Top YOU Tip #3: Train Your Vagus -- Your What?

You may be used to working your muscles with dumbbells, your heart with a good swim, and your kinks with a nice massage. But now it’s time to start exercising your vagus. Never heard of it?

The vagus is a long, wandering nerve that spends most of its time updating your brain on the goings-on of your body -- in particular, your gut, where battles with bugs are continually raging. It’s a pretty stressful round-the-clock job, and the vagus has a tendency to overreact when things get hectic. A stressed-out vagus signals your immune system to attack just about everything it can find. And all that unnecessary fighting is not good for your health.

If you can learn to soothe your vagus, you’ll be able to help reduce inflammation that leads to aging. How? One elegant way is a form of movement called chi-gong (also spelled qigong). It combines meditation and exercise to help calm the frazzled vagus.

Another bonus: It also seems to help ward off and decrease the severity of disorders, such as shingles, which increase with age because of immune system weakening.