Stress responses are only meant to be short lived. Chronic and traumatic stress can cause three patterns of nervous system dysregulation: hyperarousal (you’re stuck on high), hypoarousal (you’re stuck on low) or you may oscillate between high and low.
Dysreguation influences your nervous system to increase muscle tension, which can result in chronic aches and pain.
In addition, the endocrine and immune responses can amplify pain through a number of mind-body system pathways, such as inflammation. You activate the same network in the brain whether you’re experiencing emotional, physical or social pain like rejection, so stress can increase sensitise pain pathways.
Dysregulation impacts the digestive system: anxiety, anger and hyperarousal can increase pain because of the effect it has on the gut motility directly (the movement of food through the digestive tract), and also the hormones released and when you’re in survival mode. The vagus nerve is what restores the balance and can reduce this affect. It restores gut motility and regulates the gut microbiome.
It’s essential to be thoroughly assessed for these symptoms to rule out any organic issue, and it is equally important to recognise that these symptoms (sometimes called medically unexplained symptoms) may have a common root as a stress-related disorder of regulation. Hope lies in knowing that these symptoms make sense - you’re not being too sensitive and their not “in your head”.
They may be an underlying syndrome that can be effectively treated when dysregulation as the cause is identified. Re-establishing self-regulation through balancing the nervous system and increasing vagal tone (the functioning of the vagus nerve) can improve many chronic health issues. It gets to the root cause of stress related illnesses, rather than treating the symptoms that continue to arise until the nervous system is balanced.
Wouldn’t it be helpful to reconceptualise what health and illness are to include if your nervous system is regulated? Psychological and physical resilience come as a package. Change the nervous system and you also change the immune, endocrine, muscluloskeletal, cardiovascular and digestive systems.
Learn more in the next round of the Vagus Nerve Program.