Chiropractic Response to Stress - A Perfect Union!

Why Chiropractic Care is Perfect for Dealing with Stress!
It is Time to Set The Record Straight!

Everyone who comes into my office is complaining about stress. Stress accentuates tension in the body by simply increasing cortisol from the adrenal glands and that, in effect, will increase blood sugar, respiration and muscle tone resulting in increased pain in various parts of the body, headaches, muscle spasms and altered chemistry in the body. This culminates in you feeling on chemical overwhelm and “lousy”. There certainly has been enough literature that supports the brain’s impact on healing and physiology. When we feel alright, in balance, we tend to feel all is well with the world and sometimes even forget about any pains we previously had. Enter the home of Chiropractic Care!

The nervous system controls and coordinates physiology. This is not a point of view or belief system – this is scientific fact. All healthcare providers in their respective universities are taught that. The nervous system completely dominates and affects organ systems which affect our physiology – thyroid hormone, adrenal hormones, male and female hormones to name a few.

When we are under stress, the adaptation to that stress is the nervous system. Stress can be defined as physical (how we sit, sleep, work, previous car accidents, sports injuries), mental (how we think, our mood,) and chemical (food we eat, drink, air we breathe, meds, supplements we take). The goal of the nervous system is to mediate stress so that our physiology is adaptive and not reactive. When it is adaptive, we stay in balance with our health. When it is reactive, we usually, over time, will feel sick or “off” with our energy, healing, health status.

Chiropractic is not just about back and neck pain. It is about your life. Seriously. When spinal bones get out of alignment from daily tasks of sitting, sleeping, working , playing, previous injuries , and they are not addressed…over time this will take a toll and have a negative impact on your health. This is fact.

It is like going to the dentist and finding out you have a cavity. The cavity did not develop the night before the dental exam. It was growing, like cholesterol in your arteries…unnoticed. Most people would not just say “Thanks Doc for the info, I’ll keep that in mind. Have a good day!”. They would schedule a time to immediately take care of it, right? Dentists would drill your tooth to get rid of the cavity and a medical doctor would likely put you on a cholesterol lowering drug to deal with your high cholesterol.

The point is: even though you had absolutely no symptoms…that cavity, that cholesterol is.still having a deleterious impact on your teeth, on your body. If you ignore the cavity…you are a likely candidate for root canal – it is not a question of “if” but “when”. If you ignore the cholesterol warning, you are a likely candidate for a heart attack – we see it over and over again. So – what does this have to do with chiropractic care?

Even though misalignments in the spine usually have no symptoms – it is like the cavity example – ignore it and it will come to affect your health much more than you realize in time to come. The reason misalignments have no symptoms? It is because nerves allow you to feel. If you decrease ability to feel – you will likely feel less or nothing at all. Usually people come into my office when they feel too much – at this point the other end of the spectrum is operating – the nerve is not on a low dim, it is instead on high alert – irritation, pain, inflammation, obvious muscle spasm.

Going back, since the nervous system controls and coordinates physiology and chiropractic is the only health profession that deals with correcting misalignments to the spine and resultant insult to the nervous system and your physiology, chiropractors and the chiropractic field is uniquely positioned to deal with your stress from a “causative” angle. In my office, I use specific technology to locate and correct irritation to the nervous system caused by spinal misalignments. And guess what…I correct the spinal misalignments very safely – not by drilling them out and not by medicating them out. I don’t do any invasive treatments in my office and I usually get fantastic results. My patients love to get “adjusted” as there is an immediate feeling of well being that
re-establishes neurological tone to the body, equipping it with just the arsenal it needs to innately adapt to the stresses of life.

So, next time you feel stressed out…just know that stress is just the effect of what has already been occurring in your mind and body for days, weeks and years of being on neurological overload. If any of this makes sense, please do yourself a favor and check into chiropractic care to address your stress. When you get adjusted, your body releases hormones to balance your mind and your body. Most people notice wonderfully positive differences almost immediately with their stress and energy levels and also very impressively with better sleep, memory, concentration, quality of life. Your life will change and you will feel like a million! Oh and something else important to note: chiropractic has been around since 1895 – I think that shows staying power! It is interesting to me that other professions are finally picking up on the wisdom of our founders DD and BJ Palmer by noting that neurological tone can impact the status of health. This has been the tenet and philosophy of chiropractic from the beginning. You know what I love – how brilliantly chiropractic was so ahead of its time!

As Albert Einstein once stated: Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

It's 12:00 - Do You Know Where Your Mind Is?

There’s a funny print cartoon that has a man and woman sitting on the couch staring at a TV screen and the caption below reads, “It’s 12 O’clock, do you know where your mind is?”

As time goes on and we grow up from children to adolescents to adults, for many of us, somewhere along the way life begins to become routine. Day in and day out whether we’re walking, driving, talking, eating, going to the grocery store, or being with our families our minds get kicked onto auto-pilot and continue to develop their habitual ways of thinking, interpreting, expecting, and relating to other people. These habits of the mind can keep us stuck in stress, anxiety, depression, or even addictive behaviors.

Here are a few habits of the mind and a mindfulness practice to help you break out of auto-pilot and gain more control over your life.


Common habits of the mind that are not effective for well-being:


Catastrophizing - If you’re prone to stress and anxiety, you may recognize this habitual mind trap. This is where the mind interprets an event as the worst case scenario. If your heart is beating fast, you may think you’re having a heart attack. If your boss didn’t look at you while walking down the hall, you thinking you’re going to get fired. You get the picture. This style of thinking will support increased stress, anxiety, and even panic.


Discounting the positive and exaggerating the negative - The news is wonderful at supporting us with this one. This is where we habitually reject or minimize any positive feedback and magnify the negative feedback. The glass is always half empty. If you catch yourself saying something positive and then saying “but” followed by a negative, you are practicing this. “I got a 95% on this test, but I didnt’ get a 100%”. Without awareness, this style of thinking will likely land you in a depressed mood.


Blaming - Be careful of this one. We all do it, pointing the finger at someone else for our woes or point the finger at ourselves for others woes. “If my boss wasn’t so hard on me at work, I wouldn’t be so anxious” or “It’s my fault my parents got divorced”. Just check in with yourself after noticing this style of thinking. It doesn’t cultivate any solutions and just makes you feel stuck, anxious, or depressed.


Cultivating the ability to be more present to these mind traps will help you break free from them and shift your attention on more effective ways of interacting with life. If you notice catastrophizing, actually say to yourself “catastrophizing is happening right now”, then bring your attention to your breath for a moment to steady your mind and then ask yourself, “what are some other possible reasons why my heart is racing fast (e.g. , I just ran upstairs, I’m nervous)?

If discounting the positive, come back to the breath, and then switch the “but” to an “and” so at least the positive statement get its equal weight, being more realistic and balanced. If blaming, call it out, say to yourself “blaming is happening”. Remind yourself that blaming simply isn’t effective for anyone and then come back to your breath to steady your mind and bring yourself back to the task you were just doing.


This is not an easy process, yet an important one for regaining control from the ineffective habits we develop in our minds. If we’re not mindful in our daily lives, our minds could just fall into their habitual states to the point we’re on our deathbeds asking “where did it all go?”


Just check in with yourself during the day, look at the clock and say, “It’s X O’clock, do I know where my mind is?” You may catch yourself in some mind traps and if not, just notice whatever you are doing in the moment and then continue if you still want to be doing that or change if you’d rather be doing something else.


Try to be patient through this process and not judge yourself if you find the mind traps arising. Judging yourself as bad or wrong is another mind trap that holds keep you stuck. Breathe in, breathe out, and just redirect your focus.


As always, please comment below on thoughts or questions about this blog. Do you notice when you’re on auto-pilot? What kind of mind traps do you catch in your daily life, what works for you? Writing below helps create a living wisdom that we can all share and benefit from.


Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and conducts a private practice in West Los Angeles. Check out Dr. Goldstein's acclaimed CD's on stress prevention, depression, and addiction -- "They are so relevant, I have marked them as one of my favorites on a handout I give to all new clients" ~ Psychiatrist.

If you're wanting an interactive program to find relief from anxiety and stress, check out Dr. Goldstein's progressive online behavioral change program in Aliveworld. Dr. Goldstein is also available for private psychotherapy.