Stress

We all have experienced stress at one point in our lives. Stress can be from your job, family, or finances. It is okay to undergo stress, but we need to learn how to carry it better. The cost of hidden stress has more effects on our body then what we may think.

Stress can cause : back pain, headaches, migraines, and many other things. A great way to help your body recover from stress is from chiropractic treatments. Regular chiropractic treatments put alignment back into your spine and allow your nerves to send their complete signal to your brain. Once the complete signal is able to get through, pressure is taken off the nerve and the affected muscle/organ on the other end.

When The Body Says No

In his book, When The Body Says No, Gabor Mate explains how hidden stress or repressed emotions can link with disorders and character traits we may exhibit as adults. The back pain, neck pain, or headaches that you may have could have resulted from how you carried your emotions throughout life.

In this blog series we will go through each chapter of When The Body Says No and highlight the important information that everyone needs to hear.

How does stress turn into illness?

Whether we have subconsciously learned to protect our parents from our pain, or we believe that saying ‘no’ to someone is not an option, this stress we created will eventually have it’s time in the light. Unfortunately in today’s society, we don’t tend to listen to these signals from our body, and in turn our body has to develop an ailment to make us aware.

You may be wondering, how does stress turn into illness? Stress in our body is compiled of physical and biochemical responses to emotional stimuli. Therefore, these emotions are chemical, electrical and hormonal releases of our nervous system. These emotions then are influenced and influence the functioning of our organs. Repression of these emotions (stress, anger, sadness, etc) can disorganize our physiological defences and in some people these defences go askew and can end up destroying our health.

Example

Gabor starts his book with a perfect example of repressing emotions, in which he himself experienced. Growing up, he was a child of the Nazi genocide. He kept this knowledge in the back of his mind, knowing he didn’t want to bother his mom with his anxiety or pain. She had already been through enough. Gabor had to have a routine surgery on his leg. He had just undergone a 12 hour surgery, and understandably walked with a limp. He was visiting his mother in her nursing home, and noticed after that as soon as he saw her, he subconsciously hid his limp from her. He walked as though he was not in pain at all. Trying to hide his logical pain from his mother.

What can you do?

It is hard to change how we carry our emotions and stress overnight. Becoming aware of how you carry it is the first step. Physical stress may be easier for you to notice then mental and emotional stress. You may be walking around with sciatic pain, neck pain, or even chronic headaches. Unless result of a serious injury, this is your body trying to tell you something. It is possible that these pains you are feeling are a result of tension on your nerves. Maybe, like myself, you carry stress in your neck. Your nerves are tense, your muscles can’t relax, and you get daily headaches from this. A great way to relieve this tension on your nerves is through a chiropractic adjustment. Being able to put the alignment back into your spine, and relieving the tension off of your nerves can have a major impact on those headaches, sciatic pains, or neck pain.

If like the rest of us, you are carrying some stress in your body, call your local chiropractor and get them to perform a complete chiropractic examination with you. A chiropractor will be able to let you know where your nerves are being compressed, and can help you overcome some of this physical stress! If you or someone you love is experiencing some stress in their body, give Dr. Ali a call and let us help!

All information is referenced from Gabor Mate’s book When The Body Says No