How Stress Affects Your Spine and Nervous System

Everyone knows stress affects your mood, but it also affects your spine and nervous system more than you might realize. When your body stays in a stressed state for too long, it can create real physical changes that lead to tension, stiffness, and even pain.

How Stress Impacts the Spine

• Muscle tension. Stress activates your body’s “fight or flight” response, tightening neck, shoulder, and back muscles.

• Spinal misalignment. Chronic tension pulls the spine out of alignment, reducing mobility and causing pain or stiffness.

• Postural changes. Stress often leads to shallow breathing, slouching, or tensing the shoulders, all of which strain your spine over time.

How Stress Affects the Nervous System
Your spine protects the spinal cord, the main communication line between your brain and body. When stress affects spinal motion, it can also affect how efficiently your nervous system sends and receives signals.

• This can cause fatigue, poor focus, digestive issues, or sleep disruption.

• The longer the nervous system stays stressed, the harder it becomes for your body to return to balance.

How Chiropractic Helps
Chiropractic adjustments relieve spinal tension, restore motion, and help calm the nervous system, allowing your body to shift from “fight or flight” to “rest and recover.”

“Stress shows up in the body long before it shows up in your mood. Once we restore motion in the spine, patients feel both physical and mental relief.” — Dr. Michael Atunzu