Stress and Your Body: This Month’s Focus

Understanding how stress affects your nervous system, your immune health, and the nutrients your body depends on.

Every August, life tends to speed up again — schedules fill back in, routines shift, and the easy pace of summer starts to compress. This month at Somerset Hills, we’re focusing on stress: what it actually does inside the body, why it matters for more than just how you feel day to day, and what you can do to support yourself through it.

Stress is a physiological event, not only an emotional one. When the body senses a demand — physical, mental, or environmental — it activates a cascade of hormonal and nervous system responses designed to help you meet that demand. Occasional stress is normal and even useful. The trouble starts when the stress response doesn’t get a chance to turn back off. Extended periods of stress can leave the body in a persistently activated state. Over time, this is associated with elevated cortisol levels, disrupted sleep, and a nervous system that struggles to downshift even when the original demand has passed.

One of the more overlooked pieces of the stress puzzle is magnesium. It’s an essential mineral the body cannot produce on its own, and it plays a direct role in how well the body tolerates stress. Research shows that stress is associated with increased magnesium loss — both through plasma changes and through the urine — which means periods of high stress can actively deplete the very mineral that helps regulate the stress response.

This creates a cycle worth paying attention to: stress depletes magnesium, and low magnesium makes it harder for the body to respond efficiently to stress. Roughly half of Americans don’t get enough magnesium from diet alone, so it’s worth being intentional about it. Nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, leafy greens, and many fruits and vegetables are all good dietary sources.

The link between stress and immunity runs through the same pathway. When the stress response is triggered, it activates the innate immune system with pro-inflammatory signals, while cortisol works to balance that response as the body’s natural anti-inflammatory counterpart. This is a healthy, necessary system — in short bursts. The problem is duration. Occasional stress sharpens the immune system. Ongoing, unmanaged stress drains it, leaving the body more vulnerable rather than more prepared. Magnesium plays a supporting role here too, contributing to healthy immune cell regulation and function.

Your nervous system is the command center for how your body perceives and responds to stress. Chronic tension, restricted movement, and spinal misalignment can all keep the nervous system in a more guarded, sympathetic-dominant state — the same ‘on’ switch that stress relies on. Regular chiropractic care is one tool for helping the nervous system find its way back to balance, working alongside good nutrition, sleep, and stress management.

A Few Ways to Support Yourself This Month

• Prioritize magnesium-rich foods — nuts, seeds, leafy greens, and whole grains — at meals throughout the week.
• Protect your sleep window; poor sleep and elevated stress reinforce each other.
• Build in short recovery moments during the day, not just at the end of it.
• Keep up with regular chiropractic visits to support nervous system balance.
• We recommend Magnesium Lactate or EZ Mg from standard process they are 10% off for the month of August.

Reference: Gombart, A.F., Pierre, A., Maggini, S. (2020). A Review of Micronutrients and the Immune System Working in Harmony to Reduce the Risk of Infection. Nutrients, 12(1):236.