Stress is inevitably apart of our everyday lives, and can become a part of your life whether you want it or not. This feeling of stress can overwhelm you almost instantly and can become a chronic problem if you are not careful with how you deal with your stress. Some experience stress in the form of muscle tension, back spasms, joint pain, neck pain, back pain, increasing the chances that you become sick, potential delays in cognitive ability, headaches, fatigue, sleeping difficulties, and can lead you down the path of other cardiovascular disorders or digestive problems. Other types of stress that wrecks havoc on us originate within our minds and body. In the U.S. about 75% of diseases out there are due to lifestyles and stress related that include obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. When looking at what can cause stress, there are 3 main categories that are physical, chemical and emotional.
Physical stress is the everyday stress that we put upon our bodies. This stress doesn’t have to be an injury; it can be from bad posture, sitting too long, repetitive bending, lifting awkwardly, and other physical issues that arise with our body. With physical stress comes stress on the structure of the body, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and the spine. With additional stress due to body posture and mechanics of the body, the muscles have to deal with how it relates to functional body movement and position. When the muscles decide how your body should move to allow for this stress, it creates imbalances in the spine. When you are looking at how the spine affects your physical stress, all of the nerves that travel down the spine exit and go to all of the muscles, skin, and internal organs. This creates a disruption in the nerves, which can have a negative impact on your overall health and well-being. Some physical signs that your body is in a stress overload are dizziness, insomnia, increased heart rate, digestive problems, exhaustion, ears ringing, chronic type of pain and diseases.
Chemical stress is an imbalance in the body that relates to the chemicals that are all around us. These chemicals could be from different diets, smoking, alcohol intake that is excessive, over the counter drugs, prescriptions, cleaning products, and other types of environmental pollution. These different stresses brought on by chemical reactions in your body could make your body react in a way that causes damage to the internal system that makes up your bodies cells. If your body is overwhelmed with chemicals, the stress that comes from it is your body breaking down to try and handle what is causing this stress and overloads your systems causing ailments to occur.
Emotional stress can be a little easier to explain and seen more within work issues, family problems, relationships, holidays, and the where you live could be the sources that are significant to the stress that causes your body not to function at an optimum level. This stress also originates in our minds with thinking about unrealistic goals, self-defeating thoughts, inaccurate feelings about yourself, and all of these can cause a tremendous amount of stress on the mind and body. Some signs that you can be on the lookout with emotional stress could be becoming more worrisome, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, negative thinking, anxiety, depression, and nervousness.
With these different types and amount of stress that we put ourselves through daily activities can lead your body to a heightened state. This increased state the body is in creates changes within our body and causes an increase in sympathetic tone within the muscles and nervous system. This increase with your sympathetic system causes your muscles to become tighter, constriction of blood vessels causing higher blood pressure, and nerves get stretched as they pass through the muscles. This causes your joints to become more compressed with limited motion and could create pain. When this affects your spine, this leads to additional stress and strain on the vertebra, which makes the joint not move as well and causes subluxations within the spine itself. With your spine being compressed due to the additional stress upon it from the physical, chemical and emotional stressors, this can lead you down a path for having bad posture. Bad posture creates bad habits within your body and muscles, and makes you more susceptible to limitation with ranges of motion, functionality, diseases and other ailments.
There are multiple different ways to deal with stress and help prevent it from occurring. When you develop and maintain healthy habits, identify individual stressors, and learn to adapt and control the amount of stress in your life, you will be able to enjoy your life and have more time to accomplish your goals. Here are 10 different ways that can get you on the right path to helping your body get over the unwarranted stress.
- Sleeping Enough – Getting enough sleep during the night can set you up for a great day, but not getting the sufficient amount of sleep will put you more at risk for other serious problems like, diabetes, depression, and potentially obesity. The better you are at aligning your sleep schedule with the natural sun rising and falling during the day, the better your body will feel.
- Eating Well – A good steady diet with fruits, vegetables, whole grains and plenty of water will increase your energy during the day and decrease the amount of stress your body deals with when not having the correct diet of food. The food and water that we put into our bodies is a direct result of how our body feels and reacts to everyday situations, the healthy the diet the better response you will get from your bodies reactions.
- Exercising Daily – The more you get up and get moving your body is able to handle little stressors in your life. With exercise in just as little as 20 minutes a day and substantially decrease the amount of stress levels in your body. It’s not just neck or back exercises that you need to be doing, but full body exercises. We are constantly putting our bodies into a stagnant position at work and at home, and with full body exercising it creates movement within your entire body.
- Avoiding Non-Natural energy boosters – Caffeine, energy drinks and other prescription medications can help you beat the exhaustion of everyday life, but making your body stay awake will ultimately make your body have a energy crash, enabling your body to become more vulnerable to stress.
- Seeking out Emotional Support – Seeking out help of a family member, friend, or even a counselor will help you talk about what stressors are in your life without judgment or advice. This will allow you to talk out your frustrations and not holding it all in, as this can lead to bigger problems.
- Embrace Your Passions – With our days being filled up with more ‘To-Do’ items on our schedule, don’t forget to find some time each week to enjoy an activity or hobby that you have a passion for. This activity that you do will promote a physiology of anti-stress within your body, and allow you to relax and not be as stressed of the things that occur in our lives.
- Don’t Overload Your Schedule – Our schedules can get booked and overloaded without warning with job functions, family and friend activities, and other things that we get scheduled to attend. It is always very important to not overload your schedule daily. With adding more things on the itinerary, you can feel like your just running around without stopping or taking a break, and this adds to your body’s stress of not slowing down. It is important to take good care of your body and mind, as your activities and functions are important, but so is your overall well-being.
- Just Breathe – Breathing exercise are a great way to help with easing the tension within our mind and body. Deep breathing with inhaling slowly and holding your breath for a few seconds and exhaling slowly with repeating if needed, will allow your body to prevent shallow and short breaths that aid tension feelings with your body.
- Treat Yourself to a Massage – Muscle tension and knots within muscles and the body can cause stress. A massage therapist will be able to loosen up the muscles and provide the stress relief that is needed. Almost everyone holds there tension in the shoulders and upper back, and with the help of a massage therapist, this tension can be relieved and allow your body relax.
- Try Using Essential Oils – Using Essential Oils can be very beneficial in relieving the bodies internal stress patterns, as these oils are all natural and come from different parts of natural plants. The oils that you would be looking for need to be certified pure therapeutic grade oils, as some are synthetic substitutes and could cause other problems within the body, and are not all natural.
Here at PrimeSpine in Bellevue, WA, we understand that stress in a large part of life, but when it becomes a problem that is chronic in nature it can drain your body mentally and physically. Chiropractic care can also help decrease the amount of stress that your body is going through due to the different types of body posture. When stress is in your body is creates different changes within the muscles that create unwanted tension, soreness, and pain, with ultimately leading you down the path of having headaches or migraines, neck pain, and low back pain. When your body has additional stress in the muscles, this creates an unbalanced spine and body causing misalignments to occur within the spine. At PrimeSpine we manage stress in your body by finding these spinal misalignments and correcting them with a chiropractic adjustment. After the chiropractic adjustment to the spine and body, there are several ways you can feel the benefits with the feeling of decreasing muscle tension and pain, improving circulation of fluids in your body, decreasing or eliminating headaches or migraines, and it helps the body produce and release natural stress-relieving chemicals called endorphins in your body.
If you are looking at relieving your stress naturally, give PrimeSpine a call at (425) 590-9619. We help promote not only a healthier lifestyle but also identify the types of stressors that are occurring in your life and body, and minimize your exposure to the different types of stress in your life and body. Call us Today and let us take care of your spine and body, so you can live the life you always wanted!
