July 10th, 2011
Lord March appears to have sold his soul again as there was good weather for the weekend. The weekend has had its bad weather days in the past making it into Glastonbury for cars! My son and I attended for all three days, we decided to give the Moving Motor Show a miss on the Thursday as we knew that they would not let us drive the Alfa Romeo 8C Spider up the hill.
On the Friday we spent the time looking around the pits as it is less busy, due to F1 rules you only get to see last years models, and also the Cartier ‘style and Luxe’ the Super Cars. Very much a look and don’t touch experience. Never mind I would hate to have the responsibility of owning a Bugatti Veyron but it would be nice to have an Aston Martin. You can but dream.
This year I have become a member of the Goodwood Road Racing Club. This meant that we had forward parking- my son therefore did not have so far to walk, or even cycle which we had done the year before. ( To put him in a better light he is going to do The Big Issue Walk in London on the 30th September this year- He needs to get a bit fitter though. Yo can sponsor him here http://tiny.cc/ihcv6). Also we could make use of the Club enclosure. This make it easy to spending three days at the FOS, as it was a place of calm and cleanliness. That is not to say that elsewhere is dirty, but in the club there are table cloths and flowers on the table. There are also a large number of people to clear the tables and to keep the area tidy. Finally James did managed to see Mark Webber in the distance!
On the Saturday it was a walk up to the paddock at the top of the hill, to see the drivers finish. On the way up you get to see the rally cars bouncing along the smooth chalk road in between the trees. Scary. We make a note to spend more time watching them next year. The highlight was seeing Jensen Button answering questions and signing autographs. He drove up in the Mclaren MP4-12C rather that the race car as he had an injury that needed treatment prior to the British GP next week. Unfortunately he was not able to drive his car on three wheels and so had to drop out of the GP. An interesting machine was the jet propelled motor bike. It had a gas turbine engine from a helicopter mounted on the motorbike chassis. It is road legal with a power output of 420bhp and sounds like a jet.
Sunday was the day we paid to sit in the grandstand and again we managed to get into the one opposite the house. We went armed with enough food to last all day – we were only staying for the morning- plus a flask of hot coffee. We did not want to lose our seats. What can I say, we had Lewis Hamilton doing a donut in the 2008 McLaren – Mercedes MP4 – 23, a car being driven up on two wheels all the way up the 1.2 mile track, various stunt motor cyclists. Finally the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500 motor race. This included the yellow jackets of the marshals, a marching band and a guitarist on top of Goodwood House playing the American National Anthem. Brian May also made quite an appearance, arriving on an old American truck. His band arrived on a large lorry with hugh speakers at either end, positioning themselves in front of Goodwood House.
There were also the Red Arrows and the Vulcan bomber, which is always very impressive over the weekend. Trick BMX riders and stunt motorcyclists. In the end there was too little time to see everything. Looks as though we will be back next year.
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February 27th, 2011
One of the biggest problems with being a dentist is how people perceive you. Are you a private dentist or cosmetic dentist?
I look on the best thing that I can provide my patients with is long term dental health. This means looking at all the factors that make up the way they use their teeth. The way the jaw works. Do they grind their teeth? Do their teeth have worn edges and maybe chips. Do teeth at the back keep fracturing.
These problems affect a lot of people and it is becoming more common as people retain their teeth well into old age.
Sorting these problems early means that as old age approaches they will have less problems.
Yes I do improve peoples smiles, with whitening, veneers, six month smiles, but only on a solid foundation that will give them continued dental health.
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February 15th, 2011
We smile to convey joy and goodwill. The smile is one of the four primal human gestures. The others are fear, anger and disgust.
We begin to smile as early as two days old.
In the book the Perfect Smile by James Doundoulakis, he informs us that “When produced properly a smile allows us to communicate eloquently and gracefully. We smile to show respect and deference, to demonstrate a desire to cooperate and intent to please. The smile is our fundamental social gesture and an essential tool of social interaction. To not smile is to endure isolation and loneliness.”
There are many who believe that their teeth and gums are unattractive. This could be due to the teeth being crooked, chipped, missing or heavily stained. These people find it difficult to smile. It deprives them of a basic form of human communication.
But all is not lost. Treatment can be as simple as polishing or whitening to more advanced treatments like 6 month smiles and veneers.
I am happy to give free advice regarding the Six Month Smiles treatment in Chichester, to give you that perfect smile.
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January 7th, 2011
At the end of last year I attended a course on Self Hypnotism run by Adam Eason, www.adameason.com.
This was a fascinating course. By the end of it we were able to break an arrow with the soft part of our neck, become a steel girder supported between two chairs, see photo. Finally be able to have a needle placed in a fold of our skin without pain.
There a much written about what hypnotism is. Derren Brown in his book ‘Tricks of the Mind’ has a whole chapter on ‘What is Hypnosis?’. Adam Eason defines hypnosis as communication. It is the communication between the conscious, questioning analytical, intellectual part of the mind and the Sub-Conscious, emotional and autonomic part. We use self-hypnosis for a long list of activities that we do naturally. We all, on a regular drive home, can sometimes wonder how we got there.
The mind is easily fooled. Paddi Lund the famous dentist from Australia tells the story of how we perceive pain. We can be playing the best game of our lives and fall over badly grazing our knee, but carry on to score the goal. It is only later when we look at our knee do we feel pain. Likewise we can be in a torture chamber strapped down. We can see all the knives and torture implements laid out in front of us. The torturer out of sight picks up a feather and runs it down your back. This to you feels as if a knife cutting the skin.
This brings us back to dentistry. The imagination plays an important part in how we perceive pain. The more relaxed we are the less we perceive pain. The first thing you do when you hypnotize yourself is to relax. This is one of the most important procedures when treating a patient . We aim to do this from when you enter the building.
I am going to explore this subject further and will be attending a year’s course on clinical hypnosis later in the year.
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November 26th, 2010
People ask what is Lindy Hop. This article describes it very nicely.
Fitness Workshop: Lindy Hop – Telegraph.
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November 9th, 2010
November is Mouth Cancer Actions Month; organised by the BDHF – some revealing statistics have been published.
• 1 person in 10 has never heard of throat cancer – more awareness predictably being in the over the age of 50.
• An increasing number of young people are being diagnosed with the disease.
• It is responsible for 1 death every 5 hours in the UK alone.
• It kills more people than testicular and ovarian cancer combined.
• The rates of mouth cancer have increased by 40% during the past decade.
• There has been an increase in 10% over last year’s figures to 6,000 new cases a year.
Dentistry is primarily associated with quality of life and rarely with life and death. People survive without teeth – although I would not want to be one of them. Mouth cancer is devastating in treatment and consequence.
This is why I routinely examine my patients for early signs of the disease inside the mouth and to examine the areas outside the mouth for lumps and bumps.
So I will:
• Tell you what I am looking for
• Tell you what signs and symptoms are so that you can become aware
• Tell you how many people die of the disease
• Tell you what the risk factors are
• Tell you that’s why it’s important to have a regular screening as part of their routine recall
• Tell you “if in doubt….get checked out”
I wish to thank Alun Rees who had this article on his blog page.
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October 22nd, 2010
This was from a happy patient who had just completed 6MS in six months.
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October 18th, 2010
The definition of occlusion is the bite or mode of meeting of the teeth.
According to the British Society of Occlusal Studies 20-25% of adults suffer from regular headaches.
Imagine you had a stone in your shoe that you could not remove. You had to walk around all day with this stone. You would adjust your walking so that the stone did not cause pain when you walked. After a while your muscles of that leg would hurt as well as the knee.
In your mouth you can have a part of the top of the tooth that if the mouth closed normally would cause pain. The muscles then learn to close the jaw so that the tooth is not touched when the jaw closes. This can go on every day without you realizing that you could have a problem.
If we are stressed we tend to clench our teeth more so that more force is applied to our muscles around neck and head. They don’t like this so start to ache and the ones on the side of the head begin to cause headaches, rather like the muscles of the leg that try to avoid the stone.
When someone comes to see me with these symptoms I check all the muscles for tenderness. I then provide a guard for their teeth that allows the jaw to move more freely. Over the course of a couple of weeks the pain will disappear, as the muscles become more relaxed. Finally I adjust the teeth to get rid of the piece of tooth that is causing the obstruction, at this stage the patient would not need the tooth guard.
I am always happy to answer any questions you may have regarding this problem.
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June 6th, 2010
This is an excellent entertainment. It is based on the childrens book ‘War Horse” by Michael Morpurgo, about a horse which is brought up by a your lad who looses it when the father sells it to the army so that it can fight in the 1st world war. It is basically a puppet show with live actors. If your idea of a puppet shown is Thunderbirds think again. The play was developed at the National Theatre and a lot of time was spent in developing the the horses. The horses are very believable so much so that you can feel their pain and suffering during the performance. You do not ‘see’ the puppeteers, they blend into the back ground.
The story is very strong and moves along at a fair pace. It includes music and folk songs that add to the experience. Look at the web site to get an idea of how good it is. http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/45205/home/war-horse-official-website.html
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June 6th, 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber has received much negative press regarding Love Never Dies. Lover Never Dies is the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, the musical he wrote for Sarah Brightman over 21 years ago. It starred Michael Crawford and his wife Sarah Brightman. The music had been released on a CD some months before and produced three top ten hits. It was based on a very well known story which had been make into several films. The most famous was with Lon Chaney playing the disfigured Phantom. The musical was an instant hit and has been doing well all around the world.
Love Never Dies is a completely new musical. It is the first for many years not to be based on any other source. The music and the story were released only weeks before it opened. It had very mixed reviews.
I went to see it several weeks ago and was very impressed. The story has moved on by 10 years. The characters have developed and I feel they are made more believable. I never believed in the characters in the original Phantom and I felt it was the poor relation to Les Mis. The action has moved to Coney Island where the Phantom fled. The opening evokes the feeling of the fun fair and starts to pull you into the story. Christine is now a very successful Opera singer, who is saddled with her husband Raoul, who has become a gambler and an alcoholic. They also have a 10 year old boy Gustave.
The music is not as memorable as Phantom but is very powerful and a joy to listen to. The sets are well conceived and certainly as good as the original but in a different style.
Overall a very enjoyable musical with a strong ending. I feel it will develop over the coming months. The cast are excellent and it deserves to have a long run
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