The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
The vagus nerve is a very extensive nerve pathway, as the 10th cranial nerve comes out of the back of the brainstem, heads into the body, and branches out extensively to innervate or connect to many of our organs, including our lungs, our heart, our gut, et cetera. And all of those organs are able also to send neural signals back up to the brain.
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The vagus nerve is one-- not the only, but one way in which our brain and body are connected and regulates our emotional states.
The vagus nerve, or what neuroanatomists call cranial nerve 10, is an extremely interesting nerve because when we hear the word nerve, we often think of a small, you know, connection between one thing and another, the wires of the nerve, which of course we call axons. If you didn't know that, now you know. They're called axons. But actually, the cranial nerve is an extensive pathway. It's a whole set of connections that link the brain and body. In fact, in many respects, it looks kind of like its own nervous system, within the traditional nervous system of the brain and the spinal cord, the connections between spinal cord and muscle.
The vagus nerve is very different than the other cranial nerves because whereas it does have connections with areas on the face, head, and neck and deep to those areas too, so throat, et cetera, it also has connections, or I should say, it receives and provides connections to areas within the body.