When you are faced with a stressful situation, the adrenals produce hormones that allow the body to divert energy away from day-to-day maintenance and put it all toward getting you through the task at hand.
That fight-or-flight response can protect you, help you stay focused and alert, and even keep you alive. Any system your body doesn’t need — say digestion — takes a backseat as your body gears up to help you survive a potential catastrophe. In the short term, stress works wonderfully.
But that hormonal response cascade should do its job and then simmer down. When it doesn’t — when your adrenal glands stay fired up producing cortisol and other hormones when you no longer need them, it often leads to chronic stress.
It can manifest in many ways, including:
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Digestive issues (including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea)
- Aches, pains, and tense muscles
- Sleep disturbances
- Getting sick more often
On a practical level, that low-grade chronic stress impacts your daily decisions that adversely affect overall health.
When you’re constantly stressed, you’re less likely to exercise. You might reach for chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, or a few glasses of red wine to dampen your feelings. You sleep less deeply, which subsequently makes you more stressed.
On a mental level, feeling nearly constantly stressed means you’re less likely to make solid decisions, you snap at co-workers easily, and your overall peace of mind takes a downward spiral.
Negative health effects resulting from such stress includes – strokes, high blood pressure, muscle tissue degeneration, lowered speed of healing, etc. When prolonged, the long-term negative effects of chronic stress can be detrimental.
During this workshop, you will learn how to combat stress with chiropractic care.
- Chiropractic adjustments can relief some of the effects of chronic stress, such as muscle tensions leading to subluxations. Easing muscle tension helps the body return to a more balanced state.
- Such changes may convince the brain to turn off the fight or flight response and returns the body to its process of healing.