Do you take the armour? I'm sure the pigs they get that from are quite unhealthy from all the grain and have unbalanced thyroids from the large percentage of soy in the feed. Plus the pills are made with dyes and fillers. I take a dessicated cow thyroid from grass-fed cows that uses only dessicated liver as the filler. I'm not taking it for the hormones, just to encourage my thyroid to heal any damage taken over the years, so I take it 3 days a week to avoid building up the hormones in my system. My thyroid tests normal to hyper before I started, but I don't trust the tsh test. Objectively I have many symptoms of hypo. The first time I took it I felt the effects of hyperthyroid for the first time, I wouldn't call it suffering. Actually it got me high. It was like having a lot of strong coffee, but without any anxiety. I quickly built up some sort of tolerance or resistance to the hormones and now its a very mild effect.

I would have fresh, I just don't know where to source it right now. So I supplement the hard to find stuff like brain and thyroid with raw dessicated. Do you know any good mail order sources for grass-fed organs?

That is great news. I have been taking dt a few days a week and I could feel it still working on the days I don't take it so this probably explains that effect.

I'd be interested to see a similar study for strength training. I know certain exercises, squats for instance, really get my sweat and heart rate going like I just did some sprinting.

Has anyone heard this theory that the full muscle repair process takes about 5-10 days to complete and that working the same muscle before healing is complete will actually slow your progress? If this is true, I would think a good way to test your required time is to do a hard full body workout after not lifting for a long time. Then see how long it takes for the soreness to go away completely and this is your ideal recovery time. This flys in the face of the convention of doing split routines every day or full body every 2-3 days.

Most people say working out once a week will only maintain your current strength and mass. Right now I am testing this theory. I'm into my 3rd week and I've been doing a full body routine once a week in the morning before eating then following with half a pound of beef fat and half a pound of lean beef, raw of course. Then another 50/50 later in the day. So far my strength is increasing, but its too early to tell.

Let me know if anyone is interested, I will post my progress or lack thereof.

Sounds like lyme disease with possible coinfections and parasites from a bug bite.

Have you had any tick/spider/mosquito/horsefly bites before your symptoms began?
Do some of your symptoms seem to cycle every few weeks getting better then worse again?
Do you live or ever go in the woods or on grassland near the forest?
Do you have pets that go out in the yard and then back in the house?

If you answered yes to any of these you should get tested. Most doctors will be reluctant to test for lyme depending on where you live and whether you present a bullseye rash or not and the standard test misses most cases anyway. You should find a lyme specialist who will test you thoroughly and accurately. If you show positive I would try to avoid taking doxycycline, this drug made me get skin rashes when I'm around wireless devices and computers.

Whatever your issue may be, the raw paleo diet will only make you stronger and make your body better able to fight and heal. I always suggest a vey high fat and very low carb or ketogenic version of raw paleo to achieve the most healing, but that is for advanced dieters and can be harmful if done incorrectly. One step at a time. Don't be afraid of raw saturated fat, this is the best fuel for your body. And don't live in fear of bacteria and parasites in meat, they are unavoidable in life and trying to constantly disinfect yourself, your food, and your surroundings will do more harm than good. I wouldn't worry at all about any 100% grass fed meat, go ahead and have it fresh never frozen. The grain fed stuff is more likely to have a poor balance of bacteria and contain bad parasites so if you want to include that in your diet you should freeze it to kill the parasites and weaken the bacteria.

Having lots of raw organ meats is very wise for healing. Especially the specific organs you are trying to heal. Its good to have a wide variety but you should focus on raw tripe, heart, and brains.

I would recommend cutting out the dairy, but definitely don't replace it with smart balance. If you must have dairy, try to minimize the milk proteins by having butter or double cream if you can find it. Heavy whipping is too milky.

You mentioned that you took antibiotics. If you didn't take a probiotic after that you may have worsened your gut problems. Look into a probiotic with sbo (soil based organisms). This is supposed to be very good at fighting anything pathogenic in the gut. For an advanced probiotic you might look into making "high meat" out of the cleanest 100% grass-fed and never frozen meats.

Aajanous was a great man for bringing attention to the safety and health benefits of raw food, especially raw meat. Why he chose to surround his wisdom with so many tall tales, I'll never know. I wouldn't trust his specific recommendations and recipes or his theories about disease. Instead just see the underlying theme that helped people was raw food including large amounts of raw animal fat.

At least for the bad breath, colds,  and brain fog I would look into following the raw paleo diet in a ketogenic fashion. I've spent most of the last 18 years in ketosis, recently paleo and raw as well. The ketosis alone made those symptoms a thing of the past for me. But gaining the benefits of ketosis takes a level of dedication that most people can't or won't handle. Thinking you can cheat on the weekends will certainly cause you worse brain fog, low energy, and destroy your immune system. You must be spartan, but the potential benefits are unmatched. Being relatively new to raw paleo myself I can't say what it will do exactly on its own, but the concept is sound and I can guarantee it will only do good things for you.

My best guess is that they have many unique nutrients that are not found in muscle meat and they are in a form that is very easily absorbed, whereas the same nutrients in a supplement or vegetable would be mostly excreted. When I eat raw organs I will feel satisfied after a few ounces. Especially liver. If you ever get more adventurous with your organ meats, be careful with the adrenal gland. I ate a package of bison adrenals from northstar once that put me through such hell. First when I bit into it my mouth started burning, then I had the worst stomach pain for 2-3 hours. My mouth still felt a little burned the next day. I don't know if I just had too much or it was because I fried it for a minute. Maybe it was just a bad one. I've had it a few times since then, but it was raw, I was afraid to chew it, and I had one gland at a time and I was fine.

I like to put pork rinds in the food processor and use that like flour. It works for pancakes, haven't attempted anything else. Not exactly a raw food though.

Mixing meat and plants should be either high fat with low carb plants or low fat with starch or sugars. This is what is seen in nature, the hunter would get the fatty tissue and organs first and maybe some stomach contents and is satisfied, the scavenger is left with pieces of lean tissue stuck to the bone and is still hungry and will seek out other sources of energy, like starchy roots and sweet fruits or honey. Otherwise you are taking two fuels and one of them will be stored while the other one gets burned, a good way to put on weight. Also a good way to cause insulin sensitivity. I would think having any two types of food separately is the more natural way and probably easier on your system in general. With the exception of fermented plants and leafy greens, as this would have been available in the stomach contents of a fresh kill. I've never seen a bear catch a salmon, carry it over to a beehive, dip it in honey, and then eat it. They just eat it and worry about what else is available the next time they are hungry.

I think raw meat has sufficient good calcium in it, especially the cartilage and connective tissues. There should be no need for dairy. I would be much more concerned about avoiding foods that leach calcium from your body such as beans and vegetables.

I have been chronic ZC for years and mostly chronic VLC for a decade before that. I have become metabolically resistant to weight loss from gaining and losing the same 100lb over and over. If I start eating starch or sugar I have somehow developed the ability to gain weight faster than I can eat it, nevermind lose it. Two weeks of carbs can set me back 3 months of weight loss on strict ZC. Also, I get itchy, gassy, smelly, depressed, mood swings, asthma, intense hunger and cravings for the worst poison junk food, skin problems, I sleep an extra 4 hours and still feel like shit when I drag myself out of bed, catch frequent colds, there is more but I've made my point. I'm like an addict, if I let it go on long enough you will find me in a car littered with chocolate wrappers and fast food bags maxing out my last credit card at the mcdonalds drive thru. I say no thank you to all of that, I will take ketosis for life whatever the alleged consequences. I'm almost 100% sure the people who had problems were making one of the big three mistakes: cheating too frequently to fully adapt to burning fatty acids in the body directly and reserving most ketones for the brain, eating such a large amount of protein that it converts to glucose and resets adaptation, or not drastically increasing the fat intake for normal weight people.

About the resistant starch and gut bacteria, If I am eating raw meat then my gut will be populated with the right bacteria for what I am eating. Why do I need to feed starch to the the starch eating bacteria? This is why I stopped taking probiotics. One day I just realized, "wtf am I doing? These bacteria are for digesting lactose and fermenting plant cellulose. I don't have any of that in my diet. The probiotics must be just dieing and getting eaten by the other bacteria, what a waste of money."

I enjoyed a nice pound of raw salmon this weekend, it was great. I still felt compelled to take the skin off, just because its all silvery and shiny like mercury and I suspect that's where it would be hiding. Sashimi is skinned anyway, the dogs were happy with the scraps.

How's this for a food scare, someone in texas found so much mercury in their ground beef it could be seen rolling around in the ziploc bag:

http://www.caller.com/news/2010/aug/17/police-family-says-hamburger-meat-contained/

forgive me for linking to alex jones, but the footage to this story is somewhere in this clip:

Mercury in Beef, It's What's for Dinner? - Alex Jones Tv

This is just so outrageous, I suspect this person had a gripe with the supermarket and just emptied out a couple thermometers to get them bad press in the news.