Hi Health Creator,

Not all stress is bad, but the stress we can’t recover from creates health challenges

Everyone experiences stress. It is often portrayed in a negative light, but that isn't the full story. When most people think about stress, they are connecting with the emotion of stress, which feels like a combination of tension, anxiety, and frustration.

Stress can certainly have a negative impact on our health, but in some circumstances, it is not only beneficial, but necessary for our survival.

Stress isn’t just emotional - it’s a state of pressure or tension placed on something. It’s what your body experiences during a hard workout. It is also what your mind feels while you’re preparing for an exam or racing to finish a work project.

We can think about stress as beneficial or harmful in the context of recovery and adaptability.

Stress that we are able to recover from helps us grow and become more adaptable and resilient. This is a result of pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone, or when we exceed our limits enough to stimulate growth, but not so much that we cause destruction.

Stress that we can’t recover from does the opposite. It creates damage in the short term, and over time, more stress weakens us, break things down, and creates negative feedback loops.

When your body can’t fully process and integrate a stressor, that energy doesn’t just disappear. It gets stored in the body.

These unresolved stress patterns create interference in your nervous system. They get in the way of your ability to regulate, repair, and heal. You might not see the effects, but you can feel them showing up as pain, fatigue, anxiety, tension, or a vague sense that something’s off.

3 Categories of Stress

If you have seen me as a chiropractic patient in my office, you may remember on my intake forms that there are questions about sources of stress in your life. After reading this, you will understand why that is included and how it is relevant to my work.

Physical Stress:

This is the most familiar form of stress and is a result of injuries, accidents, poor posture, repetitive movement patterns, or not moving enough. Some are acute injuries, and some are chronic issues that get more extreme over time. Physical stresses that we do not recover from build up over time and can lead to tension, injuries, and nervous system dysfunction.

Chemical Stress:

This one is often overlooked, but it’s also highly impactful. Chemical stress affects your body’s internal environment at the level of fluids and cells and directly impacts your hormones, cellular health, and brain function.

Some common examples are:

• Processed or low-quality food

• Environmental toxins (mold, air pollution, plastics)

• Medications or recreational drugs

• Pathogens (bacteria, viruses, parasites)

These stresses change how your body functions from the inside out. Over time, they contribute to inflammation, hormonal imbalances, and a less adaptable nervous system.

Emotional Stress:

We tend to downplay this one the most, but emotions are part of our brain chemistry and can't be ignored.

Strong or prolonged exposure to emotional stress activates your survival brain (the amygdala). When this happens, your logical, thinking brain (the cortex) gets overridden. This affects your hormones, brain chemistry, and nervous system, which eventually impacts all the cells in your body.

It also affects our psychology and when we have an overactive amygdala, we have a risk of saying and doing things that we later regret. Was there ever a time where you said something in the heat of the moment that you wish you could take back? A time where you said or did something, only to feel immediate regret and think “that wasn’t me?”

When you are overwhelmed by strong emotions, you are likely experiencing the effects of an overactive amygdala. The amygdala in this case is like a child throwing a tantrum, but the parent (your prefrontal cortex) is unable to do anything to stop it.

Strong emotional experiences leave strong impressions, which is why your strongest memories from childhood are linked with a strong emotion. Emotion + experience = a lasting memory, or impression.

Emotional imprints can get locked into your physiology, just like scar tissue or compensation patterns after physical injuries. A single experience with a very strong emotion is enough to change the structure of your brain to store that memory for life. Seeing how that shows up in your life or changing your response to that memory is not so simple or easy, but it is possible.

I wrote this newsletter to answer a commonly asked question: what is causing me to feel XYZ ailment/condition?

The most honest answer to that question is that your body has been unable to integrate or adapt to a stressor. In most cases, people have countless unintegrated stress patterns locked into their system. These build up in the body, layer by layer, to the point that some people are perpetually stuck in crisis mode. For many, this feels normal after enough time has passed.

I think many people are asking that question because they think that if they can pinpoint what is making them feel the pain, they will know what to do about it. That is true sometimes, but in most cases, there are many causes, variables, and layers to their pain.

When we instead locate the interference and help the body integrate and adapt, it is able to sort out more than we give it credit for. I think it is much simpler in the long run to create a good environment for healing by creating clear channels and allowing the body to do what it already knows how to do.

Want to explore how stress might be affecting your body?
Hit reply and let me know what kind of stress you think your system is carrying the most: physical, chemical, or emotional?

Or forward this newsletter to someone you care about who might be stuck in stress and doesn’t even realize it.

Talk soon,
Dr. Josh

P.S. Let me know how I’m doing. This newsletter is my way of helping you become healthier and grow, whether you are a practice member or not. Is my writing helping you and giving you new perspectives, or is it too lengthy or confusing? Are there topics you would like to learn more about? Reply and share your thoughts.

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Disclaimer:
This email is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider for personalized health decisions.