Why Your Immune System May Not Be Working at Full Capacity — And What to Do About It
- Dr Anupa Dharamsi
- Mar 16
- 9 min read
By Dr. Anupa Dharamsi, Chiropractor | Handcrafted Chiropractic, Māngere, Auckland Nervous system-focused chiropractic care | ACC & WINZ welcome
It's Not Just About Vitamins
Every year, as the Auckland winter rolls in, I notice the same pattern in clinic.
People come in a little more depleted. They've been fighting off colds that won't fully clear. They're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. Some have been sick two or three times already and it's only June. And almost all of them are already doing the "right things" — vitamin C, zinc, early nights, hand washing.
So why does it keep happening?
Most people believe immunity is a nutrition problem. Take the right supplements, eat the right foods, and your immune system does its job. And nutrition absolutely matters — it's part of the picture.
But there's a deeper layer of physiology that almost nobody talks about, and it's the layer I find most relevant in clinical practice.
Your immune system doesn't just need nutrients. It needs the right signals.
Without those signals, immune cells can be present in your body — fully stocked, technically ready — but not operating at full capacity. Think of it like a car. You can fill the tank with premium fuel. But if the engine doesn't turn over, the car isn't going anywhere. Your immune system works the same way.
The body may have all the resources it needs — vitamins, minerals, energy — but if the system that coordinates those resources isn't functioning well, immune responses can become sluggish, poorly timed, or misdirected.
The system that does that coordinating? Your nervous system.
The Nervous System and Immune System Are More Connected Than You Think
For a long time, the immune system was viewed as a stand-alone defence force — an army that operated independently from the rest of the body.
Modern physiology tells a very different story.
The immune system and the nervous system are deeply, constantly talking to each other.
Immune cells receive signals from the brain and spinal cord through a complex network of neural and chemical communication pathways. One of the most important is the vagus nerve — a long, wandering nerve that connects your brainstem to your heart, lungs, gut, and immune tissue — which plays a key role in regulating inflammation and coordinating immune responses throughout the body.
When the nervous system is balanced, immune responses tend to be efficient and well-regulated. The body recognises threats quickly, responds proportionally, and recovers without unnecessary collateral inflammation.
When the nervous system is under prolonged stress, that coordination begins to break down.
Research in psychoneuroimmunology — the field studying how the brain and immune system interact — has consistently shown that chronic stress can suppress certain immune responses, increase inflammatory signalling, slow recovery from illness, and impair the body's antiviral defences. This doesn't mean the immune system "shuts off." But it can become less responsive, less coordinated, and slower to activate when you actually need it.
Why Stress Is Quietly Undermining Your Immunity
Your nervous system is continuously scanning the environment — assessing whether the signals it's receiving mean safety or threat.
When it perceives ongoing stress — whether that's a hard season at work, financial pressure, a relationship that's wearing you down, or simply years of accumulated demands — the body shifts into what's called sympathetic dominance. You'll know this as fight-or-flight. It's a brilliant survival mechanism for short-term threats.
The problem is when it runs for months or years without resolution.
In that prolonged state, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline actively change how immune cells behave. They alter inflammation levels, affect the communication between immune tissues, and cause the body to quietly re-allocate its resources. Immediate survival takes priority. Long-term repair, recovery, and immune efficiency get deprioritised.
I see this clinically all the time. People who say:
"I get sick every time work gets really busy." "My body takes forever to recover from even a small cold." "I feel run down constantly, but my blood tests always come back fine."
Often the issue isn't simply that they need more supplements. It's that their nervous system has been running on high alert for so long that the coordination layer of their health has started to falter — and immunity is one of the first places it shows.
The missing piece isn't always nutrition. Often it's regulation.
The Immune System Is a Network — Not a Single Organ
Another thing worth understanding: immunity isn't located in one place.
The immune system is distributed throughout your entire body — the gut, lymphatic system, bone marrow, spleen, skin, lungs, and mucosal surfaces.
All of these areas are in constant communication with the nervous system.
This is why factors that seem unrelated to immunity — sleep quality, chronic emotional stress, movement habits, breathing patterns — can so significantly affect how resilient your immune system is.
The body works as a coordinated network. When that network becomes dysregulated, the effects show up in many different ways:
Recurrent infections that don't fully clear
Chronic low-grade inflammation
Fatigue that persists despite adequate sleep and nutrition
Slower healing from injury or illness
Flare-ups of existing conditions without an obvious trigger
The goal here isn't to "boost" immunity — a phrase that gets thrown around a lot but doesn't quite capture what we're actually after. You don't need an overactive immune system. You need a well-regulated one. One that responds appropriately to real threats, doesn't overreact to non-threats, and recovers efficiently.
That regulation is something the nervous system governs.
What Actually Supports Immune Resilience
Nutrition still plays an important role, and I'm not here to minimise it. Vitamin C supports antioxidant defence and collagen synthesis. Zinc plays a role in immune cell development. Selenium and omega-3 fats help regulate inflammatory signalling. Magnesium supports immune cell function and is depleted rapidly during periods of stress — which creates its own cascade of downstream effects on immunity.
You can read more about how magnesium interacts with immune health in our dedicated post on magnesium types and how to choose the right one for your needs.
But beyond nutrition, the key drivers of immune resilience are:
Sleep quality — Deep sleep is when immune memory consolidates, repair processes occur, and inflammatory signalling resets. Poor sleep for even a few consecutive nights measurably suppresses immune function.
Stress regulation — Chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system disrupts the immune signalling pathways described above. Managing the source of the stress matters, but so does supporting the nervous system's capacity to recover between stressors.
Movement — Regular movement improves circulation of immune cells throughout the body and supports lymphatic drainage — the system responsible for clearing cellular waste and pathogens.
Nervous system balance — Healthy communication between brain, spine, and body helps coordinate immune responses, regulate inflammation, and support the kind of physiological recovery that keeps the system resilient over time.
This is where structural and neurological health becomes far more relevant to immunity than most people realise.
Where Chiropractic Care Fits In
The spine is the physical housing of the spinal cord — one of the main communication highways of your nervous system.
When spinal joints become restricted through injury, poor posture, repetitive strain, or accumulated stress, the quality of information flowing through those pathways changes. Your nervous system receives a noisier signal. And a nervous system working with poor-quality information from the body has to work harder to maintain coordination — including the coordination of immune activity.
Chiropractic adjustments restore movement to restricted joints and reduce mechanical stress along the spinal cord. For many people, this improves the overall quality of nervous system signalling — and when the nervous system functions more efficiently, the rest of the body's systems tend to follow.
This isn't a claim that chiropractic "cures" illness or directly treats immune conditions. What it does is support the coordination layer of health — the layer that helps all the other systems communicate and work together.
At Handcrafted Chiropractic in Māngere, I work with people who initially come in for pain — neck tension, headaches, lower back discomfort — and frequently discover that their body was carrying a deeper level of dysregulation. As nervous system function improves through care, what I often hear is:
Sleep becomes deeper and more restorative
Energy levels stabilise rather than fluctuating dramatically
Recovery from illness becomes faster
The general sense of resilience — of having something in reserve — starts to return
Health becomes less about constantly adding more: more supplements, more protocols, more interventions. It becomes about restoring clarity and coordination within the body's own systems. And that's when real resilience starts to build.
Practical Steps You Can Take Right Now
You don't need to wait for a clinic appointment to start supporting your immune resilience. Here's what I recommend to patients:
1. Prioritise sleep architecture, not just duration. Seven to nine hours matters, but so does sleep quality. Keeping a consistent sleep and wake time — even on weekends — supports the circadian rhythm that governs immune repair cycles.
2. Manage your nervous system load deliberately. This could be breathwork, walking in nature, reducing screen time before bed, or simply building genuine rest into your week. The nervous system needs downtime to recover from chronic stress — it doesn't happen automatically.
3. Look at what you're actually eating, not just what you're supplementing. Whole food sources of zinc (pumpkin seeds, legumes), Vitamin C (kiwifruit, capsicum, leafy greens), and omega-3s (walnuts, flaxseed, oily fish) support immune function in a more bioavailable form than most supplements.
4. Move your body daily — even gently. A 20-minute walk improves lymphatic circulation and supports immune cell trafficking. You don't need intense exercise; you need consistent, regular movement.
5. Consider whether your nervous system needs structural support. If you've been managing chronic stress, pain, poor sleep, or fatigue for a long time, your nervous system may need more than lifestyle changes to reset. This is where chiropractic care can play a meaningful role.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can chiropractic care actually improve immune function? The direct research on chiropractic and immune function is still developing, but what we do know is well-established: spinal health influences nervous system function, and the nervous system plays a central coordinating role in immune regulation.
Improving nervous system efficiency through chiropractic care supports the body's ability to regulate and respond — including immunologically. It's not a direct immune treatment; it's support for the system that coordinates everything else.
Why do I keep getting sick even when I take vitamins? As this article explores, immune function depends on more than nutritional status. Chronic stress, poor sleep, and nervous system dysregulation can all compromise immune performance regardless of supplement intake. If you're consistently getting sick or slow to recover, it's worth looking at the whole picture.
How does the vagus nerve affect immunity? The vagus nerve is a major communication pathway between the brain and the immune system. It helps regulate the inflammatory response and signals immune tissue throughout the body. Chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation can reduce vagal tone — meaning this regulatory pathway becomes less effective. Practices that improve vagal tone (deep breathing, chiropractic care, regular movement, sleep) support both nervous system regulation and immune coordination.
Is this relevant for autoimmune conditions? If you have an autoimmune condition, supporting nervous system regulation and reducing chronic stress load is generally beneficial — though care should always be coordinated with your GP or specialist. Chiropractic care for autoimmune conditions focuses on improving overall nervous system efficiency and reducing physical stressors on the spine, rather than directly targeting the immune response.
When should I see a doctor rather than a chiropractor? If you have a fever, significant infection, or symptoms that are worsening rapidly, please see your GP. Chiropractic care is a complementary support for resilience and regulation — not a replacement for medical care when you're acutely unwell.
The Bigger Picture
Health doesn't come from a single intervention. It emerges when multiple systems begin working in harmony — nutrients fuelling the cells, movement keeping tissues adaptable, sleep allowing repair, and the nervous system coordinating the whole process.
When that coordination improves, the body does what it was designed to do.
It recovers. It adapts. It heals.
Not because something was added from the outside — but because the conditions for the body to do its own work were restored.
That's what we're working toward at Handcrafted Chiropractic. Not a quick fix, and not a lifetime of symptom management. A body that has the capacity and coordination to look after itself — and a person who understands how to support that.
Ready to Look at the Bigger Picture?
If you've been stuck in the cycle of getting run down, slow to recover, or just not quite feeling your best — it might be time to look at what's happening in the coordination layer.
At Handcrafted Chiropractic in Māngere, we work with people across South Auckland — Māngere, Māngere Bridge, Ōtāhuhu, Māngere East — who want to understand their health more deeply and build genuine, long-term resilience. ACC and WINZ welcome.
Not sure where your nervous system is at right now? Take our free 2-minute Nervous System Quiz — it's a useful starting point.
Dr. Anupa Dharamsi is the founder and lead chiropractor at Handcrafted Chiropractic, a nervous-system-focused practice in Māngere, Auckland. She works with patients to address the root causes of poor health resilience — including chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, and recurring illness — through trauma-informed, evidence-informed chiropractic care. ACC & WINZ welcome.
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