Hi! Just realized I never posted a "Hello" here. I'm a veteran of another Paleo diet forum, so it didn't occur to me to think of myself as new, really. Here is the long journey I took to arrive here:
Close to my 40th birthday, after decades of chronic minor health issues that were becoming increasingly numerous and serious, I eliminated dairy and gluten foods in late 2003 to early 2004 at my doctor's suggestion (who is an excellent GP from Russia with a far wiser approach to medicine than treating only with drugs and surgery). After trying everything else, including past experiments with vegetarianism and other dietary changes, supplements, exercise, yoga, sunlight, positive thinking and other approaches suggested by others, as a last resort I had inquired with him about the possible relation of dairy and gluten foods to my puzzling multiple health issues, based on some articles, studies and patient success stories I had found--which I likely never would have learned about without the invention of the Internet, the WWWeb and search engines. I first eliminated dairy with some resulting benefits. Then within three and a half weeks of going gluten-free, this regimen had an amazingly beneficial effect on my health. When I tried to re-introduce these foods I got very sick, and it didn't matter whether they were whole grain, organic, raw, unpasteurized, or any other of the excuses that their supporters offer up. Later testing would confirm moderate to high levels of antibodies to the antigen-like components of wheat and other grains and dairy (including gliadin, whey, casein, and others), although these tests are controversial and an elimination/re-introduction challenge is still considered the best test.
Based on the results of my dietary challenge and moderate levels of antibodies to gluten components in my blood (despite having been gluten free for weeks), my doctor diagnosed me with gluten sensitive enteropathy, an autoimmune disorder. I didn't technically have clinical celiac disease because my intestinal villi were not flattened, though I had gastroscopy-confirmed gastritis, other GI issues, and other symptoms common to gluten sensitivity. I didn't really care about the precise diagnosis anyway, except that I wish it had been made much earlier than the age of 40 (which is the precise avg age of celiac disease diagnosis, BTW)--I only cared that avoiding gluten and dairy helped me enormously.
However, I was curious as to why these supposedly healthy foods should bother me, when for years I had been told to "eat more healthy whole grains," so I looked into it and learned that some scientists hypothesized that people with my Irish background are particularly susceptible to gluten intolerance because they have ancient genes descended from hunter gatherers who haven't adapted to wheat and other grains. Curious, I searched further and found more recent articles that found that the people of most other European nations were also highly susceptible to gluten intolerance and that all of humanity's genes hadn't really changed that much since hunter-gatherer days, so it seemed to be more of a widespread human problem than an Irish issue.
I searched on with the help of beyondveg.com, which introduced me to S. Boyd Eaton's theory of Paleolithic nutrition and from there I went on to read lots of articles, research reports, Ray Audette's NeanderThin, and Loren Cordain's The Paleo Diet. Through Audette and Cordain I also learned more about Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Inuit, the !Kung San bushmen and so on. The differences between Eaton, Audette and Cordain pointed out to me that this is a new field of study with many unanswered questions, which was good, because I think it helped me to avoid jumping to conclusions and becoming dogmatic about my diet--though I have never been the dogmatic type anyway. My instincts told me that Audette was closest to the truth, because I had independently arrived at many of the same speculations that he did and the examples of hunter gatherer peoples and my own experience seemed to match his approach most closely, but I preferred Eaton and Cordain's scientifically cautious approach to testing and confirming things, because of my own love of science. Years of experience would later validate that my instincts were more on target than my rational brain, and Audette's view of animal fat and raw meats as being crucial was more on target for me, though I recognize that Cordain and Eaton's scientific work in the field (hated as these gentle men may be in circles such as this one) is more important to the human race in the long run than the speculations and anecdotal experiences of Audette and myself--even if our experiences and speculations turn out to be more correct in the short run.
I realized later I had heard about the Paleo diet once before but the news report on it wasn't very good and it's explanatory power didn't really start to sink in until I read Eaton's hypothesis in the New England Journal of Medicine article and had a Eureka moment (which is also how Loren Cordain says he got into it). Following my own version of Paleo based on a mixture of Audette and Cordain's books and my own views (for example, I included a bit more fat than Cordain recommended, but less than Audette suggested) improved my health even more. After several months of gradually loosening my standards to meet the social pressures of relatives and friends, however, I started to have a slight return of some of my symptoms and things eventually got to the point again that I decided that maybe my diet was still not quite right.
I decided to get stricter again, and this time eliminate questionable foods, of which nightshades and winter squashes were two that I had never been sure about. I had gradual but substantial improvements, so I knew I was on the right track again. I decided that it was time to try the higher-fat, more-raw approach that Ray Audette, Vilhjalmur Stefansson and some of my colleagues at the PaleoFood forum had tried with success. Part of the reason I hadn't tried a higher fat approach before was that I had trouble digesting some fats and had never liked the mouth-feel or taste of most fats very much. But I figured that if I could gradually eat more fats, my digestion of them might improve--which turned out to be correct.
Since my twenties I had always been willing to eat small amounts of semi-raw and raw animal foods like those in cold-smoked lochs with bagels, sushi, sashimi, egg nogs, and eggs over easy, and recently had been eating more beef jerky (raw beef dried at low temps) and raw eggs but was skeptical (though open-minded) about whether eating most of my meats raw is really necessary for optimal health. Over time I've been moving increasingly toward more raw and less carb and have found that even relatively small amounts of carbs effect my health negatively. Eliminating nightshades and winter squashes and replacing them with animal fats seemed to have the biggest benefits for me. Dr. Cordain has since come out with interesting research reports pointing to nightshades as contributing to autoimmune diseases. It also helped to eliminate the occasional cheats of potato/vegetable chips and juice pops, and the more frequent cheats of dried fruits and fruit juices (all of which Audette and Cordain warned me about but I was too hooked on to give up until I realized that I needed to). The results were the sort of astounding success I had had back when I first cut out gluten and hope was restored.
In seeking information about pemmican, to use in my new high-fat approach, I came upon Lex Rooker's Pemmican Manual and Lex's remarkable story and other very helpful information here. Because of Lex I joined this forum. Granted, pemmican is not completely raw, so it is an unorthodox route here, but I did recognize that fully raw meat, fat and organs are probably superior even to pemmican, which Lex's diet seems to validate (though the experience of a fellow with the handle of DelFuego, and his family, as well as Ray Audette, myself and others, with pemmican suggest that it also is an extremely healthy food probably second only to fully raw meat/fat/organs).
So many thanks to you people for creating this forum, and especially to Lex Rooker, who has provided priceless help and is one of the most knowledgeable and wisest people on human nutrition I have yet encountered. I recognize that no human being is perfect, so even Lex likely gets things wrong at times, but science and hunter-gatherer culture are not about perfection--they are about experimentation, trial and error, and passing on knowledge. So I am also very grateful to the other sources that helped me along the way, even though they may not have gotten everything right. I am even thankful for what I learned from Weston Price's writings and the Weston Price foundation, despite the fact that Price wrote glowingly about raw dairy products and whole grains--from the two food categories that affect me worst of all and which I do not consider truly Paleo foods.
