Is the stress of school affecting your child’s health?

The new school year can often be exciting, however it can often bring with it a lot of stress for our kids. When this stress builds up it can cause our children’s nervous systems to get stuck in overdrive leading to a downward spiral in their health.

Dr Michael explains….

The start of the school year can be both exciting and nerve-racking for our kids and can bring with it lots of additional stress that we as adults might forget about. For our really little ones the anxiety of leaving mum or dad and starting school for the first time. For our older kids graduating from primary to intermediate or intermediate to secondary comes with the stressors of starting at a new school, having a new teacher, classrooms, routine and the scariest of all, making new friends! Add to the mix homework, assignments and the pressures of social media and you get a big pot of stress that can cause our kids health to boil over.

Our bodies are pretty amazing and can adapt to a lot but when the stress builds up too much our nervous system gets ramped up into overdrive and gets stuck in our stress (fight or flight) side of our nervous system. Now we want our nervous system to be balanced and have the ability to shift between our fight or flight and our rest & digest sides of our nervous system with ease, allowing us to adapt and stay healthy. When our/our kids nervous systems get stuck in this fight or flight side of the nervous system our kids immune system lowers, and their bodies ability to grow, heal and adapt is reduced which can lead to many different issues. 

With all the stressors at this time of the year some common body signals that we see when kids are stuck in this overdrive are:

• Behavioral Issues
• Poor Concentration
• Poor sleep
• Digestive Issues
• Reduction in immune function (sick a lot of the time)

So how do you know if your child is stuck in this fight or flight overdrive? A Heart Rate Variability test is the most accurate way to assess exactly how well your child is adapting to the stress of the new school year. Here at Chiropractic House we use the latest state of the art Insight CLA scanning software, which allows us to measure the specific effects of stress on your child’s nervous system.

Chiropractic adjustments address this overdrive/imbalance within the central nervous system and helps to apply the brake pedal in their system, taking our children out of this flight or fight state (sympathetic) and allowing their system to shift towards the rest & digest (parasympathetic). When our children are able to shift into this rest & digest side of our nervous system we know that their systems are able to grow, adapt and develop accurately which promotes rest, relaxation, digestion and improved immune function.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask the team when you are next in for your chiropractic check up or please feel free to contact us direct.

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