What do you mean the problem is my nervous system?

It has always amazed and confused me that the general population really has no concept of what their nervous system is all about. If you ask the next person you come across on the street about what function the nervous system plays you are likely to get a response, vague at best, commenting on how the brain tells the body what to do or a shrug and a look saying I really don't know.

It is pretty hard to say one system is more important in the body than another but you would be hard pressed to downplay the importance of the nervous system. The short answer is that the nervous system is the electrical wiring system of the body that is monitoring everything, and communicating with everything. What I want the average person to know though is that if the nervous system goes into "overdrive" we are in big trouble and will eventually show some sort of symptom or dis-ease.

What do I mean by "overdrive"? To answer this we need to understand the basics of the nervous system. There are two big parts to the nervous system. One of these we are in control of, and one we are not. The one we are not in control of, the autonomic nervous system, is the one I wish to discuss here. The easy way to remember the word autonomic is to basically think of it as the "automatic" nervous system.

Within the autonomic nervous system there are two parts. These are called the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. These are opposite systems and there is really no easy way to remember their names. They are sort of like yin/yang, push/pull, or up/down. In our case the sympathetic is the stress based system. It is the system that gears you up to deal with the stresses in your body. It is the system that is breaking down or deconstructive.

The parasympathetic is the healing side. It is the side that is repairing, rebuilding and regenerating. It is the side that is responsible for digestion, healing, reproduction and the immune system. With this in mind the problem starts to become clear. The problem is one of balance.

Most of us lead a lifestyle that is full of stress. We have family, work, financial, kid and a myriad of other stresses day after day, week after week. This massive full speed ahead stressful lifestyle is continually activating our sympathetic nervous system. The effect is one in which we are constantly on high alert putting us out of balance.

The good news, with respect to this high alert state, is that this is a highly necessary reaction to help keep us alive and functioning. In other words, the stress response allows us to deal with the stresses we bring into our life and is something we cannot live without.

The bad news is that we are not designed to be living under a constant barrage of stress and the effect is one where we put tremendous strain on our ability to keep up this positive response. Remember this stress response is keeping us alive by helping us to cope with our stresses. The problem is that we create a lack of balance and burn out our sympathetic nervous system.

A good analogy is to picture your stresses as a crocodile following you around all day about three feet behind you nipping at your heels. Your stress handling sympathetic nervous system kicks in and helps you to deal with the crocodile. This is good. It comes with a cost though. The cost is that while your sympathetics are helping you out, your parasympathetics are being compromised and your healing, digestion, reproduction and immune system become diminished.

In the short term this is not a problem. In the long term this is devastating. In the long term if your "crocodile" is not dealt with you will have problems with the healing and rebuilding of your body. In the long term you will become sick, fatigued and ultimately diseased. When we stop and think about our full on lifestyles and our "crocodiles" we start to see the extent of the problem. We are slowly but surely burning out our sympathetic nervous system and preventing our parasympathetics from doing the healing and rebuilding they were designed to do.

Looking for the solution? The answer is clear. Deal with your crocodile "stresses" as much as possible and take part in activities that allow the parasympathetics to be activated. Things such as walking, relaxing, meditation, yoga, infrared saunas, supplements and chiropractic etc. This combination is ultimately the only way to get your nervous system back on track.

A hair mineral analysis is one of the best and most sensitive ways of assessing your nervous system. In fact blood tests are really quite limited in this perspective. With a hair analysis we can tell whether you are in the exhausted state and if you are, design a personalised program along with the specific supplements you need to help fix the problem.

Feeling burnt out or overwhelmed? It might be your nervous system. Who'd have thought?