Why This Area Matters
Hey, it’s Dr. Cicala from Balanced Living Chiropractic. So let’s break down how this part of the body, this two inches of the body, can be causing your vagus nerve issues—or at least a big part of your vagus nerve issues—your dysautonomia, POTS, whatever you wanna call it. Those odd symptoms can cause brain fog, fatigue, your heart to race, your stomach not to feel right, and you just don’t feel good, but no one can figure out how to help you or what’s actually going on.
So let’s break this down. First off, in this area, about an inch or two just below your skull, is a thing called the brainstem. The brainstem is basically like the master electrician box, or the electrical box, of your body. It’s where every nerve signal goes and comes back to, and if there’s pressure on that brainstem, it can kind of cause chaos.
The Vagus Nerve and Fight or Flight
Now, how does this tie into the vagus nerve? Well, the root of the vagus nerve starts right up here at the top of the spine, and it wanders its way down, all the way into our gut. While it’s wandering down into the gut, it’s innervating your heart, your lungs, your stomach, and a whole bunch of other things that are part of your nervous system, especially your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest system.
And so typically, when you have pressure up into the brainstem and onto the vagus nerve, it’s gonna put you into the sympathetic part of your nervous system, which is your fight or flight system. And when you get stuck in fight or flight for too long, that’s when you start to get these overwhelming symptoms and this stress, anxiety, brain fog, “I just don’t feel good, but I don’t know what’s wrong with me” type of combination of symptoms.
Checking the Top of the Spine
And so if we can locate a misalignment at the very top of the spine that’s indicating there’s pressure on the brainstem and the vagus nerve, then we can start to get that misalignment to go away, take pressure off of that, and get your parasympathetic and your sympathetic to start to balance. Because right now, again, that sympathetic system is way high, the parasympathetic system is way low, the vagus nerve doesn’t function right, and you don’t feel good.
And so if we balance those back out, then you start to feel more normal, all your symptoms start to relieve over time, and we get that nervous system to calm down, get that vagus nerve to calm down. The dysautonomia, the POTS-like symptoms all start to balance, and all of a sudden you don’t feel bad, you don’t feel crazy, and you have an actual reason for those symptoms to go on.
If You’re Having These Issues
So if you haven’t had the upper cervical spine checked out and you’re having these issues, and you’ve had all the tests, you’ve seen all the doctors, and you’re not sure what else to do, come see us. We’re in Rochester Hills, Michigan. We focus and we specialize in this type of an issue. We see many patients, especially over the last six years, who are starting to have more and more of these issues.
So look at the upper part of the spine. We’re the people to come see. We look forward to helping you.
