Journal

I’m sorry there hasn’t been a blog for such a long time! As some of you know, my husband and I are thrilled to be expecting our first baby in early November. I just wanted to let you know my plan for seeing clients over the next few months.

Treatments will be available between now and early October at the following times:

• Tuesday – Thursday 10am – 7pm
• Friday 10am – 6pm

As the late afternoon and evening appointments are very popular, please book as far in advance as you can, to avoid disappointment!

Treatments available include:

• Pregnancy massage
• Holistic and therapeutic massage
• Deep tissue massage

Unfortunately I’m unable to offer hot stone treatments whilst I’m pregnant but these will be available again in the new year.

I am also in the process of finishing my MSc before the baby arrives, so if you are female and interested in what impact your menstrual cycle has on what you eat and might consider taking part in my study (which requires you to do a food diary for six days during your next cycle), do let me know ASAP so I can send you more information.

If you’ve been for a treatment recently, you may have noticed a little red collecting pot in my treatment room. As some of you know, my husband is running the London marathon in April to raise money for Helen and Douglas House hospice for terminally ill children.

As you can imagine, he spends most of his spare time pounding the pavements or the treadmill… or on my massage table demanding deep tissue treatments to help his recovery! Massage can be a great way to speed up recovery from physical training, be it running, cycling or anything else. It encourages greater blood flow to the muscles, helping to repair them more quickly so they feel less sore and ready for action sooner.

If you’re doing a physical activity event for charity this year, please let me know and you can receive 10% off your treatments in the six weeks before and two weeks after your event, to help with your training and recovery.

Just in case you might be interested in sponsoring Dave for his marathon effort for Helen and Douglas House, please visit: https://www.justgiving.com/DaveWheater or drop a few pennies in the red collecting box after your next treatment! Many thanks!

 

 

Hands up, who likes a nice cup of tea? I think I am a bit of a tea addict, especially now that I work from home for half of the week. Luckily it’s not caffeinated tea that I am addicted to (although I’m unlikely to turn down a cup of earl grey first thing in the morning), I like all sorts of tea!

And in a recent lecture I heard about white tea being really pretty good for you, so I thought I’d give it a try!

There’s an awful lot of research going on at the moment about the health benefits of tea, but because white tea is full of flavonoids (a type of antioxidant) it is thought to have the following benefits:

• Reduce cardiovascular disease risk
• Potential reduction in cancer risk
• Potential reduction in diabetes risk
• Likely to aid with weight management
• Some evidence of improved cognitive function

How amazing is that? From tea! There’s still a lot more research to be done, however, one important point to note – the tea also tastes good! I followed the instructions to brew for 3 minutes and although it looked quite dark and I assumed it would have an overpowering taste, actually it was pleasant, light and quite floral…!

PS – Antioxidants are natural compounds which work to ‘quench’ free radicals, reducing and stopping the damage they cause. Free radicals are naturally present in the body but also increased by external factors such as smoking, stress, UV rays. If anti oxidants and free radicals get out of balance in favour of free radicals, they can cause significant damage to the body

In case you’re interested, this info came from a lecture from Dr Lisa Ryan at Oxford Brookes Uni on 19/2/2013.

 

 

Last Wednesday morning I had a bit of an eye-opener, and I think it’s going to be the same again tomorrow morning. I realised that for more than 10 years I have completely taken something I use every day, three times a day (at least!) completely for granted.

That is my ability to cook a basic meal from scratch. It doesn’t matter if it is porridge, soup, cake, pasta sauce or a roast dinner, I realised how incredibly lucky I am to know the basics of cooking.

Last Wednesday morning I spent three hours volunteering with a small project (through Oxford Brookes university), bringing basic cooking skills to ladies living in a deprived area of Oxford called Rose Hill. I was a bit nervous when I turned up at the community centre, particularly as no-one else was there when I arrived… Luckily Monika (the mature student who set the project up) soon bustled in and had me heaving boxes of cutlery and condiments into the kitchen ready for our students. By 9.45am there were five women chopping vegetables around a table, and by 11.30am they had cooked four different dishes including minestrone soup, apple crumble, brown soda bread and chicken and mushroom risotto:

The food was delicious and the ladies went away with some new skills which we’ll hopefully hear about how well their new recipes went down when I see them again tomorrow morning.