When I transitioned to raw food I can't keep myself from meat... I am desperate

In a message dated 1/4/05 11:03:23 PM, Anna writes:

Hi, Rhio,

You have a wonderful web-site. My family, well, the female, obviously more health-conscious in our family's midst, part of the family, keep surfing it and every day we discover more things that we haven't checked out yet.

I like raw foods, and they taste fine to me. I transitioned very easily in August. September was a blast, October was weird, in November I turned into a vampire. Okay, it will be a scary story. Well, not really. I have been a vegetarian since 1998. When I transitioned to raw food I can't keep myself from meat. As it turns out, I mostly enjoy when it's almost raw, a little bit cooked but mostly raw. What the bleep?!?!!?! Pardon my e-mail English. My little doggie may be in danger. He is beginning to look quite appetizing... Just kidding.

I am desperate. I cook for my family. I do not cook a lot of meat, but sometimes I do. Every time I cook it, I just can't stand it, I need to have a piece. The craving is so huge that I hate to come into the stores now. Every time I see meat I am experiencing some very strong Tarzan-like urges, like jumping into the meat isle, eating pounds of sausages, and beating myself proudly in the chest. It's good that I never go to the store alone. I always have my daughter with me.

But on a serious note,... what's wrong with me? I do not want any carbs that I used to love, sugar, rice, buckwheat, or pancakes. All I want is MEAT! CHICKEN! TURKEY!

Since I went raw I lost 15 pounds. I noticed that I eat less and less every month. I have less headaches. But my primary motivation was to lower my blood pressure. I am on medication. I think it dropped 5 points (but I did not drop medication). I am afraid it will never drop anywhere if I continue my love-hate relationship with MEAT!

Sorry it's so long.

Anna

Dear Anna,

I'm glad that your family (the female side) is finding my website of value.

It is sometimes vexing how the body works and how detox works, as you are finding out.

Of course, I cannot advise you in any way because I am not a practitioner of any kind, so please accept the following only as an exchange of ideas and information.

Several things come to mind.

1) You've been a vegetarian since 1998... a cooked food vegetarian. While being a vegetarian will generally detox the body somewhat (especially if you ate fresh fruits and vegetables rather than processed and packaged foods), it doesn't work nearly as well or as fast as being a raw food vegetarian. So, it's not surprising that three or four months into your raw food lifestyle, you started detoxing meat residues that were still in your system. These particles are most probably coming out of your body through the skin and all orifices. It is somewhat of a retracing that is going on. The body seems to detox in reverse order. The most recent first and then back and back through layers accumulated over years. And of course, while this is going on, you would have some old cravings return.

Let me give you an example of what happened to me. I had been raw for approx. five years... and I went on a green coconut water fast (I only had the water of green coconuts) for ten days. During that fast I expelled a lot of mucous from my chest and then toward the end of the fast I started smelling this perfume that I had worn previously to becoming a raw food enthusiast. The smell was very strong and it continued to pour out of me for approximately three weeks after I finished with the fast. It was very annoying but finally it went away and I thought "I'm Clean!"... A couple of years later, I was in Los Angeles and I went to have Iridology done with a Naturopathic Doctor and he put me on a fast of pomegranate juice (fresh pomegranate juice - it was in season) and some herbs. A day or two into the fast I started smelling the perfume again and once again it poured out of me for three weeks beyond the end of the pomegranate juice fast. So, you see how cleansing goes. It can take a long time. Since then I've done other fasts and had no more perfume smell so I'm thinking it's finally gone. But now, I'm detoxing from the aftereffects of the 9/11 pollution (I live in the district), but that is another story.

2) According to Dr. Johann Schnitzer of Germany, high blood pressure is caused by a high protein diet, and highly processed foods have some complicity too. (This is the diet that is predominant in the US and other westernized countries.) Dr. Schnitzer has helped people overcome many serious health problems, including high blood pressure, over the 4 decades of his practice. He puts his patients on at least 85% raw food. On a raw food diet, a person would consume much less protein and therefore blood pressure would reduce and normalize.

Dr. Schnitzer wrote a book called Hypertension – Causes and Cure. In his book he states "It’s a particular merit of Prof. Dr. Lothar Wendt, who was working at the Elisabethen-Hospital in Frankfurt, to have proven {that} oversupply of protein being the main cause of the pathological alterations of tissues, blood vessels and blood, which lead to hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, deficiency of oxygen in the blood and tissues . . ."

I carry some of Dr. Schnitzer’s books on my website, but unfortunately am presently out of stock on the book above. It comes from Germany so not easy to get.

Dr. Schnitzer goes on to say in his book that high blood pressure is only the body’s intelligent response to protein oversupply. It has to increase the pressure to successfully keep the cardiovascular system flowing. Oversupply of protein in the system causes several mechanisms to occur which increase the blood pressure. Excess protein causes the walls of the blood vessels and capillaries to thicken and the inside diameter to narrow. The walls (or basic membrane) also harden and become less flexible. Excess protein also causes the blood itself to become thicker and stickier and abnormally high in blood cells in ratio to plasma (the liquid part of the blood). This is called the hematocrit value. According to Dr. Schnitzer, the normal percentage is 37 to 39%.

Narrowed blood vessels and thicker and stickier blood needs greater pressure to push it along. Think of it as water in a hose. A certain amount of pressure is needed to push the water through the hose. But if, instead of water, you have something thick in the hose, like, let’s say oatmeal gruel, and the inside diameter of the hose becomes narrower, then more pressure is needed to push the blood through. Understand.

In order to keep excess protein out of the general circulation (the cardiovascular system), the body will also shunt excess protein into tumors and cysts (storage), all in an effort to keep the cardiovascular system flowing as normally as possible.

3) There is a great Raw Food institute near you in San Diego, called The Optimum Health Institute of San Diego (you can find them listed in my Directories). A 2-3 week stay there would probably help you through this initial detox and abate your cravings for meat. You could also get some colonics which would assist the detox.

4) Of course it is not helpful that you must prepare meat for your family. Is there any way to avoid that? If not, you might want to always have a meat substitute handy if the urge strikes. In my book Hooked on Raw, I have four (that come to mind). One was shared by a friend of mine and it's called Almond Beet Nut Roll - to me and others it tastes just like the sausage flavors that we remember. Then I have a recipe called Neat Loaf which has satisfied many as a substitute for meat loaf. Then there is Veggie Seed Pate, a substitute for chopped liver and finally Buckwheat-Quinoa Burgers. So my suggestion is that you try these to see if the flavors satisfy you and if they do, on the days that you prepare meat for your family, you have your "meat" available also.

There are also "meat-like" flavors available in recipes from other raw recipe books.

5) If you view videos such as Diet for a New America about how meat is produced, it will help you psychologically reject meat consumption and all the pain and misery that it causes, both to the animals and eventually to ourselves. Also, a good book to read is Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman.

6) And finally the good news... as your body becomes more alkaline, the addictions will lose their grip.

Hope this gives you some food for thought. Stick with it, you will get there.

With blessings and peace,

Rhio