The imbalance between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system is most often caused by stress. Now, stress is in our lives every day. There is physical stress, there is chemical stress, there is emotional stress. Physical stress could be getting hit with a bat. Emotional stress can be worry about a loved one or worry about a final exam or whatever that might be. And a chemical stress might be ingesting things that are not good for you and that stresses the body. So, there are all different types of stress, but all stress leads to what we call sympathetic overdrive.
There are very few people who live their lives in parasympathetic overdrive. Sympathetic overdrive is when we are under stress. Your body is cranking out cortisol and adrenaline. Your muscles are tighter. Your visual acuity, your audio acuity, everything is higher because when you are under that type of stress due to some type of traumatic event or a lion just jumped into the room, you go into fight or flight mode. You’ve got to run, and your body goes into that chemistry automatically. But very few people are just so subdued and laid back and relaxed because we live in this state of urgency in a crisis-addicted society.
So, my general statement is that stress really is the culprit here. And what stress does in the body is, it secretes cortisol and adrenaline. Adrenaline makes the muscles tighter. And then cortisol shuts off the immune system. It also shuts off the pancreas and stops insulin from doing its job because if you are in fight or flight, you need that sugar in your bloodstream because your body thinks it is going to have to fight or run away. And what does the body run on? It runs on sugar. So, it stops that from happening.
Now, if you are in a constant state of stress and your body is constantly keeping a high level of sugar in your bloodstream, and you have a high level of cortisol, so your immune system is inactivated, which does the regeneration and healing in the body, well, you’ve got a pretty big issue. Your body is not healing, running and regulating properly because of the state that it is in.
Chiropractors help you deal with the physical manifestations of stress. I can’t help anyone with their stress; I am not a psychologist. Anything above the atlas, the top cervical, that is not in our realm. But I can clear that pathway and by adjusting the spine I can help the muscles relax and also help rebalance the body so you’re not just cranking out constant amounts of cortisol and adrenaline.
So, by balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic, we can alleviate a lot of the symptomatology and the chemical situation that causes the stress, which then allows the body to heal, run and regulate. And again, this is a general thing. Chiropractic is not a treatment for high blood pressure. However, when we adjust the spine, in many cases we see changes in the blood pressure. And it is not a miracle; it is just a return to normal. That is the importance of people understanding that chiropractic is not a panacea; it is not a cure-all. It is a way of eliminating nerve interference or getting pressure off the nerve system by detecting and removing what we call a vertebral subluxation, which is a misalignment of the vertebrae, which is then pinching or irritating the nerves as they exit in between adjacent vertebrae. That irritation creates static in the line and changes the kinetics of the body. It changes the messaging in the body, and that is where the body starts to break down. But with proper messaging and proper alerting, the body can pretty much heal from just about anything.
The body can do that. It has an amazing ability to heal, but it is all controlled by our nerve system. If we are really nervous and we are in sympathetic overdrive, those things are not going to be stimulated. So, it is about rebalancing the nerve system and allowing the body to function in a clear, natural way that helps the body reduce the secretion of the cortisol and the adrenaline. It is about balancing the body in that way.
And again, I don’t like to say chiropractic specifically treats diabetes or people with MS or any of those things, but if you have MS and it is actually limiting your nerve system function to only 75%, and then you have a subluxation which takes another 10% away, now you are trying to run a body on 65% nerve function and efficiency, and that is not enough for the body’s demands. Understanding that chiropractic isn’t something that is going to treat anything other than help rebalance the nerve system and then let your body heal, run and regulate the way God designed it, that is the plan with chiropractic. And that is how it works. There is not one specific thing, but certainly people who are under a lot of stress and cranking out cortisol and adrenaline will have higher levels of blood sugar, so it might look like they are diabetic, and their body might act like they are diabetic at the time.
By hopefully removing the stress, rebalancing the nerve system allows the body to get back into its balance or what we call homeostasis. Chiropractic is more holistic, working on the whole body and making sure that your body functions the absolute best that it can.
Photo Credit: fizkes/Bigstockphoto.com
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a Midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 30 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (212) 977-7094 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
Click here to receive more information & to schedule your consultation.
