How stress impacts the body- An Acupuncturists perspective.

Written by - Nicole DeLory, L.Ac, C.SMA

Have you ever wondered why things hurt more when you are stressed?  I’ll offer you two reasons- Viscerco-Somatic and Somato-Viscerco dysfunction.

To lay some ground work, Somatic pain is in the muscles, bones, or soft tissues. Visceral pain comes from your internal organs and blood vessels. Somatic pain is intense and may be easier to pinpoint than visceral pain.

As an acupuncturist, one way of correcting this disharmony is from the inside out (Viscerco-Somatic). It’s a bit complicated, but in a nut shell, patients who have been depleting their bodies and running on empty over time, (bartenders, parents, teachers, people in finance, lawyers, athletes.. or basically anyone living in NYC), start to develop a host of symptoms that hit them where they are most constitutionally weak. These symptoms can range from back pain, digestive disturbances such as ulcers or inflammatory bowel disease, pelvic and urinary issues such as bladder infections or incontinence, breathing issues, anxiety, depression and panic attacks.

If a patient comes in for back pain, one of the first questions I will ask is “How stressed are you?”. The relationship between the viscera (organs) and the soma (muscles, bones or soft tissues) is a tightly knit one. Literally. Using the above example of back pain, If a person is under moderate to extreme stress, the adrenal glands will slightly expand. When stress is chronic, this can irritate the soft tissues and deep muscles which will then likely go into spasm. Sometimes, it is a simple sneeze that sets the whole cycle off, locking up your back until the pain is so intense your quality of life is affected.

But it was just a sneeze!!!

Was it? Or was it all those small signs of overwhelm you ignored? Life is intense, especially for us New Yorkers. So much is expected of us every single day. Accomplish! Achieve! Adhere….If you don’t pay attention to what your nervous system is telling you, those whispers will start screaming.

On the other side, your tight muscles (Soma) CAN affect your organs.  Another way is approaching from the outside in (Somato-Viscero), such as in muscle tightness/athletic injuries that over time may create issues with the underlying organs. I often see this combination in my office-

shortness of breathe/difficulty taking a deep breath. Yes, I will ask about asthma, environmental toxins, assess posture/mechanics, etc.. but you can be assured that I will also inquire about life stress. I’ll even ask about your tight neck (which you will have) and I’ll tell you why. A common pattern is how we breathe. Under stress we often take shallow breaths, recruiting all of those accessory breathing muscles (Scalene, SCM’s, Trapezius), making them primary movers. Ideally, we should take deep expansive breaths into our lower abdomen, expanding our rib cage laterally, lifting at the top at the very end. Under stress, our diaphragm will tighten creating a belt like tension around the midline making it difficult to take a deep breath. When chronic, our intercostal muscles become overly taxed trying to push against this mighty wall of restriction. Because we adapt and NEED to breath, our neck muscles pick up the slack and the task gets done. Not without a price, though. Our lungs can’t expand in a natural way and breathing becomes difficult.

Another common example of a somatic/visceral dysfunction is ballerinas suffering from amenorrhea, which is a lack of menstruation. This can often be attributed to tightness and restriction in the pelvic muscles, inhibiting function in the uterus.

This goes much deeper than simply releasing trigger points in muscles. If you fall into this category, you may appear to some practitioners to be good candidate for muscle release because you’ll likely have soft tissue constrictions and pain. But by only releasing and dispersing muscles without regulating your nervous system, you can become even more depleted and exhausted. Regulating the nervous system (taking you out of the “fight or flight response”) and life stress awareness (homework) is also required to bring balance to the body and give you the relief you deserve. This is one major difference between acupuncture and dry needling. Acupuncture addresses the whole picture, while dry needling focuses solely on the muscular/somatic component.

In both these instances, stress needs to be reduced and tension in the muscles must be corrected but the root cause is what we are looking for. More often than not, it’s stress. No two people are exactly the same, therefore each treatment plan varies from person to person. Most folks have no idea how much physical and emotional discomfort they live in until they are taken out of the cycle of pain.

Nicole DeLorey L.Ac, C.SMA

Nicole DeLorey Acupuncture 

303 Fifth Avenue, Suite 209, NY NY 10016

917 312 3602 , www.nicoledelorey.com

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