Here’s a simple check of your stress level: try to lower your shoulders. If you could – if your shoulders were tense – your body is in defence physiology. You are ready to defend yourself against attack. But you aren’t in danger – you are supposedly relaxed while reading this article. Keeping your shoulders raised is just one clue that you are not relaxed – you are “stressed out.” Other stress clues include sensations of a “knot” in your stomach or your heart pounding, feeling tense or nervous most of the time, habitual foot-bouncing or finger-tapping, teeth grinding or jaw clenching. Unless you are in a crisis situation, you should be reasonably relaxed.

Responses to stress are normal, natural, and necessary – on every level physically; physiologically; mentally; emotionally and personally its stress that triggers us to grow. However, constant defensiveness is not appropriate or healthy.

When you are under any kind of stress – life-threatening or just irritating – your body is stimulated. Organs and glands change gears and speed up or slow down activity as needed. Your adrenal glands are activated, and increased amounts of energy are ready to be used. Blood pressure goes up, digestion slows, muscles tense, and your overall physiology prepares to help you survive. Basically the body’s physiology prepares for defence.  This all happens in a split second! This process is known as fight or flight.

Stress from an emergency situation is over in a short time. However, stress from anxiety, worry or anger keeps your body in defence physiology 24 hours a day whether you are awake or asleep. Anxiety affects every cell of your body. Your adrenal glands work overtime. Sooner or later, they become exhausted and your body must rely on other glands to handle the stress responses. In time, these glands lose their ability to function properly. It’s only when stresses exceed our ability to adapt or compensate or when their effects build up over time that they significantly affect our wellbeing, our emotional capacity and our mental functioning.  Eventually, your body becomes exhausted and normal repairing and healing processes are put on “hold.” You then become a candidate for pain or dis-ease.

“When we think of stress, most people think of emotional stresses, but there are actually 3 different types of stress” as described by Chatswood Chiropractor Dr Kim Lie Jom. There 3 types of stresses and they can be categorised into:

-Physical stress: these include sporting activities, motor vehicle accidents (MVA), sitting or sleeping with incorrect postures, birth trauma, sedentary lifestyle, repetitive trauma.

-Mental/ emotional stress: these include financial troubles, work deadlines, relationships problems, family worries, depression, anger, anxiety, sadness.

-Chemical stress: which include alcohol use, nicotine from smoking, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, drugs, poor diets, processed foods, cleaning chemicals, nutritional deficiencies.

“All these stresses all build up over a lifetime. We are more sedentary than ever, we have more emotional stress then any time in our history.  The amounts of chemicals in our foods are going up all the time. In fact in1996 it was reported that 75% of the population experienced frequent great stress. Researchers currently estimate that number to be around 90%¹” says Chiropractor Dr Jom

To understand stress and the impact of it to our health we need to understand what normal health is. When we think about health, we know that health is about how we function, not how we feel. By definition health is all encompassing; it is a state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of symptoms or disease. So what controls our function? Our nervous system does. Our nervous system, which comprises our brain, spinal cord and nerve network, controls and coordinates the function of every cell, tissue, muscle and organ in our bodies². It is our nervous system that is responsible for processing and filtering all of the stresses that we are exposed to. As chiropractors we work closely with the nervous system through the art of the chiropractic adjustment.

The aim of the adjustment is to bring the body’s stress patterns to reflect more relaxed muscle tone and free of defence physiology; your innate wisdom is better able to balance your body’s operation systems to allow them to function in harmony. At Complete Health Chiropractic we are concerned with your whole being – not just muscles, joints, and organs. When you keep your nervous system functioning at its optimum, your body is better able to withstand the effects of everyday stress and resist dis-ease.

We all experience stressful situations throughout our lives. There is no cure for stress – we need stress. But stress RESPONSES don’t have to dominate your life. We can help you develop more appropriate physiological response patterns to past experiences. Relaxed, defence free response patterns to non-threatening day-to-day events mean a pain-free, healthier and wholistic approach to life.

At Complete Health Chiropractic our highly qualified chiropractors, who are members of the CAA and the Australian Spinal Research Foundation, work closely with all clients to ensure they achieve their potential in all aspects of their life. From a newborn to the elderly we all have the potential to be our best, let us help you to achieve that first step.

Call our award winning centre to discover more and make that first step to achieving your true health potential.

1. Murphy: American Journal of Health Promotion 1996

2. Text book Grays Anatomy