Dr. Duane, LIFEstrength’s Functional Neurologist, explains the importance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and it’s connection to neck or lower back pain.

Interested in examining the health of your autonomic nervous system and more? You can call Dr. Duane for a free phone consultation at 239-774-5433, email him at Duane@LIFEstrengthHealthCenter.com, or book online here.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Dr. Olson] Hi, I'm Dr. Duane Olson.

When you come into our clinic, you're probably expecting to talk about neck or back pain, and you'd be right.

But we'll also be talking about something called your autonomic nervous system (ANS).

Your autonomic nervous system is the automatic part of the body that controls things like heart rate, breathing and digestion.

It's very important that we educate you and also take a look at this when we're examining you for your neck or your lower back pain.

Now you may have heard that the brain controls the body. What you might not know is that it also brings in sensory input from the rest of the world, also from our body.

When we sense pain in our lower back or when we have a headache, that's our body actually trying to tell us, "hey, there's something going on here."

That information is carried through something called the spinal cord.

The skeletal system actually helps protect the nervous system.

It's definitely important that we take a look at your posture when we're discussing your neck and back pain, but also for the autonomic nervous system because that's where the spinal cord travels down and it's protected by the spine.

Let's think about your brain to your heart connection.

What tells that heart how to beat?

That's the autonomic nervous system.

When we go to sleep at night, we can rest assured that our heart is going to beat. Our lungs are going to breathe and get oxygen to the tissues that needs to get there.

That's why we're going to put so much emphasis on not only your pain, but also the automatic function of that part of your nervous system.

Pop Quiz

What would happen if we snipped a connection between the brain and the heart?

It probably wouldn't work very well. In fact, it wouldn't work at all.

What if there was a disc herniation or arthritis? Or maybe there was a bone spur that was impinging on a nerve and just irritating it?

That nerve flow from the brain down there probably wouldn't be functioning at 100%.

That person might feel arrhythmias or murmurs or heart flutters.

Or in a worst case scenario, what if a person has a heart attack?

There's usually not a precursor to that. People don't know that's going to happen.

That's why we put so much emphasis into looking at the proper curvatures of your neck, your lower back and the rest of the spine, because those curves help preserve the nervous system function, especially the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

The autonomic nervous system helps control things like breathing, heart rate, and digestion.

Now most people think of us as spine specialists, and you'd be right.

But we also want you to understand the importance of this autonomic nervous system.

It's often overlooked, but it's so important when it comes to breathing, heart rate, digestion, and future problems that could creep up that we don't even know are coming.

That's why our office puts such an emphasis on looking at proper curvatures and alignments functions in the nervous system.

We do this so you can live your best life.

Educate your family, play golf, play tennis, play racquetball, play pickleball and just be you.

Thank you so much.