This is my friend Charlotte.  She is 67!  Charl has never gone in for body wraps or special beauty treatments, & only moisturises after swimming! She eats a healthy but not faddy French diet: no processed or junk food, good quality protein, local fruit and veg and plenty of red wine (she lives in Paris), and she and her husband do the 5:2 diet nearly every week to keep them trim…

If you have a phobia of needles, then this might not be for you!  But for me, acupuncture is the single, most important treatment I have regularly to stay in good health, keep sane and release tension!  I now treat it as a preventative therapy rather than waiting for a symptom to cure and, interestingly, thousands of years ago, when acupuncture was in its infancy in China, patients there would not be expected to pay their acupuncturist if they fell ill! Nowadays, in the West, acupuncture is used more and more and is even NHS approved.  It is also a great aid to ageing healthily, here's why......

I haven’t posted about fitness for a long while.  Yet, staying in Byron Bay, I have never had more opportunities to get fit.  I do a short, stretchy Yoga sequence most mornings, have found a Body Pump class,  walk 10 thousand steps a day, or more, cycle everywhere and  am having swimming lessons for the crawl! (More on that in a later post)  All  ideal exercises for increasing stamina and keeping your body toned – at any age. No wonder I’m exhausted…