How Chiropractic Can Assist Fatigue

Most of the time, fatigue can be traced to your lifestyle, such as your regular habits or routines. Fatigue can be a normal and an important response to physical over exertion, poor eating habits, emotional stress, boredom, or lack of sleep. Maybe you have over indulged in your consumption of caffeine, alcohol, or you may be dehydrated from not drinking enough water. Other causes of fatigue may be stress, anxiety or depression related. It may just be how your body tries to alert you to pay attention. In some cases, however, fatigue is a symptom of an underlying health concern that requires a health care intervention. When fatigue is not relieved by enough sleep and relaxation, sufficient stimulation, good nutrition, or a low-stress environment, it may be time to seek professional advice from your health care practitioner.

The body has an incredibly intelligent mechanism or hierarchy that is uses to allocate resources to various functions of the body. Foremost of these is always survival, and whenever the body is in a state of stress physiology, whether that be physical, emotional or chemical in origin, there is a change in the body’s physiological state to ensure survival by adaptation to the environment we find ourselves in. This all sounds good…. But the down side (for want of a better word) is that other normal functions will be downgraded until such time as the body feels like it has survived the stressful episode and can restore normal functional physiology. If the stressful episodes become chronic or long term, then these functions (like normal digestion of food into useful energy sources) remain on the physiological “backburner” and all available energy is diverted to surviving the stress. After a period of time, the availability of energy can become low enough to produce noticeable symptoms of fatigue that is not helped by standard rest.

Chiropractors use the spine and other joints in the body to stimulate specific nerve pathways to a range of areas of the brain, and in doing so can re program the brain out of neurological patterns that are initiated by mechanical and physical stresses. Relieving the stress load from the body can free up some energy rations and make them available for everyday function again, instead of diverting them to survival functions.

Naturally, any other sources of chemical and emotional stresses will be discussed with you during your consultations with the chiropractor to identify as many sources of stress as possible, with a view to managing or eliminating these.