Stress and Our Bodies

Stress and Our Bodies
In a life and death situation our body reacts similarly to how we react to any stress. We have a hormonal, adrenalin and muscular experience. We are simply “hard-wired” to react this way.

How does it work?
During stress, certain bodily functions shut down: digestion stops, sexual function stops, adrenalin in released from glands, and even our immune system is temporarily turned off. Our heart pumps two-to-three times its normal speed, our eyes dilate, and the blood vessels under the surface of our skin close down, so we can sustain a surface wound and not bleed to death (this makes our skin turn pale). At the same time, our blood pres­sure rises, so life-giving fluid reaches our muscles faster, sweating increases to cool our muscles and help them stay efficient and all of this happens when our minds and bodies are stressed. This is a fight-or-flight phenomenon as well as what happens during chronic stress.

The structural panic pattern
Chiropractic has a unique approach to dealing with stress. The fight or flight response was origi­nally discovered and researched by the great Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon in the 1920’s. Cannon and his associates, being physiologists, studied the body’s reactions to danger by limiting their observations to a person’s chemical, vascular and internal organ changes.
Chiropractors using Koren Specific Tech­nique (KST) have discovered that structural changes in the body are also involved in the fight or flight response. We refer to this as the panic pattern.

What is the panic pattern?
The panic pattern is the structural compo­nent of chronic stress. It consists of the following:
1. The coccyx (tailbone) moves forward. When the coccyx moves forward, our nerves within the spine tighten. Watch your dog when they tuck their tails between their legs as they run in fear. This happens to us too.
2. The sternum moves up. This protects our heart and lungs.
3. The zyphoid process moves forward. This often makes breathing harder.
4. The larynx moves up. This makes it harder to speak and makes our throats feel tight.
5. The pubic bones moves up.

Which comes first—the stress or the posture?
It doesn’t matter. We strive to fix both, but in the chiropractic office it’s easier to fix the posture. Some research has shown that postures may not just reflect internal states but rather produce them.
Researchers discovered that tasks performed in “defeated” or “helpless” postures create a sense of defeat in patients. When people perform the tasks in good posture, the sense of defeat takes far longer to manifest. It’s like smiling or frowning, irrespective of our emotional state, we create a chemical physiology of happiness or sadness.

Finding and correcting the panic pat­tern
Using KST protocols, we can quickly and easily analyze and correct or adjust the posture making it ideal for correcting the panic pattern. The patient is usually adjusted in standing or sitting posture. I use the ArthroStim™, setting it at 12 taps per second. The areas that are adjusted are usually the coccyx, sternum, ziphoid, larynx, and pelvis. Patients often feel an immediate sense of relief within 24 hours and the stress reduces their physical pains tremendously.