Hello Lex,

There are a few things I recommend that you do before committing to your experiment long-term.

First, I would read McDougall's Medicine: A Challenging Second Opinion, because it recommends basically the opposite of your regimen and gives scientific analysis for the why. It will give you insights into the other side of the aisle, which could be vital to proper analysis of your experimental results.

Second, I recommend that you investigate the following items to see how your regimen is affecting them:

• blood PH... amino acids and fatty acids, when consumed in excess, make the blood PH go down, and the body may dump calcium from the bones into the blood stream to compensate. Since leafy greens are rich in calcium, it might be vital to add them to help buffer your PH and spare your bones. Basically, by eating grass-fed meat, you are eating animals that did in fact have alkaline diet, bur you are inverting your PH by eating the animals rather than the leafy greens. I recommend a bone scan periodically too, to make sure you are not dissolving your vertebra and setting yourself up for crippling injuries or fractures.
• free radicals... long chain fatty acids of the saturated variety are not as bad as unsaturated in this respect, but basically any fat that is heated to cook it is damaged and will end up with dangling bonds. The dangles represent spare or missing electrons that can cause the cooked (broken-down) fatty acids to react with (glom on to) other molecules, causing them to also become reactive, resulting in long tangled chains or bursts of additional dangling bonds, and cross-linked proteins. Cross-linking causes connective tissue to become less flexible (hydrogenated oils are worst in this respect) and also can cross-link right into DNA, potentially activating growth genes that might start the cell reproducing uncontrollably in a tumor. This is basically a process of 'oxidation' or burning when these burnt fats get into your system and start reacting with your own cells, and anti-oxidants serve to terminate the long chains of free radicals by donating or accepting an electron without damaging a cell in the process. Again, leafy greens are rich in anti-oxidants. The animals you are eating had the benefit of the leafy green to protect them from cancer and connective tissue damage, but you do not.

I just hope that your experiment is not causing you too much damage. The original Eskimos did eat a diet of nearly pure fish, and did not die of heart disease or blood clots, but the high concentration of Omega 3 in their diets interfered with clotting, essentially blocking the plaque from forming a clot when it ruptures and preventing stroke and heart attack by that mechanism, not by actually cleaning the arteries out, sort of like super-aspirin or heparin when used in the hospital during coronary thrombosis or stroke. Will a diet of pure grass-fed eventually cause you the same side effect that the Eskimos suffered -- fatal nose bleeds from inability to form clots?

These extreme diets may produce all sorts of interesting effects, but just because some test results get 'better' does not necessarily mean that you are healthier. I encourage you to try reading many different sources and getting a more wholistic view of what you are doing to your body, just in case you are robbing Peter to pay Paul with your dietary changes rather than actually building equity in your health.

Skepticism is a rare quality to have, just remember to be skeptical of everything in equal measure so that your mind stays open to the possibility that you too are in error, and that there may be more to the picture than just doing the opposite of conventional wisdom to maximize health.

Cheryl