7 weeks on an all Raw Milk Diet

[Brady]

I posted this on a PD forum 3 weeks ago, so I have been doing it now for 7 weeks:

For someone that struggled with Raw Dairy it will come as a big surprise that I have been doing an all Raw Milk (Kefir) diet for this last month, I know I’m nuts! Although I was doing pretty well I noticed after eating any kind of raw flesh or eggs I just became way too acidic (tired, dehydrated, anxious) so I wanted to look at taking a more Alkaline diet.
I came across a book written by Bernarr McFadden (1923) (available as a free download online) called the All Milk Diet. It describes how it was once a cure for all diseases so of course I had to give it a go. I knew to attempt it with Fresh Raw Milk would have been a complete disaster as I just cannot digest it. I need the lactose and Casein to be predigested to the point were its extremely sour. I have been taking plenty of Raw Honey with it and drink a little veggie juice in the morning but thats it.
Now for the effects:
Within just a few hours I noticed a difference, my pulse sped up and I felt more alert.
After 2 days I was much warmer and had lots more energy.
After 1 week I could barely feel the cold, it was like being a child again, great.
After 10 days I started sleep better and I felt ‘sleepy’ at bed time, something I hadn’t experienced in years.
It’s been 1 month and my skin looks great, I’ve practically stopped brushing my teeth (no need to) and I’ve more energy and STAMINA than I’ve had in years. Still got some distance to go but its been a big step.
I’ve put on 5 kgs of lean mass

Now for the detox:
The first week I had intense headaches (I almost quit) but I kept going then they passed.
I also had an increase in inflammation around my joints, this worried me the most but Bernarr explained very eloquintly that this could be the case as there is an increase in blood flow and has since passed, provided I don’t take too much at once.
In my 4th week I entered an intense flu detoxification, felt like I had been hit by a truck. The aches, pains and fatigue passed after a couple of days but the nasal congestion has persisted and I am still coughing up flem which is increased by taking more milk. As you fellow Primal Dieters have much more experience than I do with Raw Dairy could you comment on whether this is indeed futher detox or could it just be mucus created by taking too much Raw Kefir?
Also another interesting point worth discussing is that McFadden and other old timers like Henry Bieler advised taking skimmed milk or milk from a holstein/freisen etc as opposed to milk with a higher fat content from a Jersey/Guernsey (I found another quality source) when on an all milk diet. At first a took this as Fat Phobia but I’ve since discovered that they had a point. Obviously given both sets of animals are Grass Fed, the milk with the higher fat content will be more nutritious but when on an Exclusive Milk Diet consuming large quantities of high fat Raw Milk seems to cause problems, its very congestive and creates acidity which then requires additional Water or Veggie Juice. The Skimmed Raw Milk on the other hand is very hydrating means you don’t have to resort to other fluids, or very little of them. I think finding a balance will be the key, perhaps drink the skimmed Raw Milk when thirsty and the Jersey Raw Milk when hungry.
Look forward to getting some feedback on this one.

Thanks
Brady

[goodsamaritan]

Thank you for doing this crazy experiment and telling us how it went.
You are doing everyone a great service.

[cherimoya_kid]

I think the mucus you're experiencing is from...too much milk.  I would cut back, and start adding some seafoods or raw meat, and  a little fruit.

Is the milk grass-fed? 

[RawZi]

    I'm wondering which animals make the lowest fat milk.  I know womens and cows' milk varies in fat by season and what they eat.  I know humans have higher fat than cows to develop our brains, and cows have more calcium for their bones.  I am seeing goat milk has higher fat than cow and human here.  I know various women say their milk is very fatty or creamy certain times depending on diet changes or just thicker than other womens.  I guess I'm really lucky I'm getting jersey milk, cause I make butter, and it looks like it's higher fat than many of the other cow milks.  Maybe that's why some people who have problems with milk can deal with jersey, with a varied diet higher milk fat helps.  With my son who is using milk to heal, the fat is so helpful to him that he puts half the skimmed outside for animals and drinks his milk with double cream.

nutritiondata.com

water buffalo milk 62% fat, sheep milk 57% fat, mature human milk 55% fat, goat milk 53% fat, 3.25 cow milk 49% fat

These compositions vary by breed, animal, and point in the lactation period.
Milk fat percentages

Cow breed         Approximate percentage

• Jersey                  5.2

• Zebu                     4.7

• Brown Swiss        4.0

• Holstein-Friesian 3.6

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/milk#ixzz1b4BNOFj8

[RawZi]

    At one point I got a gallon honey that was labeled unheated, but it looked heated to me.  I didn't want to bother returning it, especially because I would be calling them liars.  Eating that honey over other honeys caused what I experienced as a strange smell from me and excess mucus.  From them on for a while honey or not, milk made me very mucusy for a while, and that honey smell.  I think it was for detox, so it was alright, but bothersome if you have to work with people with all that mucus.

[Brady]

I think the mucus you're experiencing is from...too much milk.  I would cut back, and start adding some seafoods or raw meat, and  a little fruit.

Is the milk grass-fed?

The mucous has completely cleared without reducing milk taken so I suspect it was just detox.

[Brady]

    I'm wondering which animals make the lowest fat milk.  I know womens and cows' milk varies in fat by season and what they eat.  I know humans have higher fat than cows to develop our brains, and cows have more calcium for their bones.  I am seeing goat milk has higher fat than cow and human here.  I know various women say their milk is very fatty or creamy certain times depending on diet changes or just thicker than other womens.  I guess I'm really lucky I'm getting jersey milk, cause I make butter, and it looks like it's higher fat than many of the other cow milks.  Maybe that's why some people who have problems with milk can deal with jersey, with a varied diet higher milk fat helps.  With my son who is using milk to heal, the fat is so helpful to him that he puts half the skimmed outside for animals and drinks his milk with double cream.

nutritiondata.com
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/milk#ixzz1b4BNOFj8

Thanks for this, I think if you are doing 1-2 glasses of Raw Milk per day in addittion to a balanced raw diet then Jersey or a high fat milk is best but I've found that on an exclusive all milk diet the oldtimers were correct, you need to drink skimmed milk.  Drinking large quantities of whole milk caused my metabolism to crash, skimmed milk does the opposite, it stokes the fires all day.

[cherimoya_kid]

The mucous has completely cleared without reducing milk taken so I suspect it was just detox.

I'm still suspicious of it.  I think it's also possible that the mucus has just abated for a few days, and will come back later.

[zeno]

From the Miracle of Milk (Bernarr):

Some have said, “Milk is food for babies, not for adults.” This is true, and that is just why we prescribe it for sick people. No sick person is an adult. Let him first restore his enervated, functionless, depleted, emaciated, worn-out old body to normal functioning and normal proportions before he claims maturity, and this is done in the large majority of cases more surely, safely and satisfactorily by taking the milk diet than by any other known method.

Check out this website for more information.

[zeno]

This is interesting...

I feel a craving for something creamy and fatty and usually reach for the pre-frozen fat source that is available to me. At times, coconut butter is satisfying, too. The other day I tried pasteurized kefir milk and I loved how creamy it was.

Later, I've been drinking water but have felt completely un-hydrated--just full of water. Granted, the water is spring water all the way from New Zealand. Perhaps raw milk would be a good addition for small cravings of a rich liquid...

[Iguana]

I'm still suspicious of it.  I think it's also possible that the mucus has just abated for a few days, and will come back later.

Or most probably it's because your body became accustomed and stopped to react to poisoning, just like it happens  for every noxious stuff if you consume it regularly for a sufficient long duration. In other words, the immune system, being constantly overwhelmed by an antigen, goes on strike against it because it has invaded every cell all over the body and to destroy all the cells marked with such a recognition antigen would mean destroying the whole body.

With some luck, that may remain ok until you reach a venerable age, but with bad luck some cancerous cells will happen by coincidence to be marked with the same recognition antigen the immune system is "on strike”and thus won’t be destroyed. So the end result of milk consumption may emerge by a cancer 10, 20 or 40 years later, when this forum will no longer be here. 

Good luck!

[PaleoPhil]

Brady, I was just about to thank you for reporting your good results from raw honey after getting my own gradually increasing benefits from raw fermented honey when I read this thread title and was concerned that maybe you were getting bad results from it and had abandoned it, but apparently not? Don't mean to quibble, but if you're still eating plenty of honey as well as a little veggie juice, maybe it would be clearer what you're doing (and give me fewer heart attacks  ), if you called it an all raw milk, honey & veggie juice diet or a raw Primal diet?

[zeno]

Paleo-Phil's point and Bernarr's statement suggests that you are slightly meandering from a strictly milk diet:

It must be distinctly understood that with the exceptions mentioned here and to be further mentioned in Chapter IV, no other food than milk is to be taken while you are on the “diet.” I mention this for the reason that many have told me they have taken the milk diet without results, and upon inquiry I usually find they have taken three regular meals with whatever milk they were able to drink at and between meals, and have imagined they were on the milk diet. Such a procedure is not “dieting” but “stuffing.”

Anyway, do you intend to continue this diet or include other foods such as meat gradually?

[Ferocious]

Or most probably it's because your body became accustomed and stopped to react to poisoning, just like it happens  for every noxious stuff if you consume it regularly for a sufficient long duration. In other words, the immune system, being constantly overwhelmed by an antigen, goes on strike against it because it has invaded every cell all over the body and to destroy all the cells marked with such a recognition antigen would mean destroying the whole body.

With some luck, that may remain ok until you reach a venerable age, but with bad luck some cancerous cells will happen by coincidence to be marked with the same recognition antigen the immune system is "on strike”and thus won’t be destroyed. So the end result of milk consumption may emerge by a cancer 10, 20 or 40 years later, when this forum will no longer be here. 

Good luck!

Well said!

[Brady]

Or most probably it's because your body became accustomed and stopped to react to poisoning, just like it happens  for every noxious stuff if you consume it regularly for a sufficient long duration. In other words, the immune system, being constantly overwhelmed by an antigen, goes on strike against it because it has invaded every cell all over the body and to destroy all the cells marked with such a recognition antigen would mean destroying the whole body.

With some luck, that may remain ok until you reach a venerable age, but with bad luck some cancerous cells will happen by coincidence to be marked with the same recognition antigen the immune system is "on strike”and thus won’t be destroyed. So the end result of milk consumption may emerge by a cancer 10, 20 or 40 years later, when this forum will no longer be here. 

Good luck!

I think perhaps you are getting a little carried away, that sounds more like something Durian Rider would come out with rather than an open minded health advocate. 
Raw Dairy has been used by many Indigenous people world wide who did not get cancer or any other lifestyle related disease. What about the Isolated Swiss WAP studied who did a lot of Raw Milk, Cream, Cheese and Butter? Or the Mongolians who do a lot of Raw Kefir, even till this day?

Milking Horses In Mongolia

I would suggest you read some of the work by Charles Porter MD or Bernarr Mc Fadden.  These guys brought THOUSANDS of people back from the dead in their milk sanitariums or at home.

I recognise that most people on this forum thrive without the addition of Raw Dairy to their diet, and fair play to them.  I am just reporting the experiences I am having and sharing research I have discovered about an All Milk Diet.

[Brady]

Brady, I was just about to thank you for reporting your good results from raw honey after getting my own gradually increasing benefits from raw fermented honey when I read this thread title and was concerned that maybe you were getting bad results from it and had abandoned it, but apparently not? Don't mean to quibble, but if you're still eating plenty of honey as well as a little veggie juice, maybe it would be clearer what you're doing (and give me fewer heart attacks  ), if you called it an all raw milk, honey & veggie juice diet or a raw Primal diet?

Fair point sorry mate!  Yeah I am weaning my way off Honey and Veggie Juice (i do very little) and on to all Milk, will keep you posted.

[Brady]

Paleo-Phil's point and Bernarr's statement suggests that you are slightly meandering from a strictly milk diet:

It must be distinctly understood that with the exceptions mentioned here and to be further mentioned in Chapter IV, no other food than milk is to be taken while you are on the “diet.” I mention this for the reason that many have told me they have taken the milk diet without results, and upon inquiry I usually find they have taken three regular meals with whatever milk they were able to drink at and between meals, and have imagined they were on the milk diet. Such a procedure is not “dieting” but “stuffing.”

Anyway, do you intend to continue this diet or include other foods such as meat gradually?

True but I believe they said the use of various items like fruit and honey could be included for a specific function eg to keep the bowels moving.
Anyway I just take a little celery juice and raw honey first thing in morning and the rest is milk, and I am weaning my way of these also.

[Brady]

I should also mention after 3 years of near complete absence I have started to sweat again, a few nights I woke up drenched. This has excited me the most as I clearly remember with dread the day I stopped sweating, this was when my health really crashed. 

Mc Fadden and Porter both clearly mention this in their books that this is one of the key responses to the Milk Diet.

[zeno]

The question still stands, will you wean yourself of milk and introduce "adult" foods such as meat or simply continue with this all milk diet?

[Brady]

The question still stands, will you wean yourself of milk and introduce "adult" foods such as meat or simply continue with this all milk diet?

I'm going to continue for another while, perhaps to xmas.  Then see how I'm doing and what my body is craving, if need be I will reintroduce "Adult Foods".  At the moment I have no desire to eat Raw Meat or Eggs so just going to listen to what my body says.

[RawZi]

Milking Horses In Mongolia

    This looks good for YOU!  Isn't mare milk low in fat?  Are you going to try to get mare milk?  In one video they say its milking season is May to October.  I was looking online for horses for sale this morning.  I would like to have a couple.  It looks like they can give very little milk.

[KD]

Raw Dairy has been used by many Indigenous people world wide who did not get cancer or any other lifestyle related disease. What about the Isolated Swiss WAP studied who did a lot of Raw Milk, Cream, Cheese and Butter? Or the Mongolians who do a lot of Raw Kefir, even till this day?

There are basically few examples of traditional peoples or even toxic moderns peoples consuming raw grass-fed dairy as having ties with cancer, and extremely less than other known or assumed factors. The two plausible arguments against dairy remain our lack of access to it in the past (which says nothing about the current need to ameliorate toxicity) as well as HG's environmental necessity to consume it to survive in those constraints without the artificial abundances of today. The second is the possible imbalances, sugar issues, and digestive/bacterial issues it could cause (particularly in modern people who might not be balancing the right way that HGs do) which goes for so many other foods. 
 
Cancer seems to correspond more with people who have insane practices or ideas of what a healthy diet is and doesn't eat the types of foods and tools we have available that are known to absorb and pull out toxins, stop fermentation and supply essential nutrients needed to ameliorate such developments.
 
At the same time, eating only milk (and honey and juice) for extended periods might be one of those extremes which causes the same long-term lack/excess of nutrients, fermentation etc...that a conventional diet or a diet of fruits and muscle meats without proper animal fats and such can.
 
---

In the short term, its totally common and practiced amongst traditional peoples to drink all milk or almost all milk. Heres its three months milk and blood only.
 
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/pictures/110511-best-pictures-sony-world-photography-awards/#/world-photography-contest-2011-sports_35452_600x450.jpg
 
heh heh, sexy.
 
Particularly since contemporary people fast on juice (and perhaps some supplements) for 92 days I'm not ultimately concerned if you are seeing it as an experiment. I suspect even with the success of an experiment that doing something similar with some muscle meats and such wouldn't be a great long term diet but what do I know.
 

[KD]

The questions you have about detox or not will not be answered untill you assess your initial symptoms and the ones following the experiment. At that point even if one could show definitively that the properties of dairy are bad (which they won't) it will remain just as irrelevant as a person critiquing breathranism and equating it with fasting for a few days. If you can digest better, sleep better, have less problems with skin, energy etc..You will know you had a tool to bring you from one place to another.  That is all that matters. You won't have found out that you have a sustainable diet or even a perfectly problem-free food however (as above with possible imbalances) which is the trap of all raw diets, particularly when they continue to ignore certain symptoms based on what they think is good or dwelling on such seeming success prior.
 
As for signals of a failed experiment, it would be the opposite or the sort experienced by raw vegans and others: needing to eat more and more an extreme diet, not being able to digest many foods, being incapacitated by lightly cooked foods etc...all signs that this fast or protocol causes ill health.
 
Of course even when you can share experiences as you see them applied to you, people will want to criticize or tell you youre wrong about what is or is not working based on their limited experiences. You did ask though .  I know with me that I wouldn't make the type of progress I've made without consuming dairy fat like cream or butter and that I consider these to be both healing and detoxifying foods and a true asset to only eating paleo foods. I happen to have mixed feeling on milk, honey etc..particularly because these foods employ a carb based energy system but have almost no problems now with these foods eaten in small amounts. If I was not on my approach or recommending a diet to an average person I would say eating honey or milk (if they digest it) as better sources of carbs than more than 3-4 fruits or something, although I would recommend cooked tubers in those cases too, so go figure.

Even though the milk-thing is out of my experience, a number of people have shown that eating alot of milk (kefir specifically on this forum it seems) has paradoxically altered fungal growth and such. Saying this isn't some major triumph and criticizing the imbalances and such possibly brought on my dairy (again if these are even true) is like dwelling on a particular cut of meat that caused an eczema outbreak. People can ignore a lifetime of eating Captn Crunch in pasteurized milk and saying a half a cup of raw grassfed milk gave them some phlegm or something...is not a sign of physical purity IMO, to say the very least. Which is the reason so many so called experiments making claims against raw dairy are false flags. They assume they are otherwise practing that which creates healthy variables to test a 'foreign' thing like milk when in reality their past health and current practices can create toxicities and imbalances with dairy foods being possibly an agitational medium.  Only a true expriment would be like you are doing without other foods that are assumed 'healthy'. Ironically as I'm sure the Mc Fadden stuff shows, these 'fasts' always produce better results and can be stretched to longer and more comfortable term than single fruit fasts, water fasts, juice, and perhaps even diets of lean meats, showing at the very least that people can get a tremendous amount of their needs from dairy foods (again, even if there are other issues associated with it) far after maturation, making that argument totally nonsensical as well.
 
With me, all the times giving up (pasteurized) dairy products did clear up phlegm but always left me with an unsustainable diet. Even if someone can correlate the phlem with healthy milk there is no saying that like with colds/flues this isn't carrying out old waste even IF the milk is agitational in some way, so again its just weighing pros over cons.  If it isn't detox it could have to do purely with  the lactose or sugar component or digestive/gut stuff.  I have noticed that eating a LC/VLC diet with possibly almost three-hundreds of lbs of raw butter over the years, i get the periodic colds/flues detoxes every so often but I have no phlegm, that I can hardly go anywhere because my nose just drips like a faucet with no medium there and nothing from my throat. Every so often I have a small hard snot in there.
 

[PaleoPhil]

Raw Dairy has been used by many Indigenous people world wide who did not get cancer or any other lifestyle related disease. What about the Isolated Swiss WAP studied who did a lot of Raw Milk, Cream, Cheese and Butter? Or the Mongolians who do a lot of Raw Kefir, even till this day?

Don't forget the Celts, Turks, Evenks and Maasai. However, those traditional peoples had some practices that modern dairy eaters don't tend to follow. Their cattle sometimes included different species than bovines (for example, the reindeer of the Evenks), and even when they were bovines they were older breeds than what are common today and were pastured, with no antibiotics or hormones, they ate their dairy mostly raw, low-cooked or dried, they fermented/cultured/aged much of it, and long ago they apparently tended to mix raw blood with the raw milk and then fermented the mixture. Yes, I came across a report that even the ancient Celts mixed in the blood, like the Maasai still do today.

I should also mention after 3 years of near complete absence I have started to sweat again, a few nights I woke up drenched. This has excited me the most as I clearly remember with dread the day I stopped sweating, this was when my health really crashed. 

Mc Fadden and Porter both clearly mention this in their books that this is one of the key responses to the Milk Diet.

Hmmm, night sweats are usually not regarded as a good sign, though they could be harmless and not sweating at all can also be a symptom of something. Is it regarded as a sign of a detox of some sort? Was the room really hot?

I had unusually low sweating in my youth myself, and also had other health problems, then in my 30s my feet started to get increasingly warm and sweaty, so that it was unpleasant to wear socks or shoes for very long, and I started gradually getting more common mild lower extremity edema. Since going Paleo, I get less of the feet sweat and other issues and seem to get more of the more-normal chest and scalp sweat.

Do you think you were getting any bad effects from the honey, or did you just decide that you wanted to try the Bernarr McFadden diet? You had looked rather good while eating plenty of honey, but I know that appearances can be deceiving, of course.

[Brady]

Don't forget the Celts, Turks, Evenks and Maasai. However, those traditional peoples had some practices that modern dairy eaters don't tend to follow. Their cattle sometimes included different species than bovines (for example, the reindeer of the Evenks), and even when they were bovines they were older breeds than what are common today and were pastured, with no antibiotics or hormones, they ate their dairy mostly raw, low-cooked or dried, they fermented/cultured/aged much of it, and long ago they apparently tended to mix raw blood with the raw milk and then fermented the mixture. Yes, I came across a report that even the ancient Celts mixed in the blood, like the Maasai still do today.
Hmmm, night sweats are usually not regarded as a good sign, though they could be harmless and not sweating at all can also be a symptom of something. Is it regarded as a sign of a detox of some sort? Was the room really hot?

I had unusually low sweating in my youth myself, and also had other health problems, then in my 30s my feet started to get increasingly warm and sweaty, so that it was unpleasant to wear socks or shoes for very long, and I started gradually getting more common mild lower extremity edema. Since going Paleo, I get less of the feet sweat and other issues and seem to get more of the more-normal chest and scalp sweat.

Do you think you were getting any bad effects from the honey, or did you just decide that you wanted to try the Bernarr McFadden diet? You had looked rather good while eating plenty of honey, but I know that appearances can be deceiving, of course.

I'm pretty sure the sweating was my Adrenals starting up again as I felt so much better and more alert, libido also increased.  And sure it will be detoxing as well, when you don't sweat in 3 years your body accumulates a lot of poison.

No obvoious problems with the honey apart from the expense and now that I've stopped I realise that it was contributing to the over acidity I described.  Raw Honey is a strange thing, its obviously does aid in the digestion of animal foods given the fact it brought me back from the dead but it does seem to contribute to some health issues at the same time, I'll maybe play with it a little more.