COVER
STORY
BY ERIN BRIED

SEX AND THE CITY'S KRISTIN DAVIS GIVES UP THE NAUGHTY LIFE IN SEARCH OF BETTER HEALTH.

Kristin's quest

THIS IS A WOMAN WHO IS GOOD AT FAKING IT. Kristin Davis's eyes are bright. Her skin? Radiant. Her step? Bouncy enough to make one wonder if her Uggs are spring-loaded. So it may come as a surprise to hear that at the tail end of her sixth season playing preppie eternal optimist Charlotte York on HBO's Sex and the City, Davis, 38, is not just tired or sleepy—she's spent.
     Of course, the fact that she's merely exhausted, not sick, signals progress, given that Davis typically is ill enough to need antibiotics up to three times a year. She has worked through throat infections, backaches and headaches to complete filming, sometimes putting in a punishing 22 hours at a stretch. "Working on a set is like being a kid in nursery school," she says. "You have to be feverish and hallucinating to take a sick day, so everyone comes to work with their germs, and everyone is sick all the time." When it's not illness, it's pain. Davis pops Advil like Pez. 'I'm an addict," she says. "If you work all night, your feet hurt, your back hurts and you become very fond of the Advil."
     None of it, she says, has been great for her immune system, which is what she told her chiropractor last fall. He handed her the book Total Renewal (J.P. Tarcher/Putnam), by Frank Lipman, M.D., which promises "resilience, vitality and long-term health" mainly through a balanced diet, stress relief and exercise. "I read every chapter and said, 'That's me!'" Davis recalls. "I think I have a thyroid problem. I think I have an adrenal problem! And I'm reading and reading and thinking a lot of these problems can be easily tweaked." She then made an appointment with Dr. Lipman, who practices integrative medicine, an innovative blend of Eastern and Western techniques, in New York City. "In traditional Western medicine, it's black and white. Your'e either healthy or you have a disease," he says. "But there's a huge gray area where most of us belong. Chinese medicine is good at treating that gray area—the people who aren't extremely sick or 100 percent well."
     When Davis approached Dr. Lipman, her goals were clear. "I'd been thinking I needed to do something about my health for quite some time. We were heading into another New York winter, and I didn't want to get sick and go on antibiotics," says the sun-loving South Carolina native. "I also didn't want to literally fall apart when the show ends." (The last episode airs February 22, one day before her 39th birthday.) "I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to start thinking about my future," which, at this point, entails making movies.
     The first step to strengthening her immune system was to go on a temporary restorative diet. "I was having energy swings, and a lot of that was related to what I was eating," Davis says. "I had a habit of using caffeine and sugar [read: Diet Coke and M&M's] to self-medicate my way through the day." The remedy: For three to six weeks, cut out sugar, as well as wheat and dairy, which Dr. Lipman believes is hard for some people to digest. Alcohol is on the no list, too, which wasn't a problem for Davis, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for almost 15 years. So, sometimes, is fruit. The reasoning: Yeast thrives on sugar, even the kind found in fruit, and too much yeast in the body, Dr. Lipman says, can cause achiness and digestive problems.
     With her diet whittled down mainly to salmon, brown rice, eggs, guacamole, bread made from spelt (a grain), nuts, lots of vegetables, a few supplements and latte ("I couldn't give up caffeine or I'd kill someone," Davis says), she almost immediately felt better. "My energy doesn't have the weird spikes and drops it used to," she says. Making the changes was difficult. "At work I'm surrounded by every kind of candy imaginable, doughnuts, taquitos. I'm in the middle of a scene, and someone walks by with chicken fingers and I'm like, 'Hey!'" She grins, wiggling her eyebrows up and down. "But if I have some, it's a slippery slope." So instead, she reaches for her new favorite snack: organic almond butter cookies. Dr. Lipman says that after detoxing for a few weeks (how and how long depends on the individual), patients can loosen their approach to healthy eating. "You shouldn't feel deprived," he says. "Healthy eating means limiting foods that could be harmful and eating foods that contain nutrients essential to your health."

     Dr. Lipman also recommended that Davis have acupuncture weekly to help treat her digestive system. (She describes her stomach as "a growly, unhappy, tight little ball of chronic stress.") She's no stranger to the practice. In fact, her character visited an acupuncturist earlier in the season in hopes it would help her get pregnant. But unlike Charlotte, "1 have serious needlephobia," Davis says. "About 15 years ago, my dad, who is a psychologist, said I should get acupuncture," she says, adding with a laugh, "That's my dad." The exposure therapy only half stuck. Davis still sometimes faints at the sight of injection needles, but she loves acupuncture (and had no problem playing human pincushion for SELF's photo shoot). In Eastern medicine, Dr Lipman says, "acupuncture is about the flow of energy in the body. From a Western perspective, you'd say it releases neurotransmitters that can energize and relax you. In Kristin's case, for lack of a better word, it gives her system a boost."
     Although Dr. Lipman also advises exercise, Davis hasn't yet fit it into her schedule. "I never have enough energy to work and to work out," she says. "When I'm working, I don't work out. If I do both, I get sick."
     She refuses to get down on herself about not being able to do it all, and that positive outlook is key to her well-being. "I think going on a diet or exercising from that negative, 'I'm too fat' place is difficult, and you get into a downward spiral of negativity. But if you change your lifestyle for a good reason—I want to be healthier, I want to not be sick—it makes a huge difference." For the record, Davis is the only Sex actress who managed to fend off this year's round of illness. ("One of the four of us, I won't say who, even missed work," she says.) Perhaps more important to Davis, though, is her new balanced outlook on taking care of herself. "The satisfying thing is that I'm making an effort and doing something for myself. I may not be perfect, but I'm trying." •