42 Lower Kings Road, Berkhamsted Herts HP4 2AA
Over 30 years Simon King has developed a deep and unique understanding of the importance of muscle reflexes and muscle strength in the maintenance of a healthy and pain-free body. He uses innovative treatment strategies to help patients become stronger and healthier so they can exercise and live without fear of illness or injury.
Nerve messages that go TO the brain are called AFFERENT (towards), while those that come FROM the brain are called EFFERENT (away from).
Simon King is an expert in Afferent Input and using Afferent Input to treat and prevent musckuloskeletal injuries.
Over thirty years in practice, Simon has always strived to understand the true origins of disease and ill health. Fascinated by muscle testing and the connections between nerves and muscles, he set about learning all he could about Applied Kinesiology and eventually became a diplomate of the ICAK in 1996. He has gone on to teach hundreds of practitioners the principles of Proprioceptive Medicine and Afferent Input.
With Jane Eastoe, he started the Naturality Wellness Centre in 2005 and has returned to the clinic after 6 years in Australia.
Simon is available Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. His specialties include sports injuries, sports performance enhancement, chronic pain and disability.
Websites:
www.live-without-pain.com
www.proprioception.org.uk
http://afferentinput.org
“When you’ve tried everything, we can still help.”
The most common complaint of patients is that they exercise regularly, eat well and have a great lifestyle, yet they continue to suffer.
They do everything “right,” but it doesn’t resolve their problem(s).
Eventually, they accept the diagnosis, learn to live with it and get on with their life, often giving up on their dreams and aspirations.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Instead of trying to treat every condition, pain and injury as a separate problem, what if we looked at the individual instead of the complaint?
Maybe the problem isn’t the disease and injury, maybe the problem is our ability to resist illness and injury in general.
Maybe if we just concentrated on being stronger and more robust, we wouldn’t need to suffer AT ALL.
Don’t worry. I won’t be recommending exercises or any of the standard health advice. I’m going to presume that if you’re here, you’ve tried those and found out for yourself that they don’t work.
If exercise solved injury, then Andy Murray wouldn’t have needed a hip replacement and Tiger Woods wouldn’t have needed 4 back surgeries.
My name is Simon King and I restore people to their strong and healthy state, just how nature intended.
I practice Afferent Input, which is the diagnosis and treatment of abnormal muscle tone.
Muscle tone protects our body from injury and is the basis of all movement which is why it’s vital to assess muscle tone and make sure it’s optimal, not too much, not too little.
Low muscle tone will predispose to injury as the protective reflexes fail. Joints are damaged and over the long-term form osteoarthritis. Muscle tone also affects the glands and organs – leading to tiredness, fatigue and susceptibility to infections.
High muscle tone can cause aching and cramping.
An Afferent Input consultation starts with FULL ASSESSMENT of muscle tone, including neurological and orthopedic testing. If areas of low muscle tone (inhibition) or increased tone (tightness or spasm) are found, the practitioner changes sensory input until tone is normal and then uses whatever treatment is necessary to make those changes permanent.
Imagine jumping off a chair onto the ground.
At the moment of impact, certain muscles start to stretch, activating hugely increased firing of the sensors in those muscles. Messages are sent to the spinal cord and immediately return to the muscle, increasing its tone, power and strength ensuring that you do NOT fall on the floor, sprain your ankle or dislocate your knee.
Imagine now you do that same jump but this time you land in bare feet on broken glass. A different reflex (the withdrawal reflex) would prevent your quadriceps from contracting because the withdrawal reflex produces INHIBITION of the quadriceps and FACILITATION of the hamstrings. The withdrawal reflex, which would normally prevent injury by stopping you from pushing your foot through a nail, now CAUSES injury by removing strength from the muscles you need.
It turns out many persistent illnesses and injuries are caused by muscle inhibition.
An Afferent Input practitioner tests the output of the muscles. Where that output is deficient or inhibited, the practitioner can provide a solution, one that restores normal muscle tone.
Depending on the patient, treatment may involve:
Simon is available at the Naturality Wellness Centre in Berkhamsted on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Treatment is centred around muscle testing to formulate a diagnosis and a plan for treatment which may involve the removal of foreign bodies (especially metal), gentle manipulation, exercise, nutrition, or environmental change.
Special interest is in sports injuries, sports performance, chronic pain and disability.
