If it Tastes Bad, It’s Good for You

“Take a teaspoon of this in 8oz of water every day. Twice a day, if you can.”

She said this with an earnest smile.

A friendly look that meant only helpful encouragement.

Now for one thing, she is my very trusted masseuse. She is a Holistic Health Practitioner. She is the lovely lady who did the impossible once.

I don’t have back problems. I go for massage once in a while as a luxurious, stress-releasing treat. I would never let a chiropractor near me. Or an acupuncturist.

**shudder**

But I digress.

One fateful day, my back gave out. I imagine it was a series of poor choices on my part that led to that occurrence, but the fact was…that I was crippled.

Literally, I was staggering around in circles, unable to sit, stand up, or lie down without shrieking in misery.

Nothing in my medicine cabinet could touch it.

No one in my family could touch it.

Because I kept a three foot radius of personal space by shouting, “Don’t touch me!!”

I called M.

“I’m crippled!” I told her. “I have no idea if you can help me, but my doctor will only give me pain killers, muscle relaxers, and a series of stretches to do. I can do that all by myself. But what I can’t do is…anything…because the pain is so bad I can’t even think straight. Can you do something?”

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll see.”

“Fine,” I replied, “but there’s only one thing: you can’t actually touch my back. If you do, I’ll die.”

“I can work with that,” she said.

So my daughter drove me across town to M’s office and helped me lurch inside.

The whole trip was a series of me saying, “Ow! Ow! Ooow! Argh! Noo! Ouch!”

When I walked out an hour later, I was healed.

I can tell you she never went near my back, simply laid several light layers of warm, fragrant towels over it, and put it to rest, while she released the muscles from the opposite sides of joints and tendons. Her hands are intuitive and my pain somehow told her through touch, what needed what and where.

My daughter couldn’t believe the change. Me either.

It smacked faintly of voodoo to me.

M is a soft-spoken Italian grandmother. She chats about her family, her grandparents who moved from Italy carrying small grapevines in burlap sacks to set up a vineyard in Chile.

She has a beautiful laugh.

I recommend her to everybody.

But last week, she recommended this raw apple cider vinegar to me. We were chatting about how massage is a nice immune-system booster. You always need to drink a bottle of water after a massage because it’s the same to your muscles as having done a full work-out. All of your cells are ready to release the ‘ick’ afterwards, so you flush it out.

Apparently, vinegar will do the same thing.

“I drink it every day,” she said, “and use it on salads and for cooking. It’s just part of my diet.”

Makes sense.

I imagine my own Norwegian and German ancestors ate it in everything from pickles to sauerkraut. Oil and vinegar on salads right here in SoCal.

Why not?

I’ll tell you why not.

I just took my first big swig of this magic elixir and I can still feel my scorched windpipe.

It’s like a glass of battery acid went down and deep cleaned everything from my tonsils to my toenails.

It’s like drinking Easter Egg dye.

It cleared my sinuses. My eyes took on a healthy, weeping sheen. My spine straightened right up into perfect posture.

And then I ran to brush my teeth. Twice.

I’m going to go gargle with some tea now, but I wanted to pass this super advice to all of you enthusiastic readers out there, wondering to yourself, “Self,” you’re saying, “How can I give myself a jolt of goodness?”

Once it takes effect, I will be able to wield Thor’s hammer.

And probably put my back out doing it.