Nice to meet you all, from Italy

[TheArt]

Hello there,
I like forums, used them a lot. Hopefully here we can discuss and help each other, too.

About me: I am 25, currently on raw primal diet, mainly influenced by Aajonus work. I feel good, just recently I have a skin problem. My face's skin is dry and covered with red spots, similar to fungi like Candida (I looked at pics on the web and seems very similar). Moreover since a month the skin when my hair grow is dry and not looking so great. I am trying to figure it out.

I became eating raw animal food since August, when I tried my first raw egg. Delicious! After that I slowly continued to try new and new things, like muscle meat, liver, kidneys, brain, heart, raw kefir, raw milk, raw cheese and honey. Occasionally I eat nuts. So far I feel this was the missing point I was lacking, because since 3 years I am VERY interested in a healthy living, structure of our society, what is going wrong, big pharma plans, environmental pollution and so on.

I was on a basic Italian diet until 3 years ago, then a book of Arnold Ehret completely blew my mind and I removed all the processed food and animal products. I became vegan, eating wholegrain cereals, salads, fruits and legumes. The usual stuff. (except tofu and seitan).

From veganism I transitioned to raw-veganism a year and a half ago, ending up eating 100% RAW of mainly fruits, sometimes veggies and rarely some nuts. Recently I traveled in South East Asia, attracted by the tropical fruits there, and I enjoyed them A LOT during my 4 months in Malaysia and Thailand.

BUT! I still felt something was missing. After Ehret's book, I continued studying, reading books about veganism and fruitariaism, and all the connected stuff. I felt it was the right thing, however my body was telling me what something was lacking. I was quite skinny, reaching 49kg x 1.82m even if I ate A LOT. Even the coconuts did not help me to gain much weight back in Asia.

I had 0 diseases, was never ill, had energy, but still this lack of power and weight was bugging me. After many signs and thanks to Daniel Drury, I finally decided to try raw animal food. Then I realized that we, as humans, DEPEND on animals in so many ways that there could not be another way out. I must admit that I just want to understand what our mind/body/soul is designed to eat in this material world. I thought our perfect food was sweet fruits, but I found on myself that it wasn't sustainable.

So what is left? I just want to have a great life, with energy, positivity and disease-free. If I have to kill animals to do that, that's fine! My dream is to be someone like the old tribes, who hunted their food, and prayed before consuming it. In this way they had a strong spiritual connection with the animal and THIS is living in resonance with Mother Earth, in my opinion.

Now I am totally aware that the source of food is important and I am looking for the best deals in my area. Quite a challenge, but it's ok!

Have a nice day

[van]

as you said it in your other post today, some can tolerate milk, some can't.
    Also the nuts you eat should  be bought with shell on and then shelled by you and soaked.  that is if you eat more than a few a day.    you also maybe eating too much for your digestion to handle, especially when reading about your past diets.  Also please throw out all your Arnold E's books.   that is what ruined my health some 44 years ago.  So easy for our minds to believe what we read in a book.  Same goes for believing all that AV says.

[TheArt]

I agree. I eat just a few nuts a month, just wanted to mention. And yes they are shelled, I used to soak them once, now not anymore. Simply because I eat a few when I want a snack, and soaking them implies that you have to program when to eat and how much.

About dairy, I stopped to consume all dairy products two weeks ago, to see if my skin would improve. It didn't. So I feel confident to reintroduce just kefir, even if I have no issues drinking raw milk or eating raw cheese. Still, I will not consume them anymore, for now.

Fortunately I got my Ehret's book in a library, so I don't have it hehe. I totally agree with you about believing the people who write about health in their books. Everyone could claim that his/her system is the PERFECT ONE. But we are all different and we have to take the hard way of discovering our own dietary pattern.

[norawnofun]

I had dry hair issues as well, that always came after I ate too much pasteurized joghurt. As far as I know people can get all kinds of skin issues on pasteurized dairy. And when it comes to raw dairy you have to be careful not to heat it too much. I drink and eat plenty of raw dairy and recently started using my thermometer to check the temperatures of warming my milk, since drinking it cold isn´t recommended, it was only then that I realized that I was heating it up way too much. According to my research the temperature of milk coming straight from the cow is roughly between 37-38 Celcius, if you heat it higher you destroy enzymes, apparently at 47 all enzymes are gone. I had thought that my finger is a good indicator to check if the milk is too hot or not. I was VERY mistaken.

I also used to drink a lot of homemade kefir, and I sometimes noticed that my neck started to swell when I drank it, I thought that it´s a signal of my body to stop it, however, I just read in AV´s book by coincidence that heated raw cottage cheese (which he mentioned wasn´t raw in that case), can cause thyroid sluggishness and swelling throughout the thyroid area (neck). In my case this was spot on and I remembered that I used to heat the kefir up pretty much, now concluding it was way too much. So you might unknowingly drink overheated dairy, that kills the probiotics, hence causing your skin issues.

I also noticed that some days/weeks ago I started to get a red spot, including very dry and itchy skin on my foot, like eczema. At that time I didn´t really have much of raw milk, except goat ricotta, which I thought was raw but turned out to be over pasteurized, so basically I had no probiotics from the milk and enzymes at all since I eat a cooked carnivore diet, and I clearly saw the consequences. Bad digestion and eczema. Now that I am drinking plenty of raw milk again the ichyness is gone and the red spot nearly too, and I also started taking a probiotic supplement. To come to the point: You might be missing probiotics to fix your skin issues. These you can either get with raw milk (which isn´t heated too much as explained) or by possibly supplementing with probiotic supplements, or you use other probiotic foods/drinks or even high meat (?). There are numerous accounts of people which cured severe skin problems by drinking raw milk, so to conclude, I am pretty certain by now that probiotics play a major role in skin disease, regardless if you get them from raw dairy or not. And funnily enough when I had that big red spot on my food it went away by applying a swedish bitter herb tincture, but at the same time another spot appeared right on top. That makes you realize that topical applications are almost always useless, as I think nearly all diseases are caused internally, not externally.