#824: Dr. Kevin Tracey — Stimulating The Vagus Nerve to Tame Inflammation, Alleviate Depression, Treat Autoimmune Disorders (e.g., Rheumatoid Arthritis), and Much More

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4.6 • 17.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2025

⏱️ 143 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kevin J. Tracey, MD is president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, a pioneer of vagus nerve research and author of the recent book, The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Tim’s intro: why he dismissed vagus-nerve hype

06:34 What the vagus nerve actually is, plus common myths

11:31 Breaking news: FDA approval for SetPoint’s RA implant + Kelly Owens’s turnaround

21:11 Inflammation 101: when healing turns harmful

31:37 Bioelectronic medicine: from lab insight to real devices

55:26 TNF, IL-1, and IL-6: immune drivers and what VNS modulates

56:06 Exercise & recovery: vagal signals, IL-6, and adaptation

56:30 Cold exposure & breathwork: sympathetic spike, parasympathetic payoff

59:04 Chronic inflammation today: prevalence, diagnostics, and uncertainty

59:53 Autoimmunity: genes, environment, infections

01:01:08 Stress hormones, personality traits, and metabolic fallout

01:05:41 VNS tech landscape: implants, focused ultrasound, and what’s just TENS

01:11:14 Ear maps, revisited: the real science behind auricular stimulation

01:27:52 Ulf Andersson: auricular TENS, famotidine, and a depression turnaround

01:36:48 Depression & inflammation: where VNS helps (and where it doesn’t)

01:41:38 Body-brain loop: how inflammation signals ride the vagus nerve

01:42:56 Why VNS can lift mood: a working theory

01:43:22 Ulf’s setup: electrode placement and twice-daily routine

01:44:37 Acupuncture, fertility, and plausible vagal links

01:47:23 Chronic pain through an inflammation lens

01:48:34 Neural “engrams”: how the brain can store inflammatory memories

02:02:35 Cervical TENS vs. true VNS: mechanisms and open questions

02:12:15 On stage with the Dalai Lama: blue energy and two vagus nerves

02:16:55 Closing thoughts: self-care vs. medical devices, and what’s next

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show,
0:05.7	where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to determine or identify, try to identify how they do what they do.
0:13.3	In this episode, I have turned yet another conversation into a how-to-search for myself to help me with various things, chronic inflammation
0:24.7	and other issues that seem very squirrely, difficult to treat with many frontline treatments.
0:30.2	So who did I find? I found someone named Kevin J. Tracy MD. He is the president and CEO of
0:36.3	the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at
0:38.9	Northwell Health, a pioneer of Vegas nerve research and author of the recent book, The Great
0:44.3	Nerve, the new science of the Vegas nerve and how to harness its healing reflexes. Now, I say this
0:50.1	in the interview, but there's so much nonsense floating around about the vagus nerve and so many
0:55.9	different hocus, hankus, hanker,y things related to it that I discarded it. But Dr. Tracy is the
1:02.8	real deal. His contributions include identifying the therapeutic action of monoclonal anti-TNF antibodies,
1:08.6	will explain what TNF is, and discovering the specific reflex control
1:13.2	of immunity by the nervous system, called the inflammatory reflex.
1:17.8	These discoveries launched the new scientific field called bio-electronic medicine, which
1:22.6	investigates the therapeutic applications of vagus nerve stimulation to cure disease.
1:29.3	The case studies are tremendous,
1:37.3	but also the published studies and just data overall are so compelling. There's a lot you can use here. And it all started with a mysterious death from sepsis of a toddler who was in his care.
1:43.7	That's how he started pursuing studies
1:45.8	of inflammation. His lab has since revealed molecular mechanisms of inflammation and identified
1:50.6	the use of vagus nerve stimulation to treat it. An inventor on more than 120 U.S. patents and
1:56.1	the author of more than 450 scientific publications, he is among the most highly cited scientists in the world.
2:02.8	He co-founded the Global Sepsis Alliance is the author of Fatal Sequence and is a national
	...

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