Symptoms and How They Lie
- Dr. Joshua Beaudry
- Oct 27
- 2 min read
When the smoke alarm goes off in your home, what’s your first reaction? Do you rush to pull the batteries out to silence the noise — or do you look for the fire?
Most people’s first instinct is to stop the alarm. But if the alarm is just doing its job, then removing the batteries doesn’t solve the real problem — it just hides it.
The same thing happens in your body every single day.
Symptoms Are the Alarm, Not the Fire
When we experience symptoms — whether it’s pain, fatigue, anxiety, or digestive distress — it’s easy to reach for something to make them disappear. We want to drug it, numb it, or shut it down. But that doesn’t solve the cause.
Your body isn’t broken; it’s communicating. A symptom is a message asking you to look deeper — to find the “fire” that started the problem in the first place.
How Symptoms Spread
Let’s look at a real-world example: Imagine someone who suffers a head injury. At first, they get headaches. Over time, the pain spreads — neck tension, sleep issues, anxiety, and even digestive problems begin to appear.
What happened? The inflammation that started in the brain spread through the vagus nerve — the communication highway between the brain and the gut. Now, what started as a brain issue has become a gut problem, and the symptoms (like anxiety or poor sleep) are just the downstream effects.
When we only treat the surface-level symptoms, we miss the deeper imbalance that’s fueling the fire.
Understanding the Hierarchy of the Brain
The brain processes stress and dysfunction in layers — like a hierarchy.
When you’re operating from the frontal lobe or cerebellum, you can adapt to stress with clarity and calm.
But when the brainstem takes over, your body shifts into survival mode — triggering anxiety, blood sugar issues, and chronic health problems.
For example, shoulder pain may not be a shoulder problem at all. It could be due to instability between C0 and C1 (your scull and neck) or cerebellar dysfunction. When those areas are balanced through neurologically-based chiropractic and laser therapy, the pain often resolves.
The Takeaway
Your symptoms are not the problem. They’re the alarm, calling for your attention — not your suppression.
The real healing happens when you address the underlying cause: the inflammation, the stress pattern, or the neurological imbalance that’s creating dysfunction in the first place.
If you’re ready to take the next step, contact us today to set up your initial examination or join us at an upcoming workshop.
Life Springs Family Chiropractic – Denver, CO
Call/Text: (303) 770-0605
