How Stress Affects Your Spine
& Nervous System
A Message From  Dr. S. D. Pierson

What is stress? Are there different types of stress? How can stress affect the spine and nerves? The term "stress" is often used without thinking much about what it really means. Stress is real and affects our health in ways we may not realize.

Stress does indeed come in different forms. We may be most familiar with the mental or emotional form when we use the term "stress". The truth, though, is that in addition to emotional stress there is physical, chemical and thermal stress.

When there are subluxations (misalignments of the spinal bones causing nerve irritation) in your spine, there is a cut-off of communication between the brain and the cells of the body. Subluxations cause sickness, disease and pain affecting us physically and mentally. Chiropractic adjustments correct subluxations and restore these communication pathways between the brain and the body. To have a healthy mind and body it is essential to get your spine adjusted.

Subluxations result from any of the 4 types of stress each and every one of us experiences every day - physical stress, chemical stress, mental stress and thermal stress.

Physical Stress

Have you ever had an injury? Have you ever held a job that required extensive lifting, sitting or standing? Have you ever slept on your stomach? If you have, you've undergone physical stress. With injuries such as an automobile accident or a fall, spinal joints are over stretched and become sprained. The muscles surrounding the joint become tight and may pull harder on the right or left. This one-sided muscle tension causes the vertebra to misalign resulting in a subluxation. The same one-sided muscle pull occurs with bad postural habits or doing one-sided activities over and over again. This is how physical stress can cause subluxations with resultant nerve interference. Organs, tissues and cells fed by these impinged nerve become diseased.

Chemical Stress

This is probably the most common form of stress we experience. Yet, the affects it has on the body are less obvious. Everyday we breathe in air pollution, ingest pesticides and preservatives in our food and take drugs that harm as much as they claim to help. The toxins we take into our systems affect organs and muscles. This organ irritation can result in abnormal nerve signals being sent back to the spine causing asymmetric muscle pulling which in turn subluxates the spine with resulting ill health.

Mental Stress

When we think of stress we usually think of mental or emotional stress. When you are experiencing mental stress, be it trouble with family, bills, etc., your spinal muscles become incredibly tight. When this tension is more on one side of the spine the vertebrae are pulled out of position irritating nerves.

Thermal Stress

Imagine getting out of your air-conditioned car on a hot summer day and a few minutes later walking through the frozen food section at the grocery store. The effects these drastic changes in temperature have on the body are a form of thermal stress. Having your neck exposed to the cold night air while you sleep is another example of thermal stress. Again, spinal muscles become taut on one side pulling the vertebra out of alignment causing nerve irritation. 

Conclusion

As you can see, stress causes the muscles of the body to tighten. This causes spinal subluxations and disease. This is bad enough by itself. But when there is chronic stress in your life, a slow breakdown of the body's systems occurs. This can proceed to the point of irreversible damage. Muscles that are under chronic stress-induced tension choke off their own blood supply. This can bring about abnormal spinal patterns and curvatures that make chiropractic correction of subluxation very difficult. The sooner your spine is checked, the better for your immediate and long term health.