Stress

Stress

What Happens When You Face Stress?

When you confront stress, complicated things happen inside you; chemicals and nerve impulses create the general adaptation syndrome or G.A.S., which has three stages:

• .First is the "call to arms''—the alarm reaction. Messages stream from your brain to your endocrine (hormonal) system in a "fight or flight" response. If the stress stops, you revert to normal.
• If the stress continues, you enter the stage of resistance—your body tries to adapt to the stress; it puts up the barricades, so to speak. You run from or fight the threat, you tense your muscles, you raise your fever, you struggle to prevail. If the stress stops, you revert to normal.
• If the stress still continues you may enter the stage of exhaustion. Your system falls prey to ill health.

Chronic Stress
In olden days you'd confront a lion, tiger or bear and run away from it. After running safely away, your stress levels would drop. Or you'd fight it and kill it so it would become dinner and your stress would disappear. But what if you have a fight with your boss or spouse? What about making a living and paying bills? You can't run away and you can't kill—you have to cope. Living in this world of not quite fight and not quite flight causes us to carry around unresolved, chronic stress much of the time. Chronic stress means you never completely relax and, because of the energy drain, your body and mind become fatigued. You are then more susceptible to colds, infection, ulcers, digestive troubles, high blood pressure, asthma, arthritis, heart disease and premature aging.

A person under stress is more likely to have a weakened immune system. Conversely, having a shoulder to cry on or friends to talk to helps you deal with chronic stress. Such relationships increase life expectancy and help any disease including Cancer

Prayer and meditation also relieve stress. One study of 2,000 people practicing meditation showed that they had a significant reduction in a wide spectrum of ailments, particularly tumors and infectious diseases. Writing about stressful experiences has a powerful healing effect. Journal writers had reduced symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis in one study.

The Chiropractic Approach

Chiropractors are specially trained to free you from a severe, destructive, chronic stress: the vertebral subluxation complex (subluxation). A subluxation is a very common, often painless distortion in your body that affects your nerves and spine, stressing you physically and emotionally.

One of the simplest and easiest ways of stress reduction is having a chiropractic spinal adjustment.