A little stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Short bursts of stress can boost performance, increase focus, and enhance memory. Experiencing and responding to stress builds our ability to cope with future stressors, making us more resilient.
However, when stress becomes severe or sustained, it can take a serious toll on our bodies and minds. As we enter Stress Awareness Month, it’s a good time to examine the negative impacts of stress and how they can be ameliorated with chiropractic treatment.
What Are the Symptoms of Severe Stress?
Excess stress and anxiety can impact our cognition, emotions, physical health, and behavior. Symptoms of chronic stress often include some combination of:
- Body aches
- Decreased energy
- Tiredness
- Insomnia
- Digestive issues
- Appetite changes
- Changes in sex drive
- and brain fog
Severe stress may also result in social or emotional withdrawal, increased drug, tobacco, or alcohol use, and changes in how one relates to other people.
Chronic stress disorder is suspected when a person experiences three or more of the above symptoms for several weeks or longer.
What Does Chronic Stress Do to the Body?
Stress affects nearly every system in the body, negatively impacting cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, nervous, reproductive, and respiratory functions. When these functions are disrupted, the resulting physical symptoms may cause additional stress, adding to the existing mental and physical stress load. That’s why it’s so important to treat stress before it becomes a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. Stress is known as the “silent killer” because it contributes directly to many of the leading causes of death in the United States, including:
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Accidents
- Stroke
- Respiratory disease
- Liver disease
- and suicide
How Is Chronic Stress Treated?
Can your body recover from chronic stress? Yes, it can. Chronic stress is treated by relieving symptoms and building supportive lifestyle habits while working to reduce or eliminate the triggering stressors.
Chiropractic care can address the physical effects of stress, as well as provide lifestyle counseling to improve diet, sleep, exercise habits, mindfulness, and social interaction, all without prescribing medications that can have detrimental side effects.
Can Magnets Help with Stress?
In addition to traditional adjustments and massage, Total Chiropractic and Wellness offers Magnesphere therapy to ease the impact of chronic stress. This innovative, FDA-approved treatment immerses the patient in a relaxing low-level magnetic field that balances the body’s autonomic nervous system (ANS) and calms an overactive “fight or flight” response.
Magnesphere therapy treatments last 30 to 60 minutes and work to stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps regulate the processes controlled by the ANS – heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. Calming the ANS also slows the response that floods the body with adrenaline and stress hormones.
Total Chiropractic Care & Wellness Offers Holistic Treatment for Chronic Stress
If you are experiencing excess or chronic stress, Magnesphere or other chiropractic treatments could be excellent options to address your symptoms and reduce the effects of stress on your body and mind. Total Chiropractic Care & Wellness offers holistic methodologies to help ease discomfort in your body and your mind. Call (516) 447-2299 or contact us online to schedule an assessment and get on your way to improved comfort and quality of life.