We have had a busy couple of weekends that have been great for furthering our mission to be as healthy as we can be! Last weekend Neil C, Neil F, Maddy, Steve Amber and I attended the United Chiropractic Association's annual spring conference in London. The first Speaker was Cyndi O'Meara author of the book Changing Habits, Changing Lives. She spoke about the difference between Nature foods and Chemical foods and the importance of keeping manufactured chemical based foods out of your diet. A great example was the difference between two cakes. The first cake was low fat and low calorie and the second cake had a higher fat and calorie content. Many people would look at those and presume they were doing the healthy thing and chose the first cake, the trouble is many people neglect to look at the actual ingredients!

First Cake

• Margerine
• Hydrogenated fat
• Cocoa flavouring
• Egg powder
• White Flour
• White salt
• White Sugar
• Preservatives

Second Cake

• Butter
• Organic free range eggs
• Organic Cocoa
• unbleached flour
• Sea salt
• Muscavado sugar

When you look at it like that it seems obvious which one would be better for you! Some of the real baddies to look out for include Aspartame (an artificial sweetner), E477 propylene glycol - the USA have recalled all medication that contained E477 but here in the UK it is still allowed in food, Sodium benzoate again has been banned in many countries, this time because of its effects on the kidney and liver but it is allowed into our food here in the UK.

Cyndi urged us all to become powerful consumers by acting on knowledge, reading food labels, choosing not to buy technology foods, being aware of GM foods, not supporting companies that do not support your families health.

The second speakers were Jennifer and Simon Floreani. Jennifer is the auther of Well adjusted babies and Simon is aiding the Australian government with a real shake up of the their health care system. They run an amazing family chiropractic and wellness practice in Australia and they covered many topics including pregnancy, birthing, vaccinations, breastfeeding and natural ways to boost immunity. We love treating families at County Chiropractic so it was great to get together with so many other like minded chiropractors from across the world

Jenny writes a great blog on her website

http://www.welladjustedbabies.com/blog/

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with Violetta Cope 'The Green Chef'. She runs fabulous courses on raw food and this was the introduction to bringing more raw, live food into our lives. Steve and I have been gradually bringing more live food into our meals over the last couple of years and have really felt the benefits in terms of better health and greater energy. It was great to have some new ideas especially things our 1 year old daughter Amber can eat as I am very aware of over cooking her veg to make them soft enough for her to eat. My favourite recipes we tried were a raw porridge and raw soup which I will definately be trying this week! Steve is just off to Reapers our local health food shop as we speak to buy the new ingredients we need. I can highly recommend Violetta's courses and hope that many of our practice members will take up her courses to boost their health and improve their lives. We hope that Violetta will soon be joining us at the practice offfering manual lymphatic drainage treatments as she is a real inspiration and will be a great addition to our fantastic team.

http://www.thegreenchef.co.uk/

Thanks for reading my blog

Rachael