Chiropractic care can maintain and restore balance between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems by adjusting the spine to remove pressure off the nervous system.
Let’s start with the parasympathetic nervous system. Can you explain what it is and its purpose in the body?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: So, we really only have one nerve system, and there’s different branches of it. And one of the common divisions that they use is the parasympathetic versus sympathetic. And what’s interesting to me is that those two work together and balance each other out. So, if we talk about parasympathetics, they are probably most known and related to what we call rest, relaxation, and healing. When we talk about that, the parasympathetics are typically in the neck and above, and then usually below the lumbar spine like the sacrum and the coccyx and those nerves down there. The parasympathetic nerve system is truly there to balance out the sympathetics, and they kind of work like in a car when you had a gas pedal, a brake, and a clutch for the manual transmission. It generally just gives you more control over your body. The primary responsibility for the parasympathetics is healing, relaxation, regeneration, and that’s the primary purpose of the parasympathetics driving in the body.
Can you explain what the sympathetic nervous system is and its role in the body?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Excellent question. And it’s really kind of hard to define the parasympathetics without understanding the sympathetic. Sympathetic is really everything below the neck and above the waist, and that’s primarily where the sympathetic nerve system originates from. The sympathetics are really more about fight or flight. Your parasympathetics get involved when you get excited. If me and you were riding on a bus and it got a flat tire and we heard all this crazy noise, we would go into a panic and we’d be looking around each other, we’d be tight, our muscles tighten up, our visual acuity, our auditory acuity, everything goes up. The muscles are tight, because now you’re in a stressful situation where you might need to run, or fight, or whatever it might be.
So, when the sympathetics kick in, that’s your body cranking out cortisol and adrenaline, which really heightens our body awareness. And when you’re in a situation where you have to fight or run away, you need that high level of awareness to make super rapid decisions to make sure that you survive or don’t end up getting more hurt or killed in that situation. So, they balance out each other. And those are the extremes about what the two do. But most of the time we’re working out with a nice harmonious balance between the two, and then the body is in a healthy state of balance in the nervous system.
How does spinal health impact the function of both nervous systems?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: When people are nervous and in sympathetic overdrive, the muscles are tighter, which can pull the bones out of alignment, create vertebral subluxations. When the bones are out of alignment, it irritates the nervous system. And when the nervous system is irritated or when the body is subluxated, there is more pressure and irritation to the nerves, so everything gets magnified. And we talked about before how when we are in parasympathetic and when we are relaxed, that’s when the body heals. The body heals at rest, not when it’s all wound up. So, a lot of people will just think about stressful situations and their body goes into that sympathetic chemistry with tight muscles and stress and cranking out cortisol and adrenaline.
Cortisol shuts off the immune system so the body isn’t healing and regenerating. So, when we’re in sympathetic overdrive, it almost shuts off the parasympathetics, so the body is less likely to heal, and it keeps us in that state. By adjusting the spine, and what we’re doing is if someone’s in sympathetic overdrive, we’re going to stimulate the neck and the lower area, or the parasympathetics to stimulate more health and relaxation and balance those two nerve systems out and make sure that one isn’t too dominant. Because, if your parasympathetics are dominant, you’re going to be lazy, you’re just going to be resting and tired all the time, and it’s just different. So, they work with each other. The health of your spine will dictate how well your body adapts, how well your body is efficiently getting rid of the cortisol and adrenaline and breaking it down and then stimulating. So, it needs to be in balance and chiropractic helps do that.
How does chronic stress and an overactive sympathetic nervous system affect long-term health and wellness?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, Liz, we can expand upon that. It was kind of asked and answered prior to that, but when you’re under chronic stress, your mind is constantly thinking about these things. I’ve been having a little bit more stress in my life, because my mom’s been having some health challenges. I’ve been traveling a lot, and this comes up, and so I start getting more nervous and my muscles get tighter, and my body cranks out more cortisol and adrenaline. So, I get into that overactive sympathetic nervous system, or what I call sympathetic overdrive, when we’re in chronic stress. And since when we’re under chronic stress and our body is in sympathetic overdrive, our immune system is shut down and not working as efficiently because your body’s trying to conserve energy. That’s when a disease process can really get hold.
The classic example I give you is we all know these people that maybe we work with or that we know that are constantly stressed out, they’re always kind of negative, bitter and angry, and you ever notice that that’s the person that’s always sick? They’re always coughing and sneezing, and missing work, and things like that.
When your body’s in that sympathetic overdrive, our immune system just isn’t as highly functioning. Our immune system is really what does the healing in the body, and regeneration. That’s how our body survives. Our bodies every seven years, almost completely regenerate. And that regeneration is what keeps us young, healthy, and strong. If the body loses that ability or that ability is impaired, well then the regeneration process is going to be slower. If you’re breaking the body down faster than you can heal it and regenerate it, you’re going to lead to significant health challenges, pain, discomfort, and a multitude of other things.
In what ways does chiropractic care help restore balance between the two nervous systems so the body can function optimally?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Like I said, it is just one nerve system and there’s different sets of nerves in different areas. But, with chiropractic, again, we’re going to restore the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic. So, if someone is in sympathetic overdrive, we’re going to be working more with the neck and then the base, the lumbar spine, and maybe the sacrum. If someone’s more parasympathetically driven, then we’ll stimulate the mid-back area, and we’re going to look for the misalignments that could be affecting it. So, you can have subluxations that either speed things up and accelerate the nerve system, or some of the subluxations will dam back the nerve impulses and the impulses don’t get there.
So again, if there’s not proper communication, the body doesn’t act in concert. Basically, you’ve got 70 trillion cells. Every single one of those cells is connected to your brain. And how important is that when the brain knows what every single cell is doing? It can regulate and make corrections and help the body to adapt to any stressful situation and improve your health overall. But, if there’s a disconnect between the brain and the body, those things don’t get balanced out.
So, by clearing off pressure off the nerve system and restoring the balance and proper communication, that enables the body to heal, run and regulate itself. These are the people who lead active health, drug-free lives, aren’t sick all the time, have higher levels of energy and higher levels of function.
Learn More
To speak with Dr. Gregg Rubinstein, visit www.ChiropractorMidtown.com or call (212) 977-7094 to schedule an appointment.
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