Ever wondered why some seemingly healthy individuals suddenly experience life-threatening conditions? It could be caused by their autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system [ANS] controls countless involuntary functions in our body, from breathing and heart rate to digestion and even sexual arousal. But what happens when the ANS becomes dysfunctional? In this episode, Dr. Sal will delve into the condition known as autonomic dysfunction or autonomic neuropathy, where underlying chronic inflammatory activity can lead to vague symptoms that are difficult to diagnose with conventional testing methods.
Dr. Sal will shed light on the importance of establishing and maintaining autonomic balance, as evidence suggests it can reduce complications and even prevent potentially life-threatening events like heart attacks. This balance can come from reducing stress, making meditation a treatment option for conditions like IBS.
Key takeaways:
The autonomic nervous system is comprised of two parts: the sympathetic nervous system, which is associated with the fight or flight response, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is involved in rest and digest responses.
Autonomic dysfunction occurs when the autonomic nervous system becomes dysfunctional, leading to vague symptoms that are often difficult to diagnose with current medical tests.
Chronic inflammation is often present in individuals with autonomic dysfunction, and this can eventually lead to conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Establishing and maintaining autonomic balance through autonomic nervous system testing can help reduce the risk of complications and death from various diseases.
Dr. Sal [00:00:00]:
We see that because there's people that can get a a yearly physical, and then everything came out normal. They come back. They said, yep. My doctor says I'm healthy. And 3 months later, they die of a heart attack. Welcome to the Health Quest podcast, your guide to God's well for good health. Hello. My name is doctor Sal, and I've been a practicing doctor for well over 30 years.
Dr. Sal [00:00:40]:
And my goal for each episode is that you'll be able to have your mind formed to God's design for good health and to affect the way you eat and the way you live. If you're new here, we release a new episode every week. And if you enjoy the content, would you leave us a good review? Because it really helps our readings and allows our showed to reach more people so in turn, we can help more people. We'd like to thank you for your support. And on today's episode, we'll be talking Thinking about the autonomic nervous system. So let's dive right on into today's So what is the autonomic nervous system? Well, that's a part of the nervous system that controls the majority of involuntary or autonomic functions of the body, involuntary functions of the body. And it regulates the body's response without you consciously thinking about it, such as your breathing, your heart rate, your blood pressure, digestion, sexual arousal, and many other biochemical processes. It's a very complex nervous system and It starts off in the brain.
Dr. Sal [00:01:57]:
Now in the brain, there's 2 areas, thalamus, which is in the lower brain stem. But these are just 2 areas of the brain and they sent their messages through the spinal cord and out into the body or what we call the peripheral nerves. And this extends to all parts of the body. And if we take that one area of the brain called All the medulla, it regulates your heart, your respiratory, your vasomotor controls as well as reflexes such as coughing, sneezing, swallowing, vomiting. Now The hypothalamus, that other part of the brain, performs a supporting role by linking the nervous system to the endocrine system, the nervous system, the nerves to the hormonal system. So it's fascinating how Now the body starts to interact with itself. So, signals are being sent to the brain. The brain then sends signals signals back.
Dr. Sal [00:03:03]:
And in this particular case, through the hypothalamus, that part of the brain going through the autonomic nervous system, It affects the organs that produce hormones that we talked about earlier, and this regulates temperature, thirst, hunger, sleep, the circadian rhythms of when we get up in the morning and we go to bed at night. It also regulates the blood volume as well as the blood pressure. Now there's 2 portions to the autonomic nervous system. The first One is called sympathetic. Sympathetic nervous system, and that's part of the autonomic nervous system some are one of 2 parts of the autonomic nervous system. And the sympathetic, nervous system is associated with the fight or flight response. When the instincts take over, let's say you're you're confronted with some kind of danger, and you're either going to then fight that danger, or you're gonna run from that danger. Now what happens? So you see the saber tooth tiger coming after you, okay, or you see a a gang of individuals that are gonna come after you and beat you up.
Dr. Sal [00:04:13]:
And what ends up happening is that it starts to increase your breathing thing, and it does that by dilating the blood vessels. It starts to increase the heart rate so you're getting more, blood pumped to the muscles. So it also starts to shut down stuff like your gastrointestinal system, your urinary tracting system. Because at that point in time, it's not like you're gonna say, oh, excuse me. I have I have to go to the bathroom. That all shuts down. All the nerve activity is going to the areas for you to either run or to face your danger, and that's the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous stomach, on the other hand, is associated with rest and digest responses.
Dr. Sal [00:04:58]:
So it's involved in the actions needed to restore the energy in our body, in particular, get some rest, sleeping, and also to digest, particularly after we get done eating. Now if you start chewing, this starts to trigger this part of the nervous system or the autonomic nervous system. It triggers the parasympathetic nervous system to increase saliva secretion and production. It increases digestion in the gut. It also increases the gallbladder the gallbladder's function, I should say, to start putting out its hormones and its secretions to help digest the food and increases motility or the movement of the esophagus, the stomach, and the intestines to move the food product down the system. Now this is very important because this is how through this system, this is how the gut bacteria and the gut hormones interact, and there's also peptides that interact with the brain. And this is where it all happens. So the signals, from the gut bacteria, which then produces gut hormones and peptides, gets sent to the brain by way of this autonomic nervous system.
Dr. Sal [00:06:12]:
And then the up with what is known as autonomic dysfunction, where the autonomic nervous system now becomes dysfunctional. And this is a condition used to describe disabling, disabled function or failure of the autonomic nervous system. And usually, people that end up with this usually have vague symptoms. In in You go see your doctor, they run a bunch of tests, and nothing can be detected because it's undetected by currently just diagnostic techniques. So your blood work may come back normal. Your EKGs, your Your radiographs, whether they're x rays, CAT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds. And there may be and this is usually a sign that there's some kind of underlying pathology that is expressed through the autonomic nervous system, and this is what we call autonomic dysfunction or autonomic neuropathy. And patients with this disorder often have some underlying chronic inflammatory activity taking place.
Dr. Sal [00:07:28]:
Remember, this inflammation keeps coming up over and over and over again. Now you say, well, can you test for this chronic inflammation? Well, if you get either complete blood workup, it's not gonna show anything. It's gonna come back as normal. And so this is not detectable at this point, but yet The autonomic nervous system is starting to cause these symptoms in our body that we're not able to diagnose with current, state of the art testing devices. It is also this chronic disease that eventually leads to diabetes and cardiovascular disease and a whole onslaught of other disorders, and it also causes more weight gain as well. Now historically, Autonomic, dysfunction has been misdiagnosed due to a lack of standardized testing or methods of testing. For instance, we'll take examples like irritable bowel syndrome. It's not truly path there's no true identical pathology that discerons this disorder, and yet they have symptoms similar to Crohn's sort of colitis.
Dr. Sal [00:08:38]:
So ulcerative colitis and and Crohn's, you could run some tests. You can identify that they have this disease. Irritable bowel syndrome does not have any truly identifiable pathology that discerns it from patients with Crohn's or ulcerative colitis. Yet the underlying cause is fluctuations in the vagal nerve response brought about by stress. So stress, okay, of course, we interpret the stress in our brain or our mind. And then it causes a whole onslaught of chemical neurotransmitter, dysfunctions, And then this is passed on into the autonomic nervous system, in particularly the vagal nerve portion of the autonomic nervous system. And it causes the stress which eventually causes irregularities in our, bowel movements. And the what we've discovered now is the new treatment methods for irritable bowel syndrome is meditation.
Dr. Sal [00:09:43]:
Again, why? Because stress affects the autonomic nervous system. However, millions of Americans are impacted by autonomic dysfunction. And evolving new evidence suggests that establishing and maintaining autonomic balance through the autonomic nervous system testing is proven to reduce death and complications of diseases. Now we see that because there's, people that can get a yearly physical. And then everything came out normal. They come back. They said, yep. My doctor says I'm healthy.
Dr. Sal [00:10:19]:
And 3 months later, they die of a heart attack. And it goes to show you that the heart and when they do an autopsy, if they do them anymore, they discover that the blood vessels were completely clear. And so you gotta remember, the autonomic nervous system controls the regularity of the heartbeats. And if that goes out of whack, that could cause an immediate, what we call, silent myocardial infarction. This is one of the reasons that if underlying causes of autonomic dysfunction are not treated, these conditions can eventually deteriorate and lead to complications as we mentioned before, and in particular, diabetic autonomic neuropathy, which means that because of, you know, because of the irregularities in the blood sugars and excessive amount of insulin, The nerves start to deteriorate and this is what causes, neuropathy or diabetic neuropathy in patients. But in this case, it also affects The autonomic nervous system, which now controls all of these organs. So having diabetes can eventually affect all your organs through the autonomic nervous systems. And, cardiac autonomic neuropathy is what can eventually lead to irregular heartbeats and eventually a silent heart attack.
Dr. Sal [00:11:36]:
So both cases present big risk factors for adverse events. Now these could be modern monitored annually through the autonomic nervous system testing. Other forms of autonomic dysfunction include orthostatic, hypotension. This is what happens to people when they stand up, blood pressure drops, and all of a sudden they start getting dizzy or if they stand up and over time, their heart starts to race. You can get what we call neuro, cardiogenic syncope or passing out, and nobody can explain it. Well, that's because the autonomic nervous system is being affected by this. So testing for the autonomic nervous system can be done in university settings, But this could take up to hours. It's very laborious, and very labor intensive and cost a lot of money.
Dr. Sal [00:12:29]:
But now There's new technology that has come out, where the physician can now, perform these tests right in the office. It only takes about 10 to 15 minutes. So ask your doctor if he or she has the equipment to test autonomic, Remember, the autonomic nervous system is what controls all of these organs. And, folks, prayer and meditation puts us in a calm state of mind, allowing God into our lives, Being as Jesus, walking with Jesus, having the Holy Spirit do its thing puts us in a calm state of mind. It affects the autonomic nervous system. But then again, if you're not doing god's will and you're putting bad food and bad toxins into your body, then it all works counterproductive. So, again, Jesus loves us, but he hates our ways. Change your ways.
Dr. Sal [00:13:36]:
Include more prayer into your life. Meditate when you're praying. And I'm not talking about the 1 or 2 minute prayers. I'm talking about those times when you're alone for 15, 20 minutes. Place yourself in a quiet place. Pray for 15, 20 minutes. Get yourself into that, meditative state of mind. Calm the nerves down.
Dr. Sal [00:13:57]:
Remember that saying calm your nerves down? It's basically calming the autonomic nervous system, activating more the parasympathetic or the rest and digestive portion of the system in allowing your body to heal and to recuperate. With that, I'd like to thank you so much for watching our show. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to leave us a good review in our and visit our website and social media The accounts connect with us more. And if you like to see any of these sources of research in this episode, it'll be available to you on the show notes and in the description. With that, I'm doctor Sal. Have a great day, and