Communication leads to orderly processes and health. Poor and broken communication in your body leads to disorder and disease.

What does communication have to do with health? In this sense, communication means the transfer of “information” within a system of your body and between systems of your body. If you want to restore your health, your different systems must be able to “talk” to each other. When system communications break down, health deteriorates and disease sets in. Today I will discuss the importance of communication and how it relates to nervous system and immune health.

What in the world does your nervous system have to do with your immune system? Well, first of all they are both systems that require constant regulation and monitoring…they need to control themselves! When they fail to control and regulate themselves, health problems crop up. How do they control themselves? Through good communication!

Ok, so how do immune cells communicate with each other and how do nerve cells communicate with each other? They communicate through the use of specific chemicals and in this case, chemicals called neurotransmitters (NT) play a vital role. Two important NTs for the nervous system and immune system are serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin and dopamine not only provide a means of communication within these two systems, they are also used to communicate between these systems.

In the nervous system, these NTs are required for proper nerve stimulation and communication. When this communication breaks down, we begin to see problems like digestive issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, etc. Your nervous system is the primary regulating system in your body; when it cannot receive and transmit communication, your health begins to fail.

Your immune system also uses these same NTs to control and regulate its own functions. Serotonin and dopamine levels has profound effects on immune system function. Why is this important? Let’s take a very common immune system disorder; autoimmunity. Contrary to what most people are told by their doctors, autoimmunity is not caused by an overactive immune system! It is caused by an immune system that is not able to regulate its own functions. The immune system is out of control and attacking its host…you!

The only solution traditional medicine has for autoimmunity is to suppress the immune system with drugs. This is not really addressing the real problem…the immune system is in a diseased state. It is not able to control itself! Just like a brain that can’t control its functions leads to many problems, an immune system that can’t control itself leads to problems…autoimmunity.

Your nerves require NTs like serotonin and dopamine to function properly, and so does your immune system. These concepts have been written about in medical journals like Advances in Neuroimmunology and Advances in Neuroimmunology.

Neurotransmitter imbalances play a significant role in nervous system and immune system function. Imbalances in these chemicals can lead to many different health issues and they will not improve until “communication” and therefore “regulation” are restored. Functional medicine restores health, but this cannot occur in a body that is unable to “speak” or “hear”…communicate effectively with regard to it various systems.

Communication leads to orderly processes and health. Poor and broken communication in your body leads to disorder and disease.

If you would like more information about neurotransmitters, autoimmunity and functional medicine or Dr. Sexton contact our Naperville office or go to www.napervilleintegratedwelness.com

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources and organizations.

This approach to healthcare is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease. Why is this? The FDA enforces its position that these words can only be used with drugs. This approach does not use drugs.