Building Immunity

There is no season for disease. There are only normal ups and downs of your immune system. These strengths and weaknesses change as the year changes. Your body adapts to the change in weather, change in humidity, and change in nervous system function. As the body adapts the immune system becomes more or less effective.

How do we normally attempt to boost the immune system? We try to eat right, sleep more, take vitamins and supplements to allow the body to supply the immune system with the proper building blocks to function at a high level. But do we normally take a look at the area of the body controls and affects the immune system the most? Not usually.

Your nervous system is the most important organ in the body because it controls every other part. Your nervous system controls the immune system and tells it to change during the seasons, use the supplements, and increase with extra sleep. Your nervous system maintains the immune system working in the right direction and stops it from attacking the body's normal tissue (autoimmune disease).

So the question comes down to this, why don't we spend more time amplifying the nervous system and keeping it healthy? There is one profession that is dedicated to providing optimal nervous system function and that is Chiropractic. The chiropractic adjustment directly affects the immune system through a variety of different ways. I will describe one of the simplest ways below.

Your body's nervous system is composed of two major pieces that are constantly balancing each other out. One is the sympathetic nervous system, your "run from a bear" nervous system. This nervous system turns off everything in the body not used to run from a bear or fight off a bear. This includes the immune system. When your sympathetic nervous system is over-excited it causes the immune response to decrease, changes blood flow, and increases inflammation in the body.

We live in a society where our sympathetic nervous system is constantly being stimulated. Stress in the workplace, anxiety over finances, children, bullying, new changes in life and any number of things will increase our sympathetic load on the body. Subluxations, misalignments of a vertebrae, will also increase the sympathetic load. Subluxations in the mid and low back cause an increased stress response that further decreases immune function, and can cause changes in bowel and bladder function, affect ear drainage, ADD/ADHD, and many other things.

The parasympathetic nervous system is the second piece of the nervous system. It is in charge of resting, relaxation, feeding and digestion, and reproduction. It also helps to lower blood pressure and heart rate, and boosts immune function. By stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system we allow the body to use resources we get from eating, sleep better, and build the immune system stronger.

In our society we have a chronic lack of parasympathetic function. It can be negatively affected by all of the stimulators of sympathetic function, and decreased by a subluxation to the sacral area, and atlas or upper cervical. By removing interference in these areas of the body we allow the body to have that resting response and boost immune system function.

There is no wonder we have a society full of disease and sickness, autoimmune diseases and inflammatory disorders. Because of our nervous system's lack of control and unbalance we cannot control the body properly. Regular chiropractic care can help to maintain the nervous system, remove interference in these two systems and keep our immunity high.

There are no seasons for diseases. We must recognize that health comes from within. Only by fixing the root cause of our problems will we maintain our health and improve our immune function.


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