The Hidden Connection: Your Spine and Nervous System

Ever wondered why some patients walk out of a chiropractic adjustment feeling not just pain-free, but emotionally lighter, sleeping better, and digesting food more easily? The answer lies in the profound relationship between your spine and nervous system regulation.

Your nervous system exists in two primary states: sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest). When properly regulated, you can smoothly transition between these states as needed. The benefits extend far beyond stress reduction—regulated patients experience increased heart rate variability (a key marker of resilience), reduced inflammation, normalized blood pressure, improved digestion, stronger immune function, deeper sleep, balanced hormones, and enhanced mental clarity.

The magic happens through the spine—the protective housing for your body's communication superhighway. Misalignments disrupt nerve signaling, but precise adjustments stimulate mechanoreceptors that send signals to the brain, creating what research calls a "neuroplastic reset." This reboot happens within seconds, pulling you out of sympathetic overdrive. Equally important is the restoration of proper spinal curves. That natural S-shape isn't just good posture—it's functional architecture. When lost, the spinal cord stretches up to 7 centimeters, affecting cerebrospinal fluid flow and creating a permanent state of physiological stress.

I've seen remarkable transformations in my practice. Young adults regain proper cervical curves within months, while older patients might take longer but experience the same improvements in headaches, pain, and—perhaps most significantly—emotional wellbeing. People who rarely smiled begin joking again. Their nervous systems are literally being liberated.

Ready to unlock your nervous system's potential? Seek a comprehensive assessment with a chiropractor who evaluates spinal curves and alignment. Remember: adjustments create access, but daily practices maintain regulation. Your body was designed to thrive in rhythm, not survival mode—and when your spine and nervous system align, so does your life.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Benefits of a Regulated Nervous System
• 3:50 How Chiropractic Adjustments Impact Nerves
• 6:25 Importance of Spinal Curves
• 10:22 Real Patient Success Stories
• 12:42 Maintaining Regulation Beyond Adjustments
• 16:15 Episode Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

In our last episode we talked about nervous system dysregulation, what it is, what causes it and how to begin healing. Today we're going deeper into the miracles that happen when the nervous system becomes more regulated and how chiropractic care plays a powerful, often misunderstood role in that process. I've had patients who've come in for pain but after a few weeks of adjustments they weren't just feeling better, they were sleeping better, deeper, their digestion improved and they felt calmer in the situations that used to trigger them. I'm Dr Enrico Dolce Cori. Welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. This week we're diving deeper into nervous system regulation. Last week we talked about deeper into nervous system regulation. Last week we talked about dysregulation of the nervous system. But let's go into more depth of regulating our nervous system. We live in a world that just dysregulates everything, discombobulates I love that word of everything, right? So we got to recombobulate everything in our lives and that's not a word and reintegrate our nervous systems to balance and homeostasis and there's physiological benefits, uh to regulating our nervous system. A regulated nervous system is pretty much optimal tone between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. This allows the body to shift efficiently between ready for action and ready for recovery. We talked about the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system being part of the autonomic or automatic nervous system. It's the one that you don't control, it just it controls you really. It's how you perceive your environment and it gets you ready for either fight or flight or to relax and digest one or the other. When you're regulated, your heart rate variability increases. You have better stress resilience. People think of heart rate variability and it's got to be low their heart rate. But heart rate variability is not heart rate, it's the variability between each beat and we want that to be as high as possible. We want as much variability between each beat so we're always ready for the next thing. And then that calms our nervous system. It gives us better resilience to stress. When we're regulated, inflammation automatically decreases. We get fewer chronic conditions. Our blood pressure normalizes, our digestion improves via the vagal activation, so better absorption, less bloating, less IBS. Immune function strengthens, sleep deepens and REM cycles normalize. Hormones stabilize, so we get better cortisol patterns, thyroid function, sex hormone balance and then mental clarity, memory and emotional flexibility improve. From a 2022 review in neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews links parasympathetic tone to improved immune, cardiovascular and emotional health. So how do we directly impact this? Well, for once on this podcast.

Speaker 1: 3:30

I'm going to talk about something I'm almost an expert at, and that's chiropractic how chiropractic adjustments influence the nervous system. It's the neurological impact of the adjustment that's the magic behind all of this. The spine houses and protects the spinal cord. This is the superhighway of the nervous system. Communication moves faster than any fiber optic cable on the planet between the brain and the body through the spinal cord.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Misalignments or subluxations irritate or compress nerves, disrupting communication between the brain and the body, disrupting communication between the brain and the body. Adjustments stimulate mechanoreceptors which send signals to the brainstem and higher brain centers, especially the prefrontal cortex of the brain. So the misalignments of the spine need to be detected and found and corrected properly through precise chiropractic adjustments. These mechanoreceptors that move help send these signals back to the brain and tell it hey, there's not a disruption but an eruption of information in the right areas. This creates a neuroplastic reset, rebooting the body out of sympathetic overdrive, and it happens within seconds after an adjustment. People literally walk out lighter after an adjustment and they sometimes come back and say it was temporary. But even in that moment hitting that reset button, the value it brings to the nervous system, calming down even for moments, minutes or hours after the adjustment is adding so much life to that person. A research study in the Journal of Neuroplasticity in 2016 found that spinal adjustments led to improved brain-body communication and motor control, likely through the prefrontal cortex stimulation. So the adjustments restore the body's self-regulation. They do this by reducing nociceptive pain and stress input reducing nociceptive pain and stress input, increasing proprioceptive input, activating calm pathways in the central nervous system and they realign the structural foundation so the nervous system can operate without interference. These three components happen after every single adjustment.

Speaker 1: 5:53

So the spine is the conduit of the spinal, of the entire nervous system, and the spine has a healthy state and an unhealthy state. The things we see in medicine when we take x-rays and MRIs we talk about discs and disc bulges and degenerative disc disease and osteoarthritis and decay and disc herniations and all the conditions that can happen to the spine because of wear and tear is not exactly what we're talking about when we talk about the nervous system. Structure versus function plays a role, but structures decay over time. We're just not invincible. It's just the way it is how bones works, how everything works. So sometimes even a bad MRI can still have a healthy nervous system and, vice versa. A healthy MRI with no issues or healthy x-ray can have a really dysregulated nervous system. And there's some crucial things we look at as chiropractors and some things that we can do to help ourselves with this spine and the health of the spine and improving this conduit of information.

Speaker 1: 6:56

The cervical and lumbar curves in the spine. When you take a side x-ray of somebody, they have this S-shape pattern to their spine, which is natural. It's normal and the cervical and lumbar curves act like springs. So every step we take, every time we jump on the trampoline, every time we walk or run, we act like a shock absorber, as an entire unit. So this S-shaped spine acts as a slinky that absorbs shock and protects the spinal cord.

Speaker 1: 7:24

It was once believed that the discs between the vertebra were the shock absorbers of the spine, but they're not. They're literally cartilage wedges between the bone to give them some space so they don't rub on each other for 95 years and completely decay. That's the whole point, so that they're they're just spacers between the vertebra. They're filled with a disc material, a water-based material, and if that herniates can cause other issues. But uh, it's pretty dynamic structure of the spine. It's pretty resilient. It makes us super flexible. We can bend. Look at all the gymnasts and what they can do Pretty cool stuff through the flexibility of the spine. But it's actually the S-shaped curve of the entire spine that acts as the shock absorber.

Speaker 1: 8:06

The problem is when we lose these curves and we become a straight neck or straight low back or very straight spine, it creates a tethering and tension and neurological stress because the spinal cord runs through there. Think of it like a Twizzler or an elastic band. If we lose these curves and we take an S-shaped curve and make it a straight line, it's going to become longer, it's going to become more straight. It almost pulls on the spinal cord and stretches it. That changes the spinal cord's tone. It can pull the entire spinal cord. It can pull nerve roots from the peripheral nervous system and pull those and send radiating pain down the arms or legs or whatever it may be, wherever it's going. But any pull in any neural tissue can create dysregulation. You can create dysregulation.

Speaker 1: 8:59

So a straight or reverse curve in the neck can stretch the spinal cord up to five to seven centimeters, affecting cerebral spinal fluid flow and nerve conduction, which changes the communication and puts us immediately into a sympathetic overdrive. And if we're stuck there structurally. It's a permanent sympathetic overdrive that we're stuck and we're permanently caught in fight or flight, permanently caught in stress, permanently caught in anxiety, and then we have the loops of panic that continue to happen over and over and over again. The Surgical Neurology International Journal in 2015 discusses how loss of cervical lordosis is linked to symptoms of dysautonomia, headaches and dizziness Exactly what we're talking about today. So correcting spinal curves equals long-term nervous system balance, and we've been doing I've been doing this in my clinic for my entire career. By getting back the spinal curve, we improve structural integrity, consistent, unimpinged nerve signaling, less irritation, fewer sympathetic overreactions, better alignment, and that equals just more efficient brain-body communication and lasting parasympathetic activation.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So some examples are the younger kids. I see, you know, maybe in their late teens, early twenties, coming on in for headaches, whatever it may be uh, migraines, neck pain. We take an x-ray and they do have a straight neck. The nice thing about the younger population is they can adapt, change and correct a lot faster. They're dynamic. They're still healthy tissues, optimal. And with the ones that listen uh, within three to to six months, we take another x-ray and they have near optimal curves in their spine. Uh, not only are they looking better at that point on an x-ray, but during that journey over those 12 weeks they just report back. The headaches were gone after week two. Their emotions were better after week four. They were sleeping better after week one. All these improvements in function that, as a 22 year old, would not really think is a big issue With people in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

Speaker 1: 11:06

When we take these x-rays now we have other conditions, like a little bit maybe of osteoarthritis or degenerative issues, but we put them through the same process and instead of three months it may take nine months, but when we take these x-rays the exact same things happen to them the neck pain is better, the headaches are gone, their shoulders feel better, the radiating pain is better, all the things that they came to us is better. But then their other functions, their sleep is better, their nervous is, they're happier. Some of these people come in, don't even crack a smile and as the months go by they're joking again. They're happier. Whether they admit it or not, I see it. And that's what healthcare is all about is.

Speaker 1: 11:45

As a chiropractor, we're blessed because we can see people two, three times a week or once a week over a long period of time. So I may see someone two dozen times, three dozen times over the course of nine months. They're talking to me more than anyone else in their healthcare Rolodex, and maybe ever to speak to someone 36 times, and we can uncan a lot of health issues and guide them in the right direction, which is really cool, and the miracles happen by restoring the spinal curves. That's the cool part about all that and how important that central nervous system is to the overall output of our overall health. So combining adjustments with regulation practices is, I think, the perfect recipe to getting better nervous system regulation. Chiropractic care creates access. Chiropractic care creates access, but it's the daily habits that maintain that regulation and I love that. By getting adjusted, you create access to a better nervous system, but the daily habits that you maintain throughout your life is what keeps that regulation regulated. Does that make sense? So we can always try to fix things from the outside in, but really the only way to fix things is from the inside out. So breathing, deep breathing after the adjustments, uh, cold exposure we talked about that in the last episode.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Walking and grounding yourself, daily mobility or hygiene exercises that we usually give our patients. Lying on the floor putting a towel rolled up towel underneath your neck and just lying flat, using gravity to pull you down into the ground, into the floor, into your yoga mat, whatever it is, and you just lying flat, that that rolled up towel puts force up against the spinal curve in your neck and helps restore that natural curve, whether you're in good shape or not, whether you're arthritic or not. Lying there, if you can only do two minutes, you do two minutes, but if you're in good shape and you have good spinal movement, you can lie there all day. You could probably fall asleep because it puts you right into that perfect position with your spine. That's a great one. Just lying there and breathing and falling asleep, whatever it may be, even 10 minutes every night before you go to bed.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Nervous system journaling this might be something just like when you're trying to lose weight. You journal what you eat to see where the hiccups may be or where the blocks may be in the weight loss journey. Same thing with regulating your nervous system. Maybe keeping a nervous system journal to track patterns of stress versus calm what days did you feel more stress, what days did you feel more calm? And then in the journal you just kind of journal what you did that day, you'll notice.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Sometimes we work out a little too hard. Sometimes we are active, we're trying to work out, we're trying to do things, we're pushing our body and then we journal this stuff and we're like man. Those days where I go for my long runs, I'm actually more stressed. Why is that? I feel like I'm de-stressing during the run, but overall that day and the next day I'm more stressed. How is that working out? We may be pushing ourselves a little too far with our exercise. That could be one thing.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Chiropractic is the key that unlocks the door, but you have to walk through it daily in order to maintain it. So just to recap today on regulating your nervous system a regulated nervous system isn't just about feeling calm. It's about unlocking every system in your body to perform and heal at its highest potential. So if you've ever had your spine evaluated or your curves measured, this is your sign to do so. Don't wait for symptoms to force the issue.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Be proactive about your nervous system health. See a chiropractor, get assessed, and a proper assessment would be an orthopedic evaluation of the movement of your spine, a chiropractic evaluation of the posture, a heart rate variability test to see what's going on how you're actually functioning. Maybe thermography, if they have that in there, but more so the x-rays to actually measure spinal curvature and alignment and maybe find misalignments and subluxations that can immediately be corrected to help improve the flow of that nervous system. That's the magic sauce right there into chiropractic. So that's this episode. Share it with friends. You were designed to live in rhythm, not in survival, and when your spine and nervous system are aligned, so is your life. Stay well, stay healthy. Catch you on the next episode. Have a great week.