My son goes to a democratic school were all are involved in making the school rules. He often spends all day playing in the dirt making huts and stuff and can get quite dirty. Once I asked him to wash his hands since they were dirty and he simply started licking the dirt off! He is very healthy and rarely gets sick. He also rarely wears shoes. It makes sense that unpolluted dirt is good for our immune systems. If you had man made chemicals on your hands then washing them with soap is very important. I put coconut oil on my hands as a kind of barrier against chemicals and to stop them drying out from washing.

I have had a lifelong problem with secret compulsive overeating of sugar & starch. I never got fat but instead got brain fog, headaches, insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, muscle pains... really bad stuff. Doctors have never been any help and dismissed my issues as having a psychological cause and offered anti-depressants. As a teenager I read the book Raw Energy and found that eating raw fruit and veges made me feel much better, but I often overate fruit and quickly returned to junk food over eating.

Recently I have realized that I have had a candida type intestinal infestation and that this was releasing chemicals encouraging me to overeat starches and sugars, and poisoning me with its byproducts.

I have been a follower of the raw vegan movement for a long time but always felt uncomfortable with their rejection of raw animal products, especially after seeing videos of chimps and orangutans eating insects, monkeys, and fish. Then there are the science reports that our paleo ancestors ate large quantities of raw meat for hundreds of thousands of years before fire was controlled.

So I feel really at home on this site - thank you to the creators, contributors & readers : )

The local herb center recently gave me a supplement to repair my microbe caused intestinal damage, and I was intrigued to investigate the active ingredients - one was present in raw meat but destroyed by cooking, and the other was derived from crustacean shells. So I figure why buy expensive extracts when I can go straight to the source and get thousands of other nutrients that haven't been discovered yet. Also research on the net points out how important it is to eat organs, brains, bones, skin, etc as each component has its own nutritional benefits.

Hence my mostly raw green whole crustacean smoothie that is now my main food:
1 x Can of coconut cream (OK this is cooked, but I hear that it is a powerful anti-candida agent)
2 x Large handfuls of fresh dark green leaves / celery / edible weeds (stinging nettle, thistle, cleavers...)
1 x Handful of whole raw prawns or shrimps (defrosted for convenience as freezing does little damage)
1/3 Cup fresh garlic / ginger / horseradish for candida / parasite control
1 x Tablespoon mixed dried herbs oregano / pau d'arco bark / basil... for candida control
1 x Tablespoon diatomaceous earth for parasite control (not important if the animal has been frozen)

Using the blender makes the prawns and greens very digestible, any small lumps are fun to chew up.
I also have frozen raw whole sardines, and fresh free range eggs for other paleo smoothies.
Due to my microbe condition I am mostly avoiding even fresh fruit, and definitely avoiding any starches (anything that can make an alcoholic beverage is suspect for me (all grains, potatoes & other starchy vegetables, sugar etc).

So far my weight has dropped ~10kg, my energy levels are up and my food compulsion for sugar and starch have vanished. My wife is suffering from my crankiness, but I understand that this is to be expected as the candida die-off temporarily creates more toxins.

 : )