We talk about stress like it’s something we’re supposed to eliminate. Get more sleep, simplify the schedule, eat better, take the vacation, put the phone down, say “no” more often, and protect your peace. And while all of those things absolutely matter, there always seems to be one problem; a stress free life does not exist.
Your body encounters stress every single day, and that is not necessarily a bad thing!
- Exercise is stress
- Learning something new is stress
- Pregnancy requires adaptation
- Kids growing, playing, learning, and trying new things are experiencing stress
- Starting a new job, traveling, moving, training for a race
- Navigating relationships, raising children
- Even exciting changes require your body to adapt
So maybe the better question isn’t “how do I eliminate all the stress in my life?” and rather the conversation should be around “does my body have enough capacity to adapt to the life I am living?” Because that’s where the conversation about nervous system resilience really begins.
Stress Isn’t Always Bad
This is one of the biggest mind shifts we strive for families to understand. Stress should not automatically be the enemy. We actually need appropriate amounts of stress in order to grow. Your muscles need resistance to become stronger, your brain needs challenges to learn, and children need new experiences to develop confidence and independence. All of our bodies were designed to move through periods of challenge and periods of recovery.
The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system helps mobilize the body when action is needed, while the parasympathetic branch supports functions associated with rest and regulation. This gas/brake pedal analogy is a core part of how TCWC teaches nervous system balance. We need both the gas and brake pedal, as the goal is never to be on one or the other. We have to have flexibility. To be able to press the gas when the situation requires it, but then also be able to ease off and recover when the demand has passed, is adaptability.
This of Your Adaptive Capacity Like a Battery
Imagine waking up every morning with a battery representing the reserve your nervous system has available for the day. Some days you wake up and are at 90%- you slept well, you feel connected, your body feels good and life feels relatively manageable. Even with the kids moving slowly, traffic being terrible, work being busy, squeezing in a workout, and navigating a chaotic dinner, you are still doing okay. Now, imagine experiencing that exact same day, but your batter starts at 10%. Suddenly the burnt bagel at 7:42 am feels like a catastrophe, and you haven’t even left the house, due to your capacity.
This battery analogy is one of TCWC’s approaches to explaining neurological reserve; the more reserve available, the greater the ability to take on life’s demands. When reserve is depleted, the same stressors can become harder for the system to manage, and more importantly stress doesn’t come from just one place.
The Three Types of Stress Your Nervous System Has to Adapt to
When we hear the word stress, we usually think about emotional stress such as deadlines, parenting, finances and relationships. However your nervous system is processing much more than your thoughts and emotions. The three major categories of stress are physical, chemical, and emotional, however your body doesn’t experience these as three completely separate worlds. They’re all information the nervous system must receive, process, and adapt to.
Physical Stress: What Your Body Has to Physically Manage
Physical stress is often the easiest category to recognize. It can include all of the following things such as:
- Injuries or falls
- Repetitive movements
- Prolonged sitting
- Postural strain
- Demanding workouts
- Sports
- Pregnancy & birth
- Illness
- Lack of movement
- Physically demanding jobs
- Poor or insufficient sleep
As a reminder, physical stress isn’t inherently bad. Going for a run is physical stress. Lifting weight is physical stress. Pregnancy is an incredible example of the body adapting to constant physical and physiological change. For kids this is climbing, falling, running, growing, and playing sports all require adaptation. We don’t want bodies that never experience physical demand. We don’t want bodies that never experience physical demand. We want bodies that can meet the demands and recover afterwards.
Chemical Stress: What Your Body Has to Process
Your body is also constantly responding to its internal and external chemical environment. Chemical stress may include factors such as:
- Inconsistent nutrition
- Dehydration
- Blood sugar fluctuations
- Environmental exposures
- Alcohol
- Medications
- Illness
- Inflammatory processes
- Circadian disruption
This doesn’t mean every exposure is “toxic” or that we should become afraid of everything around us. It simply means your body is continuously processing what comes in, what is produced internally, and what needs to be regulated or eliminated. The nervous system doesn’t operate independently from these processes. The brain, endocrine system, immune system, digestive system, and autonomic nervous system are constantly communicating. So when we’re thinking about someone’s overall stress loads, we can’t only ask “are you emotionally stressed?” we need to consider the whole person.
Emotional Stress: The Stress You Can’t Always See
Then there is emotional stress, and this is the category many of us know well:
- Work/ school pressure
- Relationship tension
- Financial concerns
- Grief
- Caregiving/ parenting
- Social pressure
- Uncertainty
- Major life transitions
- The mental load of keeping the family running
These are all the things going on in the background, and although we are not able to always see emotional stress, your body still responds to it. For example, think about the last time you received upsetting news. Nothing physically touched you, but your heart rate likely changed. Your shoulders tightened, your stomach could have dropped, and your thoughts started racing. That’s how something emotional can create a very real, physiological response. Your brain and body aren’t operating in separate rooms; they are communicating all the time.
The Total Load Matters
This is where all three categories of physical, chemical, and emotional, become especially important. Maybe you can handle the stressful week at work, the three nights of poor sleep, the hard workout, or the conflict you had with your spouse. But what happens then they’re all happening at the same time? That is when your nervous system capacity is vital. It isn’t always one massive stressor that leaves something feeling depleted, but more often is the 25 seemingly manageable things stacking on top of each other over and over again, that eventually your nervous system has less reserve available to adapt. That’s when we want to stop asking only “what’s the latest stressor” and transition into thinking “how much reserve does my nervous system have left?”
Adaptability is Different From Perfection
Supporting your nervous system doesn’t mean creating the perfect wellness routine. You don’t need perfect nutrition, or eight flawless houses of sleep, or avoid every single environmental exposure. You don’t need to meditate every morning, never lose your patience, meal prep every Sunday, and have your circadian rhythm perfectly optimized. Your body was not designed to require a perfect environment in order to function, It was designed to adapt and be resilient. Can your system encounter a challenge, appropriately respond, and then move back towards regulation; because that is a powerful question that shifts the focus from trying to control everything happening around us to supporting what happening inside us.
What Does this have to do with Chiropractic?
At Transform Chiropractic Wellness Center, we are’nt trying to create stress-free lives for out patients; we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Your kids will still have hard days, your work will still get busy, pregnancy will still ask your body to adapt, and Minnesota winters will still come. Like will continue to keep happening. Therefore, instead, our focus is on the nervous system and why we don’t look only at symptoms. Our INSiGHT Scans give our doctors objective information that helps us better understand patterns of your individual nervous system function, We then combine that information with your history, goals, examination, and clinical findings to make individualized recommendations.
Our approach to Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care is not about treating and rather supporting the nervous system, function, regulation, and adaptability as one piece of a person’s overall health and wellness.