Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic Nervous System What??

It has come to my attention that the vast majority of the population has no idea about their autonomic nervous system. When I mention the parasympathetic or the sympathetic nervous system I can predictably watch the eyes glaze over in 1.5 seconds! Just what are these two branches of the autonomic nervous system and why should you care?? Click here for the answer.

The autonomics control the functions of your body that you are not in conscious control of. Things like your heart rate, breathing, elimination, digestion reproduction etc. I don't think anyone would argue that these were not important.

The important bit to understand is that there are two branches to this system.

1. Sympathetic (stimulating)

2. Parasympathetic (relaxing)

You see it is all about balance just like so many other things in our bodies. One side of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetics, stimulate and will speed up your heart rate for example and the other side, the parasympathetics will calm and slow it back down again.

This intuitively makes sense to most people. It is a system designed to keep your body functioning in the correct range of where it needs to be.

So what is the problem? Most of us are stuck in the ON position which is the STIMULATING side of it. When we are under stress of any sort (physical, emotional or chemical) the fight or flight response kicks into gear and helps us to deal with the stress. This is highly adaptive and good though as it is helping us to deal with the stress so what is the problem again?

The problem is that MOST of us live our lives in a constant state of low level stress therefore overstimulating our sympathetic nervous system. If this is allowed to run unchecked by the parasympathetic nervous system we will start to develop chronic degenerative stress diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and many others.

The parasympathetics need more attention and to do it we need to slow down, relax, perhaps meditate, and use infrared saunas, chiropractic as well as implement a solid nutritional balancing program as determined by a hair tissue analysis.

I'll leave you to ponder this. Digestion, elimination and reproduction are by and large parasympathetic activity. Are you surprised to be having problems in these areas now that we understand how stress and the sympathetic nervous system are taking primary control? Didn't think so.