Pressure in head from raw fat/meat - cant eat raw meat

[Dingeman]

Hello all,

I've been mostly zero-carb for almost 7 months and tried to go raw. But everytime I eat raw meat my vision becomes blurry and I have trouble seeing stuff in the distance.  I also feel pressure in my head after a couple days of eating raw meat. It also happens when I eat raw eggs. After a couple days of the pressure in my brain I would feel sensitivity to bright lights and to loud noises

Each time I had this problem I would eat raw liver and the symptoms would go away, does anyone know what could cause this? I was thinking a vitamine A overdose because that matches my symptoms exactly but that normally doesn't happen. Does this mean I have kidney/liver problems causing my body to not process vitamin A correctly?

Please let me know if you know what causes this. Some other people suggested adrenal fatigue but I just don't know how to fix that, I really want to start eating fully raw.

[sabertooth]

Sounds to me like a possible heavy metal issue, or some other sort of toxicity or imbalance. I would recommend a hair analysis along with some basic medical blood work to rule out anything serious.

[Dingeman]

Don't you think it is adrenal fatigue that got really bad because of zero carb/too much fat?

[sabertooth]

Its very well possible, especially if one is attempting Zero carb, but often times adrenal fatigue is caused by and aggravated by other issues such as heavy metal toxicity and other deficiencies and imbalances.

Why take unnecessary risk with your health, if you are having serious issues and are not sure what to do.... for about one hundred dollars you could order a hair analysis, and for a couple hundred get a decent blood panel.

Often times there are multiple factors involved in causing these symptoms, and you will need to take a wide spectrum approach in order to get to the bottom of the problem, so that you can make better informed dissensions in regards to what course to take.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

Do you grass-fed, grain-fed or wild game? The quality of both your eggs and meat is important.

Just so we are clear, you said that raw liver fixes your problem?

[dariorpl]

Raw liver is supercharged with Vitamin A, so it's unlikely that an overdose is the problem if raw liver is what makes your symptoms go away.

Do you drink a lot of caffeinated drinks, or have you done this in the past?

I find that when I'm raw, my body is especially sensitive to caffeine, and reacts strongly to it, whereas if I'm eating cooked the reaction is not as strong.

I used to get blurred vision often when I was having a cooked diet (not necessarily low carb), and this went away when on raw, the only thing left was some ocassional twitching of one or the other eyelid which I associated with caffeine detox, which also went away in time. If anything, on raw my vision became better and better. However, if I have heavily caffeinated drinks, my vision will get worse and I get pain in the eyes that feels like blood pressure is too high in there, it makes my eyes feel like they're swelling up and as if that continued, something would burst.

[dariorpl]

which I associated with caffeine detox,

(Or nerve healing from caffeine and other chemical damage)

[Dingeman]

Yes raw liver helps me, for that reason I also think that vitamin A overdose can't be the problem. I read that the adrenals are important for processing vitamin A, so if mine are not working properly (I have all the symptoms) then that maybe is the reason that I can't take all the raw fat.

I don't think caffeine is the problem, I don't even drink coffee. Maybe once in 2 months. Caffeine only makes the symptoms worse, it doesn't create them. This complements my adrenal theory, coffee is one of the foods you should avoid when suffering from adrenal fatigue.

I ordered kidney with the adrenals attached to them from my organic butcher, gonna eat them raw to see if anything changes.
Saber, I read somewhere that you suffered from adrenal fatigue as well? Did raw adrenals help you back then?

[sabertooth]

I not only consumed raw adrenals, but all the gland and organs, so its difficult to know if any specific foods helped more in restoring my vitality than any other. I highly recommend eating everything, as long as the mammal is healthy then there isnt an organ or gland thats off limits. If you are serious about making ZC or Low Carb work then consider eating the entire animal. The Thyroid, pancreas, liver, eyes, brain, guts, spleen, lymph tissue, kidneys, marrow, etc....

When I was experiencing adrenal fatigue issues I had toxic levels of lead, aluminum, manganese as well as deficiencies in calcium magnesium, selenium and many of the trace elements, which showed up in a hair analysis. Toxicity and imbalances are common with adrenal fatigue, and could be playing a larger role in your symptoms than the carbs, fat, and protein ratios you are consuming. If you are simultaneously toxic and deficient Zero carbs might not be able to help even if the animals being consumed are of good quality. You may be simply lacking the mineral balance necessary for optimal endocrine system rejuvenation.

Mineral re-balancing in many was was just as important as raw meat. I began drinking spring water instead of RO water, eating the entire animal including the connective tissues and ground up stomach and intestines, and would occasionally grind bones for bone meal. I also eat copious amunts of coconut butter which seems to help with mineral balance as well as optimal fat metabolism on a Very low carb diet. 

[dair]

It dangerous to always blame some problem on detox. This is a classic. There are far more possibilities and scenarios. I used to ALWAYS blame ALL my health problems on detox, when vegan or fruitarian, because, that's what all the people around me told me the root of my problem was.
We are much more complex beings than we think, and we differ a great deal from one another. The trick is to get to know your health... Not easy, I go by trial and error, information, experience and communication, and listening to my body, easier said than done...

[TylerDurden]

I would similiarly notice how primal dieters would routinely experiencing endless, very painful detoxes months and years after switching to the primal diet. Since such detoxes would usually be reported as occurring shortly after consuming some amounts of raw dairy, it seemed logical to me that they were not experiencing detox at all but were actually allergic to raw dairy(quite common in RVAF circles). I will admit that plenty of people do indeed experience genuine detoxes if they stray from a RVAF diet, myself included, BUT the rule is that a genuine detox is one where one feels slightly better after the detox than before the detox. If that is not the case, then the incident is unlikely to be a detox, but something else.

[Dingeman]

Toxicity and imbalances are common with adrenal fatigue, and could be playing a larger role in your symptoms than the carbs, fat, and protein ratios you are consuming. If you are simultaneously toxic and deficient Zero carbs might not be able to help even if the animals being consumed are of good quality. You may be simply lacking the mineral balance necessary for optimal endocrine system rejuvenation.

I think this is why the high amount of raw fat caused problems for me. The raw fat was working hard to get rid of toxic metals in my body, but my endocrine system was not strong enough to get rid of them. This resulted in heavy pressure in my head and blurry vision.

I'm thinking of getting a hair analysis in order to understand what minerals I'm lacking severly. Only this way it's possible for me to combat these deficiencies by eating whatever foods contain a lot of the missing nutrients/minerals.

I already consume raw liver regularly, my next step would be to add in raw forms of seafood because I noticed Iodine did wonders for me, hinting at a possible deficiency. What raw seafoods do you guys recommend?