THE specific BLOG

The Millenial Pandemic

I can still remember the days of sitting on the couch and watching my favorite tv shows on Nickelodeon….Doug, Hey Arnold!, Rocket Power, Rugrats.

Then heading outside and sticking my tongue out like Michael Jordan when shooting hoops in the driveway, or catching a pass like Antonio Freeman would from Brett Favre.

Even rearranging the skate ramps we were lucky enough to have in our driveway to try and be the next Eric Koston of skateboarding while my friends and I would make lackluster sponsor me tapes.

You know after this I’m heading inside to eat some fruit roll ups or gushers.

If any of that somewhat rings a bell to you, then you may be a millennial, which I don’t view as a bad thing at all!

At the same time….if you are a millennial….then there is no doubt that you have been criticized for not having a work ethic, taking the easy way out, blah blah blah….them boomers don’t get it!

Real talk though, I’m witnessing some sort of pandemic going on with Millennials lately, and I’m not talking about COVID-19. What I’m talking about is the big “A” word, ANXIETY.

This may not sound like a big deal but when you let things linger and linger regarding your health it does seem to compound into larger problems. A lot of the people I’ve been seeing in the office lately have been dealing with headaches, and migraines. This makes sense but something that I’ve also found is they tend to have some sort of jaw pain mixed in there as well as anxiety! This may not be that surprising as you may be someone who deals with all of this same stuff, but let’s get to the bottom of it!

It’s said that 17 percent of millennials suffer from depression with another 14 percent who deal with anxiety on a daily basis. We need to remember that these numbers are based only on the people that actually go somewhere for help and by no means show the actual number of people affected. It’s thought that millennials face a more difficult financial situation than generations before and that can definitely be attributed to the things listed above but I don’t believe that to be the sole problem.

Now there’s no doubt that when I was a kid my palms would get a little sweaty and I’d feel a sense of nervousness when I knew someone was getting slimed on Nickelodeon but this is different.

As you may be able to tell I was into all sorts of sports growing up, all the normal ones. The sports that I seemed to enjoy most were the xtreme sports, I guess you could say I’m a little bit of an adrenaline junky. The thing is that I only wanted that feeling of adrenaline when I was doing those activities. Imagine how you’d feel if you were stuck in that feeling of an adrenaline rush all the time…even after an adrenaline rush you still feel kind of weird or on edge. What is that, what’s an adrenaline rush?

A couple chemicals called epinephrine and norepinephrine are in charge of the feeling of an adrenaline rush. These are a part of the sympathetic nervous system. This portion of the nervous system is known as the fight or flight portion of the body!

It’s easy to see that if we’d have an issue with this part of the body, there may be some anxiety prevalent.

Let’s step back for a second though. If we are talking about anxiety and depression as a whole, the common thought is that they are caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that is supposedly responsible for these issues. Most of the antidepressants and antianxiety medications affect serotonin by increasing the amount of it in the brain, hopefully making the person feel better.

Something that more and more research is finding out is that a lot of antidepressants and antianxiety medications have an anti-inflammatory component to them as well. When people are stuck in a state of fight or flight, like mentioned before, their body is usually experiencing chronic inflammation. So what they found is a lot of the medications were actually working due to the fact that they were decreasing inflammation in the body, not necessarily providing more serotonin.

If we take all of that into consideration, and think back to what we were talking about with the nervous system and being stuck in that fight or flight response, there may be a more natural fix to anxiety and depression for people.

At The Specific Chiropractic Centers one of the main tests we do at every single visit is a test of the nervous system. We do this by using a tool that measures very specific temperature, and medical research tells us that the temperature should be the same on both sides of the body if measuring equally. This temperature is regulated by the sympathetic nervous system, or fight or flight system!

By working with the nervous system and balancing everything out we help calm down the sympathetic nervous system and make it so people aren’t stuck in a fight or flight mode. This inadvertently makes it so there is less inflammation going on in the body. If we look at what the research is telling us about anxiety and depression being linked to inflammation we are helping people get relief to their anxiety and depression without the use of medications. We make a very specific adjustment to the neck (without twisting the head) which clears up the interference that we detect in the nervous system. If you’re someone who is struggling with anxiety or depression or simply want to try something other than medications, what we do at the office might be a perfect fit for you. Don’t hesitate to reach out and see if we may be able to help you get resolution and relief to what you currently have going on!