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My crazy diet experiments (3+ years)
Raw meat is so much better than cooked - way less inflammation.
For those of you worried about the carcinogens in meat and its inflammatory properties, it's pretty clear that you lump cooked meat as all the same, not realizing there's such a thing as overcooked food or different cooking methods. If you could show me a case of someone getting better in any health aspect just by switching from boiled, roasted or lightly seared meat to raw meat, I would stand corrected (and that is not to say you can't overcook foods this way).
I also wonder how long has any of you managed to last purely on raw meat (and I don't mean ham/salami/sausages) without going insane, having bowel movement issues or losing too much weight. I couldn't do raw meat for more than a month, and it literally made no difference in any of my health issues. I did, however, have to eat more than usual to maintain my weight (which is not fun considering I only eat one meal a day) and I was craving salt far more than usual.
As for the paper you linked @max-3, it is extremely misleading, as it takes the pH of a fasting stomach. Imagine thinking that a dog can digest with a pH of 4.5. A dog, for that matter, can easily have a pH even lower than 1.0 during digestion, whereas humans are lucky if they even reach 1.0 ever.
Until you manage to show some convincing evidence supporting raw meat over any kind of cooked meat (and not just some in vitro study showing 'muh carcinogens'), I will just assume you guys can't be asked to cook your meat, would rather spend more money and time eating it, and you got nothing left to blame in your diet but the one practice we adopted for probably as long as our communication through language.
Quote from lil chick on June 1, 2021, 10:29 amCue the ivermectin from that other recent thread, LOL. I can't help but wonder if the reason ivermectin helps people is because they have un-diagnosed parasites. But really, is it part of life on Earth? I once read a 200 year old journal of a woman who was a midwife and she was always giving anti-parasitical herbs to people. I suppose many culinary herbs are gentle anti-parasiticals, and if we've been cutting back (to avoid VA's) we might suffer a bit at the lack of them.
Human poop was left right on top of the ground a lot more back in the olden days, so I suppose a yearly worming was important back then.
There is a strong argument for lack of intestinal parasites being responsible for much higher rates of auto immune disease.
My position is that most parasites are harmful and you never want them. However, a few species such as hookworm are our friends. Hookworm keeps iron under control, depletes vit A and many believe that the immune system has evolved to expect hookworm infection and without it the immune system becomes overactive and auto immune conditions can develop. Many find some relief from their conditions through deliberate hookworm infection.
I can't even deal with eating a small amount of raw beef.
Very good point about cooking method. Boiled food, not raw food is longevity food. This was known by ancient cultures, chinese medicine recommends porridges, broths and boiled food for invalids for example. Congee is known as a health promoting food. Thoroughly cooked boiled food puts the least stress on digestive enzymes, not raw food.
I think it's normal to want to eat baked, fried and roasted food though with all the tasty caramelized flavours etc. Eating only boiled food wouldn't be much fun.
@tim-2 I eat basically only boiled food. Only sometimes baked chicken. But i still add water so it's basically steam cooking.. I knew it instinctively even before I knew something about nutrition that baked, fried foods are really unhealthy.. Meat fried in vegetable oil and meat cooked/steamed will make huge difference in long term.. It's not one cigarette or one fried cheese with fried chips that will harm us it is the habit doing it all the time for decades..
Quick update:
- It has been 1,5 months since the 20 day water fast
- Diet has mainly been mangos and beef
- Energy levels still very good
- BUT: I feel like Im slowly getting worse again with: Seb derm (this is what I wanna heal the most), dandruff and itchiness, dry skin
I highly doubt that the beef is worsening anything. It has to be the carotenoids in the mangos. I used to think beta carotene is no problem for me. Seems like I was wrong.
I think this is what happened:
- I got rid off a lot of vitamin A with the 20 day fasting and felt great
- Then I was fine for a month even with beta-carotene fruit. But the stores slowly got filled up again
- Now that Im full of beta-carotene I get worse again and I notice it.
I will go zero vitamin A now for the rest of the year and see what happens. I just really hope I dont get too much acne from white rice.
Your story is SO interesting. If you look at the Accutane subtopic, you can read my thread and my experience healing from Accutane. I was pretty active about a month ago giving an update after a low VA diet failed me about 2 years ago. Long story short - took Accutane, severe eye issues, found Grant's work, religiously did the low VA thing for about 4/5 months, got worse, found Loren Lockman's channel and switched overnight to fruit based raw vegan. What I didn't mention in my thread was that I also completed a 23 day water fast with Loren shortly after going raw vegan as I knew I needed to clean out all the garbage I had accumulated doing the beef/rice/beans diet. I knew my Vitamin A heavy diet was already going to trigger people here, so I decided that mentioning an "extreme" water fast might make people write me off as crazy. 🙂 But you seem to get it.
I did NOT see much improvement after my water fast - but my body was in such a dehydrated and toxic state, and I knew I needed time to rehydrate with a proper diet. Things began turning around rather quickly a few months down the line, and before I knew it, the pain and suffering I experienced from that awful drug was gone. My health has sky rocketed since then - it seems things just get better and better every day.
I just wanted to warn you, as we seem to share many similar beliefs, to be very cautious before falling for the "Vitamin A is a poison" theory. Looking through your log, it seems that you had the most improvement (especially with the seb derm) on your fruit based diet. I personally don't think 8 months is long enough, especially without water fasting and ESPECIALLY if you took Accutane. It seems that you just didn't "like" the diet and wanted to eat other foods. I went through this phase at one point, probably around the 6-12 month mark (though I never caved), but now I don't ever want anything else. Especially nothing cooked - I agree with you, toxic and foreign to the human body. Also, I know the ungrounded feeling - that too eventually melts away as your body recalibrates - I am now at total peace and nothing ever gets to me. Even all the people who will likely come at me again on this board. 🙂
Note - I did have VERY mild seb derm/dandruff that was gone about a month after my water fast and on fruit/salad and never returned. The girl who cuts my hair says she has the healthiest scalp she's ever seen (and I wash my hair only with water).
Also, I am SO curious about one thing. You repeat a lot of what Loren Lockman teaches (as do I, it just all makes so much sense) - but you eat meat?? While I do commend you for eating raw meat (definitely better than cooked), I still think this is where you're going terribly wrong and why you haven't sustained the results of your water fast.
Just wanted to throw in my two cents as someone who has been there, done that.
Super interesting about the fast. I am anti-fasting because my VA-toxic elderly kidney-failure cat seemed to have a stroke after a week of self-imposed fasting. Are you both young with generally working organs? I really think it's not a great idea for people with really broken systems, like my cat. The vet and all the cat-kidney-failure websites said "keep food moving through"! I know that I personally haven't had good reactions to fasting. I'm just not that flexible in lifestyle here at 58 and being high VA probably about 44 of those years.
@michele, you probably don't read all the threads here, (perhaps you do?) so I'm just going to mention that we've been talking about how some meats might actually have more VA than anyone expects. It could be *that* is what is getting people into trouble when they try to accomplish the same things that Grant did. Perhaps their diets (that are meat centered) aren't quite as low in VA as nutrition charts might lead them to think they are.
I'm having trouble with editing my last post with the block quote, but I wanted to ask you about how you actually feel about VA at this point. You think the drug is awful, but the "vitamin" is ok?