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It was 25 years ago, but I clearly remember the lunch meeting when I drew a simple sketch of the vagus nerve on a napkin, showing the signals it carried from the brain to the body to turn off inflammation.

Sitting in a steakhouse with Ralph Nappi, the former chair of the board of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, I explained my lab鈥檚 discovery that stimulating electrical signals in the vagus nerve could prevent inflammation. My ballpoint stick figure predicted a scientific journey that is now likely to disrupt broad segments of the healthcare industry, and benefit millions of people.

So it is with fascination 鈥� and some bemusement 鈥� that I observed this decades-old discovery become a burgeoning new social media trend. Scrolling through your favourite apps, you will find influencers you can stimulate your vagus nerve by rolling your eyes, massaging your neck, chanting and humming or jumping in cold water. On TikTok alone, #vagusnerve has garnered more than 185 million views.

But a very real distinction should be made between what influencers call vagus nerve 鈥渟timulation鈥� and the vagus nerve-stimulating devices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat strokes, depression, opioid withdrawal and epilepsy. Hopefully, inflammation will one day be added to this list.

There is one vagus nerve on each side of your neck, made up of over . These transmit the 鈥渋nflammatory reflex鈥�, which connects the brain to your immune system. from my lab and others shows that small, pacemaker-like devices can turn on the inflammatory reflex to control the release of inflammatory proteins called cytokines.

Inflammation is the major problem in autoimmune conditions like Crohn鈥檚 disease and rheumatoid arthritis. And since it also to more than 50 per cent of deaths worldwide, including ones from heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, the implications for potentially treating many other conditions cannot be overstated.

But before accepting free social media advice on this topic, I recommend checking the evidence. Scientists are just starting to map and understand what the 100,000 vagus nerve fibres do. So when you are advised to 鈥渟timulate your vagus nerve鈥� by taking a deep breath or ice bath, you should ask: 鈥淲hich of my vagus nerves?鈥� The answer is that no one knows.

In the lab, we can use specific, sophisticated molecular techniques to stimulate selected vagus nerve fibres. We can force a communication flow from the brain to slow down the heart or to suppress the release of cytokines causing dangerous, painful inflammation. But immersing yourself in an ice bath isn鈥檛 selective. It activates countless vagus nerve fibres, and it also activates other nerves that control your fight or flight responses. Cold immersion might be better called 鈥渘ervous system stimulation鈥�.

So, as much as we have learned about the vagus nerve, we still have a long way to go. That is what scientists around the world are doing. They are working to better understand the basic functions of the vagus nerve and performing clinical trials to study the efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation as a way to treat a variety of conditions in this burgeoning field.

In the meantime, hum a tune or even jump in a cold shower if your doctor says it is OK, but as you cool down, think about the decades of scientific work that started you on the journey to 鈥渟timulate鈥� this powerful nerve. Then recall that there is still more work 鈥� much more, in fact 鈥� to be done.

Kevin Tracey is the chief executive of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, New York