cyst

Question
My son has had one or two benign cysts since he was very young that have not really bothered him except a couple of times when they have enlarged.  He is 17 now, and about six days ago, they began to enlarge more than they ever have.  Also, he says that when he tries to swallow, the muscles in the action of swallowing push the cyst, and it hurts.  He doesn't want to eat raw although he will drink raw milk (on his Cheerios#.  I know how damaging these things can be but he wants me to buy them so I do.  Trying to control a 17-year old I think is not wise.  He has heard how damaging they are and why but he doesn't seem to believe me.  He also has acne #which is a good thing as it is detox# and his concern has led him to want to ingest evening primrose oil which was suggested to him.  He also more recently began to ingest a regimen for his skin that included a mixture of unsweetened cranberry juice, fresh squeezed orange juice and water. He also was told to eat steamed broccoli and an avocado #he has stopped this acne regimen since the cyst was getting bigger# and take milk thistle supplements #because they are purported to clean the liver).  Does anyone have any suggestions regarding this.  I am on the primal diet but only learned of this life sustaining diet about three years ago so I have a long way to go.

Thanks.

Answer
You're faced with a number of difficult problems. First of all, raw dairy causes problems for some RVAFers. Indeed, it is the most problematic raw food in the RVAF diet community. Pasteurised dairy has been linked by scientists to acne, so it is quite possible that part of the reason why your son is getting acne is not due to detox, but due to his dairy-consumption:-


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15692464


Aajonus of the Primal Diet has stated that, for full recovery from serious health-problems, one needs to be 85 percent raw. Granted, some RVAFers have managed to cure their acne on only partially raw diets, but if your son refuses to eat raw meats, that is a major problem. There are some things you can try which might well improve things, though likely only partially:-

a)  Remove all dairy from his diet, even raw dairy. Some people benefit from raw butter but not from other kinds of raw dairy, so you might first try him on raw butter and then give him a dairy-free diet.

b) Try him on raw animal foods that are considered more socially acceptable. For example, many bodybuilders who refuse to eat other raw animal foods will happily eat raw eggs. Another idea would be to take him out to dinner at a local restaurant which offers raw-animal-food dishes like  steak tartare, sashimi or raw oysters. Many people who refuse to eat a raw-meat-diet are prepared to eat raw-animal-food dishes provided that the eating occurs in a socially-acceptable environment such as a restaurant, as that reassures them on a psychological level.

c)  Make sure his plant foods, and especially plant-juices, are as raw as possible - also, cooking plant foods generates smaller amounts of heat-created toxins than cooking animal foods does. If you are cooking for him still, then only lightly cook the foods you give him, so as to reduce the amounts of heat-created toxins generated by cooking. It also helps to reduce the amounts of those toxins in the body if the person concerned has his food boiled in water(and drinking the water afterwards, if possible, as some vitamins leach into the water) or, at the very least, marinated in some liquid sauce. Doing lots of exercise and practising Intermittent Fasting also will help to reduce the toxin-load:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

d) Try as hard as possible to improve the quality of the foods he wants cooked. So get hold of 100 percent grassfed meat(100 percent grassfed is far more important for health than organic status). Also, try to get hold of wild game.

e) Ditch all those supplements, such as the evening primrose oil or the milk-thistle. Most such supplements are heavily processed so are generally useless for regaining one"s health. They are also expensive, in the long run.

f) Ditch the broccoli. It's not that harmful, even if steamed, but it's useless for improving one's health.

g) Go onto raw-animal-food-oriented forums such as rawpaleoforum etc., and ask  for advice in those forums. That way, you may well get far more information from some of the members of those forums than I provided above.

HTH,

RPG.

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