I had an interesting experience on Tuesday of this week. A very nice journalist at the BBC in Newcastle called Jane kindly suggested me for inclusion on a programme on the BBC World Service. Me? On the subject of international aid which hasn't exactly been my specialist subject to date.
A colleague of hers rang me and asked me some questions to see if I was suitable and decided that I was. Did I agree with international aid during a time of economic difficulty in our own country after Hillary Clinton had pledged about $550,000,000 to Afghanistan when the US is in similar financial dire straits? Not really I said, although I could see the reasons for it. I have a bad habit of seeing both sides of the coin.
So having decided I was appropriate she asked if I would be free between 6 and 7pm. Oh no, I said, my Barre class would begin at 6.30pm and I love going! We agreed that they would ring me between 6.05 and 6.20 when I would be waiting to go into my class.
My daughter and I waited patiently in the car until 6.20 for the phone to ring and came to the conclusion that they had enough people on the programme without me, so got out into the rain and went into the waiting area for our class.
Typical! The phone then rang, I went outside to take the call thinking it would be quieter outside. What was I thinking? It was raining and the traffic was loud, so I had to dash back inside, get my keys and go sit in the car. It was 6.25 by this time and I was following a well-infomed lady from Connecticut who frankly was saying what I had planned to. I basically reiterated what she had said but stressing the concern that we have no control over where our international aid was going to when it left our shores and there were no guarantees that it would reach those who needed it most and that it wouldn't fall into the pockets of corrupt politicians and officials.
An Afghani chap replied saying what I think was that they couldn't guarantee that some of the money wouldn't fall into the wrong hands but would help stabilise the country and prevent another 9/11. At least that is what I grasped from what he said, while his English was vastly superior to my Afghani, I must confess I didn't grasp every nuance of what he was saying.
I summarised my thoughts by saying that if those objectives could be achieved I would not object, and thought the Taliban should be, ooh what was the word I was searching for? Sitting in the car with the rain pounding down, listening to the programme down my iPhone, my vocabulary let me down and said I thought the Taliban should be anihilated!
So if a Fatwa is put out on me, that is why! Do I believe it? Yes I do but the BBC World Service might not have been the most discreet place to say it!
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Update
Last year estate agency started to get rather quiet, you may have heard about it! So when I was offered a receptionist job in a medical spa I jumped at the chance. Having been interested in fashion and beauty pretty much all of my life I had a working knowledge of different treatments. I have been there 6 months now and don't regret the move at all, although the hours are longer than I anticipated!
I now travel on the Metro system to and from Newcastle and while it has its drawbacks in the middle of winter, with the frost biting and the wind howling around me; I have read a lot more books than I had had the chance to for years. I have finished books I started on holidays and bought new ones. All fiction for a change, having read a lot of health books over the years. Not because I think I know it all, I don't, it is just more fun to read a novel on the train in the morning.
I have discovered both Facebook and Twitter and have a lot of new 'friends' in the ether. I get very annoyed when the media malign them, they are what you make them.
My daughter is now at Leeds University studying French but has come home today to study for her end of year exams. And to go to see Nickelback with me next Monday. My son has also graduated and has a good job.
I think I might do this more often now!
Katrina
I now travel on the Metro system to and from Newcastle and while it has its drawbacks in the middle of winter, with the frost biting and the wind howling around me; I have read a lot more books than I had had the chance to for years. I have finished books I started on holidays and bought new ones. All fiction for a change, having read a lot of health books over the years. Not because I think I know it all, I don't, it is just more fun to read a novel on the train in the morning.
I have discovered both Facebook and Twitter and have a lot of new 'friends' in the ether. I get very annoyed when the media malign them, they are what you make them.
My daughter is now at Leeds University studying French but has come home today to study for her end of year exams. And to go to see Nickelback with me next Monday. My son has also graduated and has a good job.
I think I might do this more often now!
Katrina
Monday, 24 December 2007
Merry Christmas
Well, I think I am about as organised as I am going to get. For the first time ever I think, Christmas lunch will be just be my husband, son and daughter, although I am making a little extra in case my stepson turns up.
It took a long time to find the fibre optic tree, although I had found the two small trees I have had for years. It doesn't seem worth decorating everywhere in the house when my husband, son and I will be flying to San Francisco on Boxing Day to go skiing at Lake Tahoe. It kind of splits your focus so you don't end up obsessing about Christmas. You enjoy your lunch and then you carry on packing!
So with only four or five of us to cook for, it is just like a special Sunday lunch and it is mostly under control. Although we are having an odd menu: Prawns in garlic butter for starters, roast beef, roast duck, potatoes, vegetables not including sprouts, risotto (yes, I know, but my son is particularly good at making it and he wants it, so I am letting him) followed by either Christmas pudding with Cointreau sauce and Jersey cream or good old Ben & Jerry's Caramel Choo Choo.
Not exactly low-cal but who cares one day a year? Actually I should care a few more days a year, but it is a struggle. When we get back from skiing I am going to get an iJoyRide which will allow me to exercise sitting down. How that appeals! I must go and spend some time on my Lateral Thigh Trainer and do some sit ups on my Ab King Pro. I am not kidding, I really am. I use them for a while and then have a rest for a few weeks or months and then start using them again when needed. I do like a gadget!
I am particularly looking forward to meeting a new friend I have made on the internet. We have exchanged e-mails and phone calls and it is as though we have always known each other, so it is very exciting to actually meet her, which I will on Thursday of this week.
If anyone actually reads this, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas followed by a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.
Best wishes,
Katrina
It took a long time to find the fibre optic tree, although I had found the two small trees I have had for years. It doesn't seem worth decorating everywhere in the house when my husband, son and I will be flying to San Francisco on Boxing Day to go skiing at Lake Tahoe. It kind of splits your focus so you don't end up obsessing about Christmas. You enjoy your lunch and then you carry on packing!
So with only four or five of us to cook for, it is just like a special Sunday lunch and it is mostly under control. Although we are having an odd menu: Prawns in garlic butter for starters, roast beef, roast duck, potatoes, vegetables not including sprouts, risotto (yes, I know, but my son is particularly good at making it and he wants it, so I am letting him) followed by either Christmas pudding with Cointreau sauce and Jersey cream or good old Ben & Jerry's Caramel Choo Choo.
Not exactly low-cal but who cares one day a year? Actually I should care a few more days a year, but it is a struggle. When we get back from skiing I am going to get an iJoyRide which will allow me to exercise sitting down. How that appeals! I must go and spend some time on my Lateral Thigh Trainer and do some sit ups on my Ab King Pro. I am not kidding, I really am. I use them for a while and then have a rest for a few weeks or months and then start using them again when needed. I do like a gadget!
I am particularly looking forward to meeting a new friend I have made on the internet. We have exchanged e-mails and phone calls and it is as though we have always known each other, so it is very exciting to actually meet her, which I will on Thursday of this week.
If anyone actually reads this, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas followed by a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.
Best wishes,
Katrina
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
The Link Between Sugar, Candida, Being Overweight and Cancer
There are headlines in the newspapers today about the link between being overweight and developing cancer. It strikes me that it is the sugar in the diet which is the link between the two as it is known, but not widely enough, that cancer cells feed on sugar. It puzzles me why this correlation isn't pointed out in health articles but I suspect it is because of the howl it would cause in the sugar industry, which tries to claim that it does no harm.
I have a tendency to develop yeast overgrowths (or candida) in my digestive system which is exacerbated by the fact that I, like so many others in the population, have a sweet tooth. For so many years I ate far too much sugary food, to the exclusion of good food at one time because I couldn't keep my weight under control eating both, so out went the good stuff.
When I lived at home with my parents, I was fed meat and two veg every day, along with sweet treats which were controlled by the fact that I would be in trouble if I over ate what was left over. At the age of 21 I left home and was able to choose for myself what I ate. Big mistake! Out went meat and two veg and in came a lot of pasta and sweet stuff. So to hopefully help others this is a simplified explanation of how the health of the digestive system and the wrong foods can make a person feel lousy.
As a child I suffered from numerous earaches and sore throats for which I was prescribed antibiotics. In fact I was allergic to penicillin by the time I was about 7 (I came up in lumps a lot like the mumps I had already suffered).
I was a sleepy child, a sleepy teenager, my twenties were pretty sleepy too but I coped. My thirties were a slog through feeling 'tired all the time' fuelled by a diet high in pasta, pizza, ice cream and chocolate.
At the age of 40 I went to see a kinesiologist recommended by a sceptical friend whose husband had visited this lady with a successful outcome. My friend didn't think there was anything wrong with me because I painted my face every day and stayed cheerful. I can remember feeling as though I was swaying as she was saying this to me and thinking that you can never know how someone else is feeling.
A couple of weeks later I saw my kinesiologist who had asked me to fill in a dietary and health questionnaire. Before she tested me (using muscle testing) she said she thought I had food intolerances and candida (which is like having thrush in your gut but it doesn't itch!) and her testing confirmed this.
I had to give up wheat based foods (my first thought was that I would have to give up Cinnamon Toast Crunch which I would eat dry by the handful as well as in a bowl with milk), cow's milk, peppers, coffee, tomatoes and a few others which have been added to since.
I started taking herbs for the candida, the leaky gut, the parasites, along with vitamin and mineral supplements. I embarked on a sugar free diet for the next five months, which was very difficult but I stuck with it. I started having colonic irrigation and generally looking after myself better. Gradually I started feeling better and even lost about ten pounds, but still wasn't 100% and it wasn't until I got a prescription for an anti fungal from my doctor that I felt well for the first time that I could remember.
Because of my sweet tooth, following some unavoidable antibiotics nearly four months ago, I am once again on a sugar free diet, anti fungals, herbs and acidophilus to get rid of another bout of candida. It is an opportunist which will take over whenever it gets the chance.
You would have had to lived in another country to not have seen Yakult and Actimel adverts exhorting us to top up our good bacteria, but they miss the point that the sugar they contain can exacerbate a yeast overgrowth. Acidophilus is best for us without the sugar. The good bacteria act like policemen in the gut by keeping the yeast that we naturally have in our gut in check, but antibiotics, the Pill, HRT, steroids and over indulgence in sugary foods can knock out the good bacteria and the yeast turns into a fungal form which looks a bit like tadpoles under a microscope.
The wiggly end of the 'tadpole' burrows through the wall of the small intestine. The walls of the small intestine are porous like blotting paper to allow the goodness from our food to leach out into the blood stream to go and do its good work of maintaining our bodies. When the fungal form of candida starts burrowing it causes a 'leaky gut' situation, which is rather like a sieve. This is often found in children with autism I have read.
The problem with a leaky gut is that most of us don't actually chew our food properly. To quote Dr Ellen Cutler, we virtually inhale our food with nary a bite. Food needs to be chewed up to 30 times before we swallow it to break it down to help our stomachs to digest it. When it is swallowed without much chewing, food is not automatically broken down by stomach acid, which is often assumed, and undigested food particles can proceed through the digestive tract, where it can escape through the sieve-like 'leaky gut' into the blood stream. This is how food intolerances can start.
When there is something in the blood stream which shouldn't be there, the immune system is alerted that there is an 'invader', albeit only a bit of food in the wrong place, but the immune system is there to repel invaders. The immune system goes on to produce white blood cells and antihistamines which circulate around our bodies looking for something to attack. If you have ever wondered what the link is between the food that goes in your mouth and pain or bloating two feet further south in your abdomen, or perhaps in the joints of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, or the lungs of asthmatics, then this is it. Those white blood cells and histamines will search out your weak points and the immune system has a memory so this will happen every time the wrong food is consumed.
The answer is to avoid troublesome foods, and yes it can be very difficult, but feeling normal, bright and alert truly is worth it and this is why I haven't eaten any sugary, sweet food since Sunday and am starting to dream about chocolate! Using my protocol, I should be better by next weekend and it will all have been worth it, but it is tough at the moment. Even fruit is out of the question because it is still sugar even though it is in a 'good' form.
Wish me well, because I am having a tough time with my sweet tooth and its cravings. I am going to have a gymnema sylvestre tablet, that will help now I have thought about it, I haven't had one since this morning.
While this is probably over-simplified, it goes a long way to explaining why so many people are diagnosed with IBS by their doctors, who then seem to go on to do absolutely nothing to help the problem apart from prescribing the current drug for alleviating the symptoms.
Identifying the offending foods and avoiding them and getting rid of yeast overgrowth solves a majority of IBS symptoms. That is what I do as a kinesiologist and wish more people knew what we can do for them so that they can start to feel bright and alert as well.
Hopefully this blog will help those who read it consider kinesiology as a valid way of finding what is causing them to feel less than well or just plain lousy and actually being to do something constructive about it.
I have a tendency to develop yeast overgrowths (or candida) in my digestive system which is exacerbated by the fact that I, like so many others in the population, have a sweet tooth. For so many years I ate far too much sugary food, to the exclusion of good food at one time because I couldn't keep my weight under control eating both, so out went the good stuff.
When I lived at home with my parents, I was fed meat and two veg every day, along with sweet treats which were controlled by the fact that I would be in trouble if I over ate what was left over. At the age of 21 I left home and was able to choose for myself what I ate. Big mistake! Out went meat and two veg and in came a lot of pasta and sweet stuff. So to hopefully help others this is a simplified explanation of how the health of the digestive system and the wrong foods can make a person feel lousy.
As a child I suffered from numerous earaches and sore throats for which I was prescribed antibiotics. In fact I was allergic to penicillin by the time I was about 7 (I came up in lumps a lot like the mumps I had already suffered).
I was a sleepy child, a sleepy teenager, my twenties were pretty sleepy too but I coped. My thirties were a slog through feeling 'tired all the time' fuelled by a diet high in pasta, pizza, ice cream and chocolate.
At the age of 40 I went to see a kinesiologist recommended by a sceptical friend whose husband had visited this lady with a successful outcome. My friend didn't think there was anything wrong with me because I painted my face every day and stayed cheerful. I can remember feeling as though I was swaying as she was saying this to me and thinking that you can never know how someone else is feeling.
A couple of weeks later I saw my kinesiologist who had asked me to fill in a dietary and health questionnaire. Before she tested me (using muscle testing) she said she thought I had food intolerances and candida (which is like having thrush in your gut but it doesn't itch!) and her testing confirmed this.
I had to give up wheat based foods (my first thought was that I would have to give up Cinnamon Toast Crunch which I would eat dry by the handful as well as in a bowl with milk), cow's milk, peppers, coffee, tomatoes and a few others which have been added to since.
I started taking herbs for the candida, the leaky gut, the parasites, along with vitamin and mineral supplements. I embarked on a sugar free diet for the next five months, which was very difficult but I stuck with it. I started having colonic irrigation and generally looking after myself better. Gradually I started feeling better and even lost about ten pounds, but still wasn't 100% and it wasn't until I got a prescription for an anti fungal from my doctor that I felt well for the first time that I could remember.
Because of my sweet tooth, following some unavoidable antibiotics nearly four months ago, I am once again on a sugar free diet, anti fungals, herbs and acidophilus to get rid of another bout of candida. It is an opportunist which will take over whenever it gets the chance.
You would have had to lived in another country to not have seen Yakult and Actimel adverts exhorting us to top up our good bacteria, but they miss the point that the sugar they contain can exacerbate a yeast overgrowth. Acidophilus is best for us without the sugar. The good bacteria act like policemen in the gut by keeping the yeast that we naturally have in our gut in check, but antibiotics, the Pill, HRT, steroids and over indulgence in sugary foods can knock out the good bacteria and the yeast turns into a fungal form which looks a bit like tadpoles under a microscope.
The wiggly end of the 'tadpole' burrows through the wall of the small intestine. The walls of the small intestine are porous like blotting paper to allow the goodness from our food to leach out into the blood stream to go and do its good work of maintaining our bodies. When the fungal form of candida starts burrowing it causes a 'leaky gut' situation, which is rather like a sieve. This is often found in children with autism I have read.
The problem with a leaky gut is that most of us don't actually chew our food properly. To quote Dr Ellen Cutler, we virtually inhale our food with nary a bite. Food needs to be chewed up to 30 times before we swallow it to break it down to help our stomachs to digest it. When it is swallowed without much chewing, food is not automatically broken down by stomach acid, which is often assumed, and undigested food particles can proceed through the digestive tract, where it can escape through the sieve-like 'leaky gut' into the blood stream. This is how food intolerances can start.
When there is something in the blood stream which shouldn't be there, the immune system is alerted that there is an 'invader', albeit only a bit of food in the wrong place, but the immune system is there to repel invaders. The immune system goes on to produce white blood cells and antihistamines which circulate around our bodies looking for something to attack. If you have ever wondered what the link is between the food that goes in your mouth and pain or bloating two feet further south in your abdomen, or perhaps in the joints of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, or the lungs of asthmatics, then this is it. Those white blood cells and histamines will search out your weak points and the immune system has a memory so this will happen every time the wrong food is consumed.
The answer is to avoid troublesome foods, and yes it can be very difficult, but feeling normal, bright and alert truly is worth it and this is why I haven't eaten any sugary, sweet food since Sunday and am starting to dream about chocolate! Using my protocol, I should be better by next weekend and it will all have been worth it, but it is tough at the moment. Even fruit is out of the question because it is still sugar even though it is in a 'good' form.
Wish me well, because I am having a tough time with my sweet tooth and its cravings. I am going to have a gymnema sylvestre tablet, that will help now I have thought about it, I haven't had one since this morning.
While this is probably over-simplified, it goes a long way to explaining why so many people are diagnosed with IBS by their doctors, who then seem to go on to do absolutely nothing to help the problem apart from prescribing the current drug for alleviating the symptoms.
Identifying the offending foods and avoiding them and getting rid of yeast overgrowth solves a majority of IBS symptoms. That is what I do as a kinesiologist and wish more people knew what we can do for them so that they can start to feel bright and alert as well.
Hopefully this blog will help those who read it consider kinesiology as a valid way of finding what is causing them to feel less than well or just plain lousy and actually being to do something constructive about it.
Monday, 5 November 2007
Who will read this?
I often write to newspapers to have my two penn'orth on a variety of subjects and sometimes they even get printed, but I have no idea who will want to read this. So if you have bothered, thank you.
This is the rambling of an ordinary woman whose life keeps on changing likes everyone else's. I have a lovely husband, two grown up children and three even more grown up step children. I trained to be a kinesiologist after being helped back to good health by one myself, qualifying six years ago, stumbled into a full-time admin job just over two years ago trying to help out a friend's husband which gave me a bit of confidence that I was still employable. When you haven't had a job for 19 years you start to seriously doubt your abilities. After 11 months I left and found my current job in an estate agent's office.
Most people don't know what kinesiology is but it is a very simple but clever way of identifying problems in the body using muscle testing and correcting or curing them with either manual corrections or with herbs or homeopathic preparations. I principally help people with candida, having worked out a good protocol which swiftly and effectively gets people better from feeling 'tired all the time'.
I am also good with other digestive problems and was trained to use a wonderful manual technique for correcting hiatal hernias which has sorted out the cause of pain which has plagued clients for years. It is a lovely feeling when people get better because of suggestions I have made or techniques I have carried out based on my training.
I also really enjoy working in the estate agent's office. I have always loved houses and interior design and even read a lot of feng shui books about ten years ago. If I get interested in something I tend to read a book or find websites to help me learn more. There is a lot more to working in an estate agent's office than I ever realised and I think most people under estimate the amount of work which is carried out on behalf of clients.
From being a child I have always loved fashion and used to religiously read the fashion pages from the age of 6 or 7, I am not exaggerating. I remember Evangeline Carter being the fashion editor of the Sunday Times, which probably dates me! My mother was also very interested in fashion, buying Vogue Pattern magazines from which she made some of her own clothes and mine. She was a very good, untrained, seamstress who made a beautiful wedding dress for me. Sadly we lost her ten years ago and I still miss her now.
I was a teenager in the Seventies when teenagers actually seemed to care about politics. The apathy I see around me nowadays totally amazes me. I don't see how a large part of the general public can think that politics has nothing to do with them when it totally affects the way that life is lived in this country. They seem to think that the changes which have taken place in this country have just happened by remote control. Not that the idiots who currently have a majority in the House of Commons were actually voted in by members of the public. I don't understand how they can't see the link between their apathy and the continuing majority of the Labour Party and the development of what increasingly feels like the start of a police state, because they think they know what is best for everyone.
I think that is probably enough for a first effort.
Best wishes,
Katrina
This is the rambling of an ordinary woman whose life keeps on changing likes everyone else's. I have a lovely husband, two grown up children and three even more grown up step children. I trained to be a kinesiologist after being helped back to good health by one myself, qualifying six years ago, stumbled into a full-time admin job just over two years ago trying to help out a friend's husband which gave me a bit of confidence that I was still employable. When you haven't had a job for 19 years you start to seriously doubt your abilities. After 11 months I left and found my current job in an estate agent's office.
Most people don't know what kinesiology is but it is a very simple but clever way of identifying problems in the body using muscle testing and correcting or curing them with either manual corrections or with herbs or homeopathic preparations. I principally help people with candida, having worked out a good protocol which swiftly and effectively gets people better from feeling 'tired all the time'.
I am also good with other digestive problems and was trained to use a wonderful manual technique for correcting hiatal hernias which has sorted out the cause of pain which has plagued clients for years. It is a lovely feeling when people get better because of suggestions I have made or techniques I have carried out based on my training.
I also really enjoy working in the estate agent's office. I have always loved houses and interior design and even read a lot of feng shui books about ten years ago. If I get interested in something I tend to read a book or find websites to help me learn more. There is a lot more to working in an estate agent's office than I ever realised and I think most people under estimate the amount of work which is carried out on behalf of clients.
From being a child I have always loved fashion and used to religiously read the fashion pages from the age of 6 or 7, I am not exaggerating. I remember Evangeline Carter being the fashion editor of the Sunday Times, which probably dates me! My mother was also very interested in fashion, buying Vogue Pattern magazines from which she made some of her own clothes and mine. She was a very good, untrained, seamstress who made a beautiful wedding dress for me. Sadly we lost her ten years ago and I still miss her now.
I was a teenager in the Seventies when teenagers actually seemed to care about politics. The apathy I see around me nowadays totally amazes me. I don't see how a large part of the general public can think that politics has nothing to do with them when it totally affects the way that life is lived in this country. They seem to think that the changes which have taken place in this country have just happened by remote control. Not that the idiots who currently have a majority in the House of Commons were actually voted in by members of the public. I don't understand how they can't see the link between their apathy and the continuing majority of the Labour Party and the development of what increasingly feels like the start of a police state, because they think they know what is best for everyone.
I think that is probably enough for a first effort.
Best wishes,
Katrina
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