[www.rawspirit.org]

I don't know? What do you all think? It kind of makes sense. But do you really think our cells will keep shrinking ad infinitum?

My only issue is that man 2,000,000 years ago did not have colon hydrotherapy (pardon my anarchy ). I can see where, then, it MAY be helpful during detox (although I'm in Shelton's camp on this one, no colonics for me, thanks)... but forever? and ever and ever?

The varying degrees of size of cells make sense, considering how people move through different phases of detox, even as the years progress. But it seems kind of mathematically incorrect to say that, for example, you get flu-like symptoms after five years of 100% raw. Adhering to 100% raw diet, 1) input is already simplified 2) after five years of raw, I'm sure elimination channels are MUCH more open, less backed up, etc and 3) even if cellular waste entering the blood is enough to temporarily overwhelm you by bringing on symptoms of the flu, unless you celebrate with a box of ice cream sandwiches, I think waste will naturally find its way out of the body, and you'll be cleaner than ever before? If it's that bad, again, just water fast, like Shelton advocates. I don't see how on earth you can INCREASE your own toxicity over time, minus horrid food combining/overeating/stress/terrible environment/etc... and if that's what you were doing... You might not have the resources to hit the healing crisis I used for the example, anyway.

*head hits desk*

I don't know. Some of what he's saying about people who crash and burn on 100% after years sounds like they are still eating high-fat, poorly-combined gourmet and never thought about increasing their level of fresh. Storm had a blog entry I liked better, where he said the most challenging thing is to deal with the energy from 100% raw, and not being able to channel it tempts the long-term rawfooders to backslide. That could just as much be why the "raw pioneers" are only keeping it high raw.

So much debate, eh? Let's talk about this! I am intrigued!

Unless Matt Monarch has unwittingly discovered the secret to invisibility... :O

Don't get me wrong, almost everything most people consider food, I consider to be toxic. But sometimes I feel like raw foodists can get a little paranoid about being pure, kind of like hypochondriacs. I mean, yes, there's toxins, but the body has mechanisms to deal with them up to a certain point. Yes, I like to eat pure, but obsessing over it isn't healthy, either.

I also wonder what he means by yo-yoing. If you sometimes have steamed kale and collards, is that toxifying your cells (I don't think so)? Or does he mean just someone who periodically stops at McDonald's? I also suspect that many people are failing because they are on an extremely high-fat diet.

I don't think you'd increase your toxicity either. I still don't get the obsession with colonics. But I think Matt is coming from a good place, even if I don't agree with everything he says.

phantom,

Did you see my post called What will you manifest with your raw energy?? I discussed different ways of dealing with the raw energy issue.

He's mixing up science with silliness.

It is better to eat less, and to eat more nutrient-dense minimally processed foods. But to describe the excess and junk as diffusing in and fermenting inside invidual cells and making them expand is wrong.

Fermentation takes place within the large intestine (the inside of which is actually part of a hollow tube running through our body) and it accomplished by bacteria working on soluble fibers. Even the purest 100% raw whole foods diet will have a great deal of this fermentation taking place and such foods contain soluble fibers. We learn to control it to some extent by our food choices, timing, and combining. We generally choose not to eat an entire head of raw cabbage in one sitting, for example.

Aside from this, when we eat cooked foods we consume glycotoxins. Our kidneys clear most but not all of them. Some of them will make their way into the cells, not diffusing in through the lipid bilayer of the cell membranes, but by being transported by proteins that act as channels that are positioned within the bilayer. Once they get in the cell, our normal cellular garbage breakdown machinery (lysosomes) can't break them down completely, but merely surround (sequester) them so that they can't do much damage. But with time, they accumulate.

The cytosol is a very crowded place even under the best conditions. But with time, as these sequestering lysosomes get filled with junk that can't be broken down, it becomes even more crowded, and more difficult for the normal metabolic processes to take place. And this leads to problems, among them aging at a rate that is faster than necessary. About 10% faster than necessary, maybe.

Junk accumulates in the extracellular matrix, also, wreaking havoc among the long lived proteins like skin collagen and lens crystalline.

You can see these problems especially in diabetics with poor kidney function.

But you will accumulate other kinds of garbage in your cells and between your cells as you age, regardless of your food choices. Your DNA will be sending out faulty instructions for making faulty proteins that can't work right just take up space, etc., and these too accumulate with time. We all grow old and die, and even with a perfect diet, it happens; the normal mutation rate is around 1 per 10 million proteins synthesized for just about all living organisms.

We can reduce our risks for certain diseases and maybe extend our lives by 10% or a bit more by taking on a minimal garbage diet but we will still get cancers, grey hair, age spots on our skin, deteriorating vision, hearing, brain, and motor coordination, muscles, and all that other fun stuff. It just happens a little bit slower and somewhat less often than with a good cooked diet.

Matt is very enthusiastic but he is making stuff up according to what he believes, not according to what is known. He has the decency to call it a theory and not facts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2008 02:44AM by arugula.

Yes, his enthusiasm is great for encouraging people to eat better. It's just the details that I don't quite agree with.

Good post arugula

Rost, our cells also have the ability to ferment, either producing lactate (animals) or ethanol (bacteria, yeasts). This happens when oxygen supplies are low (as in heavy exercise, which hurts after a point). This allows us to generate NAD+ under adverse conditions, which feeds the glycolysis cycle, the way we generate energy that our cells can use from glucose (fructose and other sugars can also jump into the glycolysis cycle after some manipulation). Some CO2 is produced and it diffuses out of the cell. But this is generally not what makes cells bigger or smaller.

The thing that makes cells bigger or smaller is the osmotic gradient, the difference in pressure inside and outside of the cell. Cells will swell up and take in water when they have too many solutes (generally sodium or other + charged ions) compared to what's outside and shrink when the extracellular matrix has too many solutes in comparison to what's inside the cell. The electrolyte balance is usually what is driving these changes, and if our diets are good and kidneys are working ok, raw or not, the cell size will be ok also.

But I have to point out that Matt is right when he suggests that eating cooked garbage will mean that we accumulate more junk inside and outside of our cells, and I think that is what he really intends to say.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2008 01:41AM by arugula.