EIGHT years ago, Milly Dawson turned to juice cleansing as a way to heal her body.
It was shortly after a trip to Fiji that Dawson returned home and fell ill with dengue fever, the mosquito-borne virus that left her bed-ridden for two-and-a-half weeks and suffering from chronic fatigue for months after.
"I had fevers, chills - I think I was sitting at 39 degrees for nine days - and I had a dengue rash from head to toe," Dawson tells Weekender.
"You can't keep food down, so I lost nine kilos in two-and-a-half weeks. It was quite intense, so that was the sickness side of it. It wasn't until six months later that I realised the chronic fatigue was there as well."
She wanted a solution, so began studying nutritional medicine and discovered the benefits of juice cleansing.
Dawson started making her own raw, cold-pressed juices as an alternative health treatment to get her body and her mind back in balance. She recognised the benefits for herself and began selling her concoctions at market events around the Hunter, which led to the development of her cold-pressed juice delivery service, The Healthy Cocktail, in 2017.
The Healthy Cocktail offers cold-pressed juices, superfood smoothies, tonics and broths, as well as one, three and six day cleanse programs that are tailored to suit specific needs, delivering orders twice a week in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the Hunter Valley.
The Hamilton-based business is going strong. Dawson is in the process of planning to set up another kitchen to expand the growing venture after she launched an extension of The Healthy Cocktail in June last year known as The Healthy Herbals, which is a collaboration between herself and Charlestown-based traditional Chinese herbalist Dr Li Chen.
She first met Dr Chen when she began visiting her practice seven years ago to find alternative treatments to assist in her recovery from dengue fever.
"We have been speaking about collaborating and doing something a little deeper with the Chinese herbs for a while and then with COVID lockdown it gave me the time to put all of that together," says Dawson.
"The Healthy Herbals was my COVID project. I own a beauty salon as well, so when that was forced to close it gave me the space I needed to work on the herbal blends. That was one little blessing that came out of that whole thing."
The Healthy Herbal range has seven blends which are tailored to aid in the relief of symptoms around conditions affecting energy, mood, menopause, liver, immunity and digestive issues by supporting the body's organs and balancing Qi (the Chinese term for energy flow).
"These blends are something special. They haven't been done before," Dawson says.
"I take raw Chinese herbs prescribed by Li and infuse them into my vegetable broth. It's a program with detox waters, juices and medicinal herbal broth which is working a little deeper than the other range [The Healthy Cocktail]."
Everything in The Healthy Cocktail and The Healthy Herbals range is plant-based, using coconut water and milk for the "mylks".
"The juices are still so raw, they're fresh, they are unpasteurised, they are not heat treated, which means you are getting the maximum amount of nutrients in the bottle without losing them through processing," Dawson says. "They are very vegetable-based too, not fruit-based. We use cabbage in a lot of our juices. It's the secret ingredient for the medicinal properties."
It's no surprise that the first week of January is the busiest time of year for Dawson, with customers looking to cleanse their system after over-indulging during the holiday season.
"The main focus with a cleanse is healing the body and having three days to rest your digestive system, reset your metabolism, increase detoxification, increase energy and vitality, all while breaking down fat cells," she says. "It's a great way to keep the body in balance, especially if you have health conditions or inflammation. It's a great way to reset."
Order online at thehealthycocktail.com.au
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