Juicing for Joint Pain

For years I have suffered from joint pain.  I would wake up in the morning with sore fingers and find myself running them under the hot tap just to get them moving.  I had loads of tests but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong.  They suggested I had fibromyalgia, which seems to be the diagnosis they give when all other testing has been exhausted.  I was miserable and at the time very overweight.

I watched a programme called 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead' and decided I would embark on a 30-day Juicing diet, see if I could lose a few pounds. I am not going to lie to you,  it was the hardest diet I have ever embarked on.  However the upside to this hellish experiment?  The weight just dropped off, some days it was as much as a KG a day, I was thrilled.

More amazing though, as I woke up on day 10 PAIN-FREE! I didn't need to warm my hands under the hot tap.  My hands didn't hurt.  I got out of bed and I realised nothing else hurt either, not my knees, hips, arms nothing.  I wandered around my bedroom thinking this is impossible and maybe I was just having a 'good' day.

However, the more days I juiced, the better I felt, the pain never returned.  It was amazing.  It was at this point I decided to start researching some of the fruits and vegetables I was juicing to see what qualities they might possess as far as anti-inflammatories go.

It turns out some of these ingredients are superstars, in fact, all of them are in their own way.  For example, pineapple is literally natures anti-inflammatory.  It has a something called bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme known for its anti-inflammatory properties. Plus, one cup of fresh pineapple is a great source of fiber, potassium, and vitamin C, so you really can't lose.  The more I researched the more I realised that these fruit and vegetables had to be the reason for my lack of pain. My favourite recipe in our book and is heavy on the pineapple is 'Pineapple Pleasure'. This one really is a pleasure to drink, it's sweet goodness is delicious.

Unfortunately,  I am allergic to all over the counter synthetic anti-inflammatories which over my life has been a complete pain.  But now if I get pain caused by inflammation I revert back to juicing.  A side note is I have found pineapple a lifesaver during chest infections too, especially with my kids. 

I wanted to share my findings with the world! So, I thought the easiest way to do this was to write down all the recipes I have been using over the years in an eBook.  With the help of my lovely partner, we have just finished writing 'Juicing for Joints' and it is my great hope that you will get as much relief from these recipes as I did.

I would absolutely advocate you do at least a 10-day juice fast to cleanse and detox your system, to begin with, and then just add one of these delish juices to your diet every day.  Definitely watch 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead' it is so inspiring.

I intend to follow my own advice as over the last couple of years I have fallen back into old ways.  I have lapsed with my juicing and my joint pain has returned.  So, this is day 1 for me too but what's great is I know that what I am embarking on really works. 

I would love to hear how you get on, which juices you love and which juices you hate....my least favourite is anything green and my favourite is anything yellow.  However, knowing something is really good for you and is actually helping can really make something more palatable!

You can pick up our book from the Kindle store on Amazon.  It's called 'Juicing for Joints'

"Why can't the English?"

"Why can't the English teach their children how to speak" I can hear Rex Harrison crooning in my head as I start this post today and oh how I agree with the sentiments of that song!







Listening to a pair of teenagers in the library this morning was the final straw!  Their conversation went something like this -

"So well like I saw him 'an I just foght he was kinda like cute and I like I said to him like why dont we go aat like together like" the first girl says

"Oh f***** hell like that is so sick like" the second girl replies

Then to my surprise the first girl then replies "Yeah I well pleased like"  I totally misunderstood the conversation!!

I had to walk to away it actually hurt my ears to listen to them!  It did start the inevitable argument in my head of what's happened to the English language 'like'.  With Shakespeare, Wilde, Austen and  such masters of the English language to be so proud of how did we get to the point where conversation became so shortened and ugly, how did we fall so low?

I suppose some of it is my age and the young people of today would accuse me of not 'getting with it' or to write the way they do is 'sick man' but I don't care I don't want to shorten every word in the English language to suit this new ridiculous fashion.  It took me near on half an hour the other week to work out a text message a dear friend in the UK, (granted she is a few years younger than me), it went like this -

"Hi K8T twas so gtsu we musm lik hope lyf n NZ S goin wel n its nce 2B hom d gals r luvly n twas realy nce 2 mEt em we'll cum n SYS we hope B4n" 

I am sorry to "dis" this way of talking but come on people!!!  I get it that young people would look at this and just know what it says but I just think it's a crying shame that this is what our beautiful language has become, through sheer laziness and need for instant gratification.  I thought it was just here in New Zealand but sadly upon research it's seem to be a worldwide phenomenon in English speaking countries.

It's not just the way we speak either even the words being added to the Collins dictionary of late are telling of the way our culture and language is changing.

For your amusement :-

Bridezilla - a woman whose behaviour in planning the details of her wedding is regarded as intolerable

Blootered - intoxicated; drunk

Bashtag - a hashtag that is used for critical and abusive comments

Cyberbully - someone who uses electronic communication to hurt, persecute or intimidate people

Facebook - a popular social networking website

FaceTime - an application for a mobile communications device that enables people to speak to each other while simultaneously observing each other on a video display

Faff - to dither or fuss

Amazeballs - an expression of enthusiastic approval  (new one on me, might have to use this one!!)

Floordrobe - a pile of clothes left on the floor of a room (my daughter's have one of those!)

Frenemy - a supposed friend who behaves in a treacherous manner

Lollage - the practice of using the text messaging abbreviation LOL (do we need a word for this?)

Mummy porn - a genre of erotic fiction designed to appeal to women

Sick - good; excellent

Thanx - thank you (this one really grates on me!)

Bang tidy - of exceptionally good quality

Tiger mother - a very strict mother who demands that her children reach a high level of achievement


Believe me this is just a selection of the ridiculous words that have found their way into the dictionary of late.   I wonder whether we will now start dropping the letter 'u' out of half our words too like so many other countries around the world.  It drives me mad when the spell check wants me to change colour to color, it's just sheer laziness!

In all seriousness though it is sad, in an age when technology is taking over and believe me I am not averse to technology, I blog, I twitter and I facebook (look at all those new words I am using!) but what I suppose that concerns me is that we are losing something truly beautiful and replacing it with something so very ugly.  It would be so much better if we first taught our children the beauty of the English language and then 'like' let them ruin it 'like'.  At least then they might first appreciate it's poetry and beauty and the great writers of the centuries would not be lost to gather dust on library bookshelves.

I know that fairly recently Emma Thompson (Emma Thompson's Rant) went on a rampage in the UK totally 'dissing' the use of 'like' and 'innit' and frankly Ms Thompson I agree!  It's time to fight for our beautiful language and teach our children to appreciate and use it properly, otherwise we stand to lose it forever and with it the great writers of hundreds of years as they become lost to a language that people will no longer be able to decipher.

I am going to stop ranting now (I could go on and you know it!) and leave you with two beautiful examples of why we simply have to stop with the 'like' 'innit' 'bro' 'sick' and 'dissing'.

Sonnet XVIII by William Shakespeare 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I won't tell you how many words the so called spell checker underlined in that piece!

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

"If you will thank me," he replied, "let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny.  But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you".

Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word.  After a short pause, her companion added, "you are too generous to trifle with me.  If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once.  My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever"

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances.  The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.  had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction.  There was too much to be though, and felt, and said, for attention to any other subjects....


Now THAT's 'Mummy Porn'

Have a great day folks!

Kate x

P.s On an unrelated note and in regards to an earlier post 'Single Mum and the Dating Game' my first date with the man who only has one very nice head was totally wonderful 'like' and I am now nervously excited waiting on the second date 'like'!

My Love Story

What makes us who we are?  What are our love stories?  I ask couples to tell me their love stories so as a celebrant I can weave their story into their ceremony to make them unique and bespoke.  It also helps me to get an understanding of who they are as a couple and what makes them tick. 

Here is my love story…

 I love photo booths at weddings and this picture was taken back in 2014 and as you can see my bride and groom are holding up a sign saying ‘Still Available’.  At the time as a Marriage Celebrant in New Zealand I felt like a bit of a fraud, not only was I single but my belief in love and therefore marriage had dwindled.  Here I was marrying couples who, don’t get me wrong, were helping to restore my wounded soul with every ‘I do’, but I still felt disillusioned.

I found myself a single Mum of two beautiful girls suddenly back at home living with my folks.  And although they provided me great comfort in a desperate time, I had completely resigned myself to being on my own forever.  Frankly at the time it was all I wanted, I had definitely entered the phase of all men are horrible!  I was wounded and hurting and I had forgotten how to love or how to trust. 

I wrote a blog called ‘My Perfect Man’, a daydream really about all the things I wished for in a man; a most ridiculous wish really, a wish you would expect to find in a young girls diary.  At the time though it was therapeutic.  My luck, or rather my choice in men during my life, well, it left a lot to be desired - everything from Gay boyfriends (who I love as friends, not so much as boyfriends) to men who were emotional bullies, who strip you of everything, if you let them.

It was late 2014 when I moved to Australia with my girls and my folks.  A new start in yet another new country, perhaps true love awaited me there?  The romantic in me clung to the hope, but as time passed by and I hit 40 years old, a few kg’s more clinging to my thighs and crow’s feet emerging, that my thoughts of romance once again dwindled away. I was destined to be a lonely cat lady, just minus the cats!

I began my studies to become an Australian celebrant at this point, and although I had been working in New Zealand doing the same thing, my qualifications did not carry over. I even featured in my training college blog one week: 'A Day in the life of a Marriage Celebrant'. It was my thought that I would move into funerals, one area where my passion really did lay.  I could leave happy couples to other celebrants and not be faced everyday with the rich emotion of love that I simply couldn’t find myself.

I also joined a theatre group. I originally trained as an actress, many moons ago in London, and it was once something I loved but getting back up on the stage was going to be a challenge after 15 years.  I was instantly surrounded by the most amazing and beautiful set of people and my confidence started to return.  Then in 2016, a man walked into my life and he would be responsible for turning my world upside down.

We got a job together working as Santa and Mrs Claus for a Christmas light display in Pimpama and for 19 days straight we worked every night together laughing and talking, and I realised very early on that this man was a truly beautiful soul.  However, it wouldn’t be until Australia day the following year, during a business trip to Sydney, that we would finally start our love story together.  The first kiss told me everything I needed to know; I was, in that one moment completely and totally in love with this man, and on a path I knew there was no turning back from.  He fulfills everything I could ever want in a partner.  He is kind, considerate, he loves my girls completely and without reservation.  He’s funny, with a wicked sense of humour that matches mine and he is not afraid of showing how he feels.  He is brave, handsome and the most beautiful soul I have ever come across. Two years on we share a house together in Merrimac with my two girls, who he absolutely dotes on, and they love him as much as I do.  He spoils them rotten as he does me. 

After my poor experiences with men, I had come to believe love was something that just existed in fairy tales, or for the lucky few.  I certainly didn’t think it would ever be on the cards for me; oh how wrong I was! 

It wasn’t long before I started doing weddings again and meeting with beautiful couples and I am happy to have found my passion again.  I am excited by their stories and even more excited as I write their ceremonies and have the privilege to be part of their day. I don’t feel like a fraud anymore; I am just happy, so very happy.

The question is, who will marry me when the time comes?!