Straight Up Celery Juice

Have you seen those articles on how to get more clicks by writing an attention-grabbing headline? Something about getting rich quick, cute kittens, or celebrity sideboob, and you can pull millions of easily distracted eyes to your site.

Well, now that your eyes are here, I will share my miracle cure story. YES I SAID MIRACLE CURE. You see, after a day spent staring at the computer, working hard on my writing and editing (and only occasionally clicking on links to videos-silly kitten! That’s a duck!) I had a couple of glasses of wine with a lovely dinner and went to bed.

JUST A COUPLE. I swear. People over 40 will understand this.

And woke up with a headache. The kind that sits in your eye cavity, as if your eyes have grown overnight, and now uncomfortably squeezed by your skull. Lying in bed, contemplating taking ibuprofen, I decided to re-test an experiment I did when I was developing juices for my book, Juice It!

Back then, I had been researching the healing qualities of fresh juices, and found that celery has something in it that actually stops inflammation and swelling in your brain. It’s a flavonoid called luteolin. Celery is also high in calcium, which is good for headaches. Natural healers recommend celery as a first response to headaches and migraines. Ginger is another anti-inflammatory food, so adding a knob of it to your juice is also helpful.

Because Magnesium and Calcium are also good for headaches, leafy greens like kale, spinach and chard can be good for a curative drink. Many headaches are also exacerbated by dehydration, so drinking lots of water and juice is going to help.

But the day that all this really meant something to me, a year ago, I was about to have a full on migraine. I’ve only had a few in my life, and I had come to know the warning signs. I was seeing strobe-light rainbow flashes on the periphery of my vision, called “migraine haloes.” Nobody really knows why migraines come, or why they announce themselves with strobe lights, but they do.

So I had put together this recipe that was meant to cure hangovers. I put on dark sunglasses, and made the juice. (even low light hurts, with a migraine.)

Cranking Out The Remedy!

The recipe Hangover Fix, featured in Juice It!,  is made from celery, spinach and oranges. That day, I drank the whole batch, went to bed, and woke up, migraine free.

So, for the benefit of science, today I am trying the celery juice on its own, to see if it works. Maybe I need the spinach and oranges, but I will let you know.

EXPERIMENTAL LOG

Okay, I just drank an entire bunch of celery in one glass.

(Now I am taking a nap for 30 minutes, zzzzzz)

Now I am up, and it’s a MIRACLE, almost. The headache is 90% gone, and has moved from behind the eyes to the area behind my forehead. It’s definitely one that I could try to ignore all day. But in the interest of science, I am going back to the juicer.

Round two, spinach, ginger, cucumber, two lemons, a couple of apples.

Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin C and Ginger!

Okay, give me a little time to drink this, and I will report back……

30 minutes later, my headache is gone. (MIRACLE CURE)

Final analysis: Celery alone is not enough. It’s helpful, but you might as well add the leafy greens, ginger, lemon, and other stuff, just to cover all the headache helpers and make it taste better.

So here you go, you don’t have to click on a link to a pharmacy that sells blue pills, and I am not offering any celebrity nip-slip photos, but I think I have a good way to treat a headache without taking a pill.

Headache Potion

This makes alot, you can drink half today, half tomorrow, if you cover it and refrigerate.

1 bunch celery

5 ounces spinach (one bag salad or five cups leaves)

2 inch knob of ginger

2 lemons, cut off the peels

2 small apples

2 cucumbers

Juice, drink, lie down in a dark room.

Contemplate giving up wine, caffeine and chocolate. Wake up glad that you don’t have to. Here is a bonus kitten picture, of my adorable cat Sunshine.

Bonus Kitten Picture