Take Care of Your Heart by Taking Care of Your Nervous System

With February just days away, heart health is the topic of the moment.  We will see a lot of information speaking to the importance of eating right and exercising, as well as mental health exercises that all help improve our overall heart health.  However, there is another factor to our healthcare that is just as important of a factor to improve our cardiovascular function.  Researchers have been looking at a measurement called heart rate variability (HRV) to gain a better understanding of how our nervous system impacts our heart health.
Heart rate variability measures how our cardiovascular system responds to stress over a given amount of time.  Better scores in HRV means our nervous system is controlling the appropriate adaptations of our heart when under stress.  The communication pathway that our brain sends to our heart via our nerves are clear and free from interference.  A study published in The American Journal of Cardiology in 2019 followed 85 patients with suspected angina (meaning pain in the chest, neck, shoulders, or arms due to inadequate blood supply to the heart).  This research article showed that those patients with a lower heart rate variability score had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. 
Cardiovascular disease is the global leading cause of death.  Since our nervous system controls the function of our heart, it only makes sense that taking proactive health measures to improve heart rate variability will improve our overall health.  Chiropractic adjustments have been proven to increase heart rate variability measurements by removing interference to the nervous system.  Getting your spine and nervous system checked regularly by your doctor of chiropractic should be viewed just as importantly as eating right, exercising, and meditation.  When your nervous system functions properly, it allows for all other body systems to function at their optimal levels!

Yours in Health,

Dr. Nicholas J. Knutson, DC

Owner/Doctor

MOUNTAIN ISLAND CHIROPRACTIC

10917 Black Dog Ln., Suite 101 

Charlotte, NC 28214

Tel (704) 394-8556

Fax (704) 395-8556

mtnislandchiro.com

"If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." JV


Girolamo Manno, Giuseppina Novo, Salatore Novo, Egle Corrado, Giuseppe Coppola, ALTERATION OF HEART RATE VARIABILITY AS AN EARLY PREDICTOR OF CARDIOVASCULAR EVENTS: A LOOK AT CURRENT EVIDENCE, The American Journal of Cardiology (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amcad.2019.12.010