Anxiety is high right now for many people in many different ways. There are plenty of ways to combat anxiety and can give your mind and body the best chance to calm down naturally. Often with anxiety, people simply get caught in loops and patterns of repeat. The natural recommendations in this two-part series are designed to help you create a bit of structure to your daily behaviors that will allow you to contain the anxiety and hopefully eliminate some of the repetitive patterns and move forward calmly.
Regular Chiropractic Adjustments
The nervous system is the communication system through which you live and experience and live your life. The brain speaks to your body by sending messages down through the spinal cord and out miles of nerves to every single cell, system, structure, and organ. They also send information back through the nerves up the cord and to the brain. The spine houses and protects the nervous system. When the spine is moving and functioning optimally, the nervous system transmission is offered the best opportunity to flourish in its communication paths.
When you experience anxiety, the nervous system can be overloaded or over- stimulated; it can also be caught in patterns that are contributing to the experience of high anxiety. One of the ways this overstimulation can occur is when a spinal vertebrae is not moving through its full range of motion, which is commonly called “misaligned.” This can cause excess stress on the nervous system and can overload it, while the effects could be too numerous to mention; certainly, a professional can infer that experiencing anxiety is a logical possibility.
In my experience, patients have often commented on a decrease in anxiety after I adjust the first cervical vertebrae (the first bone in the neck). My professional opinion is that this has the most significant effect on anxiety levels due to the fact that a portion of the brain stem sits in the middle of that vertebrae so that when a subluxation is corrected at that level, a good deal of pressure on the nervous system is relieved, thereby creating a drop in anxiety levels. The chiropractic adjustment decreases the structural pressure on the nervous system.
The Basics
Folks in this society sleep too little, don’t drink enough water, and eat crappy food. These are the basics in life. When we deprive ourselves of the basics or minimally decrease their consumption significantly on a consistent basis, without doubt it will affect the nervous system’s ability to handle stress of daily life and get overloaded more easily — thus, experiencing anxiety is far more likely.
Make sure you follow these basics. Set a regular bed time and rise time
Stick to it. Give yourself between 7-9 hours nightly and see what your body needs. In addition, do as best you can to make sure the room is as dark as possible. This will assist your body in going into as deep of sleep as possible.
Drink half your body weight in ounces of water daily
Every cell of your body requires water. Depriving yourself of proper amounts of water on a regular basis for years on end will, without doubt, contribute to your body’s function and nervous system’s ability to operate with greatest ease, as well as the mind’s ability to deal with, adapt to, and decrease stress. Drink proper amounts of water daily.
Eat clean
Cleaner food is better. Food with fewer chemicals and processing, and as close as possible to its natural state, will always be better for your body and its ability to use that food as fuel. When the body is properly fueled, it is better equipped to deal with and adapt to stress on the nervous system and decrease levels of anxiety. In addition, the chemicals themselves can add another level of stress to the body because it now has to deal with cleaning those out or mitigating the effects. Eating an apple with no chemicals is less stressful and more usable for the body than one riddled with pesticide. It’s not rocket science. The less stress, the better the ability of the body to handle and mitigate anxiety.
People don’t realize that there can be a structural element to anxiety, which means that health and function of your spine can contribute to the physical patterns of anxiety that the nervous system is running. People also don’t realize that depriving themselves of basic needs of quality sleep, proper amounts of water, and clean food hinder their ability to deal with, adapt to, and decrease anxiety. Engage with these guidelines in your daily life consistently for 30 days and you will see a shift.
Schedule an appointment to talk to our doctor about how chiropractic may be able to help you take your health to the next level.
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