Friday, December 31, 2010

Day 5

So I started taking the herbs today. There are 4 bottles – Colonaid, Digezaid, Gentlelax and Livafood. The first one contains psyllium, which is the best fibre you can if you need help to be regular, cascara, black walnut, fennel, Turkish rhubarb, slippery elm and cloves. At least 3 of those herbs I know to be for killing parasites and worms in the body.

Digezaid has peppermint, pineapple, papaya, kiwifruit, ginger, cayenne and licorice. With all those fruits in it, you would think it would taste good, but no.

Gentlelax has psyllium again, slippery elm, guar gum and carob. I’m not sure what those are for but I think at least one of them is to help balance blood sugar.

And finally Livafood has barley grass, bilberry. NZ kelp, dandelion, milk thistle and golden seal.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Detox Day 1-4

My detox has started, but not very well. According to the instruction book in "Brett Elliotts Ultimate Herbal Detox," (hes from Tauranga) I was supposed to cut out bread, wheat, rice and anything with sugar on the first day, meat on the second day, and any other processed food on the third day.

I unfortunately attempted to start on boxing day, but there was too much leftover food from Christmas and I ended up feasting on it all (minus the bread), meat, potatoes, salad and dessert. It was delicious.

Monday was slightly better, except for lunchtime where i was eating at my auntys. Her husband was badgering me about how bad a detox is and how I should go see a doctor who can prescribe me drugs rather than my chiropractor. I told him I don't believe in drugs. He told me I need to go to a doctor. I got mad at him. I ended up eating their meat and cheese and vegetables (but still avoiding the wheat and crackers). They also offered me some Christmas shortbread. It was delicious.

Tuesday was good. I went to the fruit and vege shop on the way home and bought a lot of cheap apricots, plums, pineapples and mangoes to snack on. They were all ripe and sweet. Especially this mango, pineapple and yoghurt smoothie that I put together. I loved it.

However, in the afternoon I went to visit my friend where I ended up eating a heap of her Christmas chocolates that she very kindly offered me. They were also delicous. I should take a leaf out of the french womans book and only eat scrumptious quality food in small amounts (rather than trying to stuff myself with budget rubbish that doesn't hit the spot). I love chocolate. Its pretty much impossible to resist.

Today was the best day so far. I had fruit and vege juice followed by an apricot and orange smoothie this morning, salad and vege stir fry for lunch and nuts for my mid afternoon snack. However I still have a few hours to go before bedtime and I'm just hoping I can avoid trouble.

On the good side, one of my flatmates is also doing a detox at the moment, which is great because theres no junk food in the house to tempt me. And my other flatmate is vegan (though she's tramping in the Ureweras at the moment) and the other flatmate thats about to move back in is also wanting to eat more healthily. So thats a good thing all around.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas day

“Small but enjoyable” would best sum up this years Christmas celebrations. My sisters in-laws were all visiting family members in Queensland, and my Aunty’s family had a get together with all my Uncle’s side down near Wellington. So it was just me and my immediate family minus my working brother (suck to work today). It’s a bit weird, since my parents split up and divorced when I was a teenager, but they seem to be on friendly terms at the moment, especially since their first grandchild was born. I doubt they’d ever be together again but when I think about it, it is slightly weird seeing them interact together.

We intended to get together at lunchtime and have a swim before lunch, but it was too overcast and windy to venture into the chilly water, so we ended up rearranging parts of Aunty’s house (its fun doing things for people while they’re away) and eating copious amounts of food. My stomach is not happy with me at the moment. Good thing I’m going to do something about that tomorrow.

Detoxing again

I went to see my Chiropractor/health practitioner on Tuesday and she told me something I found very intriguing and relevant. I’m not sure why this was the first time she ever picked it up since I’m quite sure it was a problem for at least a year, but I’m just glad she picked it up. She goes around testing points on my body that pertain to particular muscles, organs and bones to see where weaknesses and structural issues lie and then presses either on the part that needs work or a point that is tied to it eg neurolymphatic points. Often this is quite painful.

On Tuesday she told me that I had a blocked valve in my stomach, the one that links the small and large intestine. She massaged it, which seemed to release a small amount of tension residing in that spot, then she found the lymphatic release point for that valve, which was on my right knee, it was so sore I yelped and squirmed and tried to get away from her (a bit hard when you’re lying on a table high in the air). She said that a blockage in this area is linked to lower back pain, a sway back and a congested stomach. I said “you just described me to a T.”

The thing I do wonder though, is that I’ve had a sway back since I was 14yrs old, so I’m wondering what came first, the blocked valve or the back pain. The congested stomach has only come about in the last couple of years, I thought it was because of stress. Well intentioned women are constantly asking me when I’m due.

I purchased “Brett Elliotts Ultimate Herbal Detox” from my chiropractor, she recommended it. Brett Elliott is a naturopath from Tauranga, he combined about 23 herbs into capsule form and you take the herbs over 10 days and its supposed to clean out your large and small intestine as well as your liver. I have high hopes for this cleanse. Another good thing is that my sister has bought the detox as well and so we’re going to start it together. Well, I start my preparation on boxing day, she’s starting on the 1st of January but we’ll probably finish about the same time. So the next 2 weeks of my blog will be my updates on how the detox is going.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Dreams

I’ve had several dreams over the past couple of weeks where the main theme was bad people coming after me trying to kill me, and me spending the entire portion of the dream that I could remember on waking attempting to elude their clutches.

If I were to go with my friends interpretation – she said it means there are subconscious beliefs that are holding me back from attaining good health. If I were to take that idea a step further it could mean that there are subconscious beliefs holding me back from attaining my optimum potential in multiple arenas of my life – financial, spiritual, social you get the picture.

According to my dream dictionary, being chased may indicate feeling stuck or threatened in my daily life. Being pursued and unable to get away suggests a fear of being overrun by ones impulses. Monsters indicate repressed emotions, anger, hostility and fear. Possibly needing to confront something or someone in one’s waking life. Running can indicate trying to get away from painful feelings one doesn’t want to face.

One thing my counselor used to get me to do was to ask myself a question and then get my subconscious to write down the answer. I took her up on her challenge and then took it a step further. I discovered that when I wrote the question with my right (wrong) hand and then answered with my left hand, all sorts of information started coming out of me that even I wasn’t consciously aware of. I think that exercise might be in order again here. I think I’ll try it the next time I’m fasting.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Thoughts on birthdays

For my birthday this year I decided to not want or expect anything. I tend to resent the fact that I have to not only share my birthday with Christmas and all the hoop-la that goes with it, but also with my twin sister. I don’t begrudge her her birthday, just the fact that I have to share mine. It would have been awesome if the doctor who delivered us hadn’t insisted on making sure we were born on the same day – since all the clocks in the hospital were on a different time and I was only born 15 minutes before midnight, with my sister 9 minutes before that, it would have been easy to find a room with a clock that would give us our own separate birthdays (and still be twins.)

Granted, it wouldn’t have been easy growing up and trying to explain to all the people (who never believed us anyway) how I could have a twin I looked nothing like and be born on different days (are you still a twin if you’re non identical and born on different days?- what a curious line of thought) they used to ask us, or rather tell us that we didn’t even look like sisters, and that since we had the same last name maybe we might be cousins.

One thing it did teach me growing up was 1) the stupidity and rudeness of people to call you a liar to your face and 2) it doesn’t particular matter what anybody else thinks since I’m usually right, and I know what I’m talking about.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine recently about “what impresses you.” She’s been trying to convince me to move to Oz and marry someone there. I told her that I don’t find intelligence impressive, since I’m already super intelligent and therefore I don’t think that highly of it. She thought I was being up myself, but I wasn’t, I was being factual. Actually I think God gave me lots of flaws to keep me humble – like poor short term memory, lack of awareness & common sense, and inability to read non verbal cues. She is also highly intelligent but she is very impressed by smart people. I said I’m more impressed by strength of character and good traits like confidence, humility and kindness. I like mental stimulation as much as the next person with a high IQ but I guess the CCNZ theme sunk into my subconscious “Character is higher than intelligence.” Didn’t stop me getting Dux though.

Monday, December 6, 2010

My new favourite place


I’ve never thought of Australia as a beautiful place, mostly because of the yellowing look of most of the trees that I saw there on all my previous trips abroad, however, this last trip I was happily proven wrong.

I planned a trip over to see my friend Hollie for her 30th birthday, but I told her I didn’t really like Sydney, even though I did want to see her. She said, well that’s alright, we’ll just go up to my parents house, they live at Smiths Lake near Forster-Tuncurry.

It is one of the loveliest places I have seen in Australia so far (greenery-wise). I just like the bush. Australian bush is very different to the one at home but I liked it (which surprised me, but there you go). The house was surrounded by trees and we were 5 minutes from the beach and 5 minutes from the lake. I had cicadas outside the window at night and birdsong waking me up every morning, it was awesome. The first night I was there I had a dream that there were monkeys outside my window but when I heard a kookaburra for the first time its laugh could definitely pass for a monkey cackle.

Apparently Smiths Lake is named after Joseph Smith as a bunch of his descendants settled in that area, and it’s a stronghold of the Reorganized Church now the Community of Christ. They were telling me about a person up in Queensland that one of her brothers met on his mission. They must be a really close descendant of Joseph Smith as they had an 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon with Joseph Smith’s name in it (whether his signature or not I’ve no doubt that book would be worth a lot of money, if they ever wanted to sell it).

I got to see a kookaburra in the wild for the first time, rosellas, bats flying overhead at nighttime, a lizard, wallabies and goats. Theres apparently koalas that live there as well but I didn’t get to see any. We were about 4 or so hours out of Sydney although it took ages to get back into the city. Sydney is my least favourite city in the world so far, but Lakes district NSW is my new favourite place in Oz