Dance and drink your way to health

Manila, Philippines -  Welcome to the world of pole dancing inhabited by men and women with great abs, rippling muscles, and unbelievable physicality (read: balance, coordination, and sensuality).

Belonging to this blissful world is Polecats Manila performer and dance instructor Margaret Jade Chua Lao, 37-year-old mom to a sixteener who’s into soccer, rugby, swimming, and baseball.

This 5’6” health buff crawls up and down poles, spins around them with grace and ease because she’s been pole dancing since July, 2009.

She recalls, “About that time, I was looking for a physically challenging workout so I went to the gym, attended spinning classes until I saw an ad about pole dancing.”  

From day one at the Polecats class run by Christina Dy, she was hooked. But despite her active lifestyle and penchant for veggies and fruits, she had this never-ending bout with constipation. She tried to break it by trying different products that promised relief. “There came a point where I even tried laxatives which aren’t really good if taken daily,” she confesses.

Sometime in 2010, she saw a TV infomercial where Dyan Castillejo talked about Easy Pha-max wheatgrass. Intrigued by Dyan’s testimonial, Margaret browsed the company website and googled the superfood.  The more she researched, the more it fired her curiosity about the product. 

Margaret bought a box of the original flavor (wheatgrass pure) from a friend who is a distributor of Easy Pha-max wheatgrass. The thought that consuming it would be unappealing never entered her mind. After all, she loves vegetables and fruits.

She said that upon her first swig, it immediately yielded the cleansing results she long yearned for. “My bowel movement has turned from irregular to regular. The feeling of being cleansed every morning has made me more energetic and more confident about myself throughout the day. Because of my daily intake of Easy Pha-max wheatgrass, the cleansing has flattened my tummy.  It has not only given me the feeling of being lighter inside, it has also reflected on me physically,” she attests. 

Margaret got her son into the wheatgrass habit, too, to relieve him of his chronic constipation. She didn’t force him to make it part of his daily diet, preferring him to evolve into it and see for himself the much- heralded benefits of wheatgrass.

Margaret initially gave him the honey-flavored wheatgrass, but her son liked the pure flavor better. “After taking two sachets, my son said his bowel movement became regular. As a growing teenager, he is gradually becoming very conscious of his physical appearance and his health. He is now more physically active. Even if I didn’t push him to it, he makes it a point to drink a glass of wheatgrass every day upon waking up. We make sure we also drink enough water,” she relates.

Margaret concedes that the body needs more fiber, which helps the digestive system function properly. The plant wheatgrass is packed with dietary fiber, chlorophyll, vitamins, and nutrients that aid in preventing health disorders like constipation and diverticulitis.

Easy Pha-max wheatgrass has become a part of the nutritional regimen of people she’s close to. In her family, Margaret points to her mother as a recent convert. 

Add Polecats Manila, where almost everyone is familiar with the green drink. “We always have a box of both flavors in our studio which the students and the dance instructors help themselves to during classes. I drink it twice, upon waking up in the morning and when I get home in the afternoon. It is my great pleasure to share what I believe will make this world a happier place — pole dancing and Easy Pha-max wheatgrass,” she says with a big smile.