You did the bloodwork. You sat on the crinkly paper, answered the same questions you’ve answered 4 times this year, and waited a week for the portal to update. Everything came back normal. And you sat at your desk staring at those green checkmarks thinking, then why do I feel like this?
If that’s you, you’re not making it up, and you’re not being dramatic. Normal labs and a body that feels off aren’t the same thing, and you don’t have to pick one to believe. Very often, what you’re feeling are symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system, and they don’t show up on a standard blood panel because they’re not a chemistry problem. They’re a capacity problem.
I see this every week in my office in Missoula. Smart, active women who’ve done everything right... and still can’t sleep through the night, can’t think straight by 2pm, and can’t figure out why a ride they used to do without thinking now wipes them out for 3 days. So let’s talk about what’s actually going on, what the signals look like, and what you can do about it.
What a Dysregulated Nervous System Actually Means
Your nervous system is the command center for everything. Heart rate, digestion, sleep, hormones, how you heal after a hard day on the mountain, how you react when your inbox explodes. It runs all of it, mostly without asking your permission.
It has 2 main modes you’ve probably heard about:
- Sympathetic (fight or flight): the gas pedal. Great for outrunning danger, nailing a presentation, or dropping into a steep line.
- Parasympathetic (rest and digest): the brake. This is where repair, digestion, deep sleep, and recovery happen.
A healthy nervous system moves between the 2 easily. It hits the gas when it needs to, then comes back down. Dysregulation is what happens when it loses that flexibility. Usually that means getting stuck with a foot on the gas. Sometimes it’s swinging hard the other way into shutdown, and often it’s a confusing mix of both. (Wired and tired at the same time isn’t a personality quirk, I promise.)
The Vessel Analogy I Use With Every Client
Your nervous system is a vessel designed to hold life. Every day, stress pours into it from 3 buckets:
- Physical stress: the micro stuff like 9 hours at a desk with your head drifting forward, and the macro stuff like that fall off your bike 3 summers ago or the fender bender you “walked away from.”
- Emotional stress: work, relationships, family, and the relationship you have with yourself (which is often the loudest one).
- Chemical stress: everything that goes in and on your body. Food, alcohol, medications, skincare, the air you breathe during fire season.
When your vessel is big, it holds all of that and you feel fine. When it’s small, or when stress keeps pouring in faster than you can process it, the vessel overflows. Symptoms are the overflow. They’re your body’s way of getting your attention and saying, I don’t have any room left.
That’s why I tell people their body isn’t broken, it’s full.
Insider Tip from Dr. Liz: Different people overflow in different ways. Your best friend might get migraines while you get digestive chaos, and you could be carrying the exact same load. Don’t compare symptoms. Compare patterns.
The Symptoms of a Dysregulated Nervous System (The Obvious Ones)
Some of these are probably the reason you clicked. They’re the ones people mention first when they sit down with me.
1. Sleep That Doesn’t Restore You
The classic is the 3am wake-up where your brain just... starts. Making lists, replaying a conversation from 2019, wondering if you locked the car. Other versions include trouble falling asleep even when you’re exhausted, or sleeping 8 hours and waking up like you got 4. Deep sleep happens in rest and digest mode, so when your system is stuck on high alert, it guards the gate all night.
2. Brain Fog
Walking into a room and forgetting why. Rereading the same email 3 times. Losing words mid-sentence in a meeting. For a woman who’s sharp and capable, this one can be unsettling, and it’s one of the most common things I hear. A nervous system spending its energy on threat detection has less to spare for focus and memory.
3. Fatigue That Coffee Can’t Touch
Not “I stayed up too late” tired. This is the 2:30pm crash that shows up like a standing meeting, or the morning your second latte does absolutely nothing. Running on stress hormones for weeks or months is expensive, and eventually the account runs low.
4. Pain and Stiffness That Wanders
Tight neck and shoulders, a low back that flares for no clear reason, jaw clenching, headaches that seem to arrive with the work week. When your system is braced for threat, your muscles brace too.
The Sneaky Symptoms Nobody Connects
These often get handed off to different specialists one at a time, without anyone stepping back to see the pattern.
5. Digestion With Opinions
Bloating after meals that used to be fine. Swinging between constipation and the opposite. New food sensitivities that came out of nowhere. Your gut is wired directly into your nervous system, and digestion is one of the first things your body deprioritizes when it thinks it’s under threat. (Nobody needs to digest lunch while running from a bear.)
Did You Know? Your gut has its own network of roughly 500 million neurons, sometimes called the “second brain.” It’s in constant conversation with your brain through the vagus nerve, which is why stress shows up in your stomach so fast.
6. Recovery That’s Slowed Way Down
This is a big one for my Montana women. A Rattlesnake loop, a day at Snowbowl, a long trail run up Blue Mountain... it used to take 1 good night of sleep to bounce back. Now you’re sore for 3 days and dragging through the week. Repair happens in parasympathetic mode, and if you rarely get there, you rarely fully repair.
7. Getting Sick More Often
Catching every cold that circulates through the office. Taking 2 weeks to shake something that used to take 3 days. Your immune system takes cues from your nervous system, and chronic stress turns down the volume on the parts that keep you well.
8. Hormones Acting Up
Heavier or more painful cycles, PMS that’s gotten louder, irregular timing, stubborn weight that won’t budge no matter what you change. Your stress response and your reproductive hormones draw from overlapping systems, and when stress is running the show, it tends to win the resource battle.
9. Feeling Jumpy, Irritable, or Flat
Snapping at your partner over the dishwasher. Startling way too hard when someone walks into your office. Or the flip side, feeling numb, unmotivated, and kind of checked out from the things you used to love. Both are nervous system states, not character flaws.
10. The Feeling That You Can’t Keep Up With Your Own Life
This one’s harder to put on a symptom list, but I hear it constantly. You want to excel at work. You want to ski every weekend. You want kids someday, and right now you can’t picture how you’d do that with your body feeling the way it does. That quiet doubt is a signal too. It’s your body telling you it’s been running on reserves.
Quick Self-Check: Which Signals Are You Seeing?
Use this table to notice your own pattern. Most people find they’re overflowing in 2 or 3 areas at once.
| Area | What It Might Look Like | What It Often Means |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep | 3am wake-ups, unrefreshing sleep | Stuck in alert mode overnight |
| Brain | Fog, forgetfulness, losing words | Energy going to threat detection |
| Energy | Afternoon crashes, coffee stops working | Running on stress hormones too long |
| Body | Stiffness, headaches, jaw clenching | Muscles bracing for threat |
| Gut | Bloating, irregularity, new sensitivities | Digestion deprioritized |
| Recovery | Sore for days after normal activity | Not enough time in repair mode |
| Immunity | Catching everything, slow to bounce back | Immune system turned down |
| Hormones | Painful cycles, louder PMS, weight shifts | Stress winning the resource battle |
If you checked 3 or more rows, your vessel’s been close to the brim for a while.
Why Your Labs Keep Coming Back Normal
This is the question I get asked most, usually with a little frustration (fair). Standard bloodwork is great at catching disease. It’s designed to tell you whether something is clearly wrong in your chemistry. It isn’t designed to measure how well your nervous system is adapting to stress.
You can have perfectly normal numbers and a nervous system that’s been running in survival mode for 2 years. Those aren’t contradictions, they’re just answers to different questions. Something is happening. It just isn’t showing up in the places anyone’s looked yet, and that’s usually where we start.
How We Actually Measure It: INSiGHT Scans
This is where it finally gets visual. During the Health Breakthrough Evaluation, we use INSiGHT scans for nervous system evaluation. They’re radiation free, take just a few minutes, and look at 3 things:
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV): how flexibly your nervous system moves between gas and brake. Low variability often means your system is stuck.
- Thermography: temperature patterns along your spine that give us a window into how your autonomic nervous system is regulating.
- Surface EMG (sEMG): how much energy your muscles are using to hold you upright. Overworking muscles are a big clue about where stress is being stored.
When people see their scans next to their symptom list, there’s almost always an “oh, that’s why” moment.
What Is Nervous System–Focused Chiropractic?
If you’re expecting a quick crack and a pat on the back, nervous system-focused chiropractic starts from a different place entirely.
Your spine protects your spinal cord, which is the main highway between your brain and your body. When the joints of your spine aren’t moving the way they’re designed to (we call that subluxation), it creates interference on that highway. Think about the wheels on your car. When they’re out of alignment, the tread wears unevenly. You don’t notice it day to day, until the uneven wear becomes the pattern. Your spine works the same way.
Adjustments clear that interference so your brain and body can communicate clearly again. The goal isn’t to “fix” you. Your body already knows how to heal, so the goal is to remove what’s in the way and give it room to do what it was designed to do.
Building a Bigger Vessel
Here’s the part I really want you to hear. Chiropractic can’t control what gets poured into your vessel. I can’t take away your deadlines, your commute, or the hard conversation you’ve been avoiding. What care can do is help build you a bigger vessel, one with more capacity to hold life without overflowing.
It works a lot like the gym. You don’t get strong from 1 workout. Strength comes from consistent reps over time, and nervous system capacity builds the same way. That’s why care at Primal Practice pairs adjustments with recovery tools like red light and resonance, so your system gets both the clearing and the space to rest and recalibrate.
Small Things You Can Start This Week
You don’t need to overhaul your whole life (please don’t, that usually lasts about 9 days). Pick 1 thing from this list and start there:
- Get outside in morning light within an hour of waking, even for 10 minutes. It helps set your sleep rhythm for that night.
- Lengthen your exhale. Breathe in for 4, out for 6 or 8. Longer exhales tap the brake pedal.
- Eat before you caffeinate. Coffee on an empty stomach is a stress signal your system doesn’t need first thing.
- Take your recovery days seriously. A slow walk along the Clark Fork counts. Not every day has to be a summit.
When It’s Time to Get Some Support
Those habits help, and they matter. But if you’ve been doing the healthy things for months and you’re still overflowing, more discipline isn’t the answer. You’ve got plenty of discipline, which is exactly how you’ve white-knuckled it this long. What you need is a nervous system with enough capacity to stop running defense, and that’s a different problem with a different answer.
If you’re in Missoula and ready to find out what’s actually happening, our nervous system-based chiropractic care starts with a 60-minute Health Breakthrough Evaluation. We’ll go through your full history, run your INSiGHT scans, and do a thorough exam. Then we’ll sit down for your report of findings, usually the next day, so you can see exactly what’s going on and what a plan to build your capacity would look like.
You can book online at primalpracticemt.com or call or text us at 406-549-8969. We’re at 2200 Holborn St in Missoula.
Your body’s been sending signals for a while now. You don’t have to keep guessing what they mean.
Peace, Love and Happiness,
Dr. Liz
