Stress Management
STRESS and YOUR HEALTH. Chiropractor’s knowledge.
A lot of attention has been given lately to the topic of stress. It's talked about on TV, on the radio, in newspapers and in magazines. Most every health care practitioner alive knows about the negative effects of stress on health. BUT WHAT IS STRESS AND WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT.
Stress is usually seen a negative thing, but not always. Positive stresses are better named challenges. Challenges make us stronger but stress usually makes us weaker. Stress is not just what happens to us but how we react. Stress is YOUR reaction to circumstances. If two people lose their job, one may see it as a catastrophe whilst the other sees it as an opportunity for something new. It is a matter of perception. The way you perceive circumstances controls your response which controls your outcome. Whether you react positively or negatively to life’s challenges and difficulties depends on how your nervous system processes things. If you are still suffering stress from past events in life, this makes new challenges harder to deal which means more stress. A vicious circle.
If you want to stop reacting to life stressfully, you must empty your nervous system of unprocessed stress from the past. This makes you fully available to deal with life now. This is what we can do with chiropractic methods; empty your body of previously unresolved stresses. This is critical for good health quality of life.
Stress is the response of the body when you feel that you cannot successfully manage a circumstance in life. Often our own emotions are what we cannot manage, which creates more stress. We must teach your nervous system to distress. This is possible.
The stress response includes:
- Increased muscle tension
- Forward posture
- Increased heart and breathing rate
- Adrenaline production
- Decreased digestion
- Decreased immune system function
- Decreased fertility
This is called the 'fight or flight' response. It’s like being on ‘Red Alert.’ The safer we feel in a situation, the less the response. The more threatened we feel, the more intense the response. A decision must then be made to meet the challenge (fight) or leave (flight). Shortly after the fight or flight, full recovery of the physiology to a resting state SHOULD occur.
Stress starts to cause health problems when we fail to recover completely after each stressor in life and the fight or flight responses become accumulative. The problem is that the fight or flight response was only designed to be temporary, but accumulated stress response over time can put us in virtually constant state of fight or flight, this leads to exhaustion of the body systems, symptoms, and eventually disease. Chronic stress can eventually lead to many health problems, from heart disease to allergies. When we are in a constant state of fight or flight, we can start to react defensively to most situations in life, we can become constantly tired for no apparent reason and start to have nagging symptoms such as back pain, neck pain, headaches. We can also remain in fight or flight while we are asleep which results in us waking up feeling just as tired as when we went to bed. Sounds like anyone you know?
A chiropractic technique called Network Spinal Analysis has been developed to release accumulated fight or flight responses by applying gentle adjustments to particular areas along the spine using the hands. This allows the nervous system to recover from previously unresolved stressors and the person can start to express health and a feeling of wellness rather than continuous physical and mental defense.
Research with Network Spinal Analysis has demonstrated improvements in many aspects of physical and mental function from posture and spinal function to mood and concentration.