How Hot Wheels May Help You Be Happy

Have you ever stepped on a Lego?

Well if you haven’t bless your soul because it’s quite unpleasant.

To take that up a notch have you ever stepped on a Hotwheels car? Although not as sharp as a Lego, it’s larger and you kind of flinch because you know there is a chance of it breaking, causing a lot of your muscles to engage.

When I say the words a Hotwheels car would cripple me I’m not actually referring to the action of stepping on one and having that pain.

When I was a kid I wanted to make sure that everything I did I was good at. I also wanted to make sure that my setup was on point. So what do I mean by that?

You know how if you go to a Little League game there are kids who wear their hat too low, or their jersey is untucked, or their pants are too long? Well I always wanted to make sure that I was the opposite of that. I had to make sure I was always looking and feeling 100 as they say.

As you can tell by the picture Halloween was also the same way….Red Ranger from Powerrangers and all!

This was great as I think I always looked pretty awesome, especially in my cowboy phase, but it also made things difficult.

When you always want to feel like you look the best, it requires you to have to make the right decisions. This is what I struggled with when I was a kid and all the way through my teenage years.

As you may be able to guess by this point, one of my favorite toys growing up were Hotwheels Cars! I had a ton of them and was lucky enough to have a bunch of the tracks that went along with the cars.

It was always exciting when I’d get a new car. What would it look like? How fast would it go? Would it be able to go further than any of my other cars?

That was the fun part about getting a new car.

Now the not so fun part….PICKING ONE OUT!

This for sure sounds crazy but if I didn’t just get one as a gift my parents would let me pick out which car I wanted at the store. I would say to a normal kid or person this is one of the most exciting things!

Remember, I always wanted to make sure my setup was on point. Well, I also wanted to make sure I picked the coolest car that the store had at that exact moment. This made some Grammy level drama inside of myself. Would I get the one that doesn’t really look like a real car? Or maybe the one that looks like one of my dad’s classic cars? What color looks the best? Is there an option to get 2 cars in 1 pack?

All of these questions would consume me.

This is how a Hotwheels car would cripple me.

I would leave the store without a Hotwheels car due to having such high anxiety and not being able to make a decision.

Now later on in life I started to have what I thought were normal headaches as well as neck and back pain, I now know that they were all most likely related.

I am lucky that I know longer deal with any of those issues and I will say that I make it a point to make decisions as quickly as possible so I don’t have to deal with that constant anxiety of asking “what if.”

But why did I have that and how come I see that in kids that come into the office?

The more I learn about the human body and how it works the more all of it makes sense.

What research is showing us is a lot of anxiety is linked to the nervous system and it not working how it’s supposed to.

The nervous system is broken up into a couple of parts…one being this sympathetic or fight or flight side, while the other is called the parasympathetic or a resting and digesting side.

What I see most is a lot of kids and people that come into the office that experience anxiety are stuck in a fight or flight response. This ultimately means that it’s hard for their body to actually relax and calm down. This can cause racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping, headaches, depression, and anxiety.

At The Specific Chiropractic Centers we work directly with the nervous system and make sure that it’s working how it’s supposed to. When the nervous system is out of whack, the messages aren’t getting to and from the brain how they are supposed to. It’s almost like there’s a traffic jam of information going to the brain. When you are stuck in a traffic jam on the highway and you need to be somewhere at a certain time are you usually calm or somewhat panicked?

You’d be lying if you said that your mind doesn’t start racing, you heart rate increases a little bit, and nervousness sets in.

What do you think happens subconsciously when the brain starts to receive too much information or the information that’s supposed to get there isn’t getting there how it’s supposed to?

Naturally your body is going to go into a state of fight or flight.

By working with the nervous system and getting it out of this state of fight or flight it balances the body, calming everything down, and decreasing the anxiety that a lot of people face. We test the nervous system at every single visit, this gives us the information to determine if we do need to make an adjustment and get it back to working correctly or if it’s still working correctly from previous visits.

I am very fortunate to have learned this information and have my nervous system working at 100% now. I no longer have to worry about being crippled by a Hotwheel car….that is regarding making a decision picking one out. Jury is still out on the whole stepping on one yet!

If you or someone you know is suffering from anxiety like this, feel free to reach out to us! Let’s get them from surviving to thriving!

Learn more.

Here are a few more posts on how chiropractic care can help those who suffer from headaches and/or migraines.