bone marrow

Question
QUESTION: hi.  i see in one of your answer you mention that to heal the gut one should
take organic, grass fed bone marrow.  can i purchase this?  i know of some who
advocate cooking the bones for hours, thus releasing the marrow and eating it
from there.  my assumptions is that you are referring to raw bone marrow. how
do i go getting/making this myself?  thanks so much for any help.  jenny

ANSWER: The marrow has to be raw, obviously,I believe some WAPF-advocates like to cook bones but it's not a rawpalaeo approach.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson describes two types of marrow, one type from the lower leg which is soft "more like a particularly delicious cream in flavor" and another from the humerus and femur that is "hard and tallowy at room temperatures.


The best place to get hold of marrow is from 100% grassfed farmers, either organic farms or "naturally-reared" farms. There are various organic and/or grassfed meat online directories(such as www.eatwild.com for America) for most countries, so just google for those sites, and you'll then be able to find the contact-details for particular grassfed farms in your general area and can order from them direct. They'll then send you the bones(usually prefrozen which isn't the end of the world)(you have to pay for the weight of the bones as well as the marrow, but you can/should ask them to cut the bones up into small 2-4 inch pieces beforehand, to make things easier for you.


What I do with the bones with the drier, tougher marrow is to use a solid oyster-knife to poke/punch out the first bits of marrow at either end of the piece of bone, then I use a normal knife to scour round the edge of the bone in a circle to get the rest of the marrow out.


While, at the time, I did find raw marrow helpful re my own digestion, I've found that other methods have also been useful in that regard. If you're new to all this, it's probably best that you leave "high-meat" for much later, but try some "EM"(effectvie microroganisms) products, in the meantime. Getting in extra bacteria will help improve gut-health and digestion. Some rawists have found that it helps to consume some (high-grade) enzyme supplements, especially before a social occasion involving the consumption of cooked-foods, so that might be an idea.

Also, some more unusual conditions can lead to poor digestion. For example, I had adrenal burnout before going in for raw animal food diets, and one consequence of such a condition was that I, over the years, found it increasingly difficult to digest any cooked animal foods, suffering from agonising stomach-aches as a result. In hindsight, if I'd, early on,  taken some raw adrenal (and thyroid?)supplements(from grassfed sourced), my recovery-rate would have been faster. There's Dr Ron's site which is useful in that regard, though grassfed meat farms would be a better, cheaper source:-

http://www.drrons.com/
HTH,
RPG.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: RPG,

thank you so much for the reply to my question and your insight. wow! also,
you can post this thread to the public if you feel it will be beneficial. i was
confused as to what i was supposed to click  to allow it to go public - but you
have permission. although, please do not post my email address.  you
mentioned adrenal burnout/thyroid.  my severe constipation - 2 years -
seems only to be relieved by relief of stress and anxiety.  literally nothing else
seems to work.  i have been told by natural docs that there is a disconnect
between my brain and gut systems.  the reason i got turned onto the raw
meat diet was to heal this nightmare of constipation - but i am afraid of
allowing raw meat sit in my system for weeks on end.  i would like to start
supplementing adrenals and thyroid, but i'm wondering if you think i should
do this with supplements or should i be eating raw meat/organs  instead to
heal the adrenals.  it seems likely that i have PTSD  (post dramatic stress
disorder) going back a couple of years.  thanks so much. i already feel a lot
better from reading your previous reply.
jenny

Answer
If you look at general online info-sites on the subject of adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout/adrenal exhaustion, you'll find a lot of references to an increasing tendency for AF/AB sufferers to not be able to digest cooked animal food - it usually starts off with an inability to handle one type of animal food, and ends up, eventually, with an inability to digest any and all cooked or processed animal foods, at extreme levels. That's what happened in my own case. At first, c. the age of 18, I had problems with any foods with additives/preservatives in them(causing frequent vomiting constipation etc.), then it progressed until I had to go raw vegan/fruitarian to avoid constant digestive-issues/vomiting etc. Fortunately for me, I eventually found that raw animal foods were still properly digested even though my adrenals were completely screwed by then.

Anyway, my point is that it's better to both eat a raw animal food diet AND to use raw glandulars from grassfed/organic sources, whether from a grassfed meat farm or Dr Ron's site(I don't know of any other equivalent  high-grade supplement-source, despite a lot of online  searching). It's been claimed by 1 or 2 rpders that the adrenals/thyroid glands one gets from grassfed meat farms sometimes are too concentrated re strength, so if you get them from a farm-source, you might consider eating only small bits of them at a time. Dr Ron's glandulars are already in small doses, so that's not an issue.

I started off the raw meat diet, over 7 years ago, without using such glandulars, and I suspect that my recovery would have been a LOT shorter if I'd taken such raw glandulars as well - after all, like cures like, if one has a faulty heart, one should eat raw heart etc.. I certainly don't recommend eating a processed, cooked diet while taking raw glandulars for thyroid/adrenals, as the consumption of processed or  cooked food will burden the adrenals, thus slowing healing down  dramatically.

Re adrenals:- It's probably a good idea to use both adrenals and thyroid supplements at the same time or, as a lesser option, at least try to fix the adrenals before using thyroid supplements. It's been claimed by a few RPDers that just using thyroid supplements on their own can harm the adrenals, indirectly. This is purely anecdotal, though.

Another point to be made is that AF/AB sufferers often have acute allergies to non-Palaeo foods such as dairy, grains etc. These foods are to be avoided like the plague. I know that some raw animal food diets include lots of raw dairy,but it's a really bad idea to consume that stuff. I myself had chronic constipation for decades as a result of consuming first pasteurised dairy, and then raw dairy for the first 6 months or so of going in for raw animal foods.

Re privacy:- Once you click on the little box marked "private question", the question and answer is kept from the public automatically, and I don't think there's a way to change it.

HTH,
RPG.

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