Kick the Sick: The Role of the Nervous System in Cold and Flu Season
🤧 Introduction: Why Does It Feel Like Your Kid Is Always Sick?
The school year starts... and suddenly so does the sniffle parade. By the time Halloween candy rolls around, many families are already deep into the cycle of colds, coughs, missed school days, and another round of antibiotics.
If it feels like your kid can’t catch a break—you're not imagining it.
The reality is, kids today are facing a perfect storm for immune stress: constant exposure to germs, elevated stress levels, processed foods, poor sleep, and increased screen time. But while we can’t wrap our kids in a bubble, we can strengthen their internal defense system from the inside out.
At Solstice Chiropractic, we help families in Colorado Springs stay well by focusing on the system that controls everything else: the nervous system.
In this blog, we’ll walk through how the nervous system affects the immune system, what throws it off, and how care from a Pediatric Chiropractor in Colorado Springs can help your family kick the sick this season.
🧠 The Brain-Body-Immune Connection
Here’s a fun science fact: your immune system doesn’t work alone.
It’s directly connected to your autonomic nervous system, which controls how your body responds to stress, danger, and healing. When the nervous system is regulated and balanced, your immune system can recognize threats, launch appropriate defenses, and recover efficiently.
But when your child is stuck in fight-or-flight (a sympathetic dominant state), their body’s resources get diverted away from immune function. It’s like the body saying, “No time to fight off this virus—we’re in survival mode!”
This chronic state of stress can lead to:
More frequent illness
Slower recovery time
Heightened inflammation
Poor sleep (which impacts immune repair)
Behavioral dysregulation and emotional rollercoasters
In short: if the nervous system is out of balance, the immune system is too.
🌀 Stress, Subluxation, and a Weakened Defense
When a child’s nervous system is under stress, we often find subluxations—misalignments and tension patterns that interfere with the brain’s ability to clearly communicate with the body. These disruptions can limit the body's ability to regulate properly, weakening immune response and energy reserves.
At Solstice Chiropractic, we use Insight CLA scans to detect these areas of imbalance. Our scans measure things like:
Surface EMG (how the muscles are working)
Rolling Thermal (how the body is regulating temperature side-to-side)
Heart Rate Variability (how well the nervous system adapts to stress)
When these patterns show dysfunction, it’s a clear signal that the body’s energy is going toward managing stress, not fighting infection or healing efficiently.
✨ How Chiropractic Adjustments Support Immune Function
Chiropractic doesn’t “treat” the immune system—it supports the system that runs the immune system.
By restoring proper communication between the brain and the body through gentle, neurologically focused adjustments, we help the nervous system shift from survival mode into a parasympathetic state: the mode responsible for rest, repair, and immune defense.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Kids sleeping better and longer
Faster recovery from colds and flus
Fewer ear infections, sinus congestion, and antibiotics
Better regulation of emotions and digestion during sickness
Families telling us they “just aren’t getting sick like they used to”
(Note: These are experiences shared by our practice members—not guarantees.)
This is why we emphasize proactive care, not reactive care. You don’t have to wait until your kid is already sniffling to support their immune system.
🤝 Building Resilience Over Time
One adjustment won’t make your child a superhero overnight—but consistency creates resilience.
Each adjustment helps build parasympathetic tone—strengthening the body’s ability to regulate inflammation, restore sleep, and activate immune defense. Over time, these changes add up.
When a child is regularly adjusted, we often see:
Shorter duration of illnesses
Milder symptoms
Fewer school absences
Parents getting sick less, too (because let’s face it—when the kids go down, so do we)
That’s the power of building a nervous system that adapts well, instead of just reacting.
📊 The Research Behind Nervous System and Immune Health
You might be wondering—“Is this backed by science?”
Yes—and we’re here for the nerdy part too.
Studies have shown that:
Chronic stress suppresses immune function.
HRV (heart rate variability) is a validated measure of nervous system health and immune adaptability.
Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to improve HRV, increase parasympathetic activity, and reduce inflammatory markers.
By helping your child shift into a state of healing, their body becomes more responsive, more adaptable, and better able to bounce back.
🧘♀️ Your Immune Routine: Daily Tools for Family Wellness
While chiropractic is foundational, we always encourage a whole-family wellness approach. Here are our favorite strategies:
✅ Get adjusted consistently (especially during sick season)
✅ Prioritize deep sleep—this is when the immune system reboots
✅ Limit sugar and processed snacks—especially after school
✅ Support vagus nerve tone with humming, gargling, or cold exposure
✅ Daily movement and time outdoors to regulate the nervous system
✅ Stay hydrated—dehydration stresses every cell in the body
And of course, check in with your family chiropractor to make sure the nervous system is adapting well to it all.
📍 Ready to Kick the Sick?
If your family is ready to stop getting steamrolled by every bug that comes home from school or daycare, it may be time to look beyond the medicine cabinet.
At Solstice Chiropractic, we specialize in nervous system-based care for kids and families. Using cutting-edge scanning technology, personalized care plans, and gentle adjustments, we help your child stay resilient through every season.
