I don’t know if this happens to you but when I sit and think about how amazing our bodies are (and how incredible it is that God made them), it makes me say to myself “WOW, I AM AMAZING!”
Your nerve system is made up of more than 100 TRILLION individual cells, which live in your brain and send small extensions of themselves (nerve fibers) through your brain stem, spinal cord, peripheral nerves to every single one of your 100 TRILLION cells that make up every single piece of you (even the non-physical things – your thoughts, emotions, etc.).
The nerve system has two main purposes, speed things up (autonomic system – ie stress/activation system) and slow things down (parasympathetic system – calming/healing etc). Within the parasympathetic system, there are two sub systems: GROWTH and REPAIR.
The repair system does just that: repairs muscles, immune system enhancing, hormonal balancing. The growth mode, again quite obvious, makes things grow – bones, organs, skin, hair, nails and even the production and storage of fat. These two systems must be in balance. Too much growth mode and your body begins to turn off longevity genes and activate disease genes, increases aging systems, promotes fat gaining and can even initiate the growth of unwanted cells (CANCER).
When you follow traditional American health advice, like eating three meals per day, or consuming processed/packaged foods, using vegetable based oils and/or consuming whole grains you activate the growth mode and shut off the repair mode of your nerve system.
The vagus nerve (which exits just below your skull and above your first neck bone (C1, aka “the Atlas”) controls and mediates the balance between the growth and repair modes in response to your life, foods, movements and stress levels. Normally there are two main tones of the nerve system which gradually pass between parasympathetic to sympathetic (slow to fast and fast to slow). The issue is when we acutely blast ourselves with stress and consistently overload the parasympathetic system, we get an altered response in the tone cycles.
When this happens, the growth mode sensitizes, meaning it gets set to a new level of normal. So when any growth signals come in, like eating sugars or grains, the insulin secretion rate can DOUBLE. At the same time, this runs the overall parasympathetic tone response through your entire body making it more difficult to promote repair (muscle strength, immune system and hormones) which ultimately creates a higher sympathetic tone ready to activate (i.e. more stress).
This neurological storm is what is slowly killing so many Americans today. DO NOT take it lightly and pay attention to anything you can do to reset the tone – aka ADJUSTMENTS
What Can You Do To Avoid This Perfect Health Destroying Storm
Tools To Reset Overall Neurological Tone:
- Chiropractic, specifically upper cervical focus with full body spinal correction
- Paced breathing work
- Meditation / Prayer
Tips to Reset Parasympathetic Balance (Growth & Repair) Quickly:
- Low carbs overall and less frequently
- Little to NO processed foods, especially carbs
- Regular exercise and quality SLEEP
Things have gotten very complicated over the last 30 years. The cards are stacked against you, but there is still hope, we can do better!
Spinal misalignments are complicated because they can be caused by stress and they also create stress on your nerve system. Stress itself is also a complicated animal because it often is a psychological experience with a physical component. The psychological component is further complicated because “to each their own” – in other words, what stresses me may fulfill you and vice versa. Stress as we know it today does not come from what is going on in your life physically or personally but from how you THINK ABOUT IT and how you “let it” control your life. Here’s a few examples that may help you comprehend this (and I hope you can understand these next statements as they are “tough to say”).
My relationship with my wife and 2 children doesn’t cause me stress. The way I think about my wife and kids might.
Your health issues do not stress me out. My thoughts about your health issues and how I can (or can’t) help you with them might.
Stress as it turns out is an inside job. Stress comes FROM me, not TO me. That said, it means there is no such thing as a stressor, or any external “thing” that causes me stress or to be stressed. Any stress I feel is a function of my thoughts and beliefs, not my circumstances. Pressure and feeling stressed is an accumulative result of my expectations, beliefs, and the mental framework I hold about the world and my assumptions about what happens in it.
Do not confuse “stress” with the changes and adaptations that occur in our environment. These adaptations are healthy, normal, and needed. Jogging up 5 flights of stairs with a 10lb purse and feeling your muscles burn and your breath shorten is NORMAL – it doesn’t mean you’re out of shape as even the best trained athlete may still feels this.
This is good news. It means I am in control of my stress response and I can take steps to improve it. The next time something “stresses” you out, check your thinking and look at how you can change that thinking and see if it effects your response. Your stress effects your nervous system and your nervous system controls your life. Don’t let your perceptions negatively impact your life.
