Remaining Afloat

I want to put a name to a concept that I’ve reported on multiple times in the past.  In 1993 a term was coined to explain the wear and tear on the body and what happens when our levels of physical, chemical, and emotional stress become greater than our ability to adapt.  The term is allostatic load and it explains the physiological consequences to the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system as they become compromised as a result of chronic stress.

When the body is in a state of balance and responding appropriately to life’s stresses and everything is working as you were designed, you are said to be in a state of allostasis.  The stresses that accumulate over time and have been proven to accelerate the aging process and the likelihood of disease are known to increase our allostatic load.  An easier way to think about this is as if you were floating in a raft in a pool on a calm, warm day.  This would be a state of allostasis.  However, if your kids started cannonballing into the water, making waves and began to place rocks in your raft, this would be equivalent to increasing your allostatic load.  As more rocks are placed in the raft, you begin to sink deeper and you would likely begin to kick and paddle to stay afloat.  However, you can only maintain this struggle for a limited time.  Eventually, because you begin to fatigue or more rocks are placed than what you can fight against, you will inevitably sink.  Staying afloat in this analogy is equivalent to maintaining health and a normal physiology.  The rocks are analogous to our physical chemical and emotional stresses whether they are traumas, poor posture, sedentary lifestyle, sugars and other inflammatory foods, toxins, emotional stressors like worry, anger and guilt and even lack of proper sleep. 

In the body, as these stresses increase and allostatic load increases, different hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol increase to cause problems in the gastrointestinal tract and circulation, along with increased nervous system activity, higher blood pressure and cholesterol and a weakened immune response.  Fortunately, you can work to remove the rocks out of your raft and decrease your allostatic load.  By removing interference to the nervous system from misaligned vertebrae, this is what chiropractic care does.  Likewise by increasing circulation, relaxing muscles, and decreasing stress, this is what massage and acupuncture do.  Meditation, exercise, proper diet and sleep all function to decrease your allostatic load.  The point of this discussion is that stress is real and it can sink you, but with some discipline and a little work you have numerous methods to decrease your load and remain afloat for a long and healthy life.