During the fall and winter season it seems like so many of us fall ill. People used to think this was because they went outside without a hat or got sneezed on in a crowded elevator.The truth is, it really doesn’t work that way. Illness is caused by the Stress, the Sweets and the Subluxations.
1. Take Care of Stress
Holiday shopping, end of the year bills, trying to make everything perfect… can take a toll on our bodies.With stress hormone being secreted in our body at higher levels it causes our immune response to become decreased. Consider the fight or flight response. When our bodies become stressed, our nervous system flips a switch to become more sympathetic dominant (fight or flight).
When in this state our bodies are trying to anticipate the next stressor, so it stops putting as much effort into our immune system.When our body is worried about protecting itself from physical or mental stresses that may be at hand, it stops focusing on the “little” stressors like bacteria and viruses.The body feels stress and prioritizes accordingly ending up putting immunity on the back burner.
Advice: Create a plans for getting holiday activities done ahead of time and more spaced out.Take time for yourself to pray, meditate, do yoga. Do anything calming you know of that might relieve stress naturally.
2. Watch the Sweets
Sweets also put our body through the ringer. Loads of sugar can actually throw off the body’s natural pH balance. Treats cause us to become more acidic internally which leads to bad bacteria multiplying and THRIVING in the acidic body pH environment. This is no good since much of our immune system lies within our gut.We depend on the good bacteria to outnumber the bad to stay healthy.
Advice: Don’t live on sugar daily. Give your body a chance to recover after having sweets.Add in fresh fruits and veggies.
3. Remove the Subluxation
Sublu- WHAAT? Sub-lux-a-tion: Bone out of alignment causing irritation to the nervous system. This is what chiropractor’s correct. Basically the messages your brain sends to your body and your body back to the brain are not getting sent clearly when the spine is not in proper position. This causes inflammation of the nervous system, which we know, thanks to recent studies done by Veiga-Fernandes and Pachnis, is closely intertwined with the immune system. So this means nerve stress = immune stress.
Advice: Don’t skip your visits to the chiropractor. It can be bad for your neuroimmune system.
If you want to stay healthy this holiday season…take time for you, cut out some sweets, and get your spine re-aligned by a chiropractor.
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