QuestionHey RPG, about 8 months I got a terrible ankle sprain by playing basketball, I
did not break any bones though. It took 8 months for the pain in the ankle to
finally cease and on month 9, the ankle is still very weak. I cannot run, if I do
the pain will come back. Anyways, after reading the majority of your answers I
am highly motivated to start the Raw Paleo diet. But before I dive into it, I was
curious as to whether or not eating a diet high in raw animal fats and proteins
would restore my weak ankle to the healthful state that it was at before my
injury.
I guess one of the primary reasons why I am asking is because I have been
told by many people that once you sprain your ankle badly it can never fully
recover ever again. Unfortunately, I have seen this problem in the lives of
others that I know who have gotten sprains themselves. However, the people
who tell me that the health of a ankle cannot be completely restored are
cooked foodists and the people who still have ankle problems years after
their injury are cooked foodists as well. So I am hoping that things will be
different when I adopt the raw Paleolithic diet.
One more question: Since raw meats contain bacterias, what is your
recommendation for someone who has lived off of cooked food for a couple
decades on how they should dive into the diet? Should they just immediately
renounce all cooked food and start eating raw meat like its normal? Or should
they slowly ease into it? The reason why I ask is because due to alot of
damage that cooked food has done on people it is difficult for someone in
that sickened state to just consume a bacteria filled meat and be fine. (I guess
this was shown in another post regarding a man who hunting a wild animal
and ate it raw and got sick) I guess what I am really trying to get at is how can
a person go from getting sick from ingesting raw meat to someone who is at
your level or AV who can just eat all the raw meat in the world and be
perfectly fine and feel good.
Thanks a million.
AnswerIt's certainly true that injuries heal faster if one is on a raw, palaeolithic diet. Obviously, the younger one is, the less time injuries will take to heal, and the length of time needed to recover will also depend on how much/how little the body has been damaged by cooked/processed foods, in other ways.
I've, incidentally, sprained my ankle a couple of times(in one case, very badly), and always fully recovered, while on this diet. Of course, I'm only in my 30s, so this feat isn't all that remarkable - however, I would from time to time sustain similiar kinds of injuries back in my junk-food-eating days, and most would take months to heal, if at all.
Re transitioning:- Actually, few people experience any serious problems with transitioning to a raw-animal-food diet.I'm a classic example - in the first two days of going rawpalaeo I had frequent diarrhea due to detoxing some unpleasant chemical residues from my cooked/processed-food days, but, after that, everything was fine(well, OK,I made a big mistake when I later on went in for raw-dairy-consumption, but that had nothing to do with the raw/cooked issue, per se). A very few people do experience other symptoms(eg:- muscle-cramps) which might last for a couple of weeks or so, but these aren't of a serious nature.
Anyway, my point is that you have absolutely nothing to fear as regards bacteria. Sure, the body needs a little time to adjust to a raw-animal-foods diet, after so many decades, but that's not an issue. The biggest problem on a raw-animal-foods diet is quite different, in that many people are so socially conditioned to avoid raw-animal-foods, over the years, that they can find it difficult to transition.
The easiest way to get used to raw-meat is to start eating a cooked, paleolithic diet with processed sauces, and then gradually lowering the cooking-temperature by a degree Celsius/Fahrenheit every so often and reducing the amounts of sauces, until you can, weeks/months later, eat raw-animal-food on its own at room-temperature.
I found, however, that it was better for me to just go cold-turkey and go 99% raw. By the time I'd considered going rawpalaeo, I'd already developed severe stomach-aches every time I ate any cooked-animal-food and a 100% Fruitarian diet had been disastrous for my health, so it was actually better for me to do a sudden transition. Some people recommend eating only a little raw-animal-food, along with some cooked-food, and then gradually increasing the amount of raw-animal-food, but this is a bad idea. Raw and cooked foods require different digestive efforts by the body and more than a very small amount of cooked-food can slow healing down to a crawl - also, people generally find that they get more quickly used to raw-animal-foods if they comprise a majority(95%+) of the diet. So trying either one of the first 2 ideas mentioned, is better.
Anyway, the only serious problems I've heard of, as regards bacteria, have been when people have mistakenly eaten cooked-foods that have been left out for too long - canned-foods are the worst, in that regard. Aged, raw food, however, is perfectly healthy - indeed, most rawpaleodieters find, eventually, that they need some form of aged, bacteria-rich raw animal food(ie "high-meat") in order to make up for all the years they've been eating bacteria-deficient junk-foods. So, even in your currently weakened state, you shouldn't experience much more than slight constipation or diarrhea, in the short-term, from fresh, raw-animal-food, when transitioning(provided you avoid some of the common mistakes RPD-newbies make(see my previous answers re dairy/eating too much etc.)
The case you mention where that guy ate a raw cougar, and got sick, was claimed to be due to a parasite, rather than bacteria. There has been a lot of hysteria over the parasite issue, in the medical community, but I can tell you that you have nothing to fear, in this regard - all organic-status farmers are still allowed/expected to administer occasional deworming medicines to their farm-animals a few times each year - the result is that it's virtually impossible to get parasites from farm-animals. So avoid wild-animal-meats in the short-term, and always go for 100% grass-fed, organic meats rather than grain-fed meats, and you'll be fine.
That said, I, like many other RPDers, have been eating lots of raw, wild-animal-meats for years, without ever once encountering a problem with parasites, so I'm pretty sure that the (body's) health/environment is highly relevant to whether one is prone to any side-effects from parasites.
Anyway, I realise that many of my statements re bacteria/parasites may be difficult to accept, initially. I myself was absolutely terrified, as a rawpalaeo newbie, and would insist on eating only raw-animal-food which was, at most, a day or two old from the shop, and would regularly eat large amounts of reputedly anti-parasitic remedies, such as pumpkin seeds, raw garlic leaves and bulbs, cayenne-pepper etc. etc. After a while, though, I became too lazy to keep on with this rigid regime, and found, to my surprise, that I was absolutely fine, without those constant precautions.
RPG
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