Hi folks,
This week I have been mostly…
Listening:
To the new album by Andy Shauf called The Party. If you like The Shins or Grandaddy you might enjoy this.
Contemplating:
The concepts that I am trying to communicate most clearly to my clients with regard to Chiropractic care:
1. There is a natural force within us that constantly heals and repairs us. We call this Innate Intelligence.
2. There are things that can confuse or interfere with this intelligence. We call these things Subluxations.
3. Our purpose is to address your Subluxations and help you return to a natural state of healing and health. We call these Adjustments.
Watching:
The build up to the McGregor vs Mayweather boxing match on Sunday. Whatever your views on combat sports and who will win, I appreciate the stoic philosophy and the positive mindset that Conor McGregor has espoused in his rise from nowhere to superstar in four years vs the legendary technician.
“An injury is not just a process of recovery, it’s a process of discovery.” - Conor McGregor
Eating:
A lot of super squidgy, stinky, raw cheese. August tends to be the month when friends come to stay and this time brought with them my favourite cheeses. The stinkiest was some unpasteurised Reblechon. My fridge may not ever smell the same again. The fact that this cheese is made from raw milk makes it taste better and is possibly better for us as it has more natural, and greater numbers, of bacteria in it which may be good for your ‘microbiome’ (the sum total of helpful symbiotic bacteria that populate your gut and your skin). The idea that full fat cheese is bad for us is highly questionable and in my opinion has been largely de-bunked; fat is essential and good fat is good for you.
Exercising:
Been revisiting the Bear Crawl. A great exercise for all joint mobility, balance and co-ordination. Good for core and spinal stability also. Here is a link for a beginners form of the exercise.
Have a great bank holiday weekend!
Simon
Finemore's Five for Friday (14)
Hi everyone,
Just back from Glastonbury a little tired physically but spiritually revived.
This last week or so I have been mostly:
Listening:
To live bands at Glasto. We didn’t get to see many artists as we were adjusting from 11- 6pm everyday. However ,I loved Future Islands live as Sam Herring is such a presence on stage, but my favourite gig was Warpaint at the Park stage. A smaller stage than the others and more intimate. 4 ladies sonically killing it at 11pm. Worth listening to any of their albums but 'Love is to Die’ is a great place to start.
Loving:
This year at Glastonbury the great majority of people we saw had never seen a Chiropractor before so it was a great opportunity to introduce them to the big idea. One couple of young scientists had never seen a Chiropractor before but came back everyday to get checked. As they were leaving they thanked us for making their Glastonbury.
Learning:
I adjusted one lady who was a science communicator. I spent some time explaining the science and theory behind what we do and was pretty proud of myself. After the adjustment I asked if I had communicated well. She said that after the first minute or two she knew she could trust me, would be cared for and didn’t really care about the science.
Appreciating:
The power of music and the performing arts to bring people together in love, tears and laughter. After a tumultuous 2017 it was a great relief to see so many people in harmony singing, dancing, talking, eating and drinking together. Glastonbury is a 7 mile square site filled with people from all over the UK and the wider world. It feels like a cooperative medieval city with prominent themes such as revelry, sustainability, charity, community, healing the earth and each other. As the late Jo Cox said on immigration: "We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
Consuming:
Lots of organic food. Glasto is great for the organic food tents you can find. After a long night on the tiles I found a cup of Masala Chai to be a rejuvenator. A mix of black tea and Indian herbs and spices. Yum. Plus a shout out to the lovely lady who kept bringing us homemade Spirulina balls to keep us going in exchange for an adjustment.
Until next week,
Simon
Finemore's Five for Friday (9)
Hi folks,
Here's the latest Finemore's Five For Friday for you. If you've got anything you'd like me to cover in these weekly emails or any questions please just ask and I'll do my best to answer them for you.
This week I have been mostly ...
Eating:
Organic Fennel. I love the taste and it gives a great crunch to salads. When celery can be a bit bland, fennel knocks it out the park. You can roast it and it’s yummy but this week I made a salad with organic: cherry tomatoes, fennel, chick peas, squeezed lemon, avocado oil, chopped garlic and Big Tony’s Pesto. Fennel also tastes great with Oysters.
Listening:
to an album called m_o_d_e_s by Tomemitsu. Lo-fi music to chill by. Calm.
Attempting:
To make sure that I have 13+ hrs of gut rest per day. Your gut works hard digesting all the food that you do or more commonly don’t chew enough. It needs a break. Relative or intermittent fasting is good for you. It helps you sensitise to insulin and regulate your fat-burning mechanisms. It has even been shown to help reduce cancer risk in some studies. So I’m playing with eating only 2 meals a day, breakfast and late lunch or lunch and early dinner. Ideally if you eat your evening meal at 7pm, you should not eat or drink anything but water until at least 9am the next day. Try it and see how you feel and how your brain works.
Hugging:
Nothing like a good hug. Here’s a technique that I heard from Wim Hof (the Ice Man). Wim throws his Left arm over the shoulder of the recipient placing his head on the right side of theirs and his heart (to heart) right next to theirs. Do it. Hug more often.
If you’re a man’s man. Do it more. Especially with other men. You need it more than most. See how your relationships and your life changes.
Plus if you’ve never seen the 70’s TV series ‘Hart to Hart’ then you should. Genius.
Retro exercising:
Squat Thrust. We all did them at school. Easy to do. Great for your core, upper body strength and helps those surfers out there with their surfer get ups. Try 10-20 every day as part of your daily 3 minute workout.
Until next time,
Simon
Finemore's Five For Friday (2)
Hi folks,
Welcome to the second instalment of Finemore’s Five for Friday, my weekly roundup of the five things I can’t stop doing this week, I’m enjoying or are simply on my mind.
This week I am mostly listening to...
The Feelies : Crazy Rhythms (Chiropractic band in the most appropriate sense) - great post punk poppy sound. This is their debut album; spring is on the way. Listen to them on Spotify here or check out the album on Rough Trade here.
This week I am mostly reading...
You are the Placebo by Joe Dispenza : an amazing description of the power of self healing that we all have access to from miraculous recovery to changes in the thoughts we choose that allow us to take the first steps in a preferred direction. Joe advocates meditation as a ‘way in’... here's the link to the book.
There's also a great podcast on the same topic from the Ice Man, Wim Hof, psychologist Stanley Krippner (85 yrs young) and Chris Ryan Phd that you can listen to here.
This week I am mostly appreciating...
The sound of vinyl - analogue in a digital world is rebellious. Dig ‘em out.
This week I am mostly exercising...
My low back stabilisers and Gluteus Medius integration with an exercise called ‘Flying Aeroplanes’ - one of my favourites : great to do when cleaning you teeth. Try it. Here is me doing it on YouTube.
This week I am mostly pondering...
The cultural specificity of productivity and progress. Are these concepts just cultural norms and is the idea of continual growth an illusion on a planet of finite resource?
In the podcast below Wade Davis (Ethnobotanist, explorer etc) mentions the fact that as late 1910 it was legal for white immigrants to shoot and kill ‘indigenous Australians’. It was considered that indigenous Australians were 'not human’ as they were not ‘productive' in normative immigrant terms.
In Indigenous Australian culture it was sacrilege to change, destroy or build upon the perfection of nature. Nature above all had to be appreciated and respected which resulted in the perceived lack of ‘progress’. This murderous clash of culture has stuck with me all week. Great podcast.
Have a great weekend and see you soon.
Until next time,
Simon
PS - Would love to know what you think of these or if you've got any questions you'd like answering send them through and I'll do my best to oblige.
Celebrating connections during the Fal River Festival
The Fal River : connecting people for centuries.
This week sees the Fal River Festival return to Falmouth. Now in its 11th year, the festival is a celebration of everything that makes living in this part of Cornwall great.
From live music and outdoor theatre groups to art exhibitions and world-class watersports, the Fal River Festival kicks off the Cornish summer festival season and is a chance for visitors and locals alike to embrace the connections between people and places, history and culture and experience how they are tied together and shaped by living life on these beautiful waterways.
On a very practical level, and when we look at the different sports taking place on the river, chiropractic is great for sailors, paddle boarders, swimmers and gig rowers. Not only does it improve function and performance but it also reduces the risk of injury.
But chiropractic treatment is much more than that. Being connected and being present are two of the building blocks chiropractic is built upon. The festival is a celebration of connections and chiropractic is a way of enhancing how connected we are and we feel, not only with ourselves, but with the environment around us.
When the brain and the body are better connected (a state achieved through regular chiropractic care) then the body and the mind will function better. Our nervous system controls every aspect of how we experience the world and in order to experience it fully, we need that system to be healthy and free from blockages.
When we’re more connected, our awareness and sense of purpose is heightened. And through this better connection, we appreciate what we’re doing fully and in present-time. So this week we celebrate connections, whether they be connections formed by the love of a Cornish river or the connections we can feel when our mind and body are in perfect sync.
If you’d like to see how chiropractic can help you be more connected then we’d love to see you. Pop in for an initial consultation, a report of findings and your first adjustment, all for £14 (usually £68). Just mention the Festival offer when you book.
Be your best,
Simon
Ketogenesis, Ketogenic, Ketosis... what?
Very simply Ketones are organic chemical compounds that your brain, heart and muscles can use as a fuel source for your mitochodria to produce energy. Ketones are made in your liver but can be taken as a supplement which increases available ketones for use by the body in the absence of glucose. Ketones may well be the primary fuel source that your body used throughout our evolution in the absence of excessive glucose. If you think about it we have only really had freely available glucose in our diets in the last 100 yrs where we have seen consumption per person per year multiply 100 fold in the west.
The way I explain it to my clients is that its a bit like comparing burning petrol for fuel (glucose) and burning logs (ketones). Petrol is easy to light and burns impressively but it soon burns out and you require more to keep you going. Logs are harder to light but burn longer and don't create as many nasty combustion products as petrol (the end products of using excessive glucose as a fuel are called AGEs : Advanced Glycation End-products http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3704564/).
The probable benefits of switching your body to a ketone currency (increasing available ketones and decreasing glucose) are :
Suppression of appetite which can help you loose weight
Improved athletic performance
Improved cognition (your brain loves ketones)
Neuroprotective effect - ketones may protect the brain from age related degeneration
Anti-carcinogenic effects (in mice at least) as cancer cells cannot use ketones well and it seems to promote cancer cell death
Some anti-inflammatory properties have also been observed
The negatives associated with a ketogenic approach are:
Possible bad breath in Ketosis
If you take too much MCT oil (Medium Chain Triglyceride oil made from coconut and palm oils - the C8 Caprylic Acid form would seem to be the best at promoting ketones) can cause disaster pants (unexpected improved transit of the contents of your bowels). Powdered forms of MCT are available and seem to be even better at promoting ketones but currently are expensive.
Personally I use Bulletproof coffee with added MCT oil in the morning to provide my exogenous ketones (fatty coffee - no carbs)
For more information you can listen to various podcasts by Dominic D'Agostino
http://www.dominicdagostino.com
Bulletproof Coffee back in stock at LivingRoom Chiropractic Cornwall
Mmmmm Bulletproof Coffee - clean, stimulates you and tastes great
I use Bulletproof Coffee most mornings blended with MCT oil and grass fed butter to keep me in fat burning until lunchtime. Tastes great, makes me feel great and the evidence for the benefits of Ketosis and fasting with exogenous ketones is growing.
What is Sciatica? How can Chiropractic help?
Sciatica often originates in the Spine
As you can see from the diagram above true sciatica more often than not originates in the spine. Your sciatic nerve is made up of a number of spinal nerves that descend together down the leg. Irritation of any of these spinal nerves can cause irritation and symptoms in the sciatic nerve.
Your spinal joints lie just behind your main nerves that exit through the spine. If your joints are unhappy they can become inflamed and irritate the nerve, this can affect the ability of your brain to receive vital messages from your leg and to send vital messages down the nerve to your leg. Nerve irritation can also give you sciatic pain which can go along the length of the sciatic nerve all the way to your foot.
If you spinal joints have been dysfunctional for some time this can lead to stress on your spinal discs which can in turn can make a disc injury more likely. Your spinal disc sits directly in front of the major nerve that exits from the spine. So just like joint inflammation, disc inflammation can cause irritation to your spinal nerves and then your sciatic nerve. Disc injuries can be very small (annular tear) or more significant (full prolapse) but either way they can irritate the spinal nerves depending on how much inflammation occurs.
Therefore in order to help you with your sciatic nerve pain we often need to reduce the irritation and inflammation in and around the spinal nerves that go on to make up the Sciatic nerve. This means we have to address any dysfunction in the joints and discs of the spine. If the spine is happier, the nerves that exit the spine will be happier, inflammation will decrease and so will your nerve pain. The key is finding the cause of the irritation (often the spinal joints) and not just attempting to treat the symptoms.
As Chiropractors we aim to improve the function of the unhappy spinal joints by the application gentle and specific hands on techniques called Chiropractic Adjustments which stimulate normal nerve reflexes local to the spinal joints and allow the joints to function better and to begin healing.
Happy joints = happy nerves = happy body = happy brain
OCTOBER 2015 is Friends and Family Month: First Visit is only £15 (normally £40)
Disclaimer : none of the machines illustrated are used in LivingRoom or recommended by Simon Finemore DC. Any tests carried out during your first visit are not represented in this illustration.
During October you can book in your friends and family for an initial consultation with Simon for only £15.
You can find out if you have any problems that we can help you with and how we would go about that (consultation takes about 45mins).
Love this Quote about Healing
As a Chiropractor all we do is practice the natural art of allowing your innate healing abilities to come to the for; 'wooing nature'.
Running - a software upgrade
Forefoot Running in Finland
Running/Movement/Exercise provides essential feedback to the brain from the receptors of your body. It is like feeding your nervous system and brain or giving your operating system an upgrade. The more food/upgrades your nervous system gets the better able it is to communicate clear instructions to the body. More than 50% of all this brain food comes from the receptors in your spine. The less subluxations you have in your spine and your joints, the clearer the information your brain receives.
Amount of Movement/Exercise (-number of subluxations) = quality and quantity of essential feedback to the brain = quality and quantity of instructions from the brain down (ABOVE DOWN INSIDE OUT) to the body.
Red Arrows at Falmouth Week
Beautiful Day yesterday watching the Red Arrows perform for Falmouth Week on North Parade
Dogs Allowed in my LivingRoom
My Jack Russell puppy Nuuska photobombs successfully at the LivingRoom
LivingRoom Chiropractic Cornwall - Falmouth Chiropractor Open
Come in and take a seat... finally the LivingRoom, Falmouth Chiropractic Practice is open for adjustments please visit the Welcome page in order to book your first visit.