I would make an ethanolic extraction (maybe from alcohol of non-gluten source) of the fresh/dried herbs, although I do not have the time to expend/wait, so I just buy it from a mass producer.

The only tinctures I'd prep myself would be fresh cannabis flower (great as a sublingual spray for getting loaded anywhere you can't smoke a joint, plus no heat-mediated toxicity) or some obscure Chinese herbs where my local herbalist is unable to deliver.

Otherwise, let the trials commence...

I stll feel a little bit dubious after seeing keto-boy's black shadows/edema...

Thanks for chiming in cliff - I've been thinking about long-soaking the tubers etc., so you've given me a nice cue. Do you have experience with fermenting starches, particularly roots/tubers (as opposed to grains) and do you simply long-soak them?

Also, is it through dogma or some favourable results that you're sticking with RZC? Our other friends have then decided that RZC is never going to be optimal for them (you have seen the experiences of others, right?).

Sugars complexed in whole foods (namely fruit) can be a good thing and it's natural to develop good glucose tolerance (according to some scholars).

Another thing - is food moving well through the GI tract, with a daily bowel movement, at least?

Also, how is the basal metabolic rate? Did you ever measure body temperature upon waking (like via armpit or bumhole, hehe)?

How is your thyroid/adrenals? Any greasy stools or pain radiating up to right shoulder blade upon eating fats?

Yeah man, square as square can be.

Starch (amylose) begins its digestion in the mouth (courtesy of salivary amylase for breaking dietary starches/glycogens), hence it's rapido! Judging by my earlier glucose blast testing, the (simpler sugars from the) polysaccharides were in my bloodstream almost within minutes - very quick...

I haven't found yams yet, but I want to find some - otherwise, potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, turnip/swede and others. I tolerated grains for most of my young life, so I'm not particularly fearful of gliadin/gluten, although if I did consume grains, I'd be sprouting and fermenting them a la sourdough process or complementary soaking with high-phytase grains/seeds (e.g. soaking pasteurised pure oats with buckwheat or some similar combination).

There's a lot of myth about food combining and you're not telling me that nature doesn't complex polysaccharides with various amino acids...Hmmm...

Wait? As the Zen master said, eat when hungry, sleep when tired...This is the essence of Zen, hehe...

@Paleo Donk: Good suggestion (and thanks for your useful post before). I'm with tyler on keeping my fats raw, which are not at all problematic for me. I will always consume raw where it makes sense to me, and of course, biochemistry is often finding elegant and biologically active substances that are inactivated by heat. One example is "stigmasterol" (Wulzen anti-stiffness factor) in raw butter, which is inactivated by heat - that's useful for preventing degenerative conditions.

I'm loathe to cook anything I eat, especially starches, but like I've said, this is a means to an end. One to contribute to my tooth healing (no organic acids from too much fruit) and two to correct my low basal metabolic rate (which is improving greatly already - I've just found a source for fresh thyroid as well).

Haha, the confused state is the best state - it means the mind is still open to the possibility of infinite reality...The human organism in the environment of Earth, the solar system, the milky way etc.

Anti-nutrients are a bugger and like you rightly say, it makes over-consumption less possible (so the animal moves on). I look to cooked starches as a raft across the river, but when I'm across the river, I'll discard the raft and river - in my wisdom. Maybe the domesticated breeds are less defensive in their anti-nutrient profile. Domestication sucks, but let's face it, we're a domesticated breed ourselves - I still think that life is miraculous, even if it is a little tainted by modernism.

The primitives gradually knew what they could procure and prepare from their landbase to sustain optimal health all the way through life (including pre-natal/post-natal) and they weren't restricted by dogma - it became self-evident what was nourishing/anti-nourishing. If I just eat RAF, my hair falls out and I can't eat enough to maintain a healthy weight without unbalancing organ function etc.

Isn't it stupid to sustain something that is unsustainable, hence the saying "the fool that persists in his folly will become wise"? I can say that I will be learning still on my deathbed, in whatever form that manifests...

Large amounts of fruit is NOT tooth-healing, full stop (I don't care what anyone says!), and because my kidneys can't take RZC, I have to find other strategies to make this sustainable. Quite frankly, rinsing my teeth with various substrates (bone meal, green clay, sodium bicarb etc.) after fruit definitely does not stop the rot.

I appreciate that submission on kidney stress pc701, which I found useful and I have been thinking about making some raw pemmican with ground juniper berries and maybe drinking some kidney-herb/root tea to see if that makes a difference. The article is totally undermined by the assertion that soy beans are anything fit for humans - stupid considering that it talks about phytate-related nutritional deficiencies in the same article.

Nature will temper us in its way, so I bow in silence waiting to be instructed...

I would like to be eating "guts and grease" as this WAPF article documents: http://www.westonaprice.org/Guts-and-Grease-The-Diet-of-Native-Americans.html (what a warrior face on that Navajo - awesome!)

Nuts are a source of free radicals, especially shelled nuts, so definitely eat them very sparingly. Furthermore, for their energy density, they do not provide many minerals due to binding by phytates - hence they are anti-mineralising.

I blame reliance on nuts as the reason for tooth enamel/bone destruction, especially in my case - nuts should not be in the diet when there's sufficient nutrients/energy from more appropriate food, like meat/organs/fat and moderate fruit. Of course, you could consider a Nourishing Traditions style approach, which is less akin to our early ancestry.

I've finally started to give up nuts and I know well the lack of satiety from eating nuts, especially when not pre-soaked.

Hey all,

I've been struggling with weight maintenance, energy levels and kidney health on high RVAF and as an experiment, I've been including some cooked starches (butternut squash, carrots, potatoes etc.) to augment my raw meat/fruits/vegetables diet (a la the Kitavans). I can say that for the first time in a couple of years, I feel more motivation/energy, increased strength and weight regain.

I realise it's taboo to introduce this topic in a raw forum, but frankly, it's just an "augmentation" of my raw paleo effort to assist my energy levels and weight gain.

I must say that with these cooked starches, I never feel any subsequent hypoglycemic response (tiredness, yawning) and it seems already that my glucose tolerance has improved, as well as bowel movements, metabolism and weight gain.

Has anyone else experimented with this augmentation to RVAF with beneficial efficacy?

Best,

Scotty

Use anything that will cause the liver/gallbladder to contract and eject bile into the small intestine - coffee enema, cholegogic herbs (yellow dock, dandelion root, gentian root - best as ethanolic extract/tincture to ensure that compounds go direct to liver), oil/citrus mix (read about the different flush protocols), raw apple cider vinegar mixed in water (1T per glass - honey to taste) - malic acid is a bile solvent (it can stop a so-called gallbladder attack in minutes rather than sufferers waiting hours or going to hospital).

Also, the kidney removes water-soluble toxins via urine (like liver removes fat-soluble toxins via bile), so maybe do a kidney cleanse protocol to increase elimination potential.

Have all the rivers flowing - maybe use a herbal colon invigorator to keep the bowels moving for fast-tracking toxins out into the sewer system - where they belong.

If liver and kidneys are working optimally, toxins will start to be dumped out of blood and lymph and when these are clear, the other tissues will dump their toxins into blood/lymph and eventually out into the sewer system. So there will be a movement of long-standing toxins from the inter/intra-cellular fluids into the sewer system - this means optimal homeostasis, according to some, which means optimal immunity, elimination, digestion, sensory experience, tissue regeneration etc. Sounds ideal, I know - maybe difficult in practice!

Skin brushing and exercise (rebounding) pumps the lymphatic system, so maybe a little dancing and singing per day will be nice! ;-))

It seems ridiculous to avoid fruit, given that the human organism has the metabolic pathways for processing the associated substances (fructose metabolism via liver etc.). What about the pigment-richness of diverse fruits and their associated anti-oxidant status, i.e. polyphenolic compounds, beta carotenes, tocotrienols etc.

Maybe there's some underlying cause for the intolerance (i.e. causality rather than symptomatology), which needs to be "weeded out" and addressed.

The experiential dynamic of our reality should teach us that nothing is ever quite what it seems - hence the cosmology of dualism. Stay open-minded like a true child of the universe, LOL!

I urge you to read other people (especially physiologists and endocrinologists) outside of raw/non-raw paleo dogma.

I've not been on the forum for a few weeks due to professional commitments during the week and domestic commitments during the weekend, so it's nice to come back to a thread like this...

I have big fangs on top and bottom, which is great, considering that my jaw was underdeveloped enough to crowd those fangs up a little (if I knew about Weston Price's studies when I was a fuetus/infant/child, I would've informed my mother, who was at least prudent enough to breast feed me for 18 months).

Meat and fat feel great and perfect for my own taste/bite...

Nevertheless, along with the anecdote has to come some understanding/science/physiology/pathology and precipitates that have crystallised out of solution in the various channels/ducts/organs should be a focus of anyone trying to heal the complete cellular metabolism, be it bone, skin, brain, endothelial cells, GI tract, blood, lymphatics etc.

Particularly, the cholelithiasis (debris and then tissue pathology in the biliary/liver/GB system) and nephrolithiasis (debris and then tissue pathology in the urinary/kidney system) should be of great concern, given that after the upstream blood/lymph/tissues/organs, these are the primary organs of elimination. Any pathology in the liver can result in a pathology of the kidneys, and vice versa.

I've noticed constipation and dark eye circles related to increased meat/fat consumption, which is definitely not a hallmark of healing - something I attribute to inter-related DEFICIENT liver/kidney function. Furthermore, I cannot maintain a decent BASAL METABOLIC RATE when eating only fruits and meat+fat, plus I believe that excessive nut/seed consumption represents too much PUFA in the diet, which I don't have the vitamin E or ORAC status to counter sufficiently.

As always (at least for me), the cosmos seems to be presenting me with a catch-22 scenario and that ain't good.

Personally, in my opinion (which is also wisely stated by goodsamaritan), it's necessary to clear debris in the elimination organs before embarking on our true heritage diet. Some people here think that you only need food to heal, yet there are many other tools to streamline healing - goodsamaritan seems to be one of the only ones here to embrace that, along with myself.

For example, any deficiency in bile production and liver/GB contraction definitely means a diminished ability to uptake fat and fat-soluble vitamins.

Decades of poor diet/lifestyle results in crystallisation of solids out of solution (and in most cases calcification) in the many passageways and chambers of the body/organs, which don't normalise with a paleo diet, therefore, other tools are required (herbs/tinctures, cleansing/flushing).

Does anyone know about the beneficial effect of small amounts of juniper berries on the urinary system - maybe it's a good choice for blending into pemmicans or further drying and grinding with salt/pepper onto raw meat?

Currently, I'm trying to heal my teeth on raw paleo and I consider increasing my bile output to be priority number 1 in this endeavour.

Furthermore, I imagine that most of you somehow listen to Patrick Timpone's podcasts and he often mentions the "digestive bitters" formula for stimulating digestion - that's probably a great interim measure while people are trying to become "stone free" in their organs of elimination. I live in the UK, so I probably wouldn't buy that formula, but I make my own teas/tinctures, so complexing such a formula myself would not be too challenging.

Another great tool for keeping bile moving/liquid is Apple Cider Vinegar (even though it absolutely destroys tooth enamel on contact - rinse before use and immediately afterwards with sodium bicarbonate). Apple cider vinegar has the potent malic acid content, yet without the nasty sugar spike from apple juice - perfect in the week build up to emptying the liver/GB/ducts with a flush!

KISS is a great approach, if you have non-impaired elimination organ function...My motto is that food cannot save you alone and simplicity comes through a wiser understanding, hence the Egyptian cosmological axiom "as above, so below"...

Medicine existed in the pre-neolithic period, so let's embrace those tools.

Also, Tyler, I remember you saying somewhere that you didn't really eat that much fat along with your meat these days - just what comes along with the meat. Is that the case - that you're not adding suet, brisket, marrow or some other fat to each cut?

Really, looking at the raw paleo diet and its very varying efficacies, it seems like as much as a gamble as other approaches - namely one thing doesn't apply to everyone.

So, I suppose I'd be wondering who supplements their raw omni diet (or raw zero carb) with some kind of abundant minerals for any reasons...teeth compromisation, cramping or otherwise (and if so, why?)!

Bone meal is a great suggestion, although I've found it impracticable to manufacture the fresh stuff myself. I've sat for a few hours trying to file small batches down, but I'm sure that it could easily become a full-time job without automation!

None of the local/regional butchers or farms that I know can provide bone meal (they have leftover bones collected by some contractor - I may ask for the contact details of the contractor and see if they can grind some for me!), so I suppose that the only alternative is bone broth, which is of course, boiled bones/collagen. I've boiled a few bones in the past, but I wonder what toxins are dissolved considering that the broth simmers for 24-48 hours.

I've previously looked for "store-bought" bone meal, but to be honest, I don't really know what you mean. If I Google "bone meal ...", the searches usually present the typical fertiliser offerings, rather than for human consumption - is that the stuff you're buying, or are there higher grades? Also, what about the mineral ratios in the bone meal - would it vary between grass-fed and grain-fed etc.?

Does anyone know of alternatives for making bone meal from fresh bones, such as smashing and then hand-stone-grinding? I reckon it would be great to have a couple of tablespoons worth of these bio-available minerals each day.

Is it worth me just having bone broths in the meantime to bring some more strength to the teeth (as a head start)?

I've experimented with tooth brushing formulas and the best stuff seems to be the Ayurvedic herb/bark powders with some added peppermint oil or neem oil - I've not tried tea tree oil though.

I've recently been consuming some french green clay, although I'm not sure how available the minerals are. I know that the clay is naturally-dried and high quality, but I can't seem to find any commentary on the bio-availability of the minerals. What do you reckon?

Normally, I do the oil swishing thing for better hygiene, plus I also swish with different things after carbs/acid to neutralise the mouth pH, although I have to be careful with clay given my amalgam fillings (I've tasted metals in my mouth before when clay swishing, given its metal-binding quality!).