I’m a 51-year-old project manager who’s been experiencing significant perimenopausal symptoms for about two years.
Most days started at 4 AM: pyjamas damp, heart racing, staring at the ceiling until the alarm went off two hours later.
I’d tried hormone therapy, magnesium, the cooling pillow, the special bedding, cutting out wine, and herbal supplements recommended in online menopause forums.
Some interventions provided partial relief.
But the symptoms kept returning.
Then a colleague at work mentioned “vagus nerve stimulation.”
I’d never heard of it.
I was initially sceptical. But had entered perimenopause two years earlier than I had and seemed noticeably more stable. So I ordered one, and I decided to keep a journal: day by day, no filter.
Here’s what actually happened:
Day 1–4: Persistent Early-Morning Waking
It came in a plain white box.
I clipped it onto my left ear while the coffee was brewing. It was a gentle tingle, not unpleasant, just present.
For three days, I felt absolutely nothing.
I almost emailed for the refund.
The mornings were still the worst: wake at 4, damp, heart racing despite no obvious trigger, unable to return to sleep. By the time I got to the kitchen, I already felt depleted before the day began.
On day four, I wore it during my full morning routine: coffee, emails, and getting dressed.
Around the 20-minute mark, I noticed a subtle physiological change.
It wasn’t dramatic. The muscle tension across my shoulders had eased slightly, and my jaw wasn’t clenched. I wasn’t already anticipating the next hot flush.
Not calm exactly…
But the intensity of the physical tension had eased slightly.
That’s the moment I stopped thinking about returning it.
Day 8–12: When Symptoms Became Less Reactive
By the second week, the hot flushes hadn’t disappeared, but their grip had loosened.
Before, a flush felt like an ambush: out of nowhere, a sudden wave of heat, followed by lingering autonomic arousal, chest tight for the next half hour.
By day ten, one came on during a meeting.
I noticed it.
And then it… passed.
No racing heart trailing behind it, and the episode resolved more quickly than usual.
Hot flushes are believed to involve deregulation of the autonomic nervous system. When the sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) side overrides the parasympathetic (“rest-and-recover”) side, body temperature regulation gets erratic. This is thought to be one of the physiological drivers behind hot flushes.
The same week, cognitive clarity began improving.
I sat down to write a project brief that would normally take me two unproductive hours, and finished it in forty minutes.
I sent the email and looked at myself, surprised.
Day 16–22: Sleep, and the 3 AM Wake-Up Finally Breaking
Sleep has been the symptom affecting me most significantly.
For the past two years, I’d wake at 3 AM, drenched, with intrusive thoughts already active, and unable to fall back asleep until around 5 AM.
Most nights, I’d give up by 5:30 and just get up.
I’d been wearing the device for an hour before bed for two weeks: on the first night of week three, I slept until 6:14 AM.
I checked my phone three times because I genuinely thought I had misread the time.
The next night: 5:48.
The night after: 6:30.
Some nights I still woke at 3, but I’d fall back asleep within 20 minutes instead of 2 hours.
Our Oura ring confirmed it: HRV climbing slowly, resting heart rate dropping at night, body temperature steadier overnight.
For the first time in two years, I was no longer beginning each day severely sleep-deprived.
Day 23–26: I Went Down Reviewing The Research Literature
Around day 24, I started actually wondering why this was working.
I do not have a scientific background.
But I’m a project manager, so I tend to investigate interventions that appear effective.
So I spent a Saturday afternoon with a coffee and the search bar.
This is the general mechanism I came to understand.
The vagus nerve is the body’s main parasympathetic pathway. About 80% of its fibres run from the body up to the brain, meaning it’s mostly informing the brain about physiological activity throughout the body, not the other way around.
Some research suggests vagal tone and HRV may decline during perimenopause and menopause as oestrogen levels fluctuate. That decline is one reason sleep, mood, hot flushes, and stress reactivity all seem to get worse together.
These symptoms may share overlapping autonomic and hormonal mechanisms.
The technology I was using (auricular vagus nerve stimulation) has been studied in many completed scientific studies. Several findings reported in published studies stood out to me:
- A 61% increase in vagal activity within 5 minutes of a session
- A 35% reduction in anxious states
- An 18% increase in HRV over a study period
- 31% improvement in sleep quality
- 78% reduction in inflammation markers
- 48% reduced tiredness and increased energy
- 85% reduction in palpitations
However, outcomes vary considerably between studies and individuals. I did not review the entire literature comprehensively.
But it was enough to convince me that what I was experiencing appeared to have a plausible physiological basis.
Day 30: What Changed
This didn’t fix menopause: I’m still 51, the hormonal changes associated with menopause are still ongoing, and some mornings I still wake at 4 and have to reset.
But:
- The hot flushes are still there (half as often), and when they come, they don't drag a prolonged autonomic activation behind them
- I sleep through most nights now. When I don't, I get back to sleep instead of giving up at 5
- The brain fog isn't gone, but I can retrieve words more easily, and I'm not even asking colleagues to repeat themselves three times
- My Oura HRV chart looks like a gradual upward trend
And (this is the one I didn’t expect), I’m not snapping at my husband over nothing anymore.
The irritability that had been placing noticeable strain on our evenings together is just… not there in the same way.
Why Your Body Stays Stuck (And How This Helps)
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body.
It runs from the brainstem down through the neck and into the abdomen, branching into the heart, lungs, and digestive system. About 80% of its fibres are afferent (sending signals up to the brain), and only 20% are efferent, sending signals down.
When oestrogen falls in perimenopause and menopause, autonomic balance shifts.
Sympathetic nervous system activity may become more dominant.
Vagal tone (and HRV with it) drops.
This is part of why menopause shows up across so many systems at once: sleep, mood, body temperature, digestion, energy…
Many of these symptoms may be influenced by overlapping changes in the autonomic nervous system.
Auricular vagus nerve stimulation works by sending mild electrical signals through a branch of the vagus nerve that runs close to the skin in the outer ear. The signal travels up the nerve to the brainstem, which may help support parasympathetic nervous system activity.
It’s not “fixing” menopause…
It provides the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system with additional parasympathetic stimulation via the auricular branch of the vagus nerve.
A Note on the Practical Side
If you’re thinking of trying one… a few things I wish someone had told me.
I paid full price, around €700.
It’s not cheap.
I later found out they run a remote research study you can sign up for: you fill out some forms, share your data, and you get a rebate. I wish I’d known before I purchased the device. The other thing that made me commit was the 30-day money-back guarantee. If it hadn’t worked, I’d have sent it back.
That reduced the perceived financial risk for me.
You wear it clipped to your ear; sessions run from 15 minutes up to two hours. The sensation is a faint tingle, and it’s not painful.
You can wear it while reading, watching TV, or working on a laptop.
What Changed for Me Personally
I’ve spent more money than I’d like to admit on perimenopause solutions over the past two years. Most of them disappointed me.
This intervention felt meaningfully different.
It hasn’t given me my pre-menopause body back.
That’s not how this works.
But it improved the quality of my mornings, my nights, my patience with the people I love.
My ability to think a thought through to the end without losing patience.
For the first time in two years, my symptoms no longer feel as disruptive or unpredictable.
That’s the most honest summary I can give.
Este artículo de blog tiene como objetivo ser informativo y no debe reemplazar el asesoramiento profesional en salud. Consulte siempre con un profesional de la salud para obtener asesoramiento personalizado.
Referencias
- Borges, U., Laborde, S., & Raab, M. (2019). Influence of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation on cardiac vagal activity: Not different from sham stimulation and no effect of stimulation intensity. PLOS ONE, 14(10), e0223848. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223848
- Cao, R., Azimi, I., Sarhaddi, F., Niela-Vilen, H., Axelin, A., Liljeberg, P., & Rahmani, A. M. (2022). Accuracy assessment of Oura Ring nocturnal heart rate and heart rate variability in comparison with electrocardiography in Time and Frequency Domains: Comprehensive Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(1), e27487. https://doi.org/10.2196/27487
- Peuker, E. T., & Filler, T. J. (2002). The nerve supply of the human auricle. Clinical Anatomy, 15(1), 35–37. https://doi.org/10.1002/ca.1089
- Redgrave, J., Day, D., Leung, H., Laud, P. J., Ali, A., Lindert, R., & Majid, A. (2018). Safety and tolerability of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in humans: A systematic review. Brain Stimulation, 11(6), 1225–1238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2018.08.010
- Yap, J. Y. Y., Keatch, C., Lambert, E., Woods, W., Stoddart, P. R., & Kameneva, T. (2020). Critical review of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation: Challenges for translation to clinical practice. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, 284. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00284
- Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. (1996). Heart rate variability: Standards of measurement, physiological interpretation and clinical use. Circulation, 93(5), 1043–1065. https://doi.org/10.1161/01.CIR.93.5.1043
Spanish 
English 
German 
French 
Swedish