Dear all,

I wanted to know if you all would like share your wonderful detox experiences and also your health benefits after starting teh raw diet.

Here is my (and husband) experience:

I had two major detox in teh three months after I started raw food diet. I had such a horrible "cold" with yucky mucus coming out almost endlessly. I had acid come out of my skin and nearly cooked my skin and caused painful rashes. After all that, I felt so much nice, really wonderful.

When I moved to this country from India, I became very ill just by eating teh food here. I was not used to eating any packaged food/preserved food/colrs/flavors etc., After I started eating all teh "goodies" from teh super market I started getting severe migraines and acidity and so many problems. I could barely take care of myself, but when I went to India for 6 months, I lost 30 pounds, and most of my symptoms were gone. Then I slowly corrected my diet after returning to this country, and have stayed fairly healthy. But always had acidity and severe sinus pain. Then I read and read more on raw diet. This is the first thing that made sense to me and I readily started this

I have not had a heartburn or taken any antacid in three months (I had a little bit of detox where acidic waste was released, so had some acidity for about a week, but thats it)

I have not had sinus headaches which I used to almost everyday. My husband had sinus headaches so bad that he had to go to ER. He has not had sinus headaches in two months, after he stopped all dairy foods.

I am still just 75% raw, but I am healing so much.

I thank God every day for the help and the knowledge He has given us about raw foods and after many many years, I can say that I am healing and failrly pain free.


Please share your detox/ healing experinces, so we all can learn from our experiences.


God is good.

Bless you all.

Love
Anu Ramesh

I am also thankful to have found raw foods. I went thru a horrid detox when I first started out over 4 years ago. Earaches were the worst..and I was not prone to earaches, but they were so bad that after a month I felt I had to go see a Dr. and I did take anti-biotics.

I lost 71 lbs. pretty quickly..in about 6 months if I remember correctly. I could move and do things I wasn't able to do before that. My pain from chronic sciatica was lessened, although it didn't go away completely. Most of the pain I had in my fingers did go away though, and my gout (classic gout with the left big toe being very tender) cleared up when I found to use Burdock Root tincture.

I did fall off the ra wagon but am doing really well right now, and I found something that has really helped the pain from my sciatica, which is the organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar..it's been an amazing product for me. I'm on day 21 of taking it.

I tell people now if the numb spot (about a 50 cent coin size) that's just above my knee (been there for about 16 years) goes away, and my pinkie fingers straighten out (the top joint of each is very curved from Tophi which is calcium depoits) goes away..I'm writing my own book on raw foods and acv!

Love,
Prism

I'm right at the detox part and I'm waiting for the healing part. I haven't been seriously ill to start with - some joint pain, which is still there. I'm stuffed up and I had a sore throat for a few days. Somnebody said you should expect one month detox for every year of bad eating. It seems like a lifetime but I see people with shorter sentences and there's hope at the end of detox, right?

I'm going through detox now and I've read in order to speed things up, go on a 1 or 3 day juice fast. Or make a juice fast once a week in your life. I have a terrible stuffy nose and cough a lot with tons of mucous.

But for the few weeks raw, I have no more problems with backaches, waking up is not hard anymore. Falling asleep and staying a sleep is great! I see better and I have more energy!

Its good to hear from you all. I wish I had stayed with the program. Its just that my first experience with detox was just so severe I broke with living foods. I think it was because I didn't have enough faith that what was happening was good overall. But what I remember was like a really bad nightmare, coming home from work feeling extremely tired. Not too unusual for me, so I didn't think anything of it, and then waking up suddenly from a deep sleep about 4 hours later, covered in sweat, having the chills, my head spinning and crying uncontrollably from the fever and general body pain. I don't know why I didn't think to jump in the shower or something. The next morning I got up early and had a breakfast at a local greasy spoon. I am sure if I had weathered it out, it might have gotten better.

So, when you say on month of detox for every year of bad eating, what does that mean? Processed foods, sugar, alcohol etc? Does this also include cooked food that is unprocessed? Fortunately for me I think I ate well for most of my life, not eating processed foods at all during my teens and early twenties. Later I rebelled from that, thinking it was unnecessary,and really, really paid a big price for that in poor health. And it didn't take long, just a few years for everything to go south in a hurry.

Well, to get more positive I found raw foods and have been rawing on and off for the last several years. The general trend has been to eat generally better, and more towards raw. Simply because I want to feel better, and I know what it feels like to feel better. I just have some influences that I let get to me, and it knocks me off track however temporarily. But I start over, and over.

This will probably sound ridiculous but I didn't even know that was normal. I kept trying to go 100% raw and I would go through horrible "detox" symptoms and I thought that my body just wasn't meant for that kind of diet. I assumed wrong I guess. I thought feeling like that would only happen if your body was truly deficient of something. I am not 100% raw now only about 50% but I think I will go 100% now that I know this is normal. So when and how did the symptoms get resolved for you guys? Did you work out while you were "detoxing?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2007 06:43AM by Crna.

I wouldn't put a time on how long it takes to detox, some people because of their health when they start will determine that.

Maybe if you were really ill to begin with like I was you know right away what is happening to your body..it happened quickly for me, and it was pretty obvious that is was for the good. Starting to lose weight was the first clue because that happened right from the start.

It was very difficult to go thru the kind of detox I went thru, and it's one reason that I'll never fall off the raw wagon to far. I'll always be at minimum 50% but most days higher. I want to get back to being above 90% that's when I felt very good.

You might try getting a couple books for inspiraton. My first book was Perfect Body by Roe Gallo.

Love,
Prism

Anuiyu7
Acid on the skin? How could that happen? It sounds curious, but it seems like the body would neutralize the acid, rather than bring it out on the skin. But I suppose its possible. The last time I went raw I remember loosing weight rather rapidly and from very specific areas, often overnight, and where I had lost weight I had a number of very large acne. Its like my body had the means to get rid of the stuff really rapidly and was waiting for the chance. I never noticed this type of weight loss from counting calories on cooked food.

I don't think the one month per year rule means 1 month of acute pain and suffering. but I also think its an understatement considering detox just enters into different phases.

A 'healthy' previous diet is pretty much a rarity. of course lifetime of fast food and candy will contribute to some major deposits, but even veg/vegan diets are heavy mucus forming, full of processed/chemicals (even in 'organic' products), poorly combined * (big factor) and usually are taken up in adolence/adulthood with no cleansing period in between, and often contain few fresh fruits and vegetables.

a previous lifetime of exercise, fresh air, and sunshine along with a reasonalby whole foods diet I'd assume would be a different story.

the lighter/simpler you are eating the more your body will take an opportunity to cleanse further. Anyone who says they 'went through detox in the begining' or some variation is either not examining their diet (which is of course OK) or is holding on to some major excito-toxins..i.e. not actually cleansing of wastes, and is probably in need of some kind of internal cleansing (colonics, enemas etc...)

If someone switches from SWD to fruits, they are usually just riding a high of a light diet. the internal deposits need to go! (preferably at a slow pace).

just my thoughts

For me the one month raw for each year cooked was about right. I was 45 when I went raw, 100% overnight. I shocked the hell out of my body. I didn't know anything about raw food, detox, or gently easing myself in to it. All I had read were the books by Dr.Norman Walker so I was juicing all day long for myself, then partner and two kids. And dragging crates of carrots and spinach up 3 flights of stairs

It took me the best part of 4 years to get through detox. I looked like a scarecrow for the first 3 years because I lost so much weight and couldn't put any on, no matter how much I ate. But I somehow managed to hold on to my belief that I was doing something good for my body and if I had to look awful for so long I must be getting rid of some pretty bad stuff.

Something I read in the Sunfood Diet System kept me going:

"To become new you have to sacrifice what you are for what you could become"

About 2 1/2 years into raw I finally started putting on weight again, after several juice fasts,a long juice fast (9 weeks) and a 21 day water fast. I was so desperate to get rid of that gaunt look that I was eating lots of avocados and nuts and with hindsight I'm wondering if they were partly to blame for my long detox.

Although I looked terrible I felt really good most of the time except for the last year or so when all the fat I was consuming finally caught up with me and I just felt like sleeping all the time.

Anyway, that's my experience with detox.

Love, francis

How about transitioning? is it adviseable to eat some amount of cooked food to take on detox at a lower rate? Mine was really really bad, I am not certain I want to take on detox head on.

yes, alot of people go slowly..actually it is reccomended to go slower. ease yourself into raw by eating one meal a day for like a week..and then adding another meal all raw..just go at your own pace!!

~ Tiffany

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart,
and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words..

Keeping my detox at a slow pace came very naturally to me, because it took me so long to be able to stay 100% raw anyway!

For many people (like myself), it might not be too necessary to deliberately slow down the transition, since at the beginning, we find it so difficult to be stay all raw all the time anyway.

For me, by the time I was finally able to stay 100% raw, my heaviest detox was probably over.

Thankfully, I was able to do several fasts along the way, which probably really helped, starting with a week-long juice and herb tea fast with enemas (I was hooked on the life-style after that), plus several water fasts of a few days at a time, and 3 water fasts of 7 days at a time.

That was over a period of more than 30 years (slow learner), the first 12 years being about 70% raw and not completely vegetarian, the next 21 years starting at about 97% raw and 100% vegan, then gradually moving to 100% raw as I learned more about what raw foods were most comfortable for me, and what raw foods I could eat to help me stay raw.

Committing to vegan 21 years ago really helped move me more firmly in the right direction. I think maybe the most drastic detox comes when giving up meat and dairy.

Exercise is a great detoxer. I walked a marathon once, and it was almost like doing a 7 - day water fast!





Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2007 05:55PM by suncloud.

Oh, and health benefits!:

At 56 I feel great. Much better than I felt in my 20s - and that is really true!

It's kind of like growing a fruit tree. Even if you knew it would take 15 years for the tree to give fruit, you have to figure that if you're alive in 15 years, you WILL have fruit if you DO plant the tree, but you WON'T have fruit if you DON'T!