Sympathetic Dominance and what stress can do to your body

What is SD Protocol?
The SD Protocol recognises that a lot of chronic health conditions can be linked back to the ‘fight or flight’ response being constantly switched on. It is a treatment system which provides advice, tools and tips to allow you to calm down your nervous system, letting your body recover and achieve greater health.

What is the sympathetic nervous system?
In our body we have many processes that happen automatically. We don’t have to consciously direct our body how to digest food, or tell our heart to keep beating, these actions and more are the responsibility of the Autonomic Nervous System. To allow our bodies to adapt to different situations, we have two settings for our Autonomic Nervous System- Sympathetic (Fight or Flight), and Parasympathetic (Rest and Digest). When it is working well, our body will fluctuate between the two settings, allowing us to respond to threats and changes in our environment and also calm down enough to get nutrients from the food we eat and sleep restfully to recover.

What is Sympathetic Dominance?
Sympathetic Dominance is when your Sympathetic nervous system is ALWAYS switched on. This causes your body to be in a state of constant alert, always ready to run away or fight for your life. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? For many people, this is how they live every day. Our stresses are not just trying to survive being chased by predators, we now get stressed by work (too much, not enough, toxic workplaces), relationships, kids, bills and mortgages, body image, being constantly contactable, screen time…I could go on, but you get the picture. Stress can be a constant in our lives, and our body responds as though we are constantly under threat of attack. So when do you get a chance to ‘Rest and Digest’? You don’t, and it can make you sick.

What is stress?
Stress is the feeling we get when the Sympathetic Nervous system is constantly switched on. Physically we notice this as hunched posture, tight shoulders, low back and hamstrings, racing thoughts, overwhelm/overstimulation, tiredness/fatigue, sensitivity to loud noises or bright lights. This can also lead to trouble sleeping, headaches, digestive trouble, hormonal issues and more. 

Why are my shoulders always tight?
The ‘fight or flight’ response also tenses large muscle groups, so it is easy to run away at a moment's notice. Have you ever heard someone say they carry their stress in their shoulders? It’s true! Our body tenses our fighting muscles- our pectorals and upper trapezius, muscles that allow us to throw a punch or protect our head, and our flight muscles- glutes, hamstrings and gastrocnemius(calves) so that we can jump, run or crouch easily and quickly. 

Why am I so tired all the time?
Being chronically stressed can affect quality of sleep, which naturally leads to being tired. It is often described as ‘waking up tired’ where you have had a full 8-9 hours sleep, but feel like you could just stay in bed all day. It is not easy to drift off to sleep when your body is in a state of constant alert and looking out for predators. You are woken by the slightest sounds, even the lights from your alarm clock/phone are too bright to let you sleep. This is good for when you need to make sure you don’t get eaten in your sleep, not good for when you need to go to work tomorrow and the reason you’re stressed is money, not lions. 

Can stress affect my hormonal systems?
Yes, stress can also affect our hormonal system. To allow the stress response to occur, our body releases hormones to signal what our cells should be doing to create fight or flight. Trouble is, these hormones (mainly cortisol) actually steal components from other hormones, as it was designed as a short-term response. So when we are constantly stressed, our body can’t function as it needs to on a cellular level, which can cause a multitude of problems, not always immediately, but often years down the track if we remain in this stressed state. 

Can stress affect my digestion and cause bloating?
When we’re in stress and survival mode, digesting dinner isn’t high on the priority list, so our brain slows down blood and nerve information to our gut. Inflammation levels also increase and this all leads to a very sluggish digestive system that means a stressed person can feel bloated, sensitive to some (usually complex) foods, and have a very unhealthy gut flora balance.

Can stress affect my anxiety/mood/depression?
It’s super tiring being on high alert for weeks/months/years and part of cortisol stealing important hormonal components means that happy hormones, like serotonin, aren’t being produced in sufficient quantities. (Serotonin is 90% made in the gut, which isn’t functioning well under stress anyway).
As you can see, a system that is stuck in sympathetic dominance can have MANY systems affected. While you may not notice all these symptoms all at once, they can build up over years of stress and cause chronic health challenges. There are plenty of ways to reduce stress and ways to counter balance those that you can’t! 

What can I do about being stressed?
Lots of things! Stress is not something that we just accept and move on, there are lots of ways to reduce your stress load and turn down your Sympathetic Dominance to allow your body to rest. There are always little changes you can make to help decrease the stress on your body and decrease your sympathetic dominance. It is easiest to look at it through the 3 key pillars of physical, chemical and emotional health.
These upcoming suggestions are just examples of how you can make changes to reduce your stress. Not all of the suggestions will be applicable for you, so pick and choose a couple that you would like to try, doing this whole list at once would probably be too much!
Some physical changes you can make:

1. Posture. When we are stressed and carrying our tension in our shoulders, it causes poor posture. It causes our shoulders to sag forward and our head to drop forward, increasing load on our neck and spine. This also changes the way that we breathe, making us always breathe from the top of our lungs like we’re being chased. Simply pulling your shoulder blades together will open your chest and lift your head, creating desired posture and decreasing tension in your muscles.
2. ½ foam roller/rolled up towel between your shoulder blades. Like working on your posture, winding down at the end of the day by lying on a ½ foam roller is a fantastic way to calm down your system. It opens through your chest, stretching those tight pecs, and encourages correct head and neck posture.
3. Red lenses. The blue light emitted by our devices (TV’s, phones, computers etc) is quite disrupting to our system, it can wind up your stress response without you even realising and can interrupt normal sleep patterns. A few things you can do to counteract this- every phone now will have a blue light filter option in the settings, it is a very good idea to turn this on especially at night a few hours before you go to bed. You can also use red lenses/glasses in the same way, wear them a few hours before bed to help calm your system to get ready for sleep. 
4. Get adjusted. Rib adjustments are a key component in changing breathing patterns, which helps calm the sympathetically dominant system. Having your nervous system in good working order and free from interference is a big step you can take to decrease your sympathetic wind up. Getting adjusted by a chiropractor has many benefits, come and have a chat to us to find out more.

Some chemical changes you can make:

1. Gut support- probiotics and bone broth. When you are sympathetically dominant, your body doesn’t prioritise digestion, as this is a parasympathetic action for when you are relaxed. So, supporting your gut and helping it to digest efficiently is very important. Including probiotics and bone broths in your diet are great for encouraging healthy bowel function and allowing your gut to heal from any impairments caused by the sympathetic dominance. 
2. Magnesium supplements- a good quality magnesium supplement will also help counteract the effects of chronic stress. Magnesium is used in the body to do almost everything on a cellular level, and deficiency can be another stress on your body. Magnesium deficiency can cause feelings of tiredness, weight gain and muscle cramps. 
3. Withania supplements- withania is a supportive herb for your adrenal glands, particularly useful during periods of high stress.
4. Decreasing ‘crap’ food- no preservatives, highly processed foods etc. If your body is working hard to process some of the foods you eat, it can become stressed. Try to eat whole foods as much as you can (veggies and fruit, proteins like meat and legumes) and avoid highly processed food (i.e. anything in a packet with more than 4 or 5 ingredients), or anything with sugar (or glucose etc) as one of the first 3 ingredients.

Some emotional changes:

1. Calming the busy brain- write ‘to do’ lists. It is very easy to become overwhelmed with everything we need to get done, and it is impossible to relax when you are thinking about it all. Find what works for you to help get the planning out of your head! Whether it is using a calendar to make sure no appointments get missed, or writing to do lists, do whatever you need to, so you can stop the endless planning in your head and actually switch off.
2. Guided meditation. Once you have written your to do list, try a guided meditation. There are lots of free ones you can try on YouTube, this is our favourite sleep meditation. These are great for calming your brain at the end of the day, and helping you relax and switch off from your stress, at least for a little while.

3. Confronting, or at least acknowledging the biggest stress in your life. For many people, they are stressed by a lot of little things adding up, or one big issue they can do little about. It is a good idea to sit back and look at your life and where the stress comes into it. Maybe this will give you some perspective and allow you to let go of some of the smaller stresses, or at least name where your stress is coming from and give you the chance to compartmentalise or separate it from your everyday life. 
4. See an emotional support professional- psychologist, counsellor, kinesiologist, best friend over coffee – a  shared is a problem halved. If you need any additional support to work through your emotional stresses, please seek help. It’s OK to not be OK, but often reaching out for help can seem too hard. See your GP, call a helpline, text your mum, whatever you need to, to support yourself through whatever you are going through. 

Some of these changes are easier to implement than others, so start with the easy ones and work on the rest one at a time. Make sure you pick some from each section (including the scary emotional one, it’s kind of the most important), and strike that balance within your own life. Most people notice some pretty world changing experiences within the first two weeks, some will have to stick with it for a bit longer. Thanks for taking the time to learn a bit more about how you can improve your health; the more that we know about how our body functions and why we’re in the state that we’re in, the more we can do about it.