We all know that too much stress can lead to decreased health, but how?
Stress comes in three different forms, Chemical, Emotional, and Physical, and each impacts our health differently.
Let’s start with Chemical stress. Every day we encounter chemical stress through food, water, pollution, and what comes in contact with our skin. Foods that you eat, water your drink or bathe in, and the products you put on your skin should be pure and sufficient. Anything that is processed with extra chemicals is not congruent to creating healthy tissue and is therefore considered a toxin by your body. Our body has to work harder to eliminate these toxins from our blood and digestive system.
Emotional stress is all about thinking well. This form of stress comes from how we think about ourselves and other people. This relates to living in a loving environment surrounded by friends and family that care for our well being. Anything that goes against this principle, such as watching TV, hanging out with toxic people, or working for a company that creates a stressful environment, reduces our health, and raises emotional stresses.
Physical stress is all about moving well. This type of stress most commonly comes from having a sedentary lifestyle where we don’t move enough, especially in our spine, and don’t exercise our bodies sufficiently. Examples include sitting all day becoming less flexible and stiff, doing repetitive work on computers, in labs, or driving cars. But there is also the other extreme of physical stress where we over-exercise, doing too many
We live with all these stresses daily. The goal is to eliminate the toxic parts and include more of the healthy components to help our body adapt better, reducing toxicity, and enhancing sufficiency. Small changes can lead to significant impacts.
There is nothing that our body does by accident. Everything is intelligently balanced in our systems and is coordinated by our brain through our nerve system. Unfortunately, a medical diagnosis of high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, diabetes, or cancer doesn’t usually come with a solution but instead a chemical treatment for the symptom. To understand why we have particular symptoms, we first need to be aware of how our body works and tries to adapt.
One of the ways that chronic-stress creates symptoms is through a protective process that has gone on for too long. When we encounter a tiger in the wild, our body goes into full stress mode physiologically. This is an immediate response to help save our life, and then our body returns to normal physiology so we can heal. Unfortunately, our body can’t tell the difference from a tiger attack and, for example, commuting to work, or eating processed foods, or being in a stressful work environment. The physiology is the same, but in our current lifestyle, we do not have the opportunity to return to normal physiology, we don’t get a break. Stress goes up and stays up, creating a chronic problem.
When we experience stress in our environment, our blood gets thicker, which creates higher blood pressure. More fats are deposited in the blood, causing even higher cholesterol, which then infiltrates the synovial fluid of our joints, creating stiffer joints. All of this makes sense if you have to fight a tiger and run super hard to getaway. However, if this stress response becomes chronic, as it has in modern-day living, we start to see a breakdown in our systems, like poor digestion, blood issues, brain issues, poor immunity, etc.
We know chronic stress causes a fight or flight (sympathetic) physical response in our body. When this occurs, our body’s muscles create tension. When this tension is repetitive, chronic, and severe enough, it causes shifts in the spine, which create pressure upon the nerves. And as we all know, Neuro-Structural Shifts cause nerve interference and reduce our body’s optimal function, leading to a cascade effect to many secondary conditions and feeling unwell.
At Platinum Chiropractic, we can help by working with the body to release the immediate effects of stress. Neuro-structural adjustments break this vicious cycle and allow the body to restore to a more normal physiological state, known as homeostasis. Over the period of correction with specific adjustments, we correct the spine and help it get healthy from the inside out. We also advocate for eating well, thinking well, avoiding environmental toxins, and moving well through our newsletters and classes. Our goal is to help the body get healthier and overcome pain and dysfunction. And we want to help as many people as we can.
Chronic stress is just one of the reasons it’s essential to get checked regularly, at least once a month, making sure your body is working in a healthy normal way, and not stuck in a sick, stressed out, and reduced resistance state.
LEARN MORE at our
STRESS & YOUR HEALTH Webinar
June 10 @ 5:30 pm.
Welcome to Platinum Chiropractic we offer Services such as Complimentary Consultations and Neuro-Structural Corrective Chiropractic.
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