Hi all!!

Hoping to get your feedback on my situation.

This way of life is completely new to me. I've been reading and researching for a while, but finally decided to start 100% raw last Monday. (before that, I ate whatever, whenever).

Today hubby surprised me for breakfast with a cooked veggie omelette with 1 slice of bread. Not wanting to ignore his efforts, I ate it and I've been in agony ever since. Stomach feels like it's in knots and I'm super bloated.

Question - Can eating cooked food again really cause this? How can only 1 week change the way my body reacts to food?

Thanks in advance everyone!!
-t

trinarox[and I hope you do],

As an experiment, I've eaten some cooked food this week after 100% rawing it for 5 weeks prior. All I have eaten is organic, and mostly produce. Cooked vegetables have been surprisingly more debilitating in their effects than grain products, though these haven't been a cakewalk to deal with either. As of the end of this week, I have symptoms of rheumatism--I kid you not--and I'm not rheumatic. My long bones and joints hurt, I cannot arch my back, hold out my arms, or straighten my legs without shooting pains resulting. I am also very mucusy and have been fighting off a dull temporal lobe headache for three days. My digestion ist kaput. These symptoms are also typical of first onset of Multiple Sclerosis, which really gives me pause . . . I have been craving, and drinking, organic black coffee by the bucketload. The mere thought of black coffee was nauseous to me once upon a time, and I cannot understand where this sudden passion for black joe comes from. Except that black joe does clarify the liver tissues, so I am putting it down to my liver's crying out for relief. Thus, tomorrow it's back to 100% raw, 80/10/10, So Help Me God. More and more, I cannot fathom how people live like they do on cooked. It's mind-boggling, honestly.

P.S. Your husband sounds like a dear, but I'm sure he doesn't want you in agony : )

Our bodies are highly adaptable, when we eat raw foods our body begins to become more alcholine rather than acid so it produces less mucus, the mucus was produced to protect vital orgins from the acid base.

This is the simplest explaination

I had a simular situation, I thought I could just eat some pizza with the family but ended up in pain with swollen stomach and a bloated stomach that made me cry in pain. I drank just a cap full of braggs vinegar in a glass of water and my bloat instantly went down. The vinegar brings the ph ballance correct. what ever the case I am convinced the raw food diet is the best diet and I can't eat any cooked foods unless I want to experiance that pain.

Some books:
The battle for health is over pH
by gary tunsky

The pH miracle
Robert O. Young

Tamuhka, any explanation of why the cooked veggies were harder on you than the cooked grains? I dont do grains at all anymore (for years), but I do think that I will go back to steamed veggies when this juice fast is over.

THanks for the info

cocoa_nibs,

No explanation. I was like, "Well, THIS is bizarre!" I have no idea why the grain food induced slight diarrhea but the veggies induced bloating and joint pain and excess mucus. I cannot explain it using what I[and Pam] know about alkalinity v. acidity. It really defies sense. At this point, the chemical reason doesn't matter to me because I don't get bloating or joint pains from raw vegetables and I don't intend to eat cooked anything ever again if I can at all avoid it. Thank goodness I have the refuge of green smoothies to seek shelter in! Everybody's different, cocoa, so maybe give the steamed veggies a try and see how you do. Good luck

Interesting that it seems so hard at first to eat only raw food, but then at a certain point, we may feel like: "No, I just can't eat cooked food ever again! How do other people do it?!"

80-10-10 feels uncomfortably extreme to me over the long haul, but as long as I have a few nuts and seeds to eat, plus some avocado - and of course, plenty of fruits and some greens, staying raw seems a lot easier now than it was at first. Thank goodness!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2009 09:06PM by suncloud.

Trinarox,

Maybe in addition to whatever we're experiencing with PH, there's also the waste factor that we deal with, especially when we're first starting out with raw. My understanding is that once we stop consuming cooked foods, our bodies go into "clean-up mode". All the junk that's been stored everywhere in our cells begins to be passed out of our cells and loaded up into our digestive/excretory systems to be passed out of our bodies. It's mixed with massive mucous to protect our insides as it passes through.

Good function, and the good clean raw food we're eating will help to push that wad out of our bodies and replace it with living energy for our cells. BUT if we eat something UNraw while that massive wad of mucousy junk is making it's way out of our bodies, the UNraw stuff doesn't help to get rid of the mucousy wad. Instead, it gets caught up in it!.

So we've now got a massive strain on our digestive system. There's this huge wad of mucousy junk to get rid of, plus UNdigested, UNraw stuff caught up in it. And the high-protein/starchy foods might be the worst UNraw stuff we can eat, under those circumstances. (Consider that when you ate the bread, you added paste to that mucousy wad!) Well, usually a healthy body can deal with that eventually, but it won't be comfortable!

It's often good to go a bit slow on the transition to raw food at first. That way there won't be one huge wad of junk released into the system all at once. Steamed veggies are often really good during transition (but not necessarily so good afterwards, as Tamukha has reported!).

There are a lot of things a person can change in transition to a raw food diet. A person can give up meat, give up dairy, give up salt, give up sugar and honey, change to whole grains, etc., while all the time increasing their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and a moderate intake of nuts and seeds.

An occasional water, juice, and/or smoothie fast will assist in the clean-out process, but be sure to be very careful not to eat high protein/starch foods soon after a fast, because that could bring on the same uncomfortable symptoms, for the same reasons.

Best wishes, and hoping you feel better!

suncloud

Quote

staying raw seems a lot easier now than it was at first.

One I made the decision to eat ONLY fresh raw vegan foods and absolutely nothing else it got a lot easier for me too because dead food was no longer an option.

I hear you. Yes it's like that. we become more sensitive so we have to be careful to eat food that loves us, not food we were used to love. Big difference as love always has to be both ways.

hope you feel better soon

blessings

Cynthia

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF RAW!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW BLESSED U ARE THAT YOUR BODY RESPONDED IN SUCH A LOVING WAY TO RID IT OF THE TOXINS SO QUICKLY.............

LANIE

OK... this may sound weird, cos I'm all for raw etc... but I think it's a mind thing... like, if you 'believe' you're gonna get sick as soon as you eat cooked food... then you will...
In my experience, I've been through times when I couldn't even eat a handful of roasted peanuts without getting sick the next day... nowadays I'm still mostly raw, but I eat cooked food whenever it 'suits' me... I can't deny I get 'cooked symptoms', but for some reason it's nowhere near as severe as it used to be... I feel like it's just cos my belief system has changed...
Have a read of the book 'Science and Health' by Mary Baker Eddy... it certainly changed the way I think about things...
however I still feel that raw vegan is the best way to be, if that's where you're at
xxx



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2009 11:03PM by lisa m.

lisa m,

You mean, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy? Well I'll be a monkey's uncle, but I am looking at it right now on my bookcase! It was given to me as a gift a few years ago and I haven't read it yet, but I shall start tonight just because you thought to mention it. Isn't serendipity great? Thanks!

yay Tamukha! I just love synchronicity!!! I was the same, took ages to get round to reading it cos it looked like some kind of bible or something, but it's an awesome book, all about the power of positive thinking, so inspiring! xxx

Haha, there's another good one, lisa m, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I also got a lot out of Science and Health, a perception changing book for me.

Trinarox, I think bacterial floura might play a part. One week is enough time for the mix of beneficial floura to change, imo.

When I ate cooked food after being raw and my stomach blew up like a hot air balloon I know it was real. Something real happened inside my body that caused such pain. It was not mind over matter. I don't want to experiance that kind of pain again so it was like adversion thearopy for me so the next time my family eats pizza I will abstaine.

Tamukha, bone and muscle pain can be a result of Vitamin D
insufficiency or deficiency.

I would also make sure B12 is not a problem, but your symptoms can
definitely be caused by low Vitamin D.

Just one link, but this is all over if you look on PubMed.
[www.webmd.com]
> In a study involving 150 children and adults with unexplained muscle
> and bone pain, almost all were found to be vitamin D deficient; many
> were severely deficient with extremely low levels of vitamin D in
> their bodies.

You can also do a search on "proximal myopathy" and Vitamin D and see
instances of where people ended up in wheelchairs until their Vitamin
D deficiency was discovered and reversed through supplementation.
They did walk again, but not until much supplementation to raise their
levels. Proximal myopathy especially affects the legs.


People often think of rickets and osteomalacia with Vitamin D, but
there are far more symptoms that can result than just bone loss.

There are a few places online where one can have their Vitamin D
levels measured through a home test over the mail. One is on the
Vitamin D Council's website.

If an otherwise complete and healthy diet is eaten, cooked food alone
would not cause those problems. It's ridiculous to think that cooked
vegetables, which have been eaten by all the healthy long-lived
societies in the world, would be the cause of such severe symptoms
that you described. It's not detox.

Raw food should not be a religion, and this kind of thinking that
cooked food is the source of all one's symptoms, and not a possible
deficiency or other reason, get people into a lot of trouble.

Better to make sure the diet is complete than to fall off of it
completely, don't you think? That is why some people end up on raw
animal food diets, in my opinion. They likely could have solved their
problems by adjusting their vegan diets.

Tamukah wrote:
> My digestion ist kaput.

Digestion can be dramatically affected by a B12 problem, as well as
Vitamin D. Of course there are many possibilities, but here is why
regarding the above 2 cases.

When B12 is low, it affects the nerves, especially the large vagus
nerve, which is connected to the pyloric valve of the stomach. If
this valve stops opening and closing regularly, the stomach will not
be able to properly empty into the small intestine.

Similar problems can occur with the ileo-cecal valve between the small
and large intestine, as the vagus nerve runs through that area as
well.

Vitamin D affects not only skeletal muscle, but the smooth muscle
tissue, which includes the intestines, so one's digestion can suffer.

This information should be more prominently known. Many of these weak
digestion stories are seen throughout the raw food world. If the diet
is so great, this makes so sense, where others who should have
inferior health, eating the SAD, have no problem digesting heavy
meals. One shouldn't have to be scared of each meal and their every
ingredient as the years go by on a raw food diet.

Many people would be amazed at their health improvements and digestive
capabilities if they would simply get their B12 and Vitamin D levels
up. Other factors that are important are a low fat diet, but even
many on a low fat diet end up with progressively weakened digestion
over time if either of the above two essential nutrients become
depleted.

A little bit of cooked food should not deter an healthy body.

hachiya,

I appreciate your rigor in researching both types of deficiency; I'd forgotten how subtle signs of depletion can be. However, my symptoms upon eating cooked food were acute and were discernible, one cooked food response from another. Hence my attributing them to a hyperallergic reaction to the reintroduction of cooked foods. It isn't impossible that I might have a B12 and/or Vitamin D deficiency, so I am being vigilant about these nutrients. But it's unlikely that sudden onset of these symptoms can be connected to chronic B12 or Vit D deficiency. Likewise, the cessation of the symptoms upon resuming raw suggests an allergic reaction, rather. My particular system has proven to adjust very quickly to new eating, sleeping, and stress conditions. Don't know why, that's just the way my weird body works. It seemed too anomalous a collection of symptoms to be anything other than an immune crisis. If these symptoms ever return while on 100% raw, mind you, I'll hie me immediately to the Dr. for blood and saliva tests! Thanks for reminding me how important B12 and Vitamin D are : )