When we are stressed, our body does not function well both physically and/or physiologically. Stress is a big deal. In our office, we call stress the silent killer. It’s the underlying, underpinning cause of sickness and disease, period. We have two types of the nervous system, the parasympathetic, which is our body’s ability at nighttime to enter rapid eye movement, clean our cells, and essentially rest and digest, and the sympathetic which is the opposite, it is our fight or flight response which might kick in after a car accident, for example. If we’re consistently anxious and stressed out, then we’re consistently in the sympathetic nervous system and that increases our cortisol levels. If our cortisol levels are raised, then it affects our ability to process hormones, particularly insulin, within the blood. If we can’t absorb the insulin, then our blood sugar spikes, and then it starts this catastrophic event where we’re just on that hamster wheel where we’re consistently stressed, and we can’t process the stress. We can’t handle the hormone proliferation in the body. This adds to more stress, sickness, and disease.
Our bodies are built to be in motion, so if we’re chronically stressed through those micro-stresses such as poor posture, being pinned to our desk 50 hours a week, supplement that with a high-stress job, deadlines, et cetera, then we are going to be in that sympathetic state. We call these the corporate lifestyle diseases which are essentially metabolic diseases such as an increase in the chance of type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, poor sleep, poor mood, poor energy levels, low libido, and the inability to gain and/or lose weight. Once the body is chronically stressed, it has these negative effects on the body, which can manifest in real sickness and disease.
Getting the joints moving properly and taking pressure off the nerves through chiropractic adjustments allows the body the ability, from the brain to the nerve, nerve to the brain, to communicate better. Less stress in the nervous system gives your body the ability to deal with stress better. So, taking stress off the joint, the spine, and nervous system allows us to decrease stress within the body. Less stress on the nervous system allows us to deal with stress and that allows us to feel and function optimally and as we should.
A chiropractic adjustment is done by taking a spinal joint through its intended range of motion. Delivering a light force to the joint line, you’re going to hear a pop. This has an amazing effect. 80% of stimulation in your brain comes from movement of the spine, so it obviously stimulates the brain. Stimulation in the brain allows the brain to send signals down the spinal cord to the nerve and then into where that nerve goes. It might be a muscle. It might be an organ. So, if you are subluxated, which means a joint’s out of alignment compressing a nerve and/or you’re globally subluxated, you’ve got that typical corporate posture, head shifted forward, shoulders are rounded, big hump in your upper back, essentially, you’re subluxated, you’re out of alignment, you create stress in the nervous system.
Chiropractic care is a great way for people to regulate stress on their nervous system. A nervous system that’s under less stress is going to be able to handle stress better with less sickness and less disease. So, if you’re consistently getting adjusted, you could do a quick slip and check, see how many times you’ve been sick over the last 12 months compared to your co-workers who aren’t under chiropractic care. I can guarantee the people under chiropractic care are handling stress better, they’re breaking down less, and they’re functioning better, better energy, better sleep, better mood, better metabolism.
Chiropractors should be on everyone’s healthcare team. You should be getting regularly adjusted to make sure your spine is in alignment, the joints are being moved, the nervous system’s stimulated because that’s just going to allow us to deal with day-to-day life and those day-to-day stresses much better than if we’re just chronically subluxated and stressed out.
