Welcome, Mary. Very inciteful questions. You've done some homework, I see. Good for you. That's the best advice I think I can give you--if you value your health, do your homework, learn a lot about health matters, especially dietary/nutritional, see what makes logical sense to you, learn about the risks and learn from the mistakes of others, tinker/experiment and find out what works best for you.
One thing I highly recommend is reading Lex Rooker's entire journal. Granted, I'm a biased fan of Lex's, but it also contains critical opinions, so I think it is extremely valuable. Tyler Durden is also quite valuable, because he often takes the counterpoint position to that of Lex and myself and both Lex and Tyler present quite a bit of research and experience, so you are pretty sure to get a wide range of views and conflicting data here, which I find to be quite enlightening and invigorating. The debates can get quite heated, so gird yourself, but I don't think anyone means any real harm. GoodSamaritan makes sure we don't get out of hand with his positive and calming approach.
1- If you are 100% carnivorous (i know, i know carnivorous sometimes eat some plant matter), it means you have a totally acid diet, am i right?
Well, based on Cordain's research and Lex Rooker's and my urine pH's (I think they were 5.0-5.5, as I recall) it appears to produce very acidic urine, if that's what you mean.
According to Cordain the balance alkaline-acid is vital in order to prevent depletion on calcium and therefore is more important than calcium in/out concerning to osteoporosis. I'm a women, 22y/o, not consuming any diary and really concerned about it, I'm currently taking calcium supplements (not planing to quit them). Do you have any studies, opinions, theories about this? Are we at high risk of developing osteoporosis?
This is one of the more puzzling and fascinating subjects in all of nutrition. Cordain's hypothesis seems to make a bit of intuitive sense on the surface, yet Lex and I and others have experienced
increased firming of teeth and other indicators of increased bone density instead of decreased. Some people, like Tyler, do experience the opposite effect from VLC/carnivorous dieting, but just adding back a small to moderate amount of carbs apparently resolved the problem for them. My personal, speculative opinion is that there is a surprisingly wide variation in what is optimal for different individuals, influenced by a number of factors. For me there were no noticeable negative side effects from adopting a nearly-raw carnivorous diet at all beyond increased bubbling in my urine (probably due to my high protein intake, which I have tried to modulate with increased water and fat intake) and some temporary acetone-sweetness in my saliva. I suspect that this is because my genetic heritage is particularly tilted toward hunters, which has been further suggested recently by some knowledge I've gleaned about what some aspects of myself (such as my color blindness and greenish eyes at birth) may indicate, with the help of RawZi.
2- Other vitamin and minerals. I know that if you eat the whole animal you will be getting most micronutrients you need. i.e chicken liver i think it's a great source of Vit C... But what abut others? do you supplement? I think magnesium plays a great role for preventing heart disease, etc.
Admittedly, I do supplement/replace with magnesium, and vitamins A, D3 and K2. The magnesium supplementation I was doing before I started this diet and was able to stop for a while but had to restart recently (in part because fecal volume decreases when one switches to a carnivorous diet). The D3 I do because I don't get much sun and the A and K2 are mainly to assist the D3. As I understand it, most here do not supplement beyond maybe D3 and those of us who do tend to try to use either foods or food-like supplements (I sometimes call them foodlements), and we only do so to replace what is either deficient in our systems or missing from our diets. We don't tend to get megadosers here.
I've been able to greatly reduce the zinc and potassium supplements I was taking when I was eating raw carbs and now only tend to have to take them after I've eaten some carbs. I seem to be carb intolerant (or at least plant-carb intolerant) and the carbs I ingest may bind with minerals, based on what I've read.
3- Also, I've read alot about having muscle cramps on ZC, Felling really hot after eating, etc, is that supposed to be normal?
I have seen a number of people report that. Magnesium deficiency was cited as the cause in a couple of cases. In my own case, I had toe and foot cramps caused by potassium deficiency that mostly resolved when I adopted a raw carnivore diet (again, eating carbs--even supposedly high-potassium bananas--can quickly bring back the cramps and taking potassium supplements quickly resolves them, or eating lots of raw red meat also resolves them, albeit somewhat more slowly).
I think mineral deficiencies are the most common cause of muscle cramps, but dehydration is another common factor. Traditional facultative carnivores like the Inuit people reportedly consume massive amounts of water. However, this is somewhat controversial, based on the response I got when I reported what I found.
