There are three things in life that make the human body sick: Chemical Stress, Emotional Stress, and Physical Stress. When the body is under stress the fight or flight response is triggered which in turn stimulates your sympathetic nervous system (SNS). When your SNS is stimulated your heart beats faster, blood pressure increases, vision becomes clearer and your senses become more acute. In response to the messages that are sent to the brain from the SNS, your adrenal glands secrete adrenaline, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. This is all good if we are running from a vicious animal or confronting a threat to our physical safety. But when prolonged, the long-term effects of this state can be disastrous to our health.

Stress is a reality of modern living. Especially in Western Society, where long hours are being worked and the media is constantly overloading our senses with the latest tragedy, it’s easy to see why many people experience anxiety levels ranging from mild to gut-wrenching. The good news is that chiropractic care is useful for helping individuals manage their stress levels. Read on to see how visiting a chiropractor might just be what you need to add more relaxation to your life.

Stress is a catalyst that leads to many other issues including anxiety, depression, illness — not to mention a lack of sleep. You may feel like there is little to do to alleviate your stress. You can get some relief when you visit your chiropractor.

As stress attacks your body, it becomes difficult to accomplish most anything. Your mind wanders and experiences a lack of focus. Your body screams for relief in the form of headaches, migraines, muscle tension, and back/neck aches.

While stress has been trending downward in recent years, it’s still a massive issue in the United States and has a detrimental impact on health. Sources of stress vary from person to person, but the most commonly reported causes of stress are money, work, the economy, family responsibilities, and health concerns.

Thankfully, chiropractic care can help combat the symptoms of stress. Read on to learn more.

First, it’s important to understand how the body reacts to stress. There are three basic “channels” through which we perceive stress: environment, body, and emotions. Environmental stress is rather self-explanatory; let’s say you are walking down a quiet road and you hear a loud bang nearby, similar to an explosion. That is an environmental stressor. Pollution would be another example of environmental stress.

Stress through the body includes illness, lack of sleep or poor nutrition. Emotional stress is slightly different, as it encompasses how we interpret certain things. For example, if someone you work with is being passive-aggressive, you may choose to become stressed — “is he/she mad at me for some reason?” — or you may choose to brush it off — “they must be having a rough morning.” What’s unique about emotional stress is that we have control over how much of it we experience, much more so than environmental or body stressors.

Chronic stress produces muscle tension, can cause headaches, and nerve irritation. Chiropractors work primarily with the spine which is the root of the nervous system. They release muscle tension and manipulate the spine to relieve nerve irritation. When under chiropractic care your body can return to a more balanced and relaxed state. A healthy and balanced spine is the key to a more relaxed state of mind.

Your spine is literally the backbone of your neurological system. Your brain communicates everything, including functions such as breathing and swallowing, with the help of the spine. As you feel stress and begin to tense up, this causes your spine to move. Visiting the chiropractor for an adjustment will help your spine restore function to your body. You may find yourself to be sick less, have more energy and feel less stressed overall.

Chiropractic care is essential to the healthy function of the nervous system, which contains the brain and spinal cord. Chiropractic adjustments activate the parasympathetic system, which calms the “fight or flight” reaction triggered in the sympathetic system. Research has also shown that chiropractic care can reduce blood pressure.

If you feel as though the daily stress in your life is getting to be too high, consider visiting us so we can assess what the best option will be for you!

Chiropractic care can be one of the most helpful tools during pregnancy to relieve pain and deliver a healthy baby. Chiropractic care is the health maintenance of the spine, your discs, all the related nerves, and the geometry of the bones without drugs or surgery (all-natural). It involves the art and science of adjusting misaligned joints of the body, especially of the spine, which reduces spinal nerve stress and therefore promotes health throughout the body.

All chiropractors have been trained to work with pregnant women, and there is absolutely no known research showing chiropractic care to be dangerous or not recommended during pregnancy.

As a matter of fact, I’ve put together 5 good reasons why you should see a chiropractor during your pregnancy.

#1. If You’re Healthy, the Baby is Healthy

One of the main premises of chiropractic care is to keep the body in balance and to let it heal itself via the removal of spinal obstructions to the nerves of the spinal column. When your nerves are aligned correctly, they allow the brain and body to communicate correctly, keeping you healthier and allowing the body to perform as it was intended. Chiropractic care also ensures a healthy immune system for Mom and baby.

#2. You Can Ease Your Pregnancy Symptoms

Everyone knows that a pregnancy is chock full of back and body pain, not to mention the morning sickness and constant need to pee after 4 mos. Chiropractic can help ease pregnancy symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting. It doesn’t work for all women, but chiropractic is one way to try to get some relief from morning sickness. If the nausea and vomiting are due in part to nerves pinched by an out-of-place vertebra, an adjustment will help remedy the problem.

#3. A Chiropractor Can Better Prepare You For Delivery

A chiropractor who is trained in the needs of women who are pregnant will also provide you with exercises and stretches that are safe to use during pregnancy. Chiropractic adjustments can help shorten labor and make the birth process easier. If the mother’s spine and hips are in proper alignment, and if all the nerves to the muscles and organs in her body are free and healthy, labor and birth can progress more easily and possibly take less time than if there was an alignment issue. For moms desiring a drug-free natural birth, chiropractic care can help them accomplish that goal.

#4. Your Baby Will Be Positioned Better

Chiropractic can help position baby correctly for birth. If the hips and lower spine are out of place, the baby could end up sideways, posterior or breech–none of which are ideal positions for labor and birth. Chiropractic adjustments can thus help get baby in the proper position, by ensuring that there are no vertebrae out of place. Chiropractors that have been trained to work with pregnant women may use tables that adjust for a pregnant woman’s body, and they will use techniques that avoid unneeded pressure on the abdomen, which can cause the baby to end up being moved into the wrong position.

#5. Finally Get Some Back Pain Relief

Designed to keep your spine in alignment, chiropractic care can help prevent and relieve back pain associated with pregnancy. Pregnancy is tough on the body’s skeletal structure, especially as baby grows and gets heavier! The weight of your expanding belly changes your posture and spinal curvature, and chiropractic can help correct posture problems and help your spine keep its intended curve.

All in all, the nervous system is the master communication system to all the body systems. Keeping the spine aligned helps the entire body work more effectively. It is our job as chiropractors to provide the highest quality services available to our patients and to help them work through every aspect of life, be it pregnant, in pain, had an accident, or anything else. A lot of time, I even come to be a patient’s first call when feeling sick, even though they may have a Primary Care Provider that’s an MD, they don’t want to take medicine, and I can help them get through it w/o pharmaceuticals.

Discuss these options with your health care provider. If they are not yet familiar with chiropractic care in pregnancy, ask them to find out more about its many benefits. Most importantly, seek options that support your body’s natural abilities to function and find a team of providers who are respectful of your choices.