Stress has many effects on your overall health. Today I hope to educate you on how it affects your spine.
Your spine houses your spinal cord and nerves leave there and go throughout the body to all organs and muscles. The nervous system is the master system of your body. If there is disruption or pressure on your nerves, then there will be some dysfunction in the body. So how does stress affect your nervous system, specifically the spine?
When stress is applied through physical means on the spine, then the vertebrae can shift out of alignment. This, in turn, may create nerve pressure on the spinal nerves as they exit the spine. Physical stress could be improper lifting, slips, trips, falls, auto accidents, poor posture, scoliosis, and other traumatic injuries. These things can “knock you out of alignment” as some of my patients have stated. All of us have physical trauma throughout our lifetime thus the possibility for nerve pressure. Nerve pressure may not give you pain as only 10% of the nerves deal with sensory information. 90% of your nerves deal with organ, gland, muscle and blood vessel innervation and control. So, you really won’t know if you have a misalignment in your spine unless it hits the pain part of the nerve.
Emotional stress can cause misalignment of your spine as well. They have discovered that the meninges which surround our brain and spinal cord also store emotional thoughts. These meninges attach to the spine in the upper neck and then cause tension. This, in turn, can put your spine out of alignment. Most people when under stress feel the tension in their neck and upper back. The muscles, in turn, attach to the spine creating misalignment and then further nerve pressure.
Chemical stress such as drugs both prescription and recreational, poor diet, pollutants may also cause spinal misalignment as well. You see our body is made of chemistry designed to work in a specific way. When we introduce chemicals into the system that were not intended to be there in the first place then it can stress that system.
When you eat a poor diet, ligaments lose their tone and muscles can become fatigued. These items give the spine its integrity. Once the muscles and ligaments are in a weakened state then the vertebrae can shift out of alignment much easier. I once had a patient doing a detoxification program and was detoxifying to fast. This caused her neck to go out of alignment and then within an hour it would be back out of alignment. The chemical assault was too much for her system to handle. We then slowed the detox protocol; she would stay in alignment.
Reduce your stress to keep your spine in alignment:
- Lift properly and get regular healthy exercise.
- Eat right and contact our office for the nutritional support of your body.
- Finally reduce your emotional stress with counseling, prayer or relaxation.
Remember your spine controls every cell, tissue, and organ in the body. Any nerve pressure can cause dysfunction and only a Chiropractor can correct misaligned vertebrae.