Understanding the Autonomic Nervous System: Your Body’s Built-In Command Center

Ever wonder why you get butterflies before a big event, or feel your heart race when you're stressed? That’s your autonomic nervous system at work. It controls all the automatic functions in your body - like heart rate, digestion, breathing, immune response, and hormone balance - without you even thinking about it.

This system has two main parts:

• The sympathetic nervous system (your “gas pedal”) which helps you respond to stress, danger, or stimulation

• The parasympathetic nervous system (your “brake pedal”) which helps you calm down, rest, digest, and heal

Your body is designed to move between these two states throughout the day. But when there’s too much stress, tension, or interference in the system - especially in the spine and nerves—it gets stuck in overdrive. That’s called dysregulation.

Here’s the key connection: Your brain communicates with every cell, tissue, and organ in your body through the spinal cord and nerves. The spine protects that communication highway. When the spine isn’t moving or functioning well (something we call a subluxation), it creates tension and interference in the nervous system. Over time, this stress builds up and throws the autonomic system out of balance.

And that’s when symptoms start to show up—trouble sleeping, digestion issues, anxiety, immune struggles, behavior changes in kids, even things like asthma or skin flare-ups. But symptoms aren’t the problem... they’re the fire alarm. Your body’s way of saying, “Something’s off. Pay attention.”

Nervous system based chiropractic care in Cary, NC helps locate and gently correct those areas of interference in the spine, so the nervous system can get back to doing its job - keeping everything regulated, connected, and healing.

Whether you're dealing with chronic stress or your child is facing regulation challenges, we’re here to help you get to the root. Want to know if Cary chiropractors at Harmony could help? Call 919-234-0505 or schedule online for a complimentary 15-minute consult.