Stress and Health

The effect of stress on health is devastating . Every day in our Chiropractic practice we see the negative effects that prolonged stress can have upon health potential and the body’s ability to heal itself.

The damaging influence of stress on the body comes about not because of any body/mind weakness. Interestingly, it occurs because of a normal body response that simply goes on too long.

You see, if we encounter a short term stress we experience the stress through our eyes, ears and others senses. Our brain then gets excited and tells the body to make a fright/flight response. This involves a NORMAL PHYSICAL CASCADE(waterfall effect) where we have faster heartbeat, increased blood pressure, slowed digestion,heightened awareness, nerve/muscular sensitivity and lowering of immune responses, etc .

An example of this situation/stress would be being chased by a Sabre-Toothed tiger!!! You need to run away, you do not need to digest food or fight a virus at that point. If we escape that’s fantastic, our physical functions return to normal as our subconscious brain calms down.

What would happen if the stress was a slow one? Maybe unresolved work or family stress. This stress creates a fright/flight physical response but then doesn’t go away. What would happen if another stress then came along before the effects of the first stress had stopped or been dealt with?

We then have a additive or compounding effect.

This can happen to us. We can end up with onion layers of stress and parallel layers of physical change.

Erratic Heart Beats, high blood pressure, digestive problems, poor sleep, vague unexplained aches/pains and poor immunity seem to be common ailments of modern society……. If you feel these types of symptoms please consider the possibility that our body may be merely struggling for health in a multi-layered stressful environment. If we can remove or even lessen the stress any treatment we have will be much more effective.

Wherever possible, always remember to treat the cause rather than the symptom.