Symptoms are the body returning to health.
There are 2 broad categories of how this happens.
The first is things like when we eat something bad and we vomit it up to keep ourselves healthy. Or fever is our body’s wisdom asserting itself to kill off bacteria and viruses so we can keep the outside out and the inside in.
The second way that our bodies return to health is in the case of chronic stress.
We are made for a hyperalert stress state for a half-hour every 2 to 3 days.
This system is in place so we can do things like fight for our lives and run away from lions. And it works beautifully if we let it.
In our modern lives, we rarely use this inborn survival system how it was designed. We keep ourselves in a mildly hyperalert state a lot of the time. We do this with the three main categories of stressors: Thoughts, Toxins, and Trauma.
When the fight or flight system is activated a whole cascade of physiological and biochemical responses happen in our super smart bodies. We down regulate non-essential systems e.g. sexual drive, reproduction, digestion and the immune system. Fighting off microorganisms or reproducing doesn’t matter when you are running away from a hungry lion.
We also up regulate other lion fighting essential functions e.g. mobilizing blood sugar for quick energy, increasing HDL cholesterol for wound healing, sending blood flow to the central organs and away from hands and feet to slow bleeding, and clenching your jaw so you don’t break it.
Operating in this mode for more than a half-hour every 2-3 days causes your body to start to breakdown. It’s too physiologically expensive. Systemic inflammation goes up and over time joints start to degenerate leading to arthritis. Aches and pains develop. Blood pressure and cholesterol increases and our platelets get sticky inside the blood vessels. A whole host of chronic degenerative diseases begin to appear. These symptoms and diseases are our bodies attempts to return to health by conserving energy.
Culturally, we generally keep running our systems hot and just deal with the symptoms. We go on high blood pressure medication or take an anti-inflammatory for arthritis. We do exercises for degenerated hips and knees. We get chiropractic adjustments or massages for sore bodies.
Sometimes we look at what is causing the stressed state. What is our body attempting to tell us? We change our ergonomics, we improve our diets and lift weights to be stronger. Meditate and do yoga.
One of the more upstream ways we can help out our body is by noticing our thinking. When we become aware that we are using our thinking to run our systems “hot” we start to disengage from the stress and shut off the survival mode.
Our bodies don’t believe it so much anymore.
When we don’t buy in to the illusion our natural health begins to reassert itself.
Entrainments for your nervous system can be used to help you notice your own thinking patterns and it gives your brain the space to reassess a perceived scary situation with more resources. You then relax and allow your body to heal itself.
It is always a wonder to me how beautifully we are made, how perfectly we work and how healthy you already are.
With love,
Dr. Sara
Stress In A Wheelbarrow
Stress isn’t actually a thing. Wait! What? Everyone says “Stress – It’s a thing!” Dr. Sara, you’ve been telling us for years that stress is a thing and it’s a bad thing. Yes. I know.
I was wrong.
Stress is something called a nominalization. It’s a non-tangible process that we shorthand into a “thing” to talk about it more easily. But it’s not a “thing”. You can’t put stress into a wheelbarrow. That’s a handy test for “Is it a thing?”. If you can put it in a wheelbarrow then it’s a thing. If not, then it’s a process our minds are creating. And good news, if you can’t put it in a wheelbarrow then it’s up for grabs to change or shift as it wasn’t “real” to start with anyway.
Ok but I still feel really tired and anxious, and you told me my low back pain had a lot to do with stress. You told me, Dr. Sara!
So what now?
Understanding how your brain creates stress can help us do something different. In chiropractic, we talk about 3 main stressors or sources of stress. These are physical, chemical and mental-emotional. The first two tend to be well understood by most people and the last one is rarely understood or even looked at.
Physical stress is things like a car accident, a broken arm or even soreness from exercising. The effect of the stress can be negative (e.g. car accident), creating a breakdown or positive (exercise soreness) creating growth.
Chemical stress is things like eating McDonald’s every day, alcohol, or an industrial chemical burn. Being exposed to these things requires your body to use more energy to clear them from your system just as physical stress requires more energy from your body to heal. This requiring energy is an extra load on your body or “stress”. Again, this can create growth or breakdown.
Mental-Emotional stress is the things we tell ourselves. It can be habitual thought patterns or just random thoughts. Our thought patterns are powerful as they dictate our posture, our energy levels, and the possibilities we allow ourselves in life. Like the previous two types of stressors, Mental-Emotional stress can be a trigger for growth or breakdown. We can tell ourselves wonderful joyful thoughts or terrible scary thoughts.
The awesome thing is that our bodies and minds are designed to return to a calm expansive, relaxed state once the stress is done. Once the broken arm is set and healing, once the chemical is cleared from our system, and once we allow the scary thoughts to settle we can return to factory settings ready for anything.
Mental-Emotional thought patterns are the day-to-day main reason why we don’t return to “factory settings”. They are so habitual and run beneath the surface of our awareness creating tension and tightness throughout your body and spine. Our brains can’t tell the difference between a thought in our head and a tiger on our doorstep. We create states of worry, fatigue and anxiety by replaying all the scary thoughts over and over.
The first step to changing this situation is to just notice that we are doing it. Notice that your thoughts are having an effect on your body. It could be a good effect or a bad effect. Decide if you like the way you are feeling. If yes, carry on. If no, then notice “Oh look! I thought about a tiger (or scary thing) and I contracted in, my breathing got shallow, I tightened up my jaw.” Noticing allows your brain to become aware and do something different.
The second step to changing is to become aware that we can choose our thoughts internally separate from external events. An outside circumstance happens and we are the ones who put meaning on it and create a thought with that meaning. Our body then reacts to that thought/meaning as “real”. Noticing that we have a choice is huge in itself. It opens up a path to freedom.
Noticing that you are the wizard behind the curtain is the most important part of opening up to more possibilities and eventually resting in a deeper space of aliveness for longer and longer.
With love,
Dr. Sara