How Stress Affects You

 

It has become redundant to talk about stressful times of year. Today, stress can be 24/7, 12 months a year. Despite that, the fact is, stress affects everyone differently. Have you ever wondered how stress affects you?

Results of Stress

It is well documented that high levels of stress can contribute to many health conditions. These conditions include heart disease, cancer, headaches, ulcers, backaches, and nearly every condition known to mankind. How can stress cause so many unique problems in different people, especially since the stress reaction is the same for everyone?

What Stress Is and Does

Stress is a nerve system reaction. It causes your heart to beat faster, your muscles to be tense, your stomach to tighten, and your hair follicles to stand up. All of these reactions are a way to prepare your body for an emergency. When you interpret a situation as stressful, whether it truly is or not, your brain triggers a reaction. It does this by sending a signal over your spinal cord and nerve system to every cell of your body. In prehistoric times, this would have been the perfect reaction to escape from a hungry dinosaur. However, in today’s stress-filled world with no Tyrannosaurus Rex, this chronic reaction can cause pain, sickness, and disease.

Where your body breaks down from stress may depend on whether or not you have a condition in your spine known as vertebral subluxation. A vertebral subluxation is a spinal injury that interferes with the normal function of your nerve system which can affect your health on every level. If you have this condition in your spine, your body is already pre-stressed.

Coping

Many people deal with stress through meditation, exercise, and healthy food choices. These are all very good things to do as part of your lifestyle, but if your nerve system is pre-stressed, the slightest deviation from the perfect stress management plan can send you into a frustrating, uncomfortable, or painful tailspin.

Removing this pre-stress causing subluxation can improve your resistance to daily stressors dramatically. Research shows that it only takes the weight of a dime to reduce nerve transmission. Additional research has found that nerve compression can exist without pain and can cause deterioration within two weeks.

In this pre-stressed condition, your body becomes more vulnerable to outside stresses. The location of the subluxation can determine what types of symptoms if any, you experience. For example, someone with nerve interference in the upper part of the neck might feel headaches, have allergies, or a stiff neck. Because the nerve fibers that come out of the upper neck also go to the entire body, pressure here can literally cause or mimic nearly every symptom or disease you can name.

Interference to the nerves in the lower back may cause a backache, leg problems and also affect ovary, prostate, bladder, or bowel function. Interference in the middle of your back may affect your heart and lungs or cause tension, stomach problems, and digestive disturbances.

Getting to the Cause

Like other serious conditions, vertebral subluxations can cause stress for decades without any symptoms. The birth process, childhood falls, sports injuries, and poor lifestyle habits are just a few causes of subluxations. Rather than getting to the cause and removing this underlying problem, many people attempt to chase their symptoms away with drugs, or another type of quick fix, and then wonder why their condition returns. Removing the cause and optimizing the function of your nerve system is a better immediate and long-term plan.

Regardless of your symptoms of how stress affects you, a chiropractic examination can locate pre-stressed areas in your spine that may be affecting your health on every level. Don’t wait for a crisis. Find a provider near you today.