Your Body Feels Broken Because Your Nervous System Is Overloaded

Everybody feels like they’re running on fumes lately and it’s not just “being busy.” If you’re dealing with anxiety, brain fog, poor sleep, digestive issues, tension, or burnout, we zoom out from quick fixes and look at what might be driving the whole pattern: a nervous system stuck in overload.

We break down what the nervous system actually does and why the autonomic system matters so much for daily life. You’ll hear how sympathetic fight-or-flight and parasympathetic rest-and-recovery are meant to flex back and forth, and why modern life makes that flexibility harder. We talk through the biggest stress inputs we see right now, including technology overload and nonstop notifications, work and financial pressure, late-night screens and artificial light that disrupt circadian rhythm, stimulants like caffeine and energy drinks, plus environmental stress and lack of movement.

Then we get practical. We cover signs your nervous system is “screaming” for a reset in both adults and kids, why healing gets harder when you never truly power down, and how the vagus nerve and heart rate variability (HRV) can offer real insight into regulation. You’ll also get simple, repeatable tools: better sleep boundaries, morning sunlight, daily movement, breathing with longer exhales, and carving out real quiet time, along with how chiropractic care may support brain-body communication.

If this hits home, subscribe to the podcast, share it with someone who’s been struggling, and leave a review so more people can find these nervous system reset tools. What’s the one change you’ll try first?

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Transcript

How The Nervous System Runs Everything

The Hidden Sources Of Overload

Signs Your System Is Maxed Out

Vagus Nerve And HRV Testing

Simple Daily Nervous System Resets

Chiropractic As A Reset Button

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Why does it seem like everyone is exhausted, anxious, and overwhelmed lately? Why are kids struggling more with behavior focus and sensory issues? And why are adults dealing with brain fog, poor sleep, digestive issues, and burnout? The answer might not be your diet, your hormones, or your age. It might be your nervous system. Today we're talking about why your nervous system is overloaded, what the actually means, and simple things you can do to reset it. Welcome back to Living a Full Life Podcast. I'm Dr. Enrique Rolchkori. And this week we're going through what the nervous system does and why we feel the way we do. I think it's one of these topics that's just not talked about very well. We like to do the biohacking, to jump straight to quick fixes, quick answers, eat more protein, take these GLP1s, uh, do these injections and peptides, but we don't really think about the process and what's going on. We're not just a bunch, a bag of lows and highs of like low testosterone and high thyroid function and low metabolism and high glucose. That's not how we work. It's all controlled by a master system, the nervous system. And what it actually does is it can it runs everything. And we have it divided into the automatic system, the autonomic system, the one that you don't have to think about. Uh your heart just beats, whether you're asleep or awake. It just does it. You don't have to consciously think about that. And then the conscious system, the frontal lobe, where we can move motor function, sensory function. We can pick up a ball, we can throw it, we could read a book, we could write a letter, those types of things. So your nervous system runs everything. The brain controls everything through the spinal cord and through our nervous system and backwards as well, back to the brain. All the information goes. So heart rate, digestion, sleep, hormones, immune system, mood, focus, the list just goes on and on and on. But what the automatic nervous system is divided into is the sympathetic and parasympathetic. And we live our life in a homeostasis between those two, and that's where we feel and function the best. When we start to stress one way or the other, it can be a good thing in acute situations, like trying to exercise or go for a sprint. We want to become more sympathetic, fight or flight, or a stress response where we get to pump more blood to the muscles, get our bodies moving faster, and create some endurance, exercise, CO2, VO2 max, and all the great things that happen with short-term exercise. Parasympathetic, we don't want to swing too far into there for too long either, but that side of the nervous system is what calms us and gets us ready for rest, healing, digestion, and recovery. So we have this beautiful swaying pattern through the 24-hour cycle of cycling through sympathetic and parasympathetic, but hovering on the highway in the lane. Does that make sense? We're driving down the lane every single day and we're trying to stay between the white lines. If we start to sway into the shoulders or into oncoming traffic, we put ourselves in danger. And that is what the nervous system is trying to do each and every moment of your life, is to stay in homeostasis. Your body is designed to move between these two states. The problem today is many people never leave the sympathetic fight or flight state. We're stuck in it. And I use cars because everyone knows how they work as analogies. But when we start to rev the engines and put the pedal to the metal, we drive ourselves more into the sympathetic state. And when we stay in that revved situation, even when we come to a stop, a red light, it's like pushing down on the brake, but keeping your foot on the gas, revving the engine. So when that turns green and you take the pressure off of the brake, you're just speedy gonzales for right off the bat. And we wonder why we're anxious all the time. Modern overloads and modern life stresses is what overloads the nervous system. So let's discuss where the overload's coming from. Because if we were designed to be driving down this highway in a healthy state, then we should be on autopilot in there. And what strays us off course is the overloads from life. The big one right now is technology overload. Phones, social media, news, constant notifications. I what just when I thought we're at the peak of the amount of notifications we can get, it keeps getting worse. More emails, more spam text messages, more spam phone calls, more spam mail than ever. I mean, the notifications are coming in from you're sifting through garbage more and more and more each and every year. It's unbelievable how many things are out there to get your attention. And this creates stress. There are things that need your attention: your job, your family, your focus, your hobbies, but the rest are all out there wasting your time. And unfortunately, that puts a lot of stress on us. Our culture is a work stress culture, just in the way it's set up work pressure, financial stress, and always being busy to make next month's pay and pay the bills. So there's the stress culture that's just there. And then poor sleep habits, screens late at night, watching our favorite show late, using and scrolling through the phone or social media right before we go to bed, artificial lights around the house, fluorescence, night lights, uh, blue lights, desk lights, computer screens, all this artificial light throws off our normal circadian rhythms, which is our nervous system that controls all that. So our nervous system is always trying to figure out how to calibrate on a daily basis. Then we have stimulants. We talk about, you know, emotional, mental, physical, and chemical stresses. Those are all the stresses, the toxins, thoughts, toxins, and traumas that we go through each and every day as our main stresses. So that's the mental stress. The chemical stress are the stimulants that we give ourselves: caffeine, energy drinks, uh anything to stimulate us, um, cold plunges, you know, these things, these quick things to stimulate our bodies. And then environmental stress. So there's just the toxins from the environment, breathing polluted air is one, uh, processed foods, lack of movement is a is a toxic buildup in our tissue as well. Your nervous system was designed for short bursts of stress, not 24-7 stimulation. And that is where we're at. We hear about younger and younger people getting diagnosed with colon cancer, younger and younger people dealing with chronic stress, younger and younger, because the amount of it is just overwhelming. And as soon as we understand that, we can then put our foot down and say, I am creating some solid boundaries in my life. There's no more, I'm turning on the the do not disturb function on my phone. I'm turning off my phone an hour before bed, I'm dimming the lights, I'm doing that thing for myself for 15 minutes uh every day. And you just start creating firm boundaries and non-negotiables in your life because it's so easy to say, well, I'm just too busy and all the rest needs to get done before me. It takes a toll on our nervous system. Your nervous system's craving some TLC from yourself. So, what are some signs that our nervous system is just screaming at us, saying, please, man, just just 15 minutes. Can you can we just turn it off for 15 minutes? Physically, we end up getting tension. So, tension will build up in odd places. The neck and shoulders is a very common one. Uh, headaches can come from this, digestive problems, fatigue, inflammation. We can get a bunch of um tension in the calves. Um, what else can I have? Tension in the forearms, in in odd places when people start to develop tension, just tightness of muscles. That's one. The physical, mentally, we just get anxiety, just we're anxious all the time. Everything just makes just waking up. We're like, oh, here comes another day. Brain fog, trouble focusing, sleep, difficulty just falling asleep, or maybe even staying asleep during the night. We wake up multiple times at night, not just to use the bathroom, we just keep waking up. Our nervous systems are so so shot and disruptive that we can't think straight or sleep straight. And those are all signs of a nervous system that just needs a major overhaul and reset. In children, we see sensory issues, just to the touch, to stimulation, to lights, to noise, to music, to the constant noise, um, loud environments, emotional meltdowns, attention challenges, just difficulty gaining their attention, motor coordination delays. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, the body cannot heal properly. And that is the foundation I'm trying to get to in this podcast is that if we live in this chronic state of overstimulation, our nervous systems can't heal. Now, with that being in mind, if the nervous system can't heal the body, then what can happen? And now we just open up Gray's Anatomy and Physiology book and go through every pathology that's in there, and that's what can happen when your nervous system isn't optimized and functioning well. Anything can happen after that. From the crazy cancers and strokes and heart attacks, all the way down to irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis, uh, ulcer rate of colitis, ulcers in the stomach, in the esophagus, uh, pH balance disruption, chronic infections in the in the sinuses, UTIs, kidney infection. I mean, it just can happen. This stuff, all anything can happen in the pathology book. Just buy a pathology book and close your eyes and flip to a page, and that can happen if our nervous systems are being bombarded. Now, one thing that we can do an entire podcast on is the vagus nerve regulation phenomenon. The vagus nerve is a component of the spinal cord and the connection between the brain and body that connects the brain to many specific organs. It helps shift the body into rest and healing mode. So in our office, we use heart rate variability to kind of give us a glimpse of the vagus nerve regulation and overall regulation of the nervous system and signs of nervous system balance. You can reference what you see on this heart rate variability. And actually, when we measure HRV in patients, we can actually see how the nervous system is handling stress. So that is a test we use, and you're all more than welcome, if you're in the area, to come come in for an HRV test. It takes three minutes, it's super easy. Uh, and we use specific technology and algorithm that measures what we're looking for, not what the Apple Watch is telling you as far as numbers. So we're looking for function, nervous system function of the heart rate variability. Uh, and then you can find people all over the place. I know chiropractors that do it, neurologists that do it. There's there's clinics all over the place that use our heart rate variability. Now, simple ways to reset your nervous system, uh, improve sleep. We have the we have probably four sleep podcasts you can go back to and listen to and how to improve your sleep. The dark room, the no screens before bed, the consistent sleep schedule that you just stayed stay to and set firm boundaries around. Morning sunlight uh regulates circadian rhythm, improves hormones, seeing getting that morning sunlight first thing upon waking, opening the window and standing there for 60 seconds, and getting that sunlight to the retina to your in your eyes is what helps tell the nervous system what part of day it's in so it can regulate better. Movement, walking, strength training, mobility, these things continue the circulatory system so that it knows when waking is happening and when sleeping is happening, so that you can optimize sleep. More movement, better sleep. Breathing, focusing on actually taking a deep breath in, holding it and breathing it out, resetting the breathing cycle uh and the diaphragmatic cycle stimulates the nervous system in a positive way to rest. You're actually helping your nervous system do something it does on autopilot and reset longer. Exhales and just reducing stimulation. That's how we open this podcast was reducing the amount of stimulation, the notification, take breaks from screens, have quiet time each and every day for yourself. You know what I'm talking about, especially if you're a parent. Kids are asleep, you you don't you don't fall asleep. You get up, come downstairs, you grab a drink of water, and you just stand there at the kitchen, you're like, it's so quiet. Even the birds not chirping, the dog's not doing scratching or anything, it's just that moment lasts about 15 seconds. Then something happens, the dog barks or whatever. But uh, but you sit there that 15 seconds, and oh, that was that was bliss. I think that was heaven. I think that was heaven. That's what heaven is, and that's what we're talking about: giving yourself more than just that 15 seconds of each and every day to to have that quiet time for yourself, for your nervous system to regulate better. And chiropractic care, as a chiropractor, I've seen this millions of times because that's how many adjustments I've given of what the direct effect of a proper adjustment, removing interference from that spinal cord, that nervous system, does for a person. They're living with this interference, this restriction, this lack of movement, this pinched nerve, this occlusion, whatever it may be, fixation, and it's removed instantly with one adjustment. And how much better they are the very next day, they have a great sleep, and the effects on that first one is just amazing. And using it regularly, just like movement and exercise, if you put chiropractic into your wellness lifestyle, whatever frequency you choose, your body gets used to that frequency, and it's used as a nervous system reset each and every time that you do it. Adjustments improve communication between the brain and the body. That's what chiropractic was designed to do. Everything else that we do has been accommodated around to help people heal better. Lasers for um uh sprained ankles and cold uh packs and hot packs and um grasting tools and myofascial release and massage techniques or all these things to help tissue heal better that we've added in chiropractic. But the source of chiropractic came from if we remove the interference in the nervous system, it functions better. Your body is not broken, your nervous system is just overwhelmed. When the nervous system is balanced, the body has an incredible ability to heal and function the way it was designed. Share this episode with somebody you know that needs to hear this. Uh, follow the podcast, subscribe, and mention to people that hey, you know, listen to this, do these things, and you'll notice a huge change. Thanks for living listening to a full life podcast. I'm Dr. Enrico Doshkori. We're here each and every week for you. This was a nervous system talk. If you have any questions, reach out to us at infowlifetampa.com. We're more to help, more than happy to answer questions and help you out. Stay well, stay healthy, and catch you next week.