Inflation, the negative news cycle, workplace burnout, caretaking, parenting… There are plenty of reasons to be stressed these days. And the polls show Americans are feeling it. Nearly half of U.S. adults are stressed at least once per week, largely due to social media or talk of what’s happening around the world. But gone are the days of just sitting back and allowing yourself to become a victim of stress. People are tuning into nervous system regulation, or learning how to help their bodies stay resilient and better recover from the inevitable stress that comes their way.
Why the nervous system conversation is everywhere
Data from the American Psychological Association shows that one-third of Americans report being “so stressed that they can’t function.” The World Health Organization now officially recognizes burnout as an occupational phenomenon. Famous actors are checking themselves into facilities to overcome stress. Companies are offering mental health days to prevent burnout. And wearables are tracking our stress levels and reporting back to let us know how we’re handling them. This, plus the fact that study after study seem to highlight the fact that stress affects everything from our brain health to the size of our pores — and causes inflammation that accelerates aging in every part of our bodies — has everyone talking about their nervous systems.
As we learn more about how stress affects our health, people are tuning into the importance of the mind-body connection. They’re downloading meditation apps, wearing rings and watches to track recovery metrics like their heart rate variability (HRV) and are working to keep themselves more calm and centered. And they’re searching for information online on how to better regulate their nervous systems with data from the American Institute of Stress showing that in fact, internet searches for “how to reduce stress” reached an all-time high in 2026.
Related: How stress affects your entire body
How the autonomic nervous system works
Your autonomic nervous system is a network of nerves throughout the body that are responsible for controlling all the automatic functions of the body that are necessary for survival. It’s made up of two main parts:
Sympathetic nervous system: This system activates your “fight-or-fight” response in response to stress or danger.
This system:
- Enlarges your pupils to control how much light enters your eyes
- Increases heart rate to help delivery oxygen throughout body
- Relaxes airway muscles to improve oxygen delivery to lungs
- Slows digestion to divert energy to other parts of body
- Activates energy stores in your liver
Parasympathetic nervous system
Your parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for relaxing your body after periods of danger or stress. Often referred to as the “rest and digest” system, it’s the part of the autonomic nervous system that handles life-sustaining processes when the body is calm. It helps to:
- Constricts your pupils, causes tear production, helps improve your close-up vision
- Makes glands in the mouth produce saliva and those in the nose produce mucus
- Tightens airway muscles and reduces the amount of work your lungs do when resting
- Lowers heart rate and pumping force
- Increases rate of digestion, diverts energy to help you digest food, signals pancreas to release insulin
- Relaxes muscles that help you eliminate waste
- Manages sexual functions like arousal and fluid secretion
Together, these vastly different systems create a balancing act in the body that is crucial for survival. Your sympathetic nervous system activates body processes, while your parasympathetic nervous system lowers or deactivates them.
Why nervous system regulation matters for long-term health
Acute stress is a part of daily life. But when the nervous system gets activated and thrown into a stress response on a long-term basis, it can take its toll on the systems of the body. Chronic stress that is experienced over a prolonged period of time can contribute to issues such as:
- Cardiovascular disease: Ongoing stress can keep the body in a prolonged state of activation, triggering chronic inflammation, elevated blood pressure, and an increased heart rate, all of which can damage arterial walls. A 2024 study found that people with less adaptive stress response measured through lower heart rate variability (HRV) had up to 3x the risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared with those with healthier stress responses.
- Metabolic dysfunction: Stress has a long-established impact on metabolic function. It can keep cortisol levels high, increase inflammation levels, and can disrupt how the body regulates blood sugar. This can contribute to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
- Sleep disruption: Long bouts of stress can contribute to chronic insomnia or sleep disturbances that occur at least three times per week for three months or more. It can also lead to fragmented sleep and a decrease in REM and deep sleep.
Related: How poor sleep affects your body
- Immune dysregulation: Chronic stress can disrupt how the immune system functions, weakening the body’s ability to fight off illness and leading to increased inflammation.
- Mood disorders: Research shows that ongoing stress alters communication between brain regions involved in emotion regulation. Thus, a dysregulated nervous system is closely linked to conditions like anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress disorder.
- Accelerated biological aging: Nervous system dysregulation is linked to shorter telomeres, the protective caps on DNA that naturally decline with age. This may contribute to faster biological aging over time.
Metrics researchers use to study nervous system regulation
Nervous system dysregulation can be difficult to detect until it begins to show up as more persistent symptoms. But researchers use measurable biomarkers to better understand how the body is responding to stress. Here are a few of the key metrics they study.
- Heart rate variability (HRV): Heart rate variability is the measure of the amount of time between heartbeats. A higher HRV is generally associated with better stress resilience and cardiovascular health. A lower HRV has been linked to increased risk of cardiac events and mortality.
- Cortisol rhythms: Cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, follows a natural daily pattern. It tends to peak in the morning and decline throughout the day. Disruptions to this rhythm, like consistently elevated or lowered cortisol levels, have been associated with metabolic, immune, and mental health issues.
- Inflammatory markers: Chronic stress can drive inflammation in the body, which can be checked with certain blood markers like C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels. Elevated levels of these markers have been linked to increased risk of conditions like cardiovascular disease.
How the nervous system shapes how we feel
Nervous system dysregulation doesn’t just influence your mood. Since the autonomic nervous system is constantly handling processes like your heart rate, digestion, and sleep, even tiny shifts in its balance can show up as a wide range of symptoms. These can include:
- Fatigue: When the body’s stress response system stays in a persistent fight-or-flight mode, it can lead to chronic exhaustion. This is because a nervous system stuck in high alert continuously drains energy and leaves the body feeling drained.
- Sleep problems: Difficulty falling asleep at night, waking up in the middle of the night, and feeling groggy in the morning from fragmented sleep are often linked to a heightened stress response.
- Tension and pain: Ongoing stress can cause muscles to remain constantly guarded and tense, leading to persistent muscle pain. This can show up anywhere in the body and commonly in areas like the neck, shoulders, and jaw. Stress can also intensify how the brain processes pain signals, making existing aches feel even worse.
- Brain fog: Brain fog, aka feeling mentally sluggish, difficulty concentrating, and forgetfulness can be influenced by stress-related changes in the brain. This is due to chronic stress increasing cortisol levels in the prefrontal cortex, which can impair memory, focus, and cognitive processing.
- Digestive upset: Ever get a stomach ache when stressed? The gut and brain are connected by the gut-brain axis, a two-way communication system that links the digestive tract and the central nervous system. Stress can impair how well food moves through the digestive system, leading to bloating, stomach pain, or irregular digestion.
Evidence-informed ways to support nervous system balance
Keeping stress levels in check is just one part of the equation. Here are some steps to take to help keep your nervous system regulated.
Sync your circadian rhythm to prioritize sleep: Sleep is one of the most powerful regulators of the nervous system. It’s important to maintain a consistent sleep/wake schedule and manage light exposure to keep the body naturally aligned with its circadian rhythm. Getting plenty of daytime light exposure helps to enforce the internal clock, while avoiding blue light in the evenings can help support the body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Proper circadian alignment is linked to healthier cortisol rhythms and a better ability to regulate stress.
Move your body: Regular physical activity is a long-studied way to support nervous system balance. Aerobic exercise has been shown to enhance heart rate variability, a key marker of autonomic nervous system function. It’s also been linked to reducing chronic sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) activation. And strength training builds metabolic resilience by increasing muscle mass and improving insulin sensitivity. This enhances the body's ability to manage stress and energy. Over time, this can help the brain to be more resilient to stress.
Make plans with your friends: Social connections play a strong role in regulating the body’s stress response. Strong, supportive relationships have been linked to improved autonomic function and lower levels of stress-related inflammation. Having a strong social network has been shown to boost longevity, while research has linked social isolation to a 32% higher risk of early death.
Cold exposure and thermal stress: Cold plunges, cold showers, and saunas are gaining attention for their potential ability to help the body to become more resilient to stress. These are forms of controlled thermal stress—controlled exposure to hot or cold temperatures that challenge the body’s internal balance. Some research suggests that alternating between hot and cold exposure may trigger an adaptive stress response known as hormesis, which has been associated with reduced inflammation, improved cardiovascular function, and enhanced mood, potentially through endorphin release. These methods are still being studied but many people in the functional health community swear by them.
Mind-body practices: Incorporating some form of active relaxation in your daily routine is crucial to mitigating stress and keeping your nervous system in check. Meditation, yoga, and breathwork are some of the many forms that have been studied as ways to engage your autonomic nervous system and shift the body away from a chronic fight-or-flight activation toward a more restorative state.
Related: These 3 breathwork exercises will reduce your stress and anxiety
Get outdoors: Countless studies show the benefits of spending time in nature and green spaces as being ways to help calm the body. Outdoor time has been linked to reduced stress levels, improved mood, and even reduced physiological markers of stress—like cortisol and high blood pressure. And you don’t have to do hour-long hikes to reap the benefits. Studies suggest that as little as 20 minutes in a natural setting, like a local park, may be enough to significantly lower stress hormone levels.
Unplug: Limiting constant digital stimulation may also play a role in helping to regulate the nervous system. Research is emerging that shows frequent notifications and screen exposure have been associated with increased cognitive load and stress. Some studies have also linked heavy screen use to changes like elevated cortisol levels and blood pressure, which keep the body in an activated state. Dedicate set times throughout the day to go on social media but schedule in periods of the day where you silence notifications and avoid being glued to your phone.
Why the nervous system is becoming a longevity conversation
Longevity research is constantly evolving, as humans work to find any area of their health they can optimize to help live their best and longest lives. We’ve long been told about the importance of getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, and exercising. Now the conversation has shifted to nervous system regulation.
These days, researchers are focusing on how the body responds to stress over time. They’re finding that chronic activation of stress takes a toll on the body, which experts refer to as allostatic load. This cumulative wear and tear has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, and earlier mortality.
The neuroendocrine system, which connects the brain and hormones, is also gaining attention for its role in long-term health. In addition to making us feel wired, cortisol and other stress hormones influence metabolism, immune function, and how the body adapts over time.
As interest grows in areas like the autonomic nervous system, which helps regulate behind-the-scenes processes like heart rate, breathing, and digestion, research is growing into tangible ways to assess how well it functions. This includes tracking metrics like heart rate variability. And inflammation continues to be studied, as chronic stress has been shown to keep the body in a low-grade inflammatory state, increasing the risk of chronic conditions and early death.
Check in on your your whole body
While nervous system dynamics can influence how people feel day to day, they’re only one part of the equation. Symptoms like ongoing fatigue, digestive upset, or ongoing pain may be linked to a dysregulated nervous system. But they can also be related to chronic conditions, hidden inflammation, or structural changes in the body that aren’t always obvious.
Understanding the bigger picture of what’s happening inside the body can offer immense peace of mind. Whole body imaging and advanced lab testing can help provide that broader perspective by screening for hundreds of conditions across major organ systems. These tools don’t replace clinical evaluation, but they can offer additional insight, help rule out underlying conditions, and provide more context around persistent symptoms, which may help guide more informed care.
A better regulated nervous system starts with understanding your body.
To learn more about the benefits of whole body MRI, blood labs, or how else Prenuvo could help you with your health goals, book a call with a member of the Patient Services Team.
