The Autonomic Nervous System and You

We’ve all heard the term “fight or flight”, but what controls the body’s response? Core Health Chiropractic is here to explain the nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system is a system in your body that responds to simple functions instantly. Accordingly, it is what makes your heartbeat, what makes lungs breathe, and digest food. We couldn’t think to tell our bodies to do these motions all the time, so it just does it for us. Overall, there are 2 components of ANS – the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Only one system is predominant most of the time. Let’s take a look at both of these systems in conjunction with the autonomic nervous system.

Sympathetic Nervous System

This system directs all the involuntary response to dangerous or stressful situations, aka your “fight or flight” mode. This system helps adjust your body with the help of nerve cells called neurons. These cells help adjust your body to different physical reactions to the cardiac muscle to gland secretion. Overall, this system helps us humans make quick internal adjustments and fast reactions without the thoughts needed to make the adjustments. For example, if your body feels threatened, SNS will send extra blood cells to your muscles to be able to protect yourself in situations. It happens so fast that your mind will not realize it. Also, it does not distress the body after the danger has fled.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

The opposite role of SNS is the parasympathetic nervous system. Its function is to calm the body down.  To clarify, the PNS alerts the body that it feels stressors and encourages it to rest and unstress. Things like blood pressure, breathing, and various functions go back to normal as the body starts to settle. These two functions exist to balance the body’s function and maintain it. From there the hypothalamus, a brain structure that helps with homeostasis, receives signals from the ANS in response. Stress will create signals to the body, boosting our senses with adrenaline to help combat the stressors.

What Happens In Our Bodies?

As we mentioned, one system is always in charge of the body that counteracts the other. If your body is feeling constant stressors that you may be unaware of it could mean the SNS is becoming overactive causing your body and brain fatigue. Adjustments can help your nervous system!  If you feel your body’s nervous system is suffering Core Health Chiropractic can help by combatting stressors – please contact us by calling (610) 750-9131 or use our online contact form.