I am beginning to think that any disease -- from a cold to cancer -- is a message from our bodies to our brains that a slippage occurred. The physiology and biochemistry of the body is supposed to handle stressors by secreting ACTH, catecholamines, boosting its immune system, and manufacturing more vitamin C.
We know that stressed animals will increase their secretion of C. If you wire the cage of a rat and zap him with electrical shocks every time he approaches his food dish, he will increase his C in his bloodstream by ten-fold.
The worst stress of all is that due to the loss of autonomy. No choices. Hans Selye showed us in the 30s that we are set up to handle quick stressors. This allowed us to fight or flee. We ate the animals we caught, or they at us; the end result was that the stressors were gone.
But if stressors continue they eat away at our immune systems and we will get a disease which may be lurking in our genes: exzema, asthma, arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis, migraine, high blood pressure, strokes, or cardiovascular disease. But your familial disease does not have to appear.
Take, for example, a woman stuck in a terrible marriage with a husband who constantly puts her down: "You're not a good cook," "You can't discipline the children," "You have wrecked our sex life," "Your figure has gone," "I can't have the boss over for dinner." etc. These verbally abusive statements are a set-up for cancer of the breast. If he were vicious and physically abusive, she could shoot the SOB and any jury would let her off. Our bodies are not set up for chronic, unrelenting stress.
I met a 63-year-old man who had just gotten out of a terrible marriage with a woman bigamist. He escaped from that stressor only to find last year that he had prostate cancer. Extensive surgery removed the malignancy, but has left him impotent. He was hoping he could restart his life where he left off 40 years ago with his high school sweetheart. I cannot help but feel there is a lesson in all this.
One chronic problem is a stressor, which, if unresolved, will lead to a disease, which could lead to a prescription (or surgery), which being another stressor, will hurt the body's ability to build up the immune system. I haven't even touched on the evil effects of our food and pesticides and pollution.
All of us need to reevaluate our diets and lifestyles, and those of our loved ones, clients, and patients. Health care providers, and, I think, chiropractors, specifically, are in the front lines to detect evidence of on-going stressors. I would think that muscle tension would be one of the first clues to indicate an unrelieved stressor is operating.
Have I said the right thing?