When I posted on this topic on an internet forum for widows the thread was inundated with examples of crassness and I vowed to write a book on the topic – there clearly is a need for education out there! Well that’s still a work in process but in the meantime here’s my top five what not to say and if it stops a few people inserting their feet in to their mouths then great.

By the way this list is on no particular order – what’s most offensive to me may seem mild to someone else – just play safe and avoid all of them!

1)     I know how you feel.

This one is a doozie and it seems to be comforting doesn’t it. Well it isn’t. You see when someone is in a pit of despair they have no idea how they feel so how the heck would you know? Just because your Mum died and their Mum died doesn’t mean it’s similar – this is because every person and every relationship is unique, so the pain is unique – and here’s the thing.  This isn’t about you – it’s about them so stop changing the subject to you!

2)     Be grateful you had them so long

This is a well meaning attempt to get you to count your blessings but in truth it’s plain hurtful. No matter how long you had them you’re entitled to want them around now and yes you’re grateful but you still want more and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

3)     You’ll find somebody else

Well this may be true eventually but while I’m in deep pain missing the love of my life desperately it’s also completely irrelevant to how I feel NOW.  So if you find yourself tempted to say this to anyone who has lost a partner through death or relationship breakdown; stop. Take a breath and think about someone or something important to you and say to yourself – “if you lost them don’t worry you can get another one”; register how that feels then say something else.

4)     They’re in a better place.

Now according to your belief system this may or may not be true. However it is also irrelevant to the person still here and grieving. It may give a slight comfort if they share that belief, it may cause acute discomfort if they don’t. Either way it’s also changing the subject again – away from their perfectly natural and valid pain and onto the person who isn’t there.

5)     So, he won’t be needing those golf clubs/concert tickets/other stuff

I’m sure I don’t need to explain why this is a bad one – but mainly it’s because once again it’s about you (and your desire not to see those tickets wasted!) and not about the person in pain.

So what are good things to say?

The main thing is to be honest and sincere. Sometimes all that’s needed is a hug or a smile.  Ask questions, be ready to really listen to the answers and don’t offer solutions – a griever wants to be heard not fixed.

Some helpful starters are:

I imagine that you feel like….

Starting a sentence with “I imagine” is unassertive and gives the griever a chance to correct you.  For example you say “I imagine you feel like you’ve been hit by a train” and they say well more like my entire world has exploded. This has given them a chance to say quite unconfrontationally how they really feel. Saying “you must feel devastated” will be generating an internal “yah think!!!” even if it’s not said out loud.

What happened?

Give them a chance to tell their story – don’t interrupt – questions are about you not them

I don’t know what to say…

Is often the best thing to say when there really is nothing to say.

Carole is a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist and regularly runs outreach programmes teaching the Grief Recovery Method. Contact her on 01234 862218.

So despite the fact that Catrina needs to lose a lot of weight I haven’t put her on a weight loss plan but I have asked her to cut out stimulants and the foods that were found to be toxic to her in an intolerance test.

At the start of the programme she was so toxic that drinking lemon water made her feel queasy. Adding ginger for a while relieved this, then she was able to tolerate the lemon water alone and for the last week has been tolerating a spoonful of olive oil added to it. This is real progress and a clue that she is very gradually becoming less toxic.

Last week at the end of week 5 she’d been off all her intolerant foods for at least 5 weeks, sugar had been cut out last mainly because a sugar free diet is really inconvenient. If you think you don’t each much sugar this short video is food for thought: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004tm69

We’ve agreed that Catrina won’t weigh herself as this is “diet” mentality however after 5 weeks I wanted to check what was happening with her weight and body make up. The results were fantastic.

Overall Catrina had lost 10.5lb in weight, even better her body fat percentage had dropped from 55% to 53% which means that she lost a total of 12lb in FAT. So proportionally she has a little more water than she had before.

12lb of body fat in just 5 weeks is a great result and she’s thrilled – especially as slimming is her secondary goal.

I continue to be impressed by her commitment, both to the techniques I’ve asked her to do and the ban on stimulants. Giving up alcohol was Ok at first but she’s starting to miss it now but I want her liver to be much healthier before we can talk about an occasional glass of wine.

Castor Oil packing twice a week is stepping up the process of detoxing her liver in preparation for a liver flush in April.

Today I used Thought Field Therapy to establish that her unconscious mind and conscious mind are congruent (agreeing) and discovered that although her short term goal was good for both the long term goal was not supported by her unconscious. Without clearing this in all likelihood her unconscious would have sabotaged her efforts resulting in failure despite the good intentions of her conscious mind.

Her medium term goal is to be a size 18 by September, I’m confident she’s going to make it.

A week ago she cut out the last of her food intolerance foods and so is now avoiding all 5. We spread out the cutting out of each food, partly to help Catrina adjust to what would now be off the menu but mainly to prevent a healing crisis.

This can come about when too many changes are made too quickly for the body to handle and can be very uncomfortable. Some therapists feel that this proves the treatment is working. I see it as a sign of a badly managed therapy. If someone feels ill they are likely to give up all together and return to bad habits.

I have noticed some key changes in Catrina already:

She is much calmer. Previously all her thoughts would come tumbling out one after the other at breakneck  speed and I would have to slow her down and take her back to the question I’d asked a few minutes before which she’d answer then move on to 10 more things without drawing breath. Now without being aware of it she talks in a much more measured way, although it’s still fast I no longer get breathless listening to her!

The nasty rash on her foot has dried and the skin is looking much healthier although still very red. The nature of the itch has changed and she needs to remove far less dead skin from the area than previously.

The bags under her eyes have decreased, her sleeping pattern continues to improve and she isn’t as hungry all the time.

1 week ago I decided to introduce a chromium supplement. Her blood sugar is still erratic and she gets cravings for sweet things. This GTF Chromium (glucose tolerance factor) will help regulate her blood sugar and reduce cravings. Not all chromium is helpful so if you’re shopping for a supplement makes sure it is the GTF form.

She was feeling queasy on the lemon water I asked her to start her day with – an indication of just how toxic her gall bladder/liver is.  She now adds some fresh ginger and this has abated the queasiness.

One of the products she was worried about missing was bread – as bread contains sugar to make the yeast rise. She has solved this by swapping a teaspoon of agave nectar for sugar with her easy yeast in her home made bread and was thrilled with the results.

Her diet contains very little in the way of essential fatty acids – she’s not a fan of oily fish but will eat salmon so as well as encouraging her to have salmon twice a week i’ve suggested a tablespoon of hemp oil a day. It has the perfect blend of omegas 3, 6 and 9 for the human brain.

Also I’ve asked her to begin to support her liver for detox by eating a “super greens” mix taken from Patrick Holford’s 9 day liver detox plan.

Super Greens mix

1 big handful watercress

1 big handful young spinach leaves

1 handful basil

1 handful parsley

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil or hemp or flax oil

lemon juice to taste.

This should all be blended together to make a pesto like sauce and eaten on or with a meal every day.

I also want to increase her sulphur intake for the same reason – in the form of 1 clove garlic OR 1 red onion OR 2 shallots OR 4 spring onions daily – preferably raw as this ensures the active enymes are not destroyed by cooking.

Her food/mood diary shows she is generally much calmer in herself but also that the day she chooses eggs rather than porridge for breakfast she is hungrier through the day proving that a good low GL breakfast is a good start to the day.

On 21 January 2010, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced the suspension of the obesity drug sibutramine which also goes by the names Reductil and Meridia, in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Reductil is a satiety enhancer containing the active ingredient sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate, which works by affecting neurotransmitters in the brain. In particular it increases levels of noradrenaline and serotonin, which helps you lose weight by enhancing the feeling of fullness you get after eating only small amounts of food.

However, anyone given a prescription for the drug was warned not to take it for longer than a year. But what’s the point of taking a drug which shows modest weight loss benefits which cannot necessarily be sustained after treatment is stopped? Anyway, I digress, as this is not the reason the drug was pulled…

The suspension of Reductil follows a review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) which conducted a trial with 10,000 participants and found the risks of taking Reductil far outweigh the benefits. In fact, that’s a massive understatement, as it’s been found to increase the risk of non-fatal heart attacks and strokes… not a trade-off I for one would like to make!

Alarm bells should’ve been ringing at the EMA and MHRA long before now

Since Reductil was introduced in 2001 there have been 2094 suspected adverse reactions and 17 deaths linked to the drug. Six out of the 17 deaths were caused by heart problems and stroke.

In addition, placebo-controlled obesity studies showed that Reductil (5 to 20 mg once a day) caused increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Other cardiovascular side effects have included tachycardia vasodilation, migraine, hypertension/increased blood pressure and palpitation, arrhythmias, myocardial infarction, and cardiac arrest.

This point alone should’ve have sealed the case on Reductil, since this drug was only made available to those who were obese and already at a greater risk of developing heart problems.

Gift horse

I suppose in this instance we must remind ourselves not to look this ‘gift horse’ in the mouth and to count our blessings… After-all, the drug has been withdrawn and doctors have been told not to issue any new prescriptions for Reductil. They’re also being told to review the health of patients who were taking the drug.

But (and there is always a but…) this is only the case in the UK and Europe. In the US, the drug is still available and prescribed under the name Meridia. From what I read on the website drugs.com, it doesn’t look as if the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to issue a retraction of this drug anytime soon. So, for  readers in the US (and anywhere else in the world where this drug may still be available) here is a list of other disturbing side effects associated with this drug:

1. Common side effects – These include:

Back pain, dizziness, dry mouth, flu-like symptoms, headache, joint pain, nervousness, painful menstruation, runny nose, sleeplessness, sore throat, upset stomach, weakness.

2. Severe side effects – seek medical attention right away if you experience any of the following adverse effects:

Severe allergic reactions (rash, hives, itching, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue; unusual hoarseness), agitation, anxiety, blurred vision or other vision changes, change in amount of urine, chest pain, clumsiness, confusion, difficulty breathing, eye pain, fainting, fast or irregular heartbeat, high fever, increased sweating, large unchanging pupils, loss of consciousness, mood or mental changes (e.g. depression, mania, psychosis, thoughts of suicide or suicide attempt), one-sided weakness, restlessness, seizures, severe or persistent dizziness, headache, or weakness; shivering, shortness of breath, stomach pain, swelling of the feet, ankles, or legs; tremors, unusual bruising or bleeding, vomiting.

On the subject of side effects, it may also be useful to specifically highlight the gastrointestinal side effects associated with Reductil/Meridia. These include constipation, increased or decreased appetite, nausea, dyspepsia , gastritis , vomiting , rectal disorder and anorexia… Yes, you read that right, anorexia… Imagine taking a drug that can take you from one extreme to the other?

Here’s a thought for the MHRA and EMA… perhaps this drug should never have been approved in the first place. Let’s just hope the FDA catches on to the notion of suspending it soon. In the meantime, if you know of anyone battling obesity who is taking this prescription medicine, please forward this info to them. http://wp.me/pA5CF-1i

Patients who are currently taking Reductil/Meridia should make an appointment with their doctor straight away and should explore alternative ways to lose weight.

Before she said a word I knew she’d been doing as asked and improving her hydration – her skin was clearer and her eyes brighter – but I asked her exactly what she’d done so out came the food/mood diary.

photo by Suat Eman

In the previous post I outlined how many caffeinated drinks she was getting through but this week there were none at all. Even better she’d massively increased her intake of water with some interesting effects:

1) Not surprisingly she was needing to pee more often. With plenty of fresh clean water going in the body tissues no longer feel the need to hang onto what they’ve got and start to release water previously being retained.

2) Catrina was surprised to find that although she was drinking water she was now thirsty all the time. Cutting out the caffeine had reawakened her thirst reflex and her body was letting her know it wanted more of this great stuff. For the first time she had water on her desk the whole time and was drinking it regularly. The target to gradually increase to 2 litres a day which seemed daunting during our first meeting suddenly was easy.

3) She found she was somewhat less hungry, not a lot but noticeable, which for someone who was hungry all the time is quite significant.

4) She found she was sleeping slightly better – going straight to sleep when she went to bed rather than lying awake for a while and consequently waking up more refreshed. Unfortunately this was mitigated a bit by the need to get and pee during the night so I suggested she stop drinking a couple of hours before bedtime in order to give her body time to process the fluid.

All of this in addition to the clearer skin and brighter eyes achieved in the week when the caffeine effects were still leaving her system. It will be fascinating to see what happens in a completely caffeine free week.

Catrina found the hardest aspect of giving up was not the craving of the substance as she does have fairly good will power but the social pressure of “would you like a coffee” and the feeling of “I can’t have that.” I suggested that once people became used to the idea that she drinks hot water and not coffee it will become easier. We also talked about changing the mindset from “I can’t have” to “I choose not to, as choosing to have it is damaging for my health”.

She also had managed to cut out 3 of her 5 identified food intolerances: rice, soya and brocolli. The latter of course is pretty easy to avoid. Rice isn’t as easy as you might think. Rice flour creeps into many manufactured products. Soy is much worse – it gets everywhere. There’s nothing for it but to read absolutely every label. In doing her research Catrina was horrified to discover even some tinned tuna has soya added to the oil!

Her mission this week is to keep up the great start she has made until I see her again this Friday when the next changes will be coming in….

I don’t normally weigh my clients as scales tend to reinforce the “diet” mentality but given the plan to blog Catrina’s progress I dug out my scales that also measure body fat percentage.

Catrina weighed in at 20 stone and 11lb with a body fat of 55%. Now 55% may sound high but given her overall weight I was surprised it wasn’t much higher than that. I believe therefore that a lot of her excess weight isn’t fat but retained water. This will happen partly as she’s massively dehydrated given the amount of caffiene intake (see previous post) but as a result of regularly eating foods and drinks that are toxic to her. When we bombard our body with toxins continually the liver can’t cope and a back log is created. In order to make the toxin safe in the meantime it binds the toxin with water within a fat cell. Stop ingesting the toxin and the body gets a chance to clear the backlog and the water is released along with the toxin through the normal waste channels.

The test revealed that Catrina has 5 major intolerances:

broccoli
corn
rice
soya
sugar cane

Given that she has so many that a day won’t go past without exposure to one or more of these substances it’s not surprising that she hasn’t noticed a link between eating them and a particular symptom. Although I can see from her food/mood diary that her mood dipped after a Sunday dinner that included broccoli.

So rather than worry about “slimming” I’ve asked her to cut out the above foods one by one, once she’s got her hydration programme underway.

Most Nutritional Therapy clients come back in 6 – 8 weeks for a follow up but Catrina will be back next week for step 2 of the life change process – follow this blog to find out how she’s getting on with the challenges I’ve set her.

Carole Batchelor 01234 862217 www.healthyresults.co.uk

First of all I took Catrina’s complete health history from birth right through to now. her main reason for coming is to feel healthy and lose some weight as she recognises that this will help relieve other problems. It soon became clear that all her systems are out of balance but my main concern is her liver – congestion here can lead to major symptoms in all parts of the body and is directly part of her problem with gall stones.

Because of the amount of toxicity that Catrina clearly has I don’t want her to do too much too quickly as this could precipitate a healing crisis. So therefore before addressing diet I want to sort her hydration out and take some pressure off her compromised liver.

I’d asked her to keep a food and mood diary before coming along and noticed that in the 5 days before seeing me she’d consumed:

7 cans of diet cola
1 can lemonade
3 cups of black coffee + 2 cappuccinos + 1 latte
1 snowball
3 glasses of wine
5 x 1/2 litre bottles of water although one day didn’t have any water
1 ginger tea.

I have challenged her to cut down then cut out all the stimulants and increase her water intake. Cutting out caffiene will take pressure off her adrenal glands as well as her liver. Caffiene also disrupts the blood sugar balance significantly which in turn affects appetite and sugar cravings. Aspartame (in the diet cola) has been linked with Fibromyalgia and proven in clinical trials to not only increase appetite but when taken with food increases the amount of calories extracted from that food! To help with the motivation on giving up the artificial sweeteners I’ve lent her my copy of the documentary “Sweet Misery” which gives an excellent account of how aspartame came to be approved as safe in the US by the FDA despite the evidence to the contrary, alongside stories of those most severely affected by this chemical.

Caffiene is a physically additive drug so going “cold turkey” or even dramatically cutting down can result in withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and mood swings. Increasing water intake can negate these but if it doesn’t help then dropping a few drops of coffee or cola under the tongue can relieve the problem without exposing the digestive system to a big dose.

Finally I asked her to start the day by drinking juice 1/2 fresh lemon in hot water very first thing. This is to stimulate her gall bladder and encourage more frequent production of bile as is a very gentle gall bladder flush.

Carole Batchelor 01234 862217 www.healthyresults.co.uk

I’ve brought together: holistic nutritional therapy to address physiological issues; TFT to address debilitating negative emotions that are generating stress and thereby creating or aggravating the physical symptoms and Grief Recovery to complete any unfinished business with their emotional past. This means that they don’t have to decide what to do:- we do that together.

Catrina my first life changer has agreed to take part in this blog to help others work out whether this might suit them and help me develop and refine the programme. Her comments and experiences good and bad will be posted on this page – uncensored by me – hopefully giving everyone a good understanding of how I work.

Where to start will depend on the nature of the problems. Catrina is a 43 year old working mother solo parenting 2 sons. Her visit to me was prompted by recommendations from her sister following the latest acute gall bladder attack before Christmas. Doctors have recommended that she have her gall bladder removed but currently she is considered too overweight for surgery. The attack was so bad this time her consultant suggested she be assessed for gastric band surgery but it seems she is not ill enough to justify this operation. Catrina also suffers from fibromyalgia a debilitating neurological disorder that causes severe, chronic muscle pain all over the body. There may well be more that I need to take into consideration before formulating a treatment strategy so until I take her full case history I won’t know exactly what we’ll be doing first. However, given the severity of the gall bladder attack clearly we need to get to grips with changing her body chemistry as soon as possible. It is my goal to help Catrina back to health without the need for any surgery at all. Watch this space!

Carole Batchelor 01234 862217 www.healthyresults.co.uk

So which method will you choose this time?

Cold Turkey – so named because that’s what you’ll be eating in order to give your hands and mouth something to do and there’s plenty of it in the fridge….

It’s the cheapest and most popular method at this time of year.

You’ve smoked yourself silly on New Year’s Eve and that was it. You’re no longer a smoker. Yeah Right. A few days in and the shiny new will power is starting to fade. Your partner and or kids are getting fed up with just how irritable and grumpy you are, to the point where although they begged you to give up they’re now begging you for Pete’s sake have a fag and cheer up. So you crack or perhaps still hanging on to those last vestiges of will power go and buy some …

Patches – blimey these have to work you’ll be thinking as you hand over about £15-£20 a week, (unless you’ve got them on prescription) the makers recommend a 10 week course but how likely are they to help?

Nicotine has been shown to leave the system naturally in a few days so by using patches you’re prolonging the impacts of the nicotine significantly, so they are useful only in apparently managing your nicotine craving while you’re getting used to not having something in your hands or mouth. I say apparently as many users report symptoms similar to nicotine withdrawal namely: light-headedness, queasiness, headaches, irritability, sleep disturbances, vivid dreams and depression. The main problem with these patches is that while they may help alleviate (not eliminate) the additive urge they do nothing to change the habit and many smokers end up worse off financially and physically as they light up with the patch in place – thereby getting more nicotine than they would normally!

Gum/Inhalators etc

Most of what goes for patches goes for these things too, the only difference is that they do have the benefit of giving your mouth and hands something to do. That said it has been shown in research that any benefits are placebo rather than genuinely beneficial – let’s face it, if they were that good the makers should be out of business by now…

Hypnosis

Often regarded as the ultimate last resort hypnosis can be very successful for many people – it does genuinely help break habits and addictive urges but has two main drawbacks – cost and appeal. A stop smoking course with a properly qualified therapist can cost hundreds of pounds and still may not work. Equally many people really don’t like the idea of being “put under”. Although this sort of therapy doesn’t require a deep trance and people are well aware throughout what’s going on the very idea is enough to keep them away.

So is there anything else out there? Well yes, of course – books and DVDs by the hundred so you can teach yourself why you’ll be better off not smoking and get yourself motivated. These can be great but ultimately they serve to make that Turkey a little less cold – that indeed may be enough for you but if it isn’t where next?

There is one more therapy that chances are you’ve not heard of let alone considered seriously. Thought Field Therapy created by Roger Callahan can be highly effective yet involves none of the above. TFT is the tapping of your own meridian points using your fingertips. If the correct points are tapped in the correct order then an addictive urge can be eliminated, motivation increased and negative thoughts and cravings removed. You can buy a book but I would always recommend seeing a professional for something as complex as solving an addiction.

So what does it do and why is it so effective?

Because TFT eliminates ANY negative thought or craving I would first treat the additive urge. To do this I ask anyone coming to see me, to make sure that they arrive absolutely desperate for a cigarette (or whatever they’re giving up) I ask them on a scale of 1 – 10 how much they want a fag and then work with them until it’s a 0 or 1 where 10 is MUST HAVE ONE RIGHT NOW and 1 is not bothered. This generally takes just a few minutes!

We then tap for any situation where the want for a smoke comes up so that they are far less likely to want one when that happens in reality and I teach them how to tap for themselves should the urge come back in a new situation.

We also tap for the reasons why they started smoking in the first place, why they’ve failed in the past, any emotions they are trying to push down or swallow (it’s no coincidence that many smokers turn to food as a substitute) and any difficulties they foresee ahead.

It doesn’t matter how many they smoke a day, using this process anyone who still wants a cigarette by the end of the session doesn’t have to pay. At the second session we cover anything that came up in between that made being a non-smoker difficult for them.

If you like the sound of this treatment then you can find a local TFT practitioner by visiting www.thoughtfieldtherapy.co.uk many like me, work on a no fix no fee basis for the first session but check with them when you call or contact me on 01234 862217 for more information.

The Journal of Urology by Mohammad Reza Safarinejad of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran, has reported on a trial which showed that supplementation with Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) for 6 months improved several aspects of infertility in men.

Male infertility accounts for half of the cases in which a couple is unable to conceive, and could be due, in part, to increased exposure to harmful chemicals.

The current trial enrolled 212 infertile men aged 21 to 42 who had abnormalities in sperm count, motility (movement), and morphology (formation). Participants were randomized to receive 300 milligrams coQ10 per day or a placebo for 26 weeks, followed by a 30 week treatment-free phase. Sperm quality, hormones, and blood and seminal coQ10 levels were evaluated at monthly intervals.

After 26 weeks of treatment, plasma and seminal CoQ10 levels increased by 85.5 percent and 135 percent in subjects who received the compound, while remaining relatively unchanged in the placebo group. Serum follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone levels, which, when elevated, can be a sign of testicular problems, also declined among those who received CoQ10 compared with the placebo.

Significant improvements in sperm count, density, and motility were observed in men who received CoQ10 compared with the placebo after 26 weeks.

“This study indicates that oral supplementation with CoQ10 significantly improves semen parameters compared with that of placebo…CoQ10 should be considered a good candidate for treatment in infertile men.” Dr Safarinejad concluded.

As CoQ10 is a substance we produce naturally in the body as supplements go it is one of the safest around however anyone with diabetes should be aware that it can reduce blood glucose levels especially in high doses. Our body’s ability to produce CoQ10 reduces with age so many older people use a supplement to help improve the energy levels. The doses in the study above would be considered very high, for most 30-100 mg a day is enough but for those suffering from conditions such as Angina or Parkinson’s 100-200mg is more common. However, those taking the drug Warfarin should talk to their doctor as CoQ10 can interfere with how this drug works. As with all supplements it’s a good idea to seek professional help before making radical changes to your regimen.