If you joined us for our monthly women’s group, The Refuge, last month – you heard us talk all about the health of your gut. You probably left with a few tips to cut out certain foods, add in some good foods, and general advice to help the health and repair of your gut.
One thing that severely impacts the health of your digestive tract is stress. And more specifically your body’s response to stress.
Think about this for a second. What happens when our body responds to stress?
You are driving on the interstate in rush hour traffic and the person in front of you slams on their brakes. You slam on yours and stop just short of smashing into their bumper. Whew, close one.
What does your body do?
Heart rate increases. Check.
Blood pressure increases. Check.
Respiratory rate quickens. Check.
The muscles all over your body get tight and tense. Check.
This physiological response is called your sympathetic response, or your stress response. It is totally normal, and a great thing to help our bodies react quickly and survive.
What do you think happens to other systems or processes in your body during this stress response?
Immune system? Do you think your body’s concerned with fighting off a cold? Nope.
Sleep? Do you think your body is in a state where it can fall asleep easily? Nope.
Digestive system? Do you think your body’s concerned about digesting your lunch? Nope.
When your body is in a stress response state, it will divert energy and blood supply from these areas (immune system, digestive system) to the heart, lungs, and muscles of your body.
We are meant to be in this stress response state for a SHORT period of time. Like 8 minutes. MAX! Thankfully (and hopefully) you aren’t slamming on your brakes in traffic constantly. However, things other than physical threats activate this stress response.
Like… stress at work, stressful emotional relationships, busy schedules, social media, kids, and our fast-paced life in general!
So what happens if we experience this constant stress, and our bodies aren’t handling it well? I’ll tell you exactly what suffers – Immune system. Digestive system. Sleep. Healing. Mood. Energy.
This is how stress directly affects your digestive system (AKA your gut!)
If our bodies are better able to handle stress, and avoid staying in a chronic stressed state – our immune system improves, our digestive tract improves, sleep improves, energy improves!
Here at Restore, what we look for through our examination of the nervous system is: how well is your body handling stress? Is there an issue with the nervous system that is preventing your body from handling stress properly? We use state of the art technology to test this in the form of thermography scans, EMG scans, heart rate variability scans, and range of motion studies.
When we find that a misalignment in the spine, particularly the upper neck area, is causing an issue with the nervous system and causing the body to be stuck in a chronic state of stress — we are very hopeful… because we can help!
We can remove that misalignment, allow the body to come out of the stress response, and shift more energy to healing, the immune system, and the digestive system.
This is how chiropractic can help with the stress response, and as a result the health and repair of the gut. Boom!
