The Experience Miracles Podcast

Autoimmune Conditions & Chronic Inflammation: Why the Vagus Nerve Is Critical For Healing

Apr 21, 2026

The Vagus Nerve and Autoimmune Conditions

Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Duration: ~61 min

Key Takeaways

  • The vagus nerve is the immune system’s built-in “off switch.” Through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, it signals immune cells to stop producing inflammatory proteins like TNF, interleukin-6, and interleukin-1. When the vagus nerve is dysfunctional, the body never receives the signal to shut inflammation down, and it becomes chronic.
  • Autoimmune conditions stem from disrupted neuro-immune signaling, not chemistry alone. When the immune system loses track of what is “self,” it begins attacking the body’s own healthy cells and tissues. Because this starts as a neurological problem, it cannot be fully resolved with medications or supplements that work from the outside in.
  • Vagus nerve dysfunction does not appear on blood tests, stool samples, or standard lab work — even in functional medicine. The most accurate way to assess it is heart rate variability (HRV) testing, performed alongside INSiGHT Scans inside a PX Docs office.
  • Autoimmune disorders often begin in infancy, long before a diagnosis. Early signs include colic, reflux, constipation, eczema, and chronic ear and respiratory infections, which can progress into juvenile arthritis, PANS/PANDAS, asthma, and allergies if the root cause is never addressed.
  • Full healing typically requires a combined approach: Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care to restore vagus nerve function from the inside out, working in partnership with nutritional and functional medicine to reduce the body’s toxic and inflammatory load.

Why Is the Vagus Nerve Critical for Healing Autoimmune Conditions?

The vagus nerve is the most important neurological connection between the brain and the immune system, and it is the mechanism the body uses to turn inflammation off. Through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, the brain sends signals down the vagus nerve that tell immune cells to stop producing inflammatory proteins such as TNF, interleukin-6, and interleukin-1. When the vagus nerve is suppressed, interfered with, or dysfunctional, the nervous system cannot communicate with the immune system clearly enough to say “shut it down.” Inflammation never resolves, and it becomes chronic.

An autoimmune condition develops when this disrupted neuro-immune signaling causes the immune system to lose track of what belongs to the body. Instead of only attacking foreign invaders like viruses, bacteria, and toxins, the immune system begins attacking its own healthy cells, tissues, and systems. Because these altered signals originate in the nervous system, a medication or supplement introduced from the outside cannot reset the signaling on its own — the problem has to be addressed neurologically.

This is why so many families stall out after trying conventional medications and even functional medicine protocols. Vagus nerve dysfunction acts like a cracked foundation: you can lay beautiful floors and fresh paint on top, but until the foundation is repaired, the structure keeps shifting and the problem keeps returning. Restoring vagus nerve function through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care allows the body to finally complete the immune response and shut inflammation off using its own mechanisms.

A Personal Update from Washington, DC and the MAHA Movement [00:55 – 13:06]

Dr. Tony Ebel: All right, moms and dads, I’m going to take a different path starting this one out. This week I’m recording about the vagus nerve and its role in autoimmune conditions. We’re going to talk very sciency — vagus nerve dysfunction, dysregulation, dysautonomia of the nervous system, and how that ties together with immune system dysregulation, inflammation, and chronic neuroinflammatory autoimmune conditions. But first I have to sneak in a powerful update about what’s happening in Washington, DC with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, specifically the MAHA Action Group.

I’ve traveled all over the world to teach this Perfect Storm neuroscience and root-cause, drug-free message to other chiropractors, to parents, and to other practitioners. But I’d never connected with the world of political action until about a week ago, when I went to Washington, DC. The folks now in charge of HHS who can actually move the needle want to make our kids healthy again, restore health when kids are chronically sick, and most importantly make proactive, preventative changes to stop future generations from going down this Perfect Storm path of nervous system dysregulation, toxic exposure, adverse reactions to vaccinations, overuse of antibiotics, and toxins in our air, water, food, and household supplies.

One of the leaders connecting chiropractors with the MAHA Action Group said something that stuck with me: chiropractors have been “MAHA before MAHA was even a thing.” For 125 years we’ve stood for root causes, drug-free living, gut health, nutrition, movement, sunlight, and the truth about subluxation — that health comes through restoration of primary function through the nervous system.

“Antibiotics are lifesaving, but given for a viral ear infection, they’re life-altering in the wrong direction.”

Two things can be true. The medical system can be a lifesaving, miracle-making machine for car accidents, heart attacks, and emergencies — and it can also make millions of people, including our kids, chronically sick. I don’t mind that pharmaceutical companies make billions; I’ve seen their products save my own son’s life. But can we please make money from making people healthy, not sick? Medical intervention should be incredible as it is, but saved for a last resort, not the first call.

The One Thing Missing From the Vaccine Injury Conversation [13:06 – 18:38]

Dr. Tony Ebel: On Monday I was at the MEVI meeting — the Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury. I’m putting this update inside a vagus nerve and autoimmune episode for a reason: we have the sickest generation of kids in history, rates of autoimmune and inflammatory conditions have gone through the roof, and there is now clear science that vaccines are one of the major causative — not merely correlated — factors in that epidemic. I’ll be doing deeper neuroscience dives and interviews on this in future episodes, and I’ll link the book Vaccines: A Reappraisal and others in the show notes.

I sat in those rooms with brilliant researchers, holistic and functional pediatricians, and advocates I deeply respect. They talked powerfully about toxins, vaccines, and the overmedicalization of childhood. But the one thing I did not hear a single researcher or practitioner mention was nervous system dysregulation.

“Even in the most advanced, cutting-edge modern understanding of what’s making our kids sick, the one thing nobody was talking about yet was nervous system dysregulation.”

Think about the three components of the Perfect Storm. First, emotional stress from maternal and fetal distress during pregnancy. Second, physical stress from birth trauma and injury to the brainstem — forceps, vacuum, C-section, induction, breech position, cord wrapped — which directly affects the upper cervical spine where the vagus nerve branches off. Third, toxic overload from vaccines, medications, and processed foods.

The movement is doing an incredible job on that third factor — flipping the food pyramid, labeling processed foods, getting red dye 40 and Roundup out of our kids’ food. But we won’t reverse chronic illness if we keep skipping the first two factors. The overmedicalization and stress placed on a child’s nervous system is exactly where the vagus nerve first gets thrown off track, and it’s where autoimmune conditions first begin to set up shop beneath the surface. It’s not just toxins.

What Conventional and Functional Medicine Both Miss [18:38 – 23:17]

Dr. Tony Ebel: If your child has battled chronic inflammation, autoimmune challenges, constant infections, chronic gut issues, or confusing conditions like PANS or PANDAS, you’ve probably been told to manage it — stuff down the symptoms with medication, try a new diet, manage flare-ups, or take hard-hitting anti-inflammatory medications in perpetuity. But how does taking a fistful of medications daily, suppressing an immune system that’s already dysfunctional, ever root out a condition that starts with immune system dysfunction? It doesn’t.

So many families then move on to functional medicine, and that’s a good step. But what I often find is that our patients just swap out a fistful of medications for ten fistfuls of vitamins, supplements, minerals, and homeopathic remedies. It’s still an outside-in intervention. We’re asking a supplement, vitamin, or IVIG infusion made in a lab somewhere outside the body to come in and fix the body.

“You can’t reset the immune system’s signaling with chemistry. You have to do it with neurology, because the attacking-itself signals come from altered neurology.”

Here’s the deal: an autoimmune condition is when the immune system, through disrupted signaling, loses track of what is its “self” and starts attacking healthy, essential cells and tissues from the inside out. How is something from the outside supposed to come in and restore that signaling? The real question is why the immune system can’t calm down and reset its own wiring. That’s where the vagus nerve enters the conversation — it’s the most important neurological connection between the immune system and the body, and we need it to finish the job and hit the off switch on inflammation.

How the Perfect Storm Builds: From Sick Baby to Autoimmune Diagnosis [23:17 – 37:01]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Let me paint the picture we see far too often in PX Docs offices. First the child gets sick — colicky, refluxy, constipated, eczema — and then the ear infections, respiratory infections, RSV, croup, and bronchitis kick in. What age are we talking about? Infants and babies. There has never been a generation of babies as sick as they are today, and despite what the conventional pediatrician says, this is not normal.

The baby is given Miralax for the constipation, antibiotics for what are usually viral infections, and steroidal cream for the eczema — without anyone looking deeper at why the toxins and inflammation are coming out of the body this way. That baby doesn’t grow out of it. They grow into allergies, food intolerances, and food allergies, and as they get older, heavier diagnoses arrive: juvenile arthritis, PANS, PANDAS, asthma. Run the labs and you’ll find multiple autoimmune markers, sending the family into a whole new world of specialists and immune-suppressing medications.

“If you want a nickname for autoimmune conditions and chronic illness, it’s a confused, discombobulated neuro-immune connection.”

The functional world correctly identifies inflammation and immune dysfunction, but their assessment is incomplete. A huge piece is how the immune system is being bypassed. About 60–80% of our immune system lives in the digestive system, with another major portion in the airway and respiratory passages — because by God’s design, that’s where invaders enter, through ingestion and inhalation. When something is injected straight into the bloodstream, the body doesn’t mount a full neuro-immune reaction. It triggers the antibody-producing side without the part that actually excretes and expels the invader through fever, rash, or other signs of illness. Over time the body fills with antibodies that have nothing to react to, and the neuro-immune “air traffic control” — the vagus nerve — gets confused about how they got there.

So what’s the root-cause solution? Not a treatment, not a cure — we never use those words on this podcast. We address root causes in collaboration with functional and biomedical providers. The vagus nerve is the body’s built-in brake pedal, the counterpart to the sympathetic fight-or-flight “gas pedal.” As the longest cranial nerve, it connects the brain to the heart, lungs, gut, and immune and endocrine systems, and it’s the primary driver of the parasympathetic system — the rest, digest, regulate, and eliminate side of the nervous system. Because the vagus nerve runs through the brainstem and neurospinal system, this is fundamentally a chiropractic conversation: chiropractors are the foremost experts in the function of the brainstem and autonomic nervous system, whereas a medical neurologist specializes in the pathology and chemistry of nervous system disorders.

The Cholinergic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: The Off Switch Nobody Talks About [37:01 – 43:23]

Dr. Tony Ebel: About 20 years ago, fascinating research from the Feinstein Institutes of Medical Research built out what’s called the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway — the off switch nobody talks about. When inflammation rises in the body, the vagus nerve is supposed to detect it, then signal the brain, immune system, endocrine system, and digestive system: what do you need to get the job done, and when it’s done, shut it down.

The neurotransmitter involved is acetylcholine, which attaches to immune cells and tells them to stop producing inflammatory proteins like TNF, interleukin-6, and interleukin-1. Here’s something fascinating: chiropractic adjustments have been shown to reduce these exact markers. We can measure the neurological components of an adjustment, and studies are showing that adjustments which activate the parasympathetic vagal system and calm the sympathetics decrease TNF, interleukin-1, interleukin-6, cortisol, and many cytokines.

“The vagus nerve is the immune system’s built-in off switch. When that signaling is disrupted and the off switch goes offline, inflammation can never be resolved — it keeps going and becomes chronic.”

So does a restrictive diet, a stack of supplements, and IVIG infusions help? Yes — they should work, and at first they feel like a godsend. But do they last? Are you relying on them forever to do the job the body should be able to do itself? Vagus nerve activation potently reduces gut and intestinal inflammation and works on many other inflammatory markers, which is why restoring it matters so much.

Can You Fully Heal From Autoimmune Conditions? [43:23 – 47:22]

Dr. Tony Ebel: One of the biggest questions parents ask is whether there’s a chance for full and complete healing. My answer is yes. We’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, of patients come all the way out the other side of autoimmune conditions in our own clinic. We’ve had kids with PANS, PANDAS, asthma, chronic allergies, and attached neuro conditions get so much better that some are now in chiropractic school themselves or are already Neurologically-Focused Chiropractors helping others through their own story.

How do you get all the way better? You have to add nervous system regulation care to nutrition. For the toughest chronic autoimmune and neuroinflammatory conditions — many cases of autism, PANS, PANDAS, asthma, juvenile arthritis, Lyme disease, dysautonomia — what you need is the combination of both ends: nervous-system-focused care and nutritional, natural-health-focused care.

“Vagus nerve dysfunction is like a cracked foundation. You can put down beautiful floors and fresh paint, but until you fix the foundation, the structure keeps shifting and the problem keeps returning.”

This is not a treatment and not a cure. We use adjustments to restore function to the nervous system and allow the body to heal from the inside out, and we work in partnership with functional providers who know that food is the body’s best medicine. If you’ve already done all the diet, supplements, and functional work and it didn’t hold, now you know why — the cracked foundation was never repaired. The first step is getting your HRV and your child’s nervous system checked.

Toxins, Nutrition, and Reducing the Inflammatory Load [47:22 – 54:24]

Dr. Tony Ebel: We also have to address toxic load and nutrition, because these absolutely influence inflammation and immune activity. A recent podcast between two of the brightest minds in this work — Dr. Josh Axe and functional autoimmune expert Dr. Josh Redd — captured this beautifully, and I’ll link it in the show notes. They described how autoimmune and inflammatory diseases have climbed rapidly over the last few decades, with the biggest upstream drivers being processed food, chronic stress, blood sugar instability, and hormone imbalance, with environmental toxins as the final nail in the coffin.

That aligns perfectly with what we see clinically. Our kids live in a different world: ultra-processed foods, hidden sugar everywhere, environmental chemicals, chronic stress, disrupted sleep, lack of physical activity and sunlight, constant nervous system dysregulation, and the overmedicalization of pediatric healthcare with more vaccines, antibiotics, and medications like Tylenol and Motrin. Add them up and you get allostatic overload — and when inflammatory loads get high enough, the immune system loses its ability to self-regulate.

Dr. Redd made an interesting point: people can have an autoimmune reaction happening for years before doctors detect tissue damage on labs. In babies, that early stage looks like colic, constipation, and chronic ear infections; in others, fatigue, brain fog, and gut issues. Standard testing often won’t trip the diagnostic lever until years after the dysfunction first set up shop — which is exactly why it has to be about finding the root cause, not waiting for a diagnosis.

“It’s never been about a diagnosis. It has to be about looking deeper and finding the root cause.”

Practical nutrition steps: minimize excess sugar, high-fructose and processed foods, gluten and heavily processed grains, conventional dairy, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods. Swap them for lean, organic, high-quality protein, vegetables, anti-inflammatory fruits like blueberries and pomegranate, nuts, seeds, and healthy fats — foods that stabilize blood sugar and give the immune system what it needs to regulate. From there, supportive nutrients can help lower inflammation and support detox pathways: vitamin D, glutathione, turmeric, resveratrol, methylated B vitamins, and gut-supportive probiotics and prebiotics.

Closing: The Missing Link and How to Test for It [54:24 – End]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s the bottom line. Let’s say you’ve done everything — cleaned up the diet, dialed in the supplements, reduced the toxic burden — and you still can’t shut off inflammation. That is a sure sign of nervous system dysregulation and vagus nerve dysfunction, because the vagus nerve is what ultimately tells the immune system to turn off inflammation. It’s also what we need to absorb and assimilate those healthy foods and to oversee elimination and detoxification.

No matter the angle — chiropractic adjusting, meditation and prayer, nutrition and supplementation, IV infusion — every natural, drug-free intervention works best when the vagus nerve and brain-body connection are online. You can be doing everything right and still not get all the way to healing. But when you address the one thing hidden in plain sight — vagus nerve dysfunction and nervous system dysregulation — everything else you build on top of that foundation works so much better.

“Vagus nerve function and nervous system regulation are the most important, by a million miles, missing links in the autoimmune conversation.”

How do you find out if the vagus nerve is online for you or your child? You need one test: heart rate variability (HRV). It’s the best test for vagus nerve dysfunction, and you’ll find the next-level diagnostic version inside the offices of a PX Doc. Consumer wearables like Whoop, Garmin, or Apple Watch are interesting but nowhere near as accurate, and there really aren’t wearables for kids yet. HRV testing takes about five minutes, isn’t an intervention, and is inexpensive compared to everything else out there.

I myself have battled both acute and secondary Lyme — brain fog, chronic inflammation, soreness, and physical pain — at just 30 years old, even while eating clean and living clean. I needed to upgrade my nervous-system-focused chiropractic care and attack the inflammatory secondary-infection angle, and when I did those two things together, I got all the way better. You can fully and completely help your child or yourself heal and recover from chronic autoimmune conditions. Please share this episode far and wide — let anyone struggling know that they don’t have to.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the vagus nerve have to do with autoimmune conditions?

The vagus nerve is the body’s “off switch” for inflammation. Through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, it signals immune cells to stop producing inflammatory proteins once an immune response is complete. When the vagus nerve is dysfunctional, the immune system never gets the signal to shut down, inflammation becomes chronic, and the body can begin attacking its own healthy tissue — the hallmark of an autoimmune condition.

Can autoimmune conditions in children actually be healed, or only managed?

Dr. Tony Ebel reports seeing hundreds to thousands of patients come fully out the other side of autoimmune conditions, including kids with PANS, PANDAS, asthma, and chronic allergies. Full healing typically requires combining Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care to restore vagus nerve function with nutritional and functional support — not treating or curing, but addressing the root cause so the body heals from the inside out.

Why didn’t my child’s special diet and supplements fix their autoimmune condition?

Diet and supplements are essential but often aren’t enough on their own because they work from the outside in, while vagus nerve dysfunction is a neurological problem. It acts like a cracked foundation: until the nervous system signaling is restored, inflammation keeps returning no matter how clean the diet or how many supplements are added on top.

How do you test for vagus nerve dysfunction?

Vagus nerve dysfunction does not show up on blood tests, stool samples, or standard labs. The best assessment is heart rate variability (HRV) testing, performed with the diagnostic-grade INSiGHT Scans used inside PX Docs offices. The test takes about five minutes and is far more accurate than consumer wearables like Whoop, Garmin, or Apple Watch.

What are the early signs of autoimmune conditions in babies and young children?

Early warning signs often appear long before a diagnosis and include colic, reflux, constipation, eczema, chronic ear and respiratory infections, food intolerances, environmental allergies, brain fog, fatigue, sensory issues, and emotional dysregulation. These signal that the immune system is under stress and heading toward chronic inflammation and autoimmune dysfunction.

How do I find a chiropractor who tests HRV and works with autoimmune conditions?

Use the PX Docs Directory to find a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor near you. Enter your zip code to locate a PX Doc who offers HRV and INSiGHT Scan technology to assess vagus nerve function and create a root-cause care plan, often in partnership with functional and nutritional providers.

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