Wow, it seems like forever since I've written one of these!

Forgive my absence, things at the office are picking back up, and with a kindergarten graduate and a precocious 4 year old baby sister, my life has been a little busier the last couple of months.

I convinced my husband we needed a juicer (I promised to juice pineapples and add rum to them and serve them in the hammock on Saturdays!). What prompted this was a delicious juice I ordered just before giving a talk several weeks ago. I got an apple, beet, ginger juice, and not only was the color amazing, it tasted great, too. I got a pretty fast shot of energy, and found when I had dinner that night I didn't eat as much.

So I started thinking about juicing and arthritis, and it makes sense that the right ingredients in a juice can help with that.

First, there are known anti-inflammatory properties to foods like pineapple and ginger, and combining them is pretty tasty. Second, foods like lemons and greens are alkalizing and if you're system is acidic, you're more prone to pain and inflammation.

Below is a short list of juices I like (and you can find tons more by Googling it).

Apple, Lemon, Ginger

Juice one apple, cored, one lemon, peeled, and an inch of fresh ginger root, peeled.

Pineapple, Ginger

Cut the rind off a pineapple and remove the core. Juice enough of it to get 8 ounces with one inch of peeled ginger root.

Carrot, apple, spinach, ginger

Wash (and peel if the carrot is not organic) two carrots and core an apple. Wash the raw spinach and roll the leaves until they're packed. Juice the spinach first followed by the carrot, peeled ginger, then apple.

Mango, pineapple

Peel a mango and remove the flesh from the core. Remove the rind and core of a pineapple. Juice the mango, followed by the pineapple.

There are tons of recipes using tomatoes, celery, and other veggies. If you have arthritis, this might be a simple way for you to get extra nutrition and some anti-inflammatory "stuff" into you.

Oh, and I'm using the Jack LaLanne juicer, but I suppose any old one would do! Yours in good health, Dr. Andrea Mills