Win With Welllness: What are Mental Causes of Subluxation?
By Dr. Breanna Tivy
The level of optimal health a person has is influenced by three main stressors: chemical, physical, and mental. The affect that mental stress has on the body is probably the most nebulous, but is likely the most pervasive of the three. We live in a fast paced society and are bombarded with stress about
family, money, work, etc. It’s easy to make a list of things that you can do to reduce your overall physical stress load, or to make decisions about your diet that reduce your overall chemical stress load. It is, however, more difficult to escape the basic stress of everyday life, which makes mental stress the most common of the three.
One of the ways that mental stress can cause subluxation is by creating physical stress. Emotional stress or tense situations change our posture. Many people will report that when they are stressed they feel muscle tension across their shoulders and through their neck, and a result these areas tense up. When excess tension is created in muscles it creates imbalance and influences the bony structures of your spine underneath. Due to the fact that many of these emotional stressors are long lasting, subluxation can result from ongoing imbalance.
Another way in which mental stress causes subluxation is due to the body’s stress response. From a primitive standpoint, the stress response was designed to get you out of a physically threatening situation. For example, if one of our hunter/gatherer ancestors encountered a bear, the stress response was created to get them out of that situation as quickly as possible. This involves redistributing resources in the body away from areas that are unnecessary for survival at that moment. At the moment you need to escape from a bear, digesting your food or keeping the body free from illness may not be particularly important. The difference between our hunter/gatherer ancestors and us is that our stressors are not the immediate threat of a bear, but long term and unrelenting stresses of jobs, relationships, and money. Therefore, these “less important” systems in the body, like the digestive and immune systems, lack the resources they need over long periods of time. This creates a compromise of these tissues and systems. The body communicates this compromise back up to the brain via negative messaging, and ultimately can create subluxation.
The stress response also triggers the release of cortisol, also known as the stress hormone. Its primary function is to increase blood sugar. In an immediate stressful situation, this would allow the body a rapid source of energy. Over long periods of time, it can lead to weight gain and insulin resistance. Cortisol also increases blood pressure, suppresses the immune system and decreases bone formation. All of these effects of cortisol, which occur as a response to mental stress, create physical stressors that can result in subluxation.
Is your body a “Giving Tree”?
Most of us are familiar with the classic Shel Siverstein book The Giving Tree. For those of you who are not, it’s the story of a relationship between a boy and his d
ear friend who happens to be a tree. As the boy grows older his needs change, and the tree always finds a way to help the boy. When the boy needed money, the tree gave him apples to sell. When the boy needed a house, the tree gave him her branches so he could build a house. And when the boy was old and lonely and wanted to get away, the tree gave him her trunk to build a boat. The tree gave and gave until all that was left of her was a small stump for the old man to rest on.
The relationship between the boy and the tree is much like the relationship that we have with our bodies. When we are born, our bodies have all the components we need to get us through life. It gives and gives to us each day to get us through life. As we get older, our needs, like the boy’s, continually change and we put more and more demands on our body to provide for us. This begs the question, if we are not willing to give back to our bodies, what will we be left with in the long run?
When you put fuel into your body, are you providing it with the appropriate nutrition it needs to grow healthy and strong? Are you giving your body the building blocks for optimal health, or are you casually filling it with calories it cannot functionally use, which in turn becomes detrimental to its overall wellbeing? In order for your body to give to you each day the way it was made to, you need to fill it with the foods that it was actually designed to consume.
Are you taking the time to give your body the physical activity it needs to reduce the overall stress level on the system and keep it physically strong? Do you strengthen your body so that it can in turn be strong for you when you need it to do work for you? If you want your body to withstand the everyday stress you put on it, you have to give back to it through the physical activity it needs.
Do you take the time to build healthy relationships and find things that make you mentally healthy? The body responds to mental stress the same way it does to chemical and physical stress. Are you adding to your overall stress by being in situations that create unhappiness in your life, or do you actively seek to put yourself in jobs, activities, situations and relationships that nourish you.
Our bodies are something that can easily be taken for granted as we get up each day and go about our business, assuming that they will provide for us each day like they have in the past. Take a moment each day to remember that like the tree, the body is actually giving and giving and giving to us, and it needs a little something in return. It may not need to be a grand gesture, but just think how much our bodies might appreciate it if we just tried to do one thing each day to give back a little. Giving back just may ensure that in the long run, your body may be more like the big beautiful tree in the beginning of the story rather than the stump the boy is left with in the end.
Yours in Health,
Breanna Tivy, D.C.
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