The Nervous System and Chiropractic: What You Need to Know Part 3: Nociceptors – Your Body’s Alarm System
Welcome back to The Nervous System and Chiropractic: What You Need to Know. In this series, we’re exploring how your nervous system works, how spinal subluxations interfere with its function, and how chiropractic care can help.
In Part 1, we covered subluxations—spinal misalignments or restricted joints that disrupt communication between your brain and body—and how chiropractors detect and correct them to restore proper nervous system function.
In Part 2, we discussed mechanoreceptors, your body’s motion sensors. We learned that when joints don’t move properly, mechanoreceptors send weaker or distorted signals to the brain, affecting balance, coordination, muscle function, and overall nervous system efficiency.
Now, in Part 3, we’ll focus on nociceptors, the body’s built-in alarm system. You’ll learn how subluxations can trigger unnecessary pain and stress signals, how your nervous system responds, and why chiropractic adjustments help calm this overactive alarm system.
Part 3: Nociceptors – Your Body’s Alarm System
What Are Nociceptors?
Nociceptors are specialized sensory nerve endings that act as your body’s early warning system. Their main job is to detect actual or potential harm to your tissues. Unlike regular sensory nerves that detect touch, pressure, or temperature, nociceptors specifically respond to stimuli that could cause injury or damage. They are found throughout your body—in your skin, muscles, joints, and internal organs—making them essential for keeping you safe.
Nociceptors can respond to a variety of harmful or irritating stimuli, including:
Mechanical stress: pressure, stretching, or pinching that could damage tissues.
Thermal changes: extreme heat or cold that could harm tissues.
Chemical signals: substances released by damaged cells or inflammation that signal danger.
When a nociceptor detects one of these harmful stimuli, it converts the signal into an electrical message that travels along the nerve to the spinal cord and then up to the brain. Your brain interprets this signal as important information about tissue stress, guiding your body’s protective and healing responses.
For example, if you accidentally twist your ankle while walking, nociceptors in the ligaments and muscles detect tissue strain. The signal reaches your brain, in response you feel pain, prompting you to stop walking, assess the injury, and protect your ankle from further damage.
Nociceptors are also important for longer-term healing. Signals from nociceptors can trigger inflammation and repair processes, helping your body recover after injury. Over time, nociceptors can become more sensitive if tissues are repeatedly stressed or inflamed, which sometimes contributes to chronic pain conditions where even minor stimuli cause discomfort.
In short, nociceptors are like tiny security sensors scattered throughout your body. They constantly monitor your tissues for signs of danger, alert your brain when something is wrong, and help guide your actions to protect your body and support healing.
How Subluxations Affect Nociceptors
A subluxation is when a spinal joint becomes misaligned or restricted, interfering with normal movement and nerve communication. Subluxations don’t just affect motion—they also change how your body’s nociceptors, the “alarm sensors,” behave. This can make your nervous system feel stressed even before you notice any pain.
Here are some of the main ways subluxations can overstimulate your body’s alarm system:
1. Mechanical Irritation of Tissues
When a joint is out of alignment, it can put extra pressure or tension on nearby muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joint capsules. This physical stress can:
Directly trigger nociceptors: Nociceptors are sensitive to pressure, stretch, or pinching. Stressed tissues cause them to send more warning signals to the brain, even without an injury.
Cause mild inflammation: Restricted joints can irritate tissues over time. Inflammation makes nociceptors more sensitive, which can lead to stiffness, soreness, or tenderness.
Change movement patterns: When a joint doesn’t move properly, nearby tissues may stretch or pull in unusual ways, which further stimulates nociceptors.
Think of it like a door that’s slightly off its hinges—every time it moves, it scrapes and squeaks, signaling a problem even if the door isn’t broken.
2. Chemical Irritation
Subluxations can also cause chemical irritation, which affects nociceptors in another way. Restricted joint movement can slow blood and fluid flow around the joint, allowing inflammatory chemicals to build up. These include prostaglandins, bradykinin, histamine, and substance P.
These are the same types of chemicals your body releases when you sprain an ankle or get a bug bite—they cause swelling, tenderness, and sensitivity.
These chemicals make nociceptors more sensitive, so even small movements can trigger “warning” signals.
They can also make nociceptors fire more often, creating a constant alert.
Nearby tissues can become irritated, adding to soreness and stiffness.
By restoring proper motion, chiropractic adjustments help flush out irritating chemicals and bring fresh nutrients to the tissues, which reduces inflammation and sensitivity.
Over time, this chemical irritation keeps muscles tight, joints stiff, and your nervous system on high alert. Chiropractic adjustments restore joint movement and improve fluid flow, which helps calm these overactive alarm signals.
3. Protective Muscle Guarding
Your body naturally protects joints that feel vulnerable. When a subluxation occurs:
Nociceptors detect tension or irritation and signal the nervous system.
The nervous system responds by tightening nearby muscles to protect the joint.
Tight muscles then put more pressure on tissues and nerves, which triggers nociceptors even more, creating a feedback loop.
Other muscles may overwork to compensate, spreading tension to nearby areas.
This protective guarding is helpful short-term, but if it continues, it can lead to stiffness, discomfort, and inefficient movement.
4. Altered Sensory Input Balance (Dysafferentation)
Your brain relies on a balance of signals:
Mechanoreceptors send information about normal joint movement.
Nociceptors send warning signals when tissues are stressed.
Subluxations reduce mechanoreceptor input and increase nociceptor signals. This imbalance, called dysafferentation, can make the brain interpret normal movement as a threat. It’s like your brain getting too many static-filled warning messages and not enough clear information about movement and balance.
The result? Unnecessary tension, discomfort, and stress on your nervous system.
5. Heightened Sensitivity Over Time
When nociceptors stay overactive for weeks or months, your nervous system becomes hyper-alert.
Muscles remain tight, joints feel stiff, and even gentle touch can feel uncomfortable.
Your nervous system stays on edge, affecting energy, movement, and your ability to relax.
In chronic pain, the nervous system can become so used to sending alarm signals that it continues to interpret safe movement as dangerous, even when the tissues have healed. Chiropractic adjustments help reset the nervous system by restoring normal motion and calming overactive nociceptors.
6. Hidden Effects
Not all nociceptor activity causes noticeable pain. Sometimes your nervous system can be stressed without you feeling it.
Muscles may stay slightly tense, and joints may lose some mobility.
Over time, this hidden stress can contribute to fatigue, poor sleep, and less efficient movement.
Regular chiropractic care can detect and correct these imbalances early, keeping your body functioning at its best.
Even without symptoms, your body may be adapting around dysfunction. To understand why this happens, it helps to look at the difference between nociception and pain.
Nociception and Pain
It’s important to understand that nociception and pain are not the same thing:
Nociception is when your nerve endings (nociceptors) detect potential harm, irritation, or stress in tissues and send those signals to your brain.
Pain is your brain’s interpretation of those signals.
This distinction is important because your body can be dysfunctioning even when you don’t feel pain. Here’s how:
Hidden or subtle stress: Subluxations and restricted joints can interfere with how your muscles, joints, and nerves work. Your body may adjust by tightening muscles or shifting how you move. You might not notice anything wrong because you don’t feel “pain,” yet your movement, balance, or posture is subtly compromised.
Nervous system adaptation: Your nervous system can adapt to constant nociceptor activity. Over time, it may downplay the signals to prevent you from feeling pain constantly. While this reduces discomfort, it also means your body is under stress without your awareness.
Compensations elsewhere in the body: If one joint isn’t moving properly, nearby joints or muscles often compensate. This keeps you moving but can cause uneven stress, stiffness, or tension in other areas—all without immediate pain.
Early warning signs are subtle: Poor circulation, tight muscles, reduced flexibility, fatigue, or decreased range of motion can all indicate nervous system stress or joint dysfunction before pain ever appears.
In short, pain is not a reliable indicator of how well your nervous system or body is functioning. Waiting until you feel discomfort can mean the underlying problem has been affecting your body for weeks, months, or even years.
Because subluxations can mechanically, chemically, and neurologically overstimulate nociceptors, restoring proper motion through chiropractic care helps quiet these signals and rebalance nervous system function.
How Chiropractic Helps
Chiropractic adjustments directly address the root issue—subluxations that irritate tissues and distort nerve signals. When a chiropractor restores proper joint motion, several important changes happen in your nervous system:
Reduced nociceptor firing: By relieving mechanical and chemical stress as well as irritation around the joint, adjustments calm down the “alarm system,” so nociceptors stop sending excessive danger signals to the brain.
Reactivation of mechanoreceptors: Movement is restored in the previously restricted joint, which switches mechanoreceptors back “on.” This gives the brain accurate information about body position and motion.
Balanced input to the brain: With less overactive nociceptor activity and more healthy mechanoreceptor input, the brain receives clearer, more balanced signals. This reduces nervous system stress and improves overall coordination.
Relaxation of protective muscle guarding: As the brain senses the joint is moving normally again, it no longer feels the need to keep nearby muscles tight. This allows muscles to relax, restoring fluid movement and easing tension.
Chiropractors focus on detecting and correcting subluxations early, so your body can function at its best before symptoms arise. By maintaining healthy spinal alignment and nervous system communication, chiropractic care supports not just pain relief, but optimal function, adaptability, and resilience over the long term.
The Big Picture
Nociceptors are a vital part of your body’s defense system, but when subluxations cause them to fire too often, the nervous system becomes overloaded. This imbalance—too much “danger” input and not enough healthy motion input—creates stress for both your body and brain.
When nociceptors send too many warning signals, the brain may interpret the body as being under constant threat. This can activate the sympathetic, or “fight-or-flight,” side of the autonomic nervous system—even when there’s no real danger.
Chiropractic adjustments restore normal joint movement, calm unnecessary nociceptor activity, and rebalance the flow of information, helping your nervous system function the way it was designed to.
But there’s more to the story. When nociceptors stay overactive for too long, they don’t just affect your joints and muscles—they can also push your body into a constant state of stress. In Part 4 of our series, we’ll explore how subluxations influence the autonomic nervous system, tipping the scales between “fight-or-flight” and “rest-and-digest.”
Wellness Within Chiropractic is proud to be a trusted choice for chiropractic care in Hoschton, Braselton, and throughout Jackson County, GA. Dr. Carrillo and our team focus on whole-body health, helping you improve function, energy, and overall wellness. Discover how chiropractic care can support your best life by scheduling a visit with us today.