This year sure has been a doozy! We’re all feeling the stress of the pandemic and other events, with some of us suffering more than others. And as you might have noticed, stress does manifest itself in very real, physical ways.

For example, you might have noticed the following unexplainable symptoms:

Headaches
Sleep disturbances
Upset stomach
Muscle aches and pains
Chest pain
Lack of energy
And possibly more

If you’re experiencing these symptoms and other potential causes have been ruled out, stress is likely to be the culprit. Of course, these are just the physical manifestations of stress. Anxiety, depression, outbursts of anger, lost motivation, and other emotional responses are common as well.

The impact on your heart is perhaps the most concerning physical manifestation of stress. Repeated experiences of the “fight or flight” reflex can impact your heart rate variability, or the balance between that response of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. If your heart rate variability is disrupted, your risk of serious heart conditions increases.

Luckily, you don’t just have to accept that a bad year could do permanent damage to your body. Because chiropractic care is centered around the ability of the body to heal itself, we can offer treatments to support your body’s response to chronic stress.

Chiropractic treatments have been shown to positively affect the heart rate and heart rate variability. In addition, easing muscle tension can help you to protect the health and function of your central nervous system.

Finally, people who feel better physically discover that they can handle emotional upsets better, and that leads to decreased physical impacts from stress. So, improving physical health can improve emotional responses, which in turn support physical health again! To learn more about entering into this cycle of well being, contact our office about chiropractic treatments to help you heal from stress.