East Dallas Chiropractor Presents;
Eliminate Stress with Chiropractic!
Shared by Dr. Bryan Stephens
Feeling Stressed?
We can Eliminate Stress with Chiropractic!
According to the American Institute of Stress, 48 percent of people have trouble sleeping because of stress. This is because your brain releases cortisol, the hormone responsible for our fight vs. flight instinct, when you are stressed. Besides increasing inflammation in your body (which can also lead to pain), cortisol can affect our sleeping patterns.
The pathway that is responsible for the release of cortisol is associated with the part of the brain that controls your sleep cycle. This pathway is called the HPA axis. Cortisol can stimulate the HPA axis and cause it to be overly active through the night. When the HPA axis is overly active, your sleep habits change and it is more difficult to go through the 4 stages of sleep. This can result in fragmented sleep, insomnia, or waking too early. What worsens this cycle is that the disrupted sleep patterns can also distort the natural release of cortisol and cause your body to increase cortisol production when not fully rested.
Stress = higher cortisol = less sleep = higher cortisol …
Are you starting to see the cycle?
How can we decrease our stress? Eliminate Stress with Chiropractic!
While there are many different ways people try to overcome stress, I wanted to share how my family calms down. This video is a technique I use with my daughters to help relax and refocus. It helps clear the mind and shifts their focus if they get too flustered, anxious, occupied on the negatives, or even too rambunctious right before bed time. I use the same technique for myself when I feel the pressure beginning to build and am so tense that I feel like I’m wearing my shoulders as earrings. This is just one way that we can slow down our thoughts and remove some of the stress in our day to day lives while we continue to live a more balanced life.
Theresa M. Buckley, Alan F. Schatzberg, On the Interactions of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis and Sleep: Normal HPA Axis Activity and Circadian Rhythm, Exemplary Sleep Disorders, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 90, Issue 5, 1 May 2005, Pages 3106–3114, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2004-1056
We love to help our patients in East Dallas stay healthy! We are here to relieve back pain, neck pain and headaches while also teaching about how our diet and stress effects our over all health. When you take the time to reduce your stress it can improve your health. Our Doctors at our Lakewood location, near the corner of Mockingbird Ln. and Abrams Rd., want to help you know how to be healthy by making good choices on diet, movement and mental health.