The Ashgrove Clinic

16/11/2025

🤣🐶 Phew, we were worried for a minute there! Great news for the dog-owning faction of our practitioners. Aiden Brings Two More Dogs to the Ashgrove Pack 🐾

As you know, there’s an ongoing debate at Ashgrove: dogs or cats? For years the dog owners have had the upper hand (with Badger the Dog being our clinic mascot)… then suddenly a wave of kittens arrived and things started to look a bit uncertain.

Enter Aiden Seekings, our sports massage therapist, and proud owner of two Cocker Spaniels. Balance restored. Dog team back on top. Order reinstated.

Aiden’s dogs are basically part of his training crew. They’ve supervised early morning runs, cheered him on during half marathon training and occasionally insisted on unexpected cool-downs in the shape of some snuggles.

We like to think the running, the dogs and the sports massage expertise all blend together nicely. After all, anyone who’s ever tried to keep up with a happy dog knows the value of flexible hamstrings.

So please join us in welcoming Aiden, and his two very good dogs, to the Ashgrove family. 🐶🐶
(We fully expect the cat team to respond. Probably with disdain.)

15/11/2025

Sound on! Our Clinic director, who is notorious for being rubbish in the kitchen and rubbish with a camera has finally managed to take a video that isn’t out of focus of her elderly orange racehorse.

For no reason whatsoever, well, except that a lot of you are horse riders, we thought you might enjoy it!

Now, which one do you think is the very very naughty?!

14/11/2025

Nothing like a good massage to relax your tight muscles, ease your aches and get you back to sport or back to normal activities again.

Don't underestimate how much better you'll feel after a massage, especially if you train hard or work at a desk.

Aiden and Chloe both treat office workers as often as they treat runners, swimmers and those of you who train at the gym. They love a tight muscle and watching the effects of treatment on that muscle!

13/11/2025

Knee pain can really get in the way, can't it! Whether you're walking the dog, climbing stairs, even getting up from a chair. Sometimes it’s an old injury that never quite healed; sometimes it’s just wear and tear catching up faster than we’d like.

Physiotherapy can help with all kinds of knee problems, including:
🦵 Arthritis and general stiffness
⚽ Sports injuries such as ligament or meniscus tears
🏃 Runner’s knee and patellar tracking issues
🚴 Overuse injuries from walking, cycling or gym work
⛰️ Post-surgery recovery or joint replacement rehab

Pierre, one of our physios, is brilliant at finding out why your knee hurts. He looks at your movement, muscle balance and posture to build a plan that helps you move better, not just mask the pain.

And he tries to make sure you can incorporate your exercises into your normal daily activities, so you don't have to spend 2 hours doing your rehab!

12/11/2025

🎩 Take your hat off to this longtime qualified nurse and aesthetics practitioner. She's a calm genius in a hospital and in a treatment room in our clinic, but she hates being filmed! We were very lucky to catch her on a day when she was prepared to sit for us and help us dispel a few myths about aesthetics. Well done Elaine!

🤔 The differences between fillers and wrinkle relaxants:

People often mix these up, but they do very different jobs.

Wrinkle relaxants calm the small muscles that create expression lines - think frown lines, forehead creases, and crow’s feet. The muscles rest, the skin smooths, and you still look like you, just more relaxed.

Fillers, on the other hand, restore lost volume. They’re great for softening deeper lines, lifting cheeks, reshaping lips or restoring that gentle curve under the eyes.

Relaxants stop the over-movement that causes wrinkles. Fillers replace the structure that’s been lost.

Used together, they can subtly refresh the face, but good practitioners know where to stop.

Prescribing nurse, Elaine, says, "Most of our patients want to look rested, not different,”

“Think holiday face, not new face.” ⛱🙂

12/11/2025

Anna has 10% off one test only, first come first serve. And good stuff to know before Xmas!

You will need to sign onto one of her nutrition programmes to get full interpretation and support following the test. Discuss this with her in a free discovery call.

Anna's approach to food is to make it fun, make it tasty and make it healthy, so you feel great.

11/11/2025

Weekend news - in which there is one cat, one bat and some Aussie chocolate!

Samantha (microdermabrasion) discovered that Christmas trees with Velcro are the way forward 👌🤩🎄

Kerry (physiotherapy) was swimming in the cold ocean under Table Mountain, Cape Town. 🥶

Mindfulness Nicola had a ‘crafternoon’ with friends and made this slightly wonky tree.. needs stitching plus a few embellishments but almost there! 😂

Georgina went on a gut microbiome course. We're dying to know more about it - such a hot topic right now.

🍫 Brooke and Aiya were at a remembrance march, and Brooke found out that B&Ms sell Australian chocolate! Do you recognise it? We want to know if it's any good!!

Magdalena (acupuncture) did more studying on female fertility issues - supervised by Charlie the cat. 🐈‍⬛ ❤️

🦇Claire found a bat who fell on the ground in front of her and needed moving to a safe space.

🌺 Lots of us were at Remembrance Day parades or events. Higham's was very well attended, which was wonderful to see. ❤️

We hope you had a good weekend too!

10/11/2025

Did you know that our new sports massage therapist has treated the World Cup Samoan Women's rugby team!

10/11/2025

Sciatica - Did you see in the most recent NVN our article about sciatica?

It's a difficult condition to write about because there are so many causes and so many different experiences of the pain. Some people just have a little pain running down the back of their leg, but if you're unlucky you'll have agonising, lightening-type pain shooting down your leg.

Here's the link to the eversion of the paper, but we've also got a series of Sciatica questions and answers in our blog.

Of course you can also book a free 20 minute consultation with one of the team to discuss your pain, but the blog Nene Valley News article might help as a first step.

https://ashgrovehealth.co.uk/blog/

The 8th November 2025 issue of Nene Valley News is available in print and available to download NOW at https://nenevalleynews.co.uk/e-version/

To advertise in our next issue of Nene Valley News contact us today on 01522 692542 or email f.thomas@km-media.co.uk

09/11/2025

Higham made us proud again today with so many people attending the Market Square for Remembrance Sunday.

07/11/2025

Remembrance Sunday - as always, if you've got nobody to stand with on Sunday, and want some company, Steven will be outside the clinic and will be happy for you to join him.

Sadly, his father won't be joining him this year as he's not feeling robust enough, but he'll be there in spirit representing the Royal Marines.

07/11/2025

Wow, that’s the dead stuff that came off a patients face after microdermabrasion!