Could the Autonomic Nervous System hold the key to reversing chronic illness? The answer is yes. But what is the ANS, and isn’t it impossible to repair nervous system damage? Let’s dive into this incredibly important system and take a closer look at what Autonomic Dysfunction is doing to your body.
The ANS is the primary pathway for information to travel out of the brain, providing vital instructions to every cell and system, from digestive function to hormonal regulation. A healthy Autonomic Nervous System keeps your heart rate regulated, balances cortisol levels, and maintains regular kidney and liver function to remove toxins from the blood. However, when inflammation from stress, infection and toxin overload affect the ANS, we can experience chronic pain, low energy, and whole-body dysfunction as this information exchange is disrupted.
Balance is key to a healthy nervous system. There are two parts to the ANS - the sympathetic, which turns on during times of stress to energize the body through the “fight or flight” response, and the parasympathetic, responsible for the “rest and digest” state that conserves and stores energy. Chronic stress leads to an overdependence on the sympathetic nervous system, causing the body to remain in a state of fight-or-flight, and disrupting ANS function.
When the communication between the brain and the body breaks down, every system suffers - the immune system weakens, leaving you vulnerable to infection; cellular waste removal breaks down causing toxin build up, and blood bringing vital oxygen to the brain stagnates, causing fatigue and low-level brain damage. We see symptoms like MCAS, caused by an overactive and dysregulated inflammatory response, and POTS, a sign the ANS is struggling to regulate as the body changes position from sitting to standing or laying down. It’s why autonomic dysfunction, also called dysautonomia, is one of the biggest drivers of chronic disease, causing widespread imbalance across all systems of the body.
The greatest threat to ANS function is viral infection. Viruses attack the nervous system and create widespread inflammation. Viral infections linger in the body long after they’ve been dulled by the immune system, causing low level chronic inflammation that over time destroys your body’s foundation. Covid is especially viscous to the nervous system, which is why we see symptoms like heart rate deregulation, brain fog, and chronic fatigue/ME in Long Covid cases.
While modern medicine used to believe the nervous system is impossible to repair, we now know this to be untrue. Though the nervous system is a complex and still mysterious system of the body, repair is possible, and in fact necessary for returning the body to a state of balance. Cold Laser Detox is a fantastic tool in healing the ANS, gently stimulating the cells of your nervous system to repair and regulate and allowing communication between the brain and the body to return to normal.
The source of your ANS deregulation is as individual as you are, and by removing the unique inflammatory factors in your body, managing chronic viral infections, and providing the tools your body needs to heal, the brain and the autonomic nervous system can be restored to regular function.
Want to get started on your path to a healthy nervous system? Schedule a Cold Laser Detox session now to create a unique plan that works for your body, so that you can get back to living well.