The safest, most effective therapies for optimal health!
by Ellen Landauer
Your autonomic nervous system governs involuntary processes in your body, the ones you don't have conscious, direct control over...unless you are one of the world's best chi masters!
Body processes that govern stress, anxiety and depression OR relaxation, happiness and emotional stability are intimately connected with and deeply influenced by the autonomic nervous system.
Heart rate, tension or relaxation of smooth muscles in the blood vessels, secretion of myriad biochemical cocktails from glands and other body tissues, neurotransmitter chemistry, firing of synapses and so on, are all governed by the autonomic nervous system.
Complete, long-term stress relief requires healthy lifestyle and restoring the balance of your electrolyte minerals (calcium / magnesium, salt / potassium). Medicardium is one of the fastest, most effective ways to do this.
Next, I describe for you the two polar opposite aspects of the autonomic nervous system.
This will help you understand and be more in command of your path to relieving stress.
Sympathetic: 'fight-or-flight.' This is the part that gears us up for an emergency. We are in 'survival mode.'
This is a very old natural response to danger. Fear, stress and anxiety - and the physiological gearing-up that sets our heart to pounding and brings on a rush of adrenalin has a very important purpose...
...to save our life!
The problem is, our body doesn't know the difference between a tiger - and a traffic jam that makes us late for work...
Biochemically, we respond to a traffic jam or an angry boss the same way we responded in Paleolithic times when a saber-toothed tiger wanted to eat us!
Why is this a problem..?
Because in our modern lifestyle, there are SO many stressors...
And they NEVER go away!
If it's not the baby crying, the rat race, the fear-mongering news program, it's the lawn chemicals in your suburban neighborhood or mercury vapors from the so-called 'energy-saving' light bulbs.
In Paleolithic times, when the cave man was done fighting off the saber-toothed tiger, it was easy for him to let go of the stress and go home to make love to his cave-woman. We, on the other hand have a continual barrage of situations that can keep us in stressful, sympathetic 'fight-or-flight' mode.
When our ANS (autonomic nervous system) is more 'sympathetically tuned,' body processes not essential to our survival shut down.
When we are fighting for our life, we don't need to digest food, enjoy sexual pleasure, sleep or make new cells to repair body tissues. All the body's energy goes to gearing up for a fight.
Our heart rate increases. Adrenalin and corticosteroids flood our body and blood circulation goes to the voluntary musculature to support athletic strength.
Blood fibrin increases so the blood will clot faster in case we are injured. AND the blood vessels constrict, raising blood pressure. This is fine for a temporary emergency, but NOT good as a chronic, ongoing state of affairs that results from the kind of chronic, unrelenting stress so many people are under!
Stress keeps the blood on the verge of clotting for survival purposes.
Chronic daily stress threatens our survival because that same survival mechanism becomes a time bomb!
Embolisms - blood clots that obstruct circulation and can be life-threatening, are a common problem these days partly because so much time spent stressed keeps our blood on the verge of clotting. (Poor diet and inactivity are other causes).
Do you know that...
Corticosteroids, while invaluable for increasing strength in emergencies, damage any and all body tissues when stress is ongoing? This is why athletes who use corticosteroid drugs commonly suffer health problems after long term use!
Sympathetic mode is NOT conducive to healing, organ repair, relaxation, sexual potency, food absorption or deep sleep.
Most of us are sympathetically tuned FAR too frequently to achieve optimal health!
One of the goals of meditation is to balance the autonomic nervous system.
If you are too stressed to fully enjoy life, you can help yourself by learning how to tune and re-set your autonomic nervous system.
When we are a little more parasympathetically dominant, our heart rate slows, blood vessels relax to allow better circulation throughout the body, glandular activity and intestinal peristalsis increase.
By the way, you may not know this, but it is the RELAXATION of the blood vessels that supports erectile potency in men and orgasmic response in women, allowing optimal circulation to the genital region!
There are a small percentage of people who are TOO much in parasympathetic mode. But for the vast majority of us, it is healthy to support the 'rest-and-digest' part of our autonomic nervous system at every opportunity.
Ellen Landauer is an expert with over 40 years in-depth study and experience of the safe and effective use of nutritional supplements, botanical extracts and detoxification methods.
She is Certified as an Advanced Practitioner of Structural Integration body therapy developed by Dr. Ida P. Rolf - also known as Rolfing. This hands-on therapy is the deepest, most comprehensive body alignment therapy.
To learn more about Ellen Landauer, see her detailed bio HERE