Stress  We all have it, live with it, ignore it, hope it will go away, or resign ourselves to it.  Society knows about it, my patients know about it but most everyone doesn’t know what to do about it.  Stress is defined as change either positive or negative.  So when we change our environment our ourselves it creates stress in our life.   There are positive stressors(eustress) or negative stressors(distress) in our lives.  Positive stressors make us better e.g. going to the gym to work out, taking a new position at work etc.  Then there are the negative stressors just read the paper and you know what I’m talking about.  These are the ones that create problems in our lives and diseases in our bodies.

In our office we break stress management categories into three types; physical, emotional, and chemical.  Physical is gravity, posture, birthing, injuries, slips and falls, etc.  Chemical is food we eat, things we drink, drugs we take, exposure to cell phone radiation, electromagnetic radiation and household chemicals.  Emotional stress is everything you think about that isn’t working for you  job, mortgage, relationships, academics, athletics, etc.  There is an old saying that what you think about you bring about.  Dwell on the negative and that’s what keeps coming into your life.  Read the book THE SECRET if you want more on this idea.  The reality is we are always going to have stress so what can we do.  This is where chiropractic steps in.  Your nerve system is the system that determines stress and the appropriate response.  Think about your favorite food. Can you see it, already start to taste it.  Your nerve system has this memory and already salivary glands are producing saliva, digestive system changes are happening all because your nerve system took an idea and triggered an action.  When you work out your blood pressure should go up and when your done it should go down.  This is if your nerve system is functioning at 100%.  But what if you have a misaligned vertebrae(subluxation) to the nerve that goes to your heart.  Now when you work out your blood pressure goes up and then stays up because your body can’t receive the signal that tells your blood pressure to go down.  Then you live like this for a decade or two( since most kids are subluxated by 2-3 years old).  Then you go to the doctor, get diagnosed with high blood pressure, take medication, and live with it for the rest of your life, dealing with the secondary effects of a body that’s overstressed.  (Here’s a question to think about- Is blood pressure an effect of stress or a cause. If its an effect then isn’t it better to treat the cause?)  Subluxations blocked the normal response so then the body just responded to the info that it had.  IF the subluxation was removed in this scenario then the blood pressure drops and the patient live medication free.  This type of incorrect response to stress occurs hourly in subluxated people who comprise over 85% of the population.  My job as a chiropractor is to remove the subluxation and allow the body to correctly adapt to the daily stress you put your body through.  Your job is to minimize the stress your expose yourself to and have systems in place-adjustments, exercise, massage, acupuncture, to help de-stress yourself.

Dr. David Hendrickson