Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1489985
Page 8 | Abby's Magazine | www.AbbysMag.com Cortisol. This is a stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands. You may be thinking why would we want a stress hormone, if we don't want to be stressed? A balanced level of cortisol is essential because it functions as a regulator for other hormones in our bodies. Cortisol increases sugars in your bloodstream, optimizing your brain's use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues. Glucose is what gives us the necessary energy not just so we can go about our day but so our body can have enough energy to do its daily tasks, like our heart pumping blood to keep us alive for example. Another question you may be asking now is how can we regulate cortisol in our body so we can actually help our body manage stress correctly? Sleep. Adults on average sleep 7 hours a night fitting in the healthy range being 7-9 hours a night. We underestimate the value of sleep because we are too busy justifying how other tasks need to be accomplished, putting sleep at the bottom of the mental ranking. Work, school, your child's basketball games, cooking dinner, washing the dishes, studying, your child's talent show, etc. We always find excuses to stay up later and get less sleep. Yet, we never stopped to think about how not getting enough sleep is truly affecting our bodies. We mentioned before that cortisol is an important hormone for sleep. The exact definition of a hormone is a regulatory substance produced in an organism and transported in tissue fluids such as blood or sap to stimulate specific cells or tissues into action. As a chiropractor, I am looking to address the chiropractic philosophy being your toxins, traumas, and thoughts and how they affect your body causing a misalignment of the bone putting pressure on the nerve (a subluxation). By toxins in this case we are referring to the abnormal cortisol levels in your body. This is affecting your nervous system function in many different ways, not allowing your tissues to receive their proper care. As humans sometimes we forget to think about just how the inside of our bodies are working, but they never stop working and sometimes they have interference which blocks them from fully accomplishing their job. We know that if you are at work and someone spills coffee all over your files, erasing all the important information, the coffee has now interfered with your work. Or if you are cooking pasta on the stove and your glass bowl falls on the ground, this broken glass bowl is interfering with your cooking. Life is full of stressful interferences and as a chiropractor my goal is to remove those interferences from your spine so in this case your body can handle the stressful everyday events. We only mentioned one stress hormones but there's also adrenaline, norepinephrine, etc. and all these hormones need to be regulated in order for your body to not go into stress overload. By receiving regular chiropractic adjustments, you are allowing your body to remove those interferences while still having the tools you need to take on stressful events. At Family Health Chiropractic, you will be given a care plan regarding what fits best for you, through chiropractic adjustments. This article was written by Dr. Dan Durrieu and Alexandra Durrieu a student at Sherman College of Chiropractic. Stress and Sleep with Chiropractic Dr. Dan Durrieu Family Health Chiropractic 5503 W. Waters Ave, Suite 500 Tampa, FL 33634 PH. 813-882-8181