Lets say your walking through the woods and you come across a bear. First off you see the bear and instantly you become frightened and go into a stress response. The brain interprets the potentially harmful stimuli as a stressful one and instantly transforms your body in such a way that it can respond to the threat and enhance the chance for survival. Just like that the sympathetic or “fight or flight” portion of the nervous system prepares the body for the confrontation.
Instantly your blood pressure shoots up, your heart begins to race, and your face turns white as a ghost. This is because the blood in your body is being redirected to the large muscles of the body responsible for locomotion. Certain systems of the body are enhanced and other parts of the body are shut down for optimal efficiency. For instance, digestion shuts down because when you are about to become a meal digesting that vegi-burger you just ate isn’t so important. Sexual organs shut down because procreation is the last thing on your mind, in fact the brain begins to shut down too because you don’t have time to think only react. All healing and growth comes to a screeching halt and the body stops producing vital components of tissue generation, healing and immunity and starts to increase cortisol levels as well as blood glucose and cholesterol.
Its no wonder that the most popular drug ads on TV are focused on indigestion, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, sexual dysfunction, sleep disorders, etc, etc, all working to suppress the body’s normal physiological reaction to stress. Drugs may be successful in lowering blood pressure or cholesterol but they will never produce health in the patient or improve life and, worse, they leave the cause of the problem unresolved and add a further stressor in the form of changes in blood chemistry.
What happens when we put ourselves in a chronically stressful environment like New York City, is that we force our body to adapt to this environment by producing a chronic stress response. Stress is not a disease! Problems arise when the body is unable to adapt, and stress becomes chronic. The only way to produce health is to decrease the chronic stress response by either reducing stressors or by improving the body’s abilities to adapt with lifestyle changes. Drugs do neither; chiropractic can do both.
Dr. Nicholas Baiata is a chiropractor in New York City. You can call Dr. Baiata at (212) 343-3112 to schedule your visit.
