5 Things about visiting the doctor

It’s the blog topic I’ve been trying to avoid, but it just won’t go away. In the last three weeks I’ve made 4 trips to the GP, 2 trips to the ENT specialist, one trip to the blood lab and spent an afternoon in emergency. Sickness is boring the BS out of me, but in the spirit of art imitating life, here are my 5 things about visiting the doctor…

1.     WAITING ROOM TOYS: Our local surgery used to provide a couple of toys for the little ones to spit all over during the long wait. The star of toy corner was an activity centre thing shaped like a dog’s face. You pull its tongue, roll its eyes, push its nose, you know the drill. That dog was a beacon to every boogey nosed, feverish, rashed-up kid in the ‘hood. If your kid wasn’t sick when you walked in, it would definitely be afterward. I christened it Vomit-Dog. I’ve met other mums who had named him as well: Death-Dog, Spew-Puppy, Poo-Pooch etc. Poo-Pooch is gone now - the doctors realised he was a cesspit of infectious disease. These days, to keep the kids quiet in the waiting room, I show them pictures of Hugh Jackman in Woman’s Day, and to date, this hasn't made anyone sick.

2.     NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY: No one plans their illnesses. No one pre-empts their kid getting up at 5am and projectile vomiting across the room. Generally, when you call to make an appointment, it’s impromptu. Have you ever called your doctor on Monday because you suspect that by Wednesday you might have the flu? My mum does this every week but I’m sure you don’t. By the time you call the doctor, you’re probably feeling pretty sad and sorry for yourself and would maybe like a little cuddle and a cup of tea. You certainly don’t want ‘Sorry love, we’re fully booked today. Next appointment’s Saturday.’ Really?! I might be dead by Saturday!!! Why does this happen? Can’t they factor in a few unexpected illnesses?  Surely there is such a thing – we’ve had three in three weeks and I’m sure we’re not alone. Anyone?

3.     PEEING INTO A CUP: Now big thinkers, here’s the irony…Why is it that you can’t see your doctor at the drop of a hat, but when the doctor says ‘could you please go into the bathroom and pee into this cup’ you’re expected to waltz into the communal lavatory and split your whiskies on cue, just like that. What if you’re not ready? What if you’re dehydrated? Yick! What if you actually manage to do one? Then you have to carry the warm little jar of pee back from the bathroom and into the surgery. Past all those people in the waiting room. Past Vomit Dog whose eyes are always watching. And everyone thinks you're pregnant. Here’s my hot tip: in winter, shove the jar up your sleeve and act normal. Here’s my hot, hot tip: In summer, wear long sleeves to the doctors just in case. What could be worse?

4.     STOOL SAMPLES! – I’ve been blessed so far to not require one of these myself but I did need one for my daughter once and that was an epic adventure because the reason she was being tested was… constipation! I can’t remember how long it took me to get that sample, or who suffered more during the wait. Let’s say her, poor cherub. We eventually got the sample, and I carried the little pot of turd around in my handbag until I could get it safely back to the doctor. It even came to the park with us for reasons I can’t remember now, but I did protect that poop like a golden nugget – it was harder to come by and therefore much, much more valuable.

5.     CONDESCENDING DOCTORS: First I’m going to mention all the fabulous medical staff we’ve encountered lately. They were quick, switched-on and made being sick as fun as it could possibly be for a kid. Now I’m going to tell you about Mr Condescending. Mr Condescending actually looked down his (large) nose at me and said ‘it’s funny how symptoms disappear when you walk into the hospital.’ Yep. Because a 7 year old can fake a 39-degree temp. And vomiting. And can make her body flop on cue and knows how to roll her eyes into the back of her head. I must have forgotten my daughter was possessed. Really? When you’re worried enough to take your child to hospital, do you need to be made to feel like an idiot as well? Here’s my last tip: Even if they make you feel like a dramatic, overreacting helicopter mum, always do what you think is right for your child, because in the great words of that evil witch on Rapunzel “Mamma knows best.” And we usually do.

Incidentally, my demonised daughter ended up having glandular fever, which the big-nosed doctor failed to pick up. I developed a slight crush on our ENT surgeon, who is at least 15 years my senior, balding and never going to read this blog, so I’ll say what I like about his gentle caring ways. And finally, if you ever have to collect a stool sample, may it be for constipation, as I presume this would be better than diarrhea.

Check ya’s!

5 Detox Tips for the Party Princess

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The silly season hasn’t even started and I’m already kicking off Monday morning with a cleanse for my normally well-cared for temple. It’s currently the temple of doom.  This party girl is coming off the back of four nights of eating crap and drinking more champagne and red wine than I’d normally have in a month. It's been a similar story three weeks running, and up ahead is the week-long holiday with an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord and open bar.  God help me! This week is a little more commitment free, so I’m making a commitment to self: A 5-day urgent body-repair workshop.  That’s providing I can get through Halloween without chocolate. I'm putting the Monday-Friday Detox Action Plan into, well, action.  Here's how:

1.     HAVE A JUICE DAY:  Sometimes a juice fast is exactly what you need to cleanse the bod.  That doesn’t mean going to Coles and buying as much Just Juice as you can fit in your fridge, it means dragging out that massive contraption of a juicer you spent $400 on three years ago and never use because it takes up too much bench space and is such a pain in the arse to clean.  Get it out, get out your veges and get juicing.  If you can manage two or three days, then bully for you – you’ll be feeling refreshed and energetic again in no time!  And just a reminder, even though you’re juicing,  keep drinking your water in between; you still it to flush out your system and keep yourself regular!

2.     SWEAT IT OUT:  For me this means a hot yoga class, but it can be any exercise of your choice.  When you’re all slugged out from the food/drink overload, exercise is the last thing you want to do, but it makes a massive difference.  Make sure you get at least three workouts in.  Sweat as much as you can.  Drink as much water as you can.  This will help get rid of the toxins you so kindly dumped on yourself, and help restore the fluids you lost in doing so.  

3.     VEG OUT:  Make a commitment to veg out for 5 whole days.  That is, stuff yourself with as many vegetables as you possibly can in every meal.  Ideally, cut the proteins too, especially meat and dairy. If you can’t live without carbs, have them only at breakfast, and veg yourself silly the rest of the day.  If you think this sounds limiting here’s a selection of what you can have: lettuce in every variety, cucumber, capsicum, celery, beetroot, tomatoes, avocadoes, broccoli, carrots, fennel, eggplant, sweet potato, beans, sprouts, squash, cabbage, Chinese greens, peas, spinach on and on… There’s so much to choose from and tons of ways to cook them.  If you’re stuck, check this gorge website for ideas: www.vegiehead.com.au.

4.     GREENER IS CLEANER: (And generally leaner too).  If you’re veging out beautifully, then you’re already getting lots of good nutrients and giving your bod a good internal clean out, but you can go one step better.  Use a green powder like wheatgrass, barley grass, spirulina or a greens combo in your juices to give an extra cleansing edge. Adding liquid chlorophyll to your drinking water is another way to cleanse you blood, help remove toxins and nourish your cells.  You can get all of this at any good health food store. Drink up pup. - you asked for it! 

5.     GET A MASSAGE:  So you’ve eaten every soft cheese on the market, at least four bags of Doritos, a few slices of pizza and slipped in a sly Cornetto on the side.  You drank too much, danced all night and maybe even rode the porcelain bus home…do you really deserve to reward yourself with a massage?  YES!  Wait till the end of your detox week when your body has had the time to regain some of its former glory, and then treat yourself to a full body massage and body brush.  As you cleanse internally, the massage action will help release even more toxins and the body brush will remove any of the flaky gross stuff coming out through your skin.  True story, this really happens.

By the end of the week you’ll feel brand new. Or at least back to your old self.  When Saturday hits and you have another hen’s night/40^th/kids birthday/ neighbours nibbles or all four of them, you won’t feel so bad about tucking into the chocolate crackles and caviar. 

5 totally awesome things about yoga

Ahh, no. This is not me.

If you know me, you know I yoga.  I’ve been doing it in some capacity for about 12 years, and have just upped my dedication to 4 times a week. Yowser! It’s not everyone’s cup of chai, so I don’t like to harp on, but given it’s such a massive part of my life, it would be amiss not to blog about it at least once. So now I’m going to torture you with the 5 things I love about yoga, and then I’ll shut up about it.  Promise. 

1.     YOU CAN ARM WRESTLE BLOKES – I’m a small chick.  Some of the 5^th graders at my kids’ school are taller than me, and I could probably wear their clothes and shoes.  But I’m tough!  I can arm-wrestle grown men and if I don’t win, I put up a bloody good fight.  I can hold my own body weight in a manner of positions and do push-ups without having to go the lady version.  If things need to be lifted, moved or carried, I can do it, which is handy when you have two kids and the travelling caravan of crap that goes with them. I may be a pygmy person, but I’m a strong one. 

2.     IT’S A ONE-HOUR ISLAND RETREAT – Life’s bloody busy.  And sometimes hard and stressful and tiring.  Even when it’s none of those things, it’s still noisy.  Some people go on holidays to escape, and while I wouldn’t knock back a trip to Bali, an hour on my mat is almost the same. It’s pretty much the only time I’m quiet (like, ever!).  Not only am I quiet, I’m not focusing on my silly self and all that junk that goes with me. I just go with the flow, switch off, zone out and let time pass. It’s my daily peace and the closest to relaxed I am. Ever.

3.     YOU FINALLY ACCEPT YOUR BODY – Pre-kids I was like most women, constantly worried what my body looked like.  After carrying those kids, shooting, well, sort of having them tugged out, feeding them and watching them grow, I’m more amazed by what bodies do than what they look like. Lots of running and stacks of yoga later, I’m more amazed by this than ever. I can’t lie and pretend I don’t care at all about my body, but instead of bitching and sulking about the bits I don’t like, I'm more interested in how it’s working, what it can do and how it feels. This makes me happy. 

4.     IT’S OUT-OF-YOUR-COMFORT-ZONE EMPOWERING – Every class is different, and every practice is a path. Sometimes you’re just there, going through the motions, sometimes you’re off with the fairies or having a rest, but sometimes, you challenge yourself so hard that by the time you finish, you feel like you’ve conquered Mt Everest. Not that I have, but I imagine this is how it feels. You try things you wouldn’t normally try and push to do things that seem impossible and when it hurts and you want to stop, you just hang out and breathe until you realise you're doing it. You turn yourself into a pretzel and suddenly feel like you can do anything you want to. And then in the real world, you try to.  

5.     YOU FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY - At my yoga, just about everyone has a tattoo.  There’s lots of young, fit, type A personalities with dragons on their legs, lotus flowers on their backs and lovers’ names on their wrists and ankles. While I’m probably older than the average devotee and sport no body art other than shopping reminders on my hands or texta from the kids’ drawings, I still feel a lovely sense of belonging when I walk into the studio.  We’re all there for the same thing and have some connection to each other, if for no other reason than we continue to show up and do something we love together. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, without using butterscotch schnapps.

So there it is - my yoga rant.  I promise not to go on about it again, but F#@* I love it!  I need a bumper sticker that says ‘Yoga makes me happy.’  You think I could make a million bucks selling them? Maybe I’ll try.

5 things you can do to help the environment

You don’t have to be a hippy tree-hugging vegan animal activist in order to be kinder to the planet. It’s actually super-easy, totally relevant and incredibly important to do so. Slowly but surely, ‘regular’ people are awakening to the need to care for the space we live in, if not changing it. Here are 5 teeny-weeny itsy bitsy things you can do that won’t change your life, but may just change the future.

My two best mates

1. SAY NO TO PLASTIC BAGS AND BOTTLES - I couldn’t have written this without the shocking stuff I read in Peppermint Magazine a while ago. Stuff that told me that in just 1 year Australia produced 582.9 million plastic bottles and that 323 million of those ended up in waste. (I presume the others are making their way there). That to make 1 plastic bottle uses 400ml of oil, and to put 600ml of ‘pure’ water into that bottle requires 3 LITRES of water to begin with! Get a drink bottle, please! In fact, get 2! I stash one in my handbag and one in the car, and I’m (very) cool, hydrated and thirst-free all day long. You can be too.  As for the bags, I’m just going to say this: 1 bag = 1000 years to breakdown. 10 million used every day in Australia alone and 1923 marine animals and birds dead each day because of them. You know this. Get some hessian bags, or pull out the floral granny trolley and make a statement at your supermarket, or better yet, at your local market…

2. BUY LOCAL IN-SEASON PRODUCE – Preferably at a local market. They’re popping up all over the place, even in the big bad capital cities, so there’s no excuse.  Aside from the produce, there’s normally other organic and healthy stuff to try. Sometimes there’s music, clothes, bags, candles and other fun stuff to look at. You’ll be supporting local farmers, keeping Aussie dollars in Australia, and keeping those dollars local. You support real people, not massive corporations who don’t care what they put in or spray on your food. If you can’t go to a market, there are stacks of online delivery options. At the very least, you can buy in season; it’s healthier for you and for the environment as it hasn’t been refrigerated, flown and trucked across the globe, just so you can enjoy a pineapple in the dead of winter. This makes price whining unrealistic too. Some organic produce may cost a little more, but in-season foods cost way less than those internationally shipped pineapples. Get serious. Just think about where your food comes from.

3. COMPOST AND RECYCLE – I’m including recycling here because I’m amazed how many people simply can’t be bothered to separate cans, bottles and plastics, or newspapers, egg cartons and magazines. The hard work is done for you. There are special bins. It’s SO easy, and makes SUCH a difference. Just comply - it all helps. Composting is even better. We started composting a few years ago, and it cut our general rubbish in half. Every banana skin, vegetable peel, left over dinner and uneaten crust from every sandwich you lovingly made for your spoilt kids - all of it, in the compost. This does require a bit of work. Luckily my husband loves it. He takes the compost out, mooshes it around, turns it, looks at it, turns it over again, and eventually uses it to make a little part of the garden nicer. You can get special compost bins or worm farms (some councils give them away) and use them to make your own herb or vege garden. All keeping you away from the supermarket, saving a few dollars, keeping you healthy and doing that wee bit extra for Mother Earth.

4. CUT DOWN ON RED MEAT– There's so much information and environmental recommendations out there about this. The biggest problems associated with eating beef in particular are the levels of emissions it produces, the cost and energy used in grain/feed production and the deforestation and land degradation caused by producing all that feed. Put aside the nasty way animals are slaughtered, the hideous conditions they live in and the drugs they’re given to prevent disease, and consider this: the methane produced by cattle is responsible for up to 18% of ALL Greenhouse Gas emissions. It requires 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. The land used to grow that grain now occupies almost 30% of the Earth’s surface. There go a few good rainforests. Astonishingly, it can take up to 100,000 litres of water to produce ONE KILO of beef! Then there are all the studies that suggest meat isn’t so hot for your health anyway. Not saying don’t eat red meat, just saying maybe not so often. You can start here: http://www.meatfreemondays.com/

5. HANG YOUR CLOTHES ON THE LINE – I’m pretty good with all of the above, but I struggle like crazy with this one. My ‘be nicer to nature’ side competes with my ‘I hate doing the washing’ side, and I wish the first team would win more often. This is one of those things that’s so simple, yet so hard to embrace, but here’s the deal; it’s better for your clothes to air-dry. It’s better for you to get outside and move. Yes…you bend over and get up again, several times, for ten minutes each day. It’s better for your hip pocket and it is SO much better for the environment. Them dryers suck lots of energy, and if you have a family, you’re using it all the time. If you live in a small place or if its winter, get a clothes horse! It’s annoying, it makes your home untidy and sometimes it can even smell, but it’s just something else, little, not time consuming better for you, better for the environment.

Funny how almost everything that makes the environment a bit healthier seems to make us a bit healthier too, ain't it? 

5 Things you should eat every day

Branded as fattening by Western diet ‘experts’ the following foods are often avoided. In truth, the fats they contain are incredibly healthy and vital for normal body function including the absorption and transportation of nutrients. Weirdly, they may actually help you lose weight (true story!) It’s all about the molecular structure of the fat (if you’re interested, research medium chain fatty acids/medium chain triglycerides), but for now, eat these!

Delish!  My Raw Cacao & Coconut Balls

1. COCONUT – The flesh, oil and juice are all super-rich in nutrients and have amazing health implications for the body. The fats help protect against heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. They increase metabolism, are easily absorbed quickly used by the body, so they’re less likely to stick around and be stored on your arse. That’s just a start. There’s a plethora of other health benefits from improved diabetes health to better skin and hair, plus protection from common illnesses through antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties. Coconut water is gaining popularity too, with many athletes using it to replenish energy in place of ‘sports’ drinks. Coconut water can replace electrolytes for people who have had a bout of illness (like gastro) and has even been used to intravenously hydrate critically ill patients when saline/blood plasma is unavailable. Make sure your coconut water is young and preferably fresh, and your coconut oil is extra virgin and hexane free. Compromising on quality compromises the benefits!

2. AVOCADOS – Another awesomely nutritional food labeled ‘fattening’ and often avoided by westerners. Truth is, the fats in avocados actually help to digest, transport and absorb the real goodies – the carotenoid antioxidants that are abundant in the vegetable. It’s a perfect combination in a neat little package. That’s nature showing off again. Avocados contain vitamin E, Vitamin K, potassium, folate, selenium and zinc. They are associated with reducing inflammation in the body, with eye/macular health, heart health and lowering cholesterol. If you think cost is prohibitive – grow a tree! They take really easily from a replanted seed.

3. OLIVES – Yep, they're fatty too, but again, they are ‘good’ fats, essential for normal body function. The fats in olives are associated with reduced cardio illness, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and reduced inflammation in the body. Olives are a great source of antioxidants including lutein, which strengthens eye-sight, fights free radicals and helps prevent premature ageing. Olives are rich in B vitamins as well as Vitamin A, E and K. They are mineral rich with calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium , zinc and selenium, all of which are absorbed more easily by the presence of the olive’s fatty acids. There are loads to choose from, but again, pay attention to how they’re produced and where they come from. Organic is best!

4. CHOCOLATE (yes, chocolate!) – Celebrate! The antioxidant and flavonoid content in Raw cacao is said to be higher than that found in red wine, blueberries, green tea or any other food! In this pure form, chocolate is rich in magnesium, iron, copper, sulphur, calcium, potassium and manganese. It contains Vitamins A, B, C and E, amino acids and a myriad of elements vital for healthy body function. These nutrients have a range of benefits for heart health, and the high levels of magnesium support healthy brain function. Cacao also contains a range of plant chemicals such as anandamide and dopomine that stimulate mood and decrease stress levels, hence chocolate’s frequent association with love and pleasure. It’s a super healthy food, not a treat! But beware - mixing chocolate with sugar and milk ain’t the way to go, and raw, organic cacao definitely is. You can find a million articles and recipes for raw cacao online. Yum yum!

5. NUTS – I’m nuts about them. Walnuts and almonds especially, but we’ll include hazelnuts, pecans and cashews here too (unsalted, raw of course!). The health benefits make this whole post somewhat repetitive – antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. Are you hearing me? In the fats! Again, it’s protection from cardiovascular illness, high cholesterol weight gain and other related illnesses; metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes. Yes, nuts are high in calories. But they are also high in Vitamin E, Calcium, magnesium, selenium and iron. They are mega rich in antioxidants for vital health, cell function, regeneration and repair and the fats in nuts are actually associated with weight loss, not weight gain.
Still want that bag of Doritos? Think again.

Happy munching!