Dr. Emily Savage of Revive Upper Cervical discusses Autonomic Nervous System and how they contribute to stress. This is a division of the nervous system that is heavily regulated by the brain stem but is in control of a lot of background functions such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion.
The Autonomic Nervous System is further divided into two divisions:
- Parasympathetic – Rest and Digest
- Sympathetic – Fight or Flight (or stress response)
These divisions are designed to balance each other out, but we often see that’s not always the case. Watch the entire video to learn more about the Autonomic Nervous System and how Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care can help with stress in the nervous system.
Watch the full video on YouTube or Facebook. Full transcript is below
Hey, everyone. Dr. Emily Savage here with Revive Upper Cervical Chiropractic here in Cranberry Twp. Recently, we have been having conversations about women’s health. So we’re focused more on conditions that may affect women more often than they do men or conditions that impact women differently.
So if you are interested in learning more about those things and getting in on those conversations, you can search up the #ReviveWomensHealth, and you can find more content there.
Now today’s topic is not necessarily something, again, that’s unique to women, but it’s definitely something that we have a tendency to be a little bit more sensitive to, and that is stress. Now before we dive too deep into that, I do want to take a step back and give more of an overview.
Your nervous system is divided into several different divisions, and one of the big ones that we talk about is the autonomic nervous system. If you listen to the word, autonomic, it sounds like the word automatic, right? You can think of one as an area or the division of your nervous system that is heavily regulated by the brain stem but is in control of a lot of those background functions that are keeping you alive.
Things like breathing, heart rate, digestion, all that good stuff that you know is going to happen for you, and it’s really critical, but you’re not consciously making an effort to do so.
The autonomic nervous system is then divided into two additional divisions, and that’s where we get our parasympathetic nervous system, which is also known as the rest and digest system.
And then we have our sympathetic nervous system, which is also known as fight or flight system or stress response.
So these two divisions are really designed to work in harmony with each other and balance each other out. But often times we see that that’s not always the case.
Your sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight, is the one that’s designed to help you run away from a bear. It’s designed to get you out of danger. So you hang around, you can fight the bear, or you can flee the situation.
The sympathetic system really kind of acknowledges the stressor and helps you get away from it. Anything that’s not critical in saving your life in that moment, those functions get shut down.
Now, once you remove yourself from that situation, the parasympathetic system is able to reengage. That’s where we get things like calming heart rate back down or digestion at ease.
The things that maybe weren’t as critical beforehand now can take place. But as I mentioned, we often find that’s not always the case. They’re not always totally perfectly balanced just with the world that we live in modern day society.
With things like technology and the news and social media, we’re constantly kind bombarded with stress, and it causes the sympathetic nervous system to really always be revved up.
Even though we’re not in immediate danger, it’s like the bear that you were trying to fight or get away from before is now following you home at night. When that happens, all of those functions that are really designed to be life saving can become detrimental to your health.
When that happens, we see people in that sympathetic dominant type of state. We’ll see people who are very fatigued, that are drained, very low energy. They have more susceptibility to getting sick because your immune system and immune function isn’t really going to help you escape danger.
We’ll see people with aches and pains. They have constipation, maybe bloating, sometimes it’s the opposite. Again, digestion is not something that’s necessarily helping you run away from a bear. People will have a lot of times an increase of anxiety.
They’ll have headaches, light and sound sensitivity. All of these things are happening because their nervous system is just constantly on edge and it feels like we’re in danger all the time.
We like to talk about a lot of times that there are multiple different types of stress. You have mental and emotional type of stress. You have chemical stress as well, which has to do with what you’re putting in your body and a lot of times the environment that you’re in.
Then you have physical stress – car accidents and injuries and all of those types of things.
But you also have what we recognize mostly in our work, and that’s going to be a misalignment or chiropractic subluxation.
So that is putting physical stress on the nervous system. It’s putting physical stress on those nerves. The thing about the body is that it’s not able to differentiate and react differently to different types of stress. The physical stress that comes from a misalignment is going to have the same type of impacts as the stress of having to escape danger.
When people come in and they see us and they have these misalignments, they may have present with the exact same thing that somebody who is just very stressed and feels like they’re in danger is happening.
One of the best things that you can do is just kind of take a step back and try to evaluate where the stress in your life is coming from. Is it mental stress? Is it work? Is it what you’re putting in your body? Is it your diet? And if you’ve gone through those things and you still feel you need help, there’s always the chance that it is a physical misalignment causing stress and causing these types of things.
Maybe as you’re watching this video, you think of somebody else or maybe you’re thinking of yourself. Share this video and let us know in the comments if you have any type of questions or you want somebody in your area that does this type of upper cervical work. We’re happy to help and serve.
Thank you for taking the time to watch this video and we’ll see you soon.
To schedule a consultation with Revive Upper Cervical Chiropractic, call 724-772-7060, or fill out the form below.
If you are in or around the Cranberry Township area and are looking for an opinion regarding your stress. In that case, you can visit Dr. Bulow at the Revive Upper Cervical Chiropractic. Our practice is open Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 9 am to 6 pm; Wednesday from 1 pm to 6 pm. You can also drop by on Fridays between 9 am to 12 noon.
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