Good health is vital Wellbeing in Former player manager offers mobile health focus at seaside check service to Limestone Coast businesses
Robe Health Harmony & Happiness Festival this weekend All are welcome to come along to the Health Harmony and Happiness Festival at the Robe Institute (Mundy Tce, Robe) on Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12. Opening hours are 9.30am-4pm. Check out your luck to see if you will be one of the daily raffle winners. Different healing modalities, expertise and products from amazing stallholders are showcased at the festival in a friendly, relaxed and stimulating environment. Enjoy new experiences and wonderful products. New stallholders among regular attendees will make it a day full of discoveries. The readers at the festival will be ready to give you amazing insights. Erica will offer her psychic/ clairvoyant readings and tarot reading are available with Katie Ann. Come and experience a card reading with Frances and check out her range of products. Body work will be available to relieve you of tense spots such as sore backs, shoulders and necks. A variety of modalities include Bowen Therapy, kinesiology, acupressure, reiki, massage and cranio sacral work. You can ask Heather at BodyTune Health Care about your brain profile and techniques to improve mood, behaviour, learning and achieve personal goals. Ask her about online and face-to-face personal development courses such as Brain Gym®, Reiki and Regeneration Healing. Create your own calm and relaxing environment with new
knowledge and products. Discover Yoga Pam’s meditation CD. Check out food grade products from Miessence’s organic and certified organic range. BodyTune Health Care also has 4life products that assist the immune system and general well-being plus doTERRA pure essential oils, Shell Essences and ‘Lift My Spirit’ sprays. Talk to Annie about the Melaleuca Wellness product range. Coonawarra Candles will be there on Sunday with their range of scented candles. Enjoy coffee & more from Linda’s Café & Coffee Run van. New stallholders include Rosemarie, who will offer you her amazing crystals. Marcia’s Groovy Designs offers stretch velvet flaired pants, patchwork skirts and upcycled denim. Jo has homemade dog treats for your special pets. Contact the Health Harmony and Happiness secretary Heather Gibbons on 87682537 or 0407 978 335; or email hgibbons@westnet. com.au for further information.
Ricky Nixon was a pioneer in the AFL player management space, has close personal relationships with a raft of celebrities, in the sport and entertainment industry, and is now in the health industry, having set up a mobile health check business. Vital Health Checks is the latest incarnation of Ricky’s career and he is quick to point out that when he established the service at the end of 2019, with the view to making it easier for people to take care of their health by visiting businesses and work sites, he had no clue how vital Vital Health Checks would become when a month later, we were all swept up in the COVID pandemic. Ricky has established the service in Melbourne and nom, courtesy of his connection to Mount Gambier, the Limestone Coast can now benefit from everything Vital Health Checks has to offer, from medical and mental health checks, to laser skin checks, wellbeing seminars and flu and COVID vaccinations. Ricky’s partner, a successful mortgage broker, convinced the former player manager to purchase an investment property in the Blue Lake City and it opened Ricky’s eyes to the possibilities regional areas presented for his mobile health service. He already has clients in Bendigo, Shepparton and Warrnambool. “I didn’t realise the scale of business and big industries here so this is a great opportunity for us to bring our medical health checks to Mount Gambier,” Ricky said. While he has no experience in the health sector, what he does have is a raft of personal stories that have inspired him to tackle the issue, particularly with men, to put health checks a long way down the priority list. Ricky is determined to make taking care of yourself as easy as possible by bringing those health checks right to the doorstep of your workplace. “So many of us say we should go and get a health check but we never do,” Ricky said. Ricky started to focus on health and wellbeing when his friend Clinton Grybas, an Australian sports commentator, died in his sleep when he was 32, back in 2008.
“…so many of us say we should go and get a health check but we never do…” Ricky Nixon (Vital Health Checks) More recently, his good mate Shane Warne’s death, as well as the deaths of Michael Gudinski and Glenn Wheatley, have only served to reinforce his commitment to becoming a key player in the mobile health check space. “Basically we have created a very quick check,” Ricky said. “Things like blood pressure, cholesterol and we also focus on mental health.” And the mental health space will always be a focal point for Vital Health Checks, given Ricky’s close relationship with the late Danny Frawley. “All these personal experiences with people close to me are what really drives me,” Ricky said. Which is why he is looking to focus on the wellbeing seminars as part of his mobile service and aside from medical experts, he also has an impressive little black book of contacts from the sporting and entertainment industries that can also be part of those seminars
“…all these personal experiences with people close to me are what really drives me…” Ricky Nixon (Vital Health Checks)
as they share their own personal experience and expertise. Many of Ricky’s clients are businesses who pay for their employees’ health assessments by Vital Health Checks. “They realise that healthy staff is how you keep your business up and running,” he said. Ricky has put together a team of qualified nurses, specialising across a wide variety of areas and he is ready and waiting to bring his team to Mount Gambier for businesses looking to take advantage of the convenience of Vital Health Checks. The general health check is about a 10 minute session, the same with the skin checks, as well as the opportunities for vaccination and testing your metabolic rate and metabolic age. “We already have quite a few stories where people did find a health issue from the checks and were able to go and see a specialist and get things sorted and back to full health much more quickly than if they had never had a check and didn’t know what was going on,” Ricky said. Of course, Ricky’s passion for AFL, he played 63 games for Carlton, St Kilda and Hawthorn, has never really waned and he is hoping to bring coaching clinics and sportsmen’s nights to Mount Gambier as well, given his new connection to the city. To find out more about Vital Health Checks head to the website www.vitalhealthchecks.com.au or email admin@vitalhealthchecks. com.au VITAL HEALTH CHECKS: (Above) Ricky Nixon (back far right) with some of the Vital health Check team at a site visit. STAR POWER: (Left) Dane Swan lines up for a vaccination. QUALIFIED NURSES: (Below) A Vital Health Check nurse at a work site.
