Question Hello GEOFF,
Not thus much time has gone since I last wrote to you... With an eye to refrain from repetition of questions I gave a look at all answers you posted and continue to closely examine them. As long as I expend some time in doing so and had plenty of food for thought I allowed this lull in conversation:)
The question concerning diarrhea has bobbed up. So, I'd like to take you advice.
Well, what causes the diarrhea in general? One of the reasons you mentioned here was that "the body will eventually decide it's getting too many excess nutrients from it (liver), and you'll get loose stools and mild diarrhea, with most of the liver not being properly absorbed, as it passes through your body". When you have diarrhea is food partially assimilated or it just passes the body... Ot may it even bring about mineral loss or mineral excretion? What are the other possible ill-effects of diarrhea? In my own situation I've got rather frequent diarrhea after making only one change to my diet, namely adding organ meats to my Primal Diet (heart and brain). Would you explain this as a nutrients excess?
It seems Aajonus and others regards diarrhea as part of a detox process... Don't you know how to define diarrhea due to the detoxification from, say, lienteric diarrhea or just food intolerance/allergy?
Once in yahoo live-food group (the only group I take part in; My permission to the primaldiet group was denied by Jon C. Fox as I had no Aajonus' book) I asked about detox symptoms but unfortunately was ignored there on this point. So, maybe you can help me in a way and say what it is better to do and what not when detoxing (i.e. stop or continue eating, even with depressed appetite; stick to foods that caused detox or make some changes)? Don't you know Aajonus' look on this situation? And could you suggest any further recommendations?
From you own practice you reported after staring the Primal Diet, every 2 months you would get a period of 2 to 7 days when you felt mild flu-like symptoms, was very tired, coughed up mucus etc.(plus had frequent urination.mild diarrhea). Do you know the limits of detox processes? Do they exist?
Hope I was articulate enough, bye for now
healthily
Yuriy
AnswerTwo minor corrections:- I meant to say that the edible clay should be "sun-dried", and not heated. And the native-nutrition Yahoo group only has hundreds of posts every month, rather than every day(!).
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The specific past mention re diarrhea only concerned liver, not any other organs. Some RPDers have had very loose stools if they ate large amounts of raw liver at one time, and it wasn't very well absorbed. Since this example is not a violent kind of diarrhea but of a much less urgent nature, and given the fact that it disappears when one gets liver consumption to more moderate levels, I can only conclude that it's nothing to do with allergy, but more to do with the body just not needing such high levels of vitamin A(which is quite harmful in excess quantities, such as when taking vitamin A- supplements) - besides I've never ever heard of a specific liver allergy!
In your case, it's likely that it's a detox. When I first started out on these diets, I also had awful green diarrhea in the first couple of weeks or so, due, I suspect, to all the chemicals/food-additives I'd eaten over the years, during my junk-food diet phase etc. It is also possible that, like with some rawpalaeodieters, your body might just need a little time to adjust to totally new foods, thus resulting in temporary diarrhea - in which case, it's probably best to find out which food(heart or brain?) is causing the discomfort, and eliminate or reduce it to minimal levels until your body becomes more used to this diet.Another possibility might be chemicals/additives in the food - in my own case, I had a little trouble, very early on in the diet, when I ate some smoked meats and some very dodgy factory-farmed raw meats from local butchers, wrongly thinking that they were fully approved by Aajonus(I hadn't received Aajonus' books in the post at that stage). This, however, doesn't seem to be the case, with regard to you, given your past comments on this matter. Another possibility might be your digestive capability. A number of people starting on these diets can sometimes have a seriously damaged digestive system which can make even raw foods, at times, more difficult to digest - again, it's a long shot, but it's an idea.
The issue of whether a bout of diarrhea or other symptom is a genuine detox or a sign of allergy etc. is such a difficult one. My only conclusion is that a genuine detox is a series of symptoms which are short-term in duration(lasting hours?/days/weeks?) and which result in your feeling slightly better after that episode compared to before, and that detoxes should stop, after a set time - in other words, only you yourself can determine what a genuine detox really is, and even that conclusion can only be reached by checking your progress/state of health over a long period of time, and comparing it to before you initiated the specific change in the diet. Aajonus' take is that absolutely any negative symptom on this diet is merely a detox, which is a very dangerous notion -
for example, when I first started out on this diet and incurred all those horrible symptoms from raw-dairy consumption, I honestly believed AV's idea that it was just a detox and that I would eventually get well, but I noticed that I was actually progressively getting worse, over the space of a 6-month period, and that the more raw dairy I consumed the worse the (daily)symptoms were. Then, of course, I switched to raw, organ-meats and cut out the dairy - I still got detox episodes but I always felt a very slight health-gain after each detox, compared to before the episode, so I knew these were genuine detoxes. Plus, whereas the symptoms I had from the consumption of raw dairy were quite severe, and in some cases, very painful, the detox episodes were much milder by comparison - so I knew I was on the right track.
Other than that, Aajonus' idea that the series of detoxes takes 40(!) years to be completed before you're 100% healthy, is nonsense. In my own case, after sorting out my diet, I eventually stopped having those detox episodes I mentioned, after c.2.5 years into the diet, so I should know.
I can't possibly give you an accurate idea as to how long a detox should last - someone who has cancer is going to have a different experience from someone else who's got diabetes, say. An episode could last hours or weeks, rather than days, and greatly varies in severity.
Apart from the high-meat suggestion(which can help to improve digestion), you might want to try some (edible) French Green Clay, as this should speed up rate of health-recovery. Clay is regularly used by wild animals to get rid of toxins in the body, as a result of having eaten poisonous vegetation etc., and might prove useful to you. I have no idea where you could find that in the Ukraine, though. You have to make sure that the clay is unprocessed(ie unheated) and that it is specifically designed to be eaten, as most clays are used only for putting on the face, and are not suitable as they have chemicals etc. in them. I've used clay occasionally in the past, and it caused a short-term detox reaction(usual mild flu-like symptoms) quite quickly afterwards, as the toxins were flushed out of the body. I no longer feel the need to use clay, especially since it seemed to have no further effect once I'd fully recovered and was presumably toxin-free, but I think it's very useful for those starting out on a rawpalaeo diet. Just don't use it more than very occasionally(no more than once a month?) as clay is antibacterial by nature, and will wreck your intestinal gut flora/bacteria over time, if used too frequently - and stick to just one teaspoonful at each occasion, as the label (usually) states.
Re Yahoo Groups:- The Livefood list-group members, as a whole, tend to be oddly reluctant to post replies to questions, despite having a membership of over 1,700 - (other similiarly large groups such as native-nutrition(for cooked-Weston-Price Diet followers) have, on average, hundreds of posts a day by contrast). There are two other smaller Yahoo groups you can join which cater to raw, paleolithic dieters:- RAV-food run by a Dr Nadine Winocur, which, unlike AV's Primal Diet, advocates processed supplements, and , of course, my own rawpaleodiet Yahoo group which focuses on a raw version of the Paleolithic Diet(ie no raw dairy etc).
Hope This Helps
RPG
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