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Joe's Progress
Howdy folks!
I discovered Grant's work about a month ago by happenstance. I devoured the books and their content has changed my life. It is no understatement for me to say that Grant's research is the most monumental piece of work that I've ever encountered. The implications are earth-shattering. On to my progress. First a bit of background:
I'm 39 years old, been a beer drinker and heavy smoker of hand-rolled tobacco for many years now. When people have often commented on how young I look, I have always attributed it, jokingly, to all of my drinking and smoking. I now see that there was a big grain of truth there. I have always been thin and athletic, weighing 138 at 6'2". Not much body fat to speak of.
About three months ago I decided to quit drinking beer - for my health, don't ya know. I went through withdrawals which included headaches and heavy night sweats, but it was nothing insurmountable. I began enjoying sober nights, where I could read my books in peace and eat to my heart's content with notably better digestion. My diet was always extremely heavy in coffee, tea, butter, milk, cheddar cheese, eggs, sausages, sour cream, bacon, cheeseburgers and potatoes. In my sobriety I began exploring new recipes, like chili, tacos, bangers and mash, and etc. It is my present understanding that alcohol was no longer protecting my liver (ironic, I realize), and eating my beef and cheddar and sour cream tacos, fat never drained, heavy on the chili spices, with tall glasses of whole milk, was quickly going to lead to my ruin.
I began at a certain point to experience chronic fatigue. It was serendipity which led me to Grant's blog. I couldn't say how it happened save through God. I read Grant's first book late into the first night, and my big tin enamel pot of freshly made bangers and mash, made with well over a pound of butter and plenty of milk, went into the woods for the varmints. I went out and got a beer the same night.
I switched immediately to sirloin steaks fried in olive oil and brown rice. From the beginning I experienced insomnia and constipation, both of which I hadn't experienced in over 25 years. In desperation one night, after a week of no sleep or evacuation, I made the enormous mistake of drinking the last of a dusty bottle of castor oil, which I later found was 9 years old. This nearly killed me (or so it felt). Within an hour I had a racing heart and simultaneous chills and fever and profuse sweating and was prostrate on the floor.
The constipation resolved itself on its own, the following night I believe. The insomnia took a bit longer, but also resolved. Other detox symptoms I noted: waking up with tight, tingling skin after a night of eating my homemade whole wheat bread with honey, a recurring drip of sweat from my left armpit (but not right), foaming urine, foul-smelling gas, stinky pits, and in a hot bath I noticed my left arm's skin (but not my right's) become tight and alligator like. This dissipated.
Recurring dry mouth with dry white spit, intense thirst, frequent urination, and something which I still don't understand, is that a tiny circuit-looking piece of (gold?) expressed from my thumb late one night. I still have it sitting in a bottle cap for when I get around to finding a used jeweler's loupe. I've been denailing old boards so logically it would have to have come from the nails, but what can I say, it looks like a tiny gold circuit.
I gave away my amish butter and tomato sauce, threw out all my chili spices, and continue to give away my eggs (I keep lots of chickens). My grocery trips are extremely simple, wherein I buy ten lbs. of dried black beans and 10 lbs. of brown rice at a time, and cook 3 lbs of brown rice and 2 lbs of black beans at a time, combining them in my big tin enamel pot to eat out of for the week. I have found a source of grass fed beef which gets hang time and is immensely better textured and flavored than store bought. Reasonably priced, too.
A later detox symptom I experienced involved popping ears (intense pressure) which was disturbing to me but resolved in a few days.
I am a month in and I am experiencing the raving hunger. I can put away a few cooked pounds of beans and brown rice and steak quite easily. I think my stomach is far more elastic now, as this level of gorging was never possible for me before.
I am experiencing increased mental clarity and memory recall. I am having the recall of buried memories from my past and effortlessly achieving new understanding. Empathy is increasing, what Buddha calls "loving-kindness". Also vivid dreams and picking up the vibes of the people around me without effort or anxiety. Any social anxiety I had, or trouble articulating myself in any situation, seems to have disappeared. Creaks and pain in my joints, as well as brain fog in the mornings, has also disappeared. I have the heavy burden of this new knowledge, knowing that proselytizing to any and all comers is both warned about in the bible, as well as being a rapid way to lose friends and alienate people. Walking a tight rope, so to speak.
I speculate that the pineal gland has also been subject to eczema and is now healing. They haven't got a fancy name for that condition yet, besides calcified.
Colors and feelings are increasingly vivid, though I continue to by myopic.
The magnitude of what has been stolen from us is breathtaking to me.
Summary of current diet: Olive oil, grass fed lean beef, himalayan pink salt (and LOTS of it), black beans, brown rice, honey, coffee, well water.
I bought raisins and tried munching them through the day but they were causing my teeth to hurt so I gave them up. There was one day digging a ditch in the sun when a muscle on my left abdomen cramped unbelievably, but this never returned after that day. I used to eat raw apricot seeds through the day, every day, on account of Edward G. Griffin's work but have given them up also. His treatment of scurvy and pellagra in that book has thrown it all into question for me.
I have given up my homemade wheat bread as it sat like a brick in my stomach during my bout with insomnia and constipation.
I've always been a simple guy so this diet suits me. When I travel I always keep my honey, spoon, and plenty of canisters of well water with me, which have all been indispensable.
If this posts successfully I will continue to update as new developments occur.
Thanks again to Grant!
Brown rice is a scam. will just irritate your stomach. white rice is much better.
@joseph-6 is your well water tested? It can have high amounts of some element like manganese or iron or something. Pink salt is horrible for you. Full of iron that you don't want. Basically the cheapest rock salt with added iodine is what you want. It is ironic I know. But people in health world who think celcic or pink salt is more healthy have no idea what they are talking about.. Cheap refined rock salt also doesn't have the toxins like micro plastics that are in the ocean now, but also don't have toxic metals like the unrefined version have. For example celtic sea salt which I love as well is very high in lead.. Pink salt is pink because it is full of iron oxide. Which does nothing for you but feeds pathogens in your colon and creates oxidative stress.. Also like @to is saying brown rice is loaded with arsenic and phytic acid. So you absorb barely any zinc from that beef when you eat it together. I said it in the other new thread as well. I would keep eye on iron as a male more than vit A. Especially if your diet is heavy in red meat and I would really make sure that your well water doesn't have toxic amounts of some metal, because once you make yourself toxic in some stuff it is hell to detox it out of the body..
Howdy folks!
I wasn't planning on drinking beer tonight, but these responses have inspired me.
I had my well water tested for free some years ago from a company which wanted to sell me expensive filtration units and it is quite acidic, 5.5 if I remember right. It is also delicious. I had a sip of perfect-ph, filtered water at my friend's house a week ago and the taste of chlorine and plastic was overpowering. I made the social faux pas of refusing future water on account of the taste and now I cannot live it down.
As for brown rice being a scam, I prefer having the bran and germ, and higher arsenic. Life is full of tradeoffs. I do rinse it well. I am by no means macrobiotic, but I see the virtue of taking the whole grain, as opposed to having the good stuff removed, then sold back to gullible folks in the form of supplements and to farmers to keep their animals healthy.
As to pink Himalayan sea salt being another scam, the same logic applied to rice is applied there. I don't have hemochromatosis to my knowledge. I also do my frying in cast iron, and in the winter time I have an iron kettle older than Moses which I use both to humidify the house and heat water for my coffee.
I appreciate the comments.
edit to add: Also, my well is only 30 feet deep, hand dug and culvert lined. When my stepfather and I got it going again after years of disuse, we pulled out some varmint bones. Some bleach and flushing of the system followed. More recently, say two years back, I found a kind of green mossy tendrily plant growing on the foot valve. My friend and I pulled it out with a steel rake attached to a rope and it was very impressive, like a large jellyfish.
edit to further add: Special thanks for the impetus to do a deep dive (for me, anyway) into "phytates". This article is fascinating and seems to further confirm the hygiene hypothesis treated in Grant's work: Dietary phytate primes epithelial antibacterial immunity in the intestine:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9627201/
last edit to add, I promise: Phytates are fascinating! Phytic acid is largely broken down by soaking, sprouting, fermentation and cooking. There are pluses and minuses to them - tradeoffs, you might say. Phytates can interfere with mineral absorption, particularly so for vegetarians, but do not interfere at all with the absorption of heme iron and zinc from meat. I found this information here: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/phytic-acid-101
@joseph-6 phytic acid does lower zinc absorption in the same meal, but it lowers iron as well. So like you said trade off.. I love brown rice, but she doesn't love me back. When I look into toilet it looks exactly the same as when I swallowed it.. Btw just because you don't have hemochromatosis doesn't mean you will not end up with iron overload as a male. Especially older male. You are 39.. But still if you use iron pan and cook on it daily especially with acid stuff like vinegar or citruses. You can saturate your body rather quickly and there is not good pathway of iron elimination apart from bleeding..
I fully embrace all denuded foods at this point in life. LOL
@jessica2 you can simply take some benfotiamin and resolve this lack of B1. That really is not the case for iron overload..
@jessica2 me first time taking benfotiamin 150mg a day I think it was like I am on some heavy stimulants. Crazy energy.. I was using a lot of magnesium chloride topically long time before I took that B1. SO I probably depleted that B1 with magnesium. They work together and deplete each other.. Before that I was always taking just regular B complex where was some thiamin HCL.. Even that is probably good enough for most people, but here and there do some cycles with higher dose benfotiamin + magnesium and other B vitamins like you said is probably a good idea..
With iron you are right. Females have to watch out more for copper issues.. Because high estrogen = more copper retention..
Update on progress
It has been over 2 months now. My freezer is stuffed full of the grass fed beef, and a new kicker, seed finished (higher but certainly lower on the retinol). I've read Grant's books through twice, and am halfway through a third read through Poisoning for Profits. I paused it to take up an old book called Papillon (absolutely excellent) and Dr. Bates book Better Eyesight without Glasses, over a hundred years old and still as true as the day it was written. I've tried his methods before and they only got me to a point; I only had one piece of the puzzle..
I mentioned macrobiotics jokingly in a previous post, but it is one incidence where people voluntarily went zero retinol for a period of time (from a few weeks to a month) in their indoctrination into that particular cult, eating nothing more than brown rice, and achieving miraculous cures in the process.
I misspoke before, the ph of my well water, I believe, was 5.9, not 5.5. Still acidic, but frankly my dears I don't give a damn.
Progress has slowed since my initial surge, but I believe it is simply adjusting to a new normal. I handle the punishing Carolina sun well, I'm early to bed and early to rise, I've cut myself down from 2 lbs of beef a day to 1, partaking only of rice and beans for lunch, and beef for supper. Supplements are honey and occasionally (because the good stuff is so pricey) apple sauce.
There is something to this left side being more affected than the right side in exposure and recovery from this toxin. I hypothesize that it has to do with the circulation of the blood, but I haven't dug any deeper into it than my own thoughts. It's a fact that when I'm exposed to retinol or its precursor or a similar toxin that my left eye gives me trouble - inflammation, and the last time I tried my whole wheat bread, a stye on the interior of my eyelid. It's my canary in the coal mine, so to speak.
The social anxiety is still nowhere to be found. New insights day to day have slowed down, but after all, it only takes one or two to change a man's life. I'm dreaming every single night. My weight has settled at 140, which is comforting as 135 was a little too light for my build. I believe that I'm adding muscle. When I split wood now, I have power and stamina (and accuracy) which I never had before.
There is one insight I had about a week ago which I'll share: The philosophical/moral precepts which I have always sought out and strove to adhere to no longer require any striving at all. To be good men and women is our natural bent. If it requires effort, then you are toxic.
My patience is through the roof now from where it was. Like Siddhartha, I know how to wait, how to fast, how to listen.
I see they sell a new water now called "Body Armor" which has vitamin a palmitate (33% of your daily needs!). Knowing that, and looking up at the checkerboard sky every day, nobody can tell me personally that this isn't a genocide. Still, one other insight I had was personal; I found that the things that once upset me now had become humorous. I haven't followed the news these two months at all. I haven't had any desire to go on the net since being rebuffed on this questionable forum. Not for the rebuffing, but because it no longer appeals to my natural bent. I'm back to vinyl and vhs, thanks.
On that note, films don't read the same at all to me now. The only film I've watched these months (and I've seen plenty) which still struck the same chord (and more deeply, in fact) was Fitzcarraldo. I tried to watch As Good as it Gets and had to shut it off. I mean honestly, what rich and free man doesn't aspire to wed a single mother with a disabled child requiring around the clock care (predictive programming, anybody?). And Mosquito Coast, wth was the message of that film? The same message as Naked and Afraid? (Go it alone and you'll get shot like a dog!). Or even Brazil, why the hell did I ever recommend that drek to anybody? The message was: fight the system and you'll be eaten alive by paperwork, or tortured to the point of insanity. I recommended these films because I was toxic.
But I'm working on it.
Cheers!
edit to add: Everything I've observed in real life since my first read through Grant's work has only confirmed it. There have been many observations but one stands out and is worth noting here: In Solzhenitsyn's Gulag works the books open with a before and after picture of the man. Before gulag he has very little, light, and thin hair, a feminine face, and vanishing eyebrows. His after picture is a chiseled man's face, with thick and black eyebrows and a full head of black hair. I have noticed this in myself as well. I am becoming more masculine. Libido is a part of it but only in its season. I find that I am fully capable of violence but never in cold blood and never without reason. I am becoming more of a man thanks to this "diet", for what it's worth, and I'll leave it there.
Most of the movies are propaganda. It's hard to find one that isn't.