Given the pandemic and various types of stress that adults and kids are facing these days, it’s no surprise that anxiety is the #1 thing we see in the office. While anxiety may not be what brings a person into the office, it’s why 85% of our practice comes back on a wellness basis.
Now more than ever anxiety is affecting people across the spectrum, including children. Unfortunately, it’s starting earlier with kids due in large part to technology, social media and the comparison game. We have seen a huge increase in stress in kids due to the uncertainty of school, home schooling and not being able to be social with their friends. This is a massive problem!
What we see with adults is they’re being asked to do more with less. They may have more on their plate at work coupled with family responsibilities at home.
Affecting Both Kids & Adults
If you have a lot of stress and tension in the nervous system stemming from drivers changes it’s going to create more noise in the nervous system. When your brain is dealing with all that noise while it’s also trying to go about your everyday functions it creates a lot of stress in the nervous system. The result is anxiety, sleep disturbances, digestive dysfunction, hormone changes, ADHD, focus issues and more.
Noise in the Nervous System
A big thing we focus on in the office is vagus nerve dysfunction. The vagus nerve is a major cranial nerve root. The vagus nerve goes to your heart, your lungs and every single major organ in the digestive system.
A Focus on Vagus Nerve Dysfunction
It’s also important to know that the nervous system controls everything. You have an autonomic nervous system that consists of your sympathetic nervous system-or your stress response, which is also referred to as your fight or flight system. Think about that as the gas pedal of the autonomic nervous system.
How We Can Help
You also have the parasympathetic nervous system which is the rest and digest system. It’s like the brake pedal. The vagus nerve is the major brake pedal in the body-the primary parasympathetic nerve in the body.