your liver on the raw paleo diet

Question
How does ones liver fair out on this diet?? Doesn't it get clogged??? Do I need to do a liver flush while on this diet every so often?? Also, Do you eat fish and if so  are you concerned about Mercury in fish??? Do you take cod liver oil or is it useless??

Answer
Re Liver Health:- On the contrary, the liver is generally helped by all the raw animal fats. I have heard some rawpalaeodieters suggest that their livers might be clogged by the raw dairy they were consuming, but no other raw food has ever been mentioned as burdening the liver.

Personally, I've never felt the need for a liver-cleanse - however, a liver-flush might indeed be useful if you're just starting with this diet in order to get rid of some of the toxins acquired on a previous diet of cooked-foods.

Re cod-liver oil:- I don't bother with any supplements whatsoever,as my rawpalaeo diet is varied enough and I get more than enough of the nutrients I need. Processed supplements are badly absorbed by the human body and create toxicity - not a good idea - besides, a supplement regime can be  very expensive. In the case of cod-liver oil capsules, almost all of them are heat-treated and the tiny few that claim to be 100% raw always have lots of artificial preservatives added to the mix, making them decidedly unhealthy.


Re fish:- Yes, I do eat fish regularly - mainly swordfish, mackerel and some shark-species when I can get them.

As for the mercury-in-fish claims, they're  totally without foundation. This urban myth  was originally started by various dodgy animal-rights groups such as PETA etc. The truth is that natural levels of mercury have always been in the environment and manmade levels of mercury form only a very tiny percentage of the amount of mercury in the Earth's oceans. Here's a website exposing many of the myths behind the mercury-in-fish claims:-

http://www.fishscam.com/

Here's a link to a years-long (still ongoing) scientific study which showed that Seychelles-islanders children had no symptoms whatsoever even though they ate at least ten times  more fish than the average Westerner:-

http://tinyurl.com/2orch2

Here's another study showing that mercury-intake from fish does not lead to symptoms of ill-health:-

http://tinyurl.com/lh4k8


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