HEALTH - E - TALK: 8th edition.
Hi!!
Welcome to the eighth edition of "Health - E - Talk".
It is our hope to at times challenge and stretch some of your common beliefs/ assumptions regarding "healthy" behaviour. Hope this week's topic challenges the brain cells!?

 QUESTION: WHERE DOES STRESS AND SICKNESS HIT YOU?
For those of you have have been receiving this service from its' inception, you will remember previous discussion of how "stress" can make us sick. This is no theory - but is today regarded as "scientific fact".

Have you ever wondered why when you get run down or sick, it tends to hit you in the same part of your body all the time? When I was a teenager, and into my early twenties, no matter what kind of minor infection I "caught", it would head straight for my chest/lungs. I would be choked up with bronchitis for weeks. Many people who consult chiropractors need to because when they get stressed, run down, physically exerted, sick; they always seem to end up with their neck or lower back "going out".

To understand why this happens we need to learn some more about the finer workings of the nervous system. Yes, that's right. It's not due to your lungs, muscles, immunity etc; that illness patterns recur.

Let me introduce you to "The Law of Facilitation": "When an impulse passes through a certain set of neurons (nerve fibres) to the exclusion of others, it will take the same course on future occasions, and each time it traverses this path the resistance in the path will be less." (You may need to read this a couple of times to get your head around it.)

The most easily understood "healthy" example of this law, is the learning of a new motor skill. Riding a bike, kicking a footy, juggling etc. When you perform the task successfully, the information travels through your nervous system in a characteristic pattern (as individual as a fingerprint). So, according to the law of facilitation, once we have set off this characteristic nerve pattern once, it becomes easier and easier to set it off successfully again and again. "Practice makes perfect". Top sportspeople are even able to rehearse these patterns mentally, which we know of as "visualisation".

Now, here's the bad news. The same kinds of patterns can develop in our nervous system when it comes to how we respond to chemical, physical, mental and/or emotional stresses. Almost like a "habit" forming.

An example of this is Asthma. Children who are vaccinated and the children of smokers are more prone to suffering from asthma throughout their life. Now vaccines and smoke in themselves do not cause asthma. But they can both irritate the airways and lungs of the children exposed. This can set up a "facilitated" nerve pattern. Future different kinds of stresses will tend to be channelled through that same loop, leading to repeated pressure on the lungs. Asthma is basically an overactivity of the immune and muscular tissues around the airways of the lungs, due to different "triggers". But for a person who has not developed the particular "facilitated" pattern of an asthmatic, the same triggers may not be good for them, but they do not attack their lungs with the same speed and severity. (They may have another type of "facilitative" habit and suffer a sinus attack instead!)

Science has now demonstrated that our body replaces all of its' chemical building blocks on a continuous basis. This has lead some experts to say that in just a couple of years, chemically speaking, you will have an entirely new body!!? So, this leads to the question of, "why does it keep putting my arthritic ankle back the wrong way?" "why do we age?" "why do we look the same?" etc. Well, now you know the answer! The nervous system is the slowest (and some scientists say that it doesn't regenerate chemically at all) to change, and it determines how, where, and when all the chemicals are replaced. So the reason the ankle gets replaced in its' "arthritic" state is due to the existence of a "facilitated" nerve pattern.

NEXT WEEK: Can we modify or break these bad nervous system habits?

 HERE'S A THOUGHT!!
"He who makes excuses - makes nothing else!"

OUR PHILOSOPHY:
4) "That physical, chemical, emotional and spiritual stresses on your body lead to overload - eventually resulting in illness."

And after this week's discussion you can understand why!

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© Dr Nick Hodgson 2008

2005 Victorian Chiropractor of The Year, Australasian TRT Training Provider, Fellow Holder Research Institute.

 Visit Nick's other web site at www.torquerelease.com.au