Trapped on an iceberg! Probably not something you have spent a lot of time thinking about, much less having had experienced.  However, just for a few minutes, let’s imagine that you have found yourself in this regrettable circumstance because the responses your body will go through as you live stranded on the ice flow is remarkably similar to what happens to your body as you continue to engage in a fast paced, high stress lifestyle with little or no time to invest in your health.  Let’s take a look.

In this very high stress situation, your body will go through a series of very smart responses that are designed to allow you to survive. If your body did nothing to react, it would succumb very quickly to the harsh environment of your iceberg. These responses, while at the time may seem unpleasant and make you look and feel ‘sick’, are very smart adaptations of your physiology that are designed by God for a specific purpose.

Initially, your brain will respond to the cold temperature of your extremities by dilating blood vessels supplying your hands and feet, allowing more blood to flow and warming you up. That makes you happy, you now have warm feet.  As time goes on, and you get colder and colder, the blood flow to your feet now keeps your toes alive, but you are getting colder.  Eventually, your brain redirects this vital blood supply to your organs at the expense of your feet – in the big scheme of things, you need your heart and lungs more than your feet.  As time goes on, this gets pretty uncomfortable for you, you are about to loose some of your extremities.  But, don’t forget, this is very smart!

Now lets say a health care provider just happens to come along, checks you over and discovers that you have poor circulation in your feet, so he prescribes you something to increase your peripheral blood circulation – and a couple days later you feel a lot better because you know that you are not going to loose your toes and your feet feel pretty good!

This is a common scenario.  Your body is exposed to a situation or environment that is stressful; it kicks into play a very smart stress response; over time, this stress response makes you sick; you get relief from your sickness from a medication – and all is good.  Or is it?  There is still a very serious problem.  Do you recognize it?  You are still on the iceberg!!

Our goal as chiropractors is to help you recognize that being on the iceberg day in and day out is bad, and we want to get you off the iceberg so your body can begin to heal naturally.  And that’s what Dr. Scott will talk about at our upcoming Stress Management Workshop on November 2^nd. Easy steps to implement now that will get you off the iceberg!  Sign up using the contact form on the web page, or just give us a call.