Circuit Breakers

You probably can already appreciate that stress - when it becomes too much for us, is not healthy. It results in a shift in dominance of our autonomic nervous system from the parasympathetic system (the rest and digest, calm side), to the sympathetic system (the drill sergeant, run for your life, fight or flight side). When the sympathetic system is the one turned up the loudest, our body’s focus is to survive. When the parasympathetic system is leading the way, our body’s focus is on repair, regrowth, and healing (generally thriving). Both systems are important and both are working all the time, taking turns being in the lead, like a bike peloton. Ideally, we’d like to spend the vast majority of the time with the parasympathetic system leading the way and the sympathetic system just leading here and there throughout the day. Unfortunately, these days it is more common to have a reversal of this ratio. Chronic stress leads to our sympathetic system working overtime, an accumulation of inflammation in the body, and not much time spent on repairing and healing - leading us down a not so good path to having an increased chance of illness, injury and disease. 

Let’s look at the body like a house with electrical appliances and lights as the stressors in your life. If we plug too many lights and appliances in, chances are that we’re going to blow the circuit. Even if the things we’re plugging in are relatively small on their own, eventually, if we keep them all turned on, we’re going to max out the capacity and end up blowing the circuit leaving us wondering what the heck happened?! We can add a ton of power bars, thinking we’re sneaky and increase our ability to plug in more and more things, but eventually we will hit the limit and it will blow. If we plug just a few larger things in, they are naturally going to draw more power and it might be that adding just one small lamp at the end is enough to flip the switch and plunge us into darkness. As we fumble around in the dark cursing and looking for a flashlight, we usually blame that final small lamp for the predicament we now find ourselves in. We’ve overlooked everything else that we already had running and drawing power, so although it’s tempting to blame the lamp, we should be honest that the lamp on its own likely isn’t the problem.

We often get frustrated with ourselves when “one little thing” seems to be the culprit in an injury or when we can’t seem to cope with what would normally be a small blip on our radar. We forget it’s the combined stressors that matter. As healthcare providers, we can often help you reset the circuit, flip that little switch back on again and fire up the system. We may even be able to help you find a few things to unplug while we’re in there poking around that will keep things running for a while longer. What you need to know though, is that unless you do some work and unplug some of those things drawing your power, you will find yourself back in our offices, with more blown fuses.    

We are now realizing more and more that chronic inflammation is the underlying factor in nearly all types of pain, degeneration, and disease. Tracing back through the cascade of reactions in the neuronal and hormonal systems, the ultimate flip of the switch to ramp up inflammation is stress - no matter what type. When we have a lot of emotional stressors, it doesn’t take much more emotional trauma to put us over the edge, and likely it won’t t take much physical stress either. The flip side is also true. Consider as well that when we are in a career or relationship that isn’t right for us, it might not seem like a big deal day to day, but it is like one big hidden appliance stealing a large portion of our body’s coping capacity. You just can’t thrive when you are dragging a 1950s refrigerator behind you! Your body is running on full tilt and it begins to beg for your attention in the only way it knows how - symptoms and disease. 

By pausing to listen to your body and taking a compassionate look at why it might be doing what it’s doing you will be serving yourself far better than when you were just trying to add more power bars in an attempt to increase your capacity to plug more things in. You may need some help repairing the circuit breaker, dealing with the mess of cords and figuring out what you actually need and what clunky appliance you are storing from the past. I have no doubt a good healthcare team can help you do this, but it’s up to you to make sure that you don’t keep plugging the exact same things back into the system. When you get rid of some of those stressors (be they physical, mental, emotional, chemical), you will unlock so much more capacity for healing and thriving - you’ll be amazed at what your body can do and how much brighter your lights can shine.