Hello, I'm new 

I basically want to learn more about raw paleo, although I don't label myself if I can avoid it.  I am a shameless stealer of ideas as long as it helps my health.  If that's okay with your guys and gals, then I'll hang out for a while. 

I can relate to this thread since I was a vegan, also a raw vegan for almost 10 years until my health collapsed.  I have a collection of youtube video links from other vegans who experienced the same collapse I did so I couldn't be more pro-meat if I went through a brainwashing program, LOL.  I've been lurking here but it was this message that made me want to post for the first time. 

One of the things that happened to me was the destruction of my gut flora from the practice of fasting.  Fasting isn't "bad" but you have to be aware of what you're doing to the flora if you do it for longer than a day or so.  I was very good at fasting.  I could go 10 days or longer with just water.  My flora was DEAD at the end of that time.  Especially since I combined it with (TMI alert!!!)  either enemas or cathartic herbs to get the goop out of my guts.  I didn't do the Master Cleanse, I had plenty of other options.  I should say that I'm not a spring chicken so I had plenty of time to learn all the tricks. 

It can seem like fasting improves the situation because the bloating goes away and the pain stops. But some of the flora, especially those that break down cellulose are quickly starved out.  More quickly than the tougher archaea.  I got to a point where I was chewing for ages just so vegetables wouldn't come out mostly whole at the "other end."  So what I did was to add fermented foods to my diet.  Not just yogurt/kefir types of things, but fermented vegetables, kombucha, anything that had living germs, I ate it.  I guess that's raw, isn't it?  I also ate grapes which apparently have a lot of germs on their skins.  With grapes, I was looking for a natural alternative to the purified "saccahromycetes boulardii" which is sold as a supplement. 

To make a long story short, this fixed the problem.  But I had a lot of stinky gas when it started.  Then the new balance was reached and I am now fine.  It took only 3 days for the balance to be reached for me, but I don't know how it will affect anyone else, so if you try this, use caution.   My ancestry is Eastern Europe, so maybe it worked because I'm adapted genetically to eating sauerkraut, etc?  But I suspect that the germs we need to break down veggies are in ferments of veggies, not in ferments of milk.  Just my opinion.

Are there ferments of fruit?  That aren't wines?