Funny, colong cleansing and juice fasting has been with out a doubt the biggest improver of my health
I suppose it is a matter of scale. I was a vegan for 20 years. I did colon cleanses religiously and drank copious quantities of juice. I drank at least a pint of mixed green juice every day and would go through a 50 lb sack of organic carrots every week. I grew wheat grass by the flat and usually had at least 100 sq. ft. of my patio committed to wheat grass production at any given time. I made and consumed rejuvilac, a lightly fermented raw tea made from soaking grain. My garage looked like a commercial sprouting operation as I consumed large amounts of fermented nut cheeses and sprouts of all kinds. In short, I did everything that all the gurus said I should do.
What did I get for my trouble? For the first 5 years or so I felt better than I had when consuming a normal SAD diet so I was convinced that I’d found the true path. However, from that point on things started to go down hill. Little things at first and then as time progressed bigger an bigger problems surfaced. I had constant gas and foul smelling stools. I was cold all the time and had to wear a sweater in the summer. I got migraine headaches several times per month that were so severe that I’d have to go to bed with a heating pad and pillow over my face for 2 days at a time. I lost the enamel on my teeth. I lost bone density in my jaw to the point that my dentist said I was going to lose my teeth and would need full dentures within a few years. My blood pressure rose to 150 or 95, my fasting blood sugar rose to 140, my weight rose to 215+, my waist went from 32” to 40”, my cholesterol rose to 250+, I lost a good bit of my hair, and my prostate started to give me problems and I was only in my late 40’s, but I persevered because the books and gurus said I was doing all the right things. All the gurus told me my problems were clearly ‘detox’ issues. That I was clearly having ‘healing crisis’ as my body was finally able to get to all that nasty stuff that had been stored in my fat for 20 years. Never mind that I was adding weight not losing it. Gurus never let facts get in the way of their religious devotion to their beliefs.
At age 50 I gave up. My teeth were loose and the dentist wanted to pull them. My doctor wanted me on cholesterol, blood pressure, and diabetes medication. My nose was always running and I felt terrible all the time. No energy and most of the time I just didn’t want to do anything. Emotions were a real roller coaster as well. One day I’d be feeling high and excited about something and then for the next week I’d be in the dumps and not want to get out of bed. Upon close examination it seemed to me that it had to be my diet that was causing the trouble as everyone around me was doing much better than I was and the only thing different was what I was eating. I went back to SAD.
Upon returning to SAD I did start to feel a bit better. Some energy returned and my mood was a little better. Unfortunately my teeth were still loose, and all my lab tests continued to show that I still needed medications for the previously diagnosed problems. I didn’t want to take meds so I told my doctor I was going to look for another solution. He warned me that if I didn’t do something soon it would be to late as I was a heart attack or stroke just waiting to happen.
It was then that I ran across the BeyondVeg website, Raymond Auddett’s “Neanderthin” book, and other paleo resources, and decided to give paleo a shot. A couple of years later I found TylerDurden’s original Yahoo Group and the rest of my journey is fairly well documented here in my journal.
Anyway, I learned that short term improvements (remember I felt great for the first 5 years or so on the vegan diet) can happen from a dietary change, and this can be followed by disastrous long term results. I will no longer tell you that what I am doing is the right path. What I now say is that here’s what I’m doing, here’s how long I’ve been doing it, and here are my results. I report both the good and the bad as, unlike the guru’s, I eat to best fuel my body and not as a religious commitment.
If you think colon cleanses and juicing are working for you, more power to you. Unfortunately, I, and others like me have learned the hard way that this is not a viable long term solution.
Lex
