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I posted some of my history of dietary experiments previously under 'The vegetarian Myth' section. I wanted to give consideration here to a fruitarian diet for healing, and share a bit about my experiment with it.
Last year I ate mostly ketogenic, based on research and learning from a few books (Man 2.0, Four Hour Body, Grain Brain), and as a last resort to heal a few things, and to build some muscle. For the years before, I'd eaten vegetarian some years, and moderate meat other years, mostly fish. Paleo type diets for certain years, and the Specific Carb Diet, which is a diet to heal the bowels, which consisted of no refined carbs and meat, some vegetables and fruit, and no starches of any kind. That and water fasting / master cleanses. I didn't get to the root of the healing, though I felt best on certain days on the master cleanse (lemon, maple syrup liquid fast). I’d tried about 50 other dietary approaches, with varied levels of success. (That would be pages of writing).
Anyway, the Ketogenic diet had me achieving some of my health goals, but a few chronic conditions worsened (cough and nasal mucus), which I'd had since infancy. Ok. Also, I hadn’t cut out dairy, though I’d cut it out in other years.
What I do agree with:
Vegetables are not ideal food
Grains and beans are not ideal food (and certain modified grains are damaging)
Dairy is damaging generally, though perhaps fermented or raw in tiny amounts could be healing in certain circumstances
Certain grass fed meats may be more suitable food for humans than the above.
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At the beginning of the year, I’d switched to the most healing diet I could find at the time, Gerson Therapy. Some healing, though slow and plodding. So I was reading in the bath, coughing, doing that thing where I ask for guidance, and then I open a book, and in a book on Buddhism, I turned to a chapter and it suggested using only medicine made of urine. Then I researched urine therapy and read 'The Water of Life: A treatise on urine therapy.' The written experiments of a practitioner who supported his clients in healing Cancer and other ailments on urine fasts, just drinking one's own urine, and massaging with it. I tried it. It had a medicinal effect. Too much, actually, so I entered a 'healing crisis' that was a bit intense. Profound headache and nasal discharge. What was interesting is that I could taste in the urine what the body used and what it ejected. For instance, meat, dairy, and vegetables, produced bitter, unpalatable urine. And fruit / fasting produced sweeter urine.
The Gerson Therapy advised cutting out all protein rich foods, even nuts and beans. Which was a far leap from ketogenic / paleo. Research Gerson… you’ll discover it does have a fairly steady track record and good success rate. Not only for healing of the cancers but also for healing of prolapsed disks and such. Anyway, I found that it aligned fairly well to the sweet urine thesis. Except for the hourly green juice, which was bitter. I’d assuming the urine was ejecting nutrients that were superfluous to the system at that time. The urine therapy thesis is that urine acts as a sort of homeopathic remedy, and that wastes go out through the other system, and excess nutrients leave through the urinary tract, so they are ‘re-usable’, in a sense.
So this, using urine as a sort of bio-feedback device, lead me into researching fruit diets as healing, which I'd already done somewhat because of the Master Cleanse, on which I felt great for one of the few times. (though the results weren't steady). I came upon late 19th and early 20th century naturopaths, including Arnold Ehret. At the same time Dr. Morse on youtube.
Anyway, I’ve been eating mostly fruit and fruit juices for 7 months, with occasional green juice or salad, and virtually no protein rich foods, and have experienced more healing than on the other diets. This also coupled with various herbal teas.
I’ve experienced: improved clarity, and iris of the eye lightening, and the brown eyes turning slightly greener. Less back pain. Less foot pain on waking. More mobility in upper cervical area (which I injured in the past). Reiterated pains from previous traumas, and then clearing of those. Much discharge of mucus from head and bowels, and lungs. 20 year skin condition cleared. I also never need to drink water on days when I’m eating all fruit. Also, some days I hardly need any fruit. And I am able to dry fast quite easily on certain days. No body odor. Skin healthier. Hair slightly thicker. No need to use lotions or oils for dry skin. More energy. More positive outlook. Lunulas on nails returning. Acne scars healing (60% thus far).
Dr Morse and others (Ehret, Lovewisdom) talk about the fruit diet launching them into out of body experiences frequently. I haven’t experienced that yet.
This ’feeling good’ happens in between bouts of ‘detoxing’, which were constant for the first few weeks, and are now sporadic and rare. Cold and flu like symptoms, among others.
A word about fruit is that the diet does not necessarily include vegetables. The human system does not seem to be evolved to digest the cellulose in raw vegetables.
So I just wanted to point this out as another potentially viable healing strategy, in case the modified paleo diet doesn’t work for some.
Perhaps there are genetic differences in people that account for this?
This journey was also inspired because my mother tried Wahl’s paleo protocol for MS without much success for the past 3 years, and I’d tried it in various forms for different years of my life (because the research aligns), but I knew I needed to try something else.
Ehret treated mental and physical patients at his Sanitorium for Fruit and Fasting with seemingly great results.
For optimal athletic performance, on the fruitarian diet (which I have not experimented with), I read the 80/10/10 diet and the fruitarian.com, both of whom advocate adopting a fruitarian diet solely for performance (and both acclaimed athletes in their own right). They say it is the best for athletic performance. I find that impractical, since the fruitarian.com person is an acclaimed marathoner and ultra-runner, but needs 6 full sized fridges to keep enough fruit around.
I think of fruit as an ideal food in many ways. It is palatable as is. Water rich. Complete for the human system in that it contains the fiber needed to move through. Cleansing. Minimal digestive effort required. High energy. Enzyme rich. Portable. Not requiring seasoning or cooking or water in the processing. Contains less radioactive waste than vegetables or meat (purportedly). Since that settles on the shallow root plants and the animals eat those.
Though I do not much trust genetic studies, they’ve found that we are only 2% removed from Chimps and Bonobos genetically, who subsist on a frugivorous omnivore diet (like 50-60% fruit). Perhaps this is an ideal diet for some humans? Or engaging in it for a time activates healing and regeneration?
I don’t know about living on a fruit diet long term. I haven’t tried it, nor do I feel compelled to currently. Ehret and Morse basically state that a fruit diet may be ideal, but we are not at a place where we can handle it. As soon as Ehret seems to have mastered it, he mysteriously diet at 53, after giving a lecture, when a woman lured him around a corner with a glass of orange juice, and he was found with a bludgeoned head. (I’d like to ask the C’s about this because it is curious).
I am accumulating great evidence of the fruit diet being profoundly healing in the short term, and aiding in the process of detoxification. And I consider myself a challenging case, being a cystic fibrosis ‘carrier’ (and though genetically it shouldn’t be possible, many carriers seem to exhibit some of the symptoms), and having been dealing with congestion issues since infancy, exacerbated by feeding of formula, antibiotics regularly, standard american diet, etc.
The tropical scenario would make it easier for our ancestors to subsist on fruit, whereas other environments would make it easier not to. So perhaps there were some humans that evolved in tropical climates, and some that evolved outside of them? I also think a lot about this in relation to ‘the fall’ and the expulsion from paradise. That and the fact that most fruits have been hybridized over the years, though Dr. Morse has mentioned that even on Walmart Grapes ( a low quality grape), he has seen massive healing. Perhaps this was the diet of humans before global cataclysms, or destroyed landscapes due to agriculture (‘introduced by the gods’)?
I’ve read / heard of bodies healing (on fruit / herbs): broken bones, MS, cancer, parkinson’s, arthritis, skin conditions, paralysis, brain damage, AIDS, HIV, Lyme’s disease, all bowel diseases, tumors, hair loss, teeth issues, etc etc. One person’s teeth ejected their cavities and re-mineralized.
Ehret and Morse talk about their cuts not bleeding on the diet. Ehret traveled where there were deadly viruses and never contracted them. Because the lymph system is operating fully?
Any thoughts? It’s hard to bring up to any group of people, paleo or vegan, because it challenges belief systems about nutrition. But my personal experience is that it is healing thus far, and that most of what we know about 'nutrition' seems to be wrong.
Also, I was reading that Gurdjieff ‘suffered with bronchitis for 30 years’. Somehow reading that inspired me not to do the same.
Anyway, I thought I'd share, and hope to update more in the coming months, as / when / if more healing happens.
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Do the C's say anything about fruit diet? I remember reading once that they recommended a woman who was experiencing a health challenge 'eat more fruit', and then in other lines about needing to eat meat or vegetarians being doomed. And I did read the Vegetarian myth... I found it interesting, though not related to the above topics, per se.
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I have encountered many people who defend their consumption of fruit based on an evolutionary point of view, "Out of Africa" theory. The problem that this is actually a hypothesis and data doesn't seem to support it. Actually, research contradicts the "Out of Africa theory":
A few years ago, I summarized some of the the problems with fruit in this article:
FWIW( acronym for "for what it's worth"), here is a relevant quote:
Possible Fruit Protein Effects on Primate Communities in Madagascar and the Neotropics tells us:
Quote
"The ecological factors contributing to the evolution of tropical vertebrate communities are still poorly understood. Primate communities of the tropical Americas have fewer folivorous but more frugivorous genera than tropical regions of the Old World and especially many more frugivorous genera than Madagascar. ...Neotropical fruits have higher protein concentrations than fruits from Madagascar and that the higher representation of frugivorous genera in the Neotropics is linked to high protein concentrations in fruits. Low fruit protein concentrations in Madagascar would restrict the evolution of frugivores in Malagasy communities."
That is to say that eating fruits wasn't the main diet of primates in Africa and the main element sought by the consumers, leading to their development as species, was protein. Further, I should point out that fruit-eating creatures didn't evolve into human beings as primates exposed to harsh or unusual conditions did. Read the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis for some very good and eye-opening arguments for how and why humans evolved as they did. In short, if you want to devolve to a monkey, eat more fruits.
At some point in our evolution, essential fatty acids like DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) - from meat and organs of wild game and other grass-fed meats and wild-caught cold-water seafood - had a dominant role in our diet to the extent that it is thought that they alone were responsible for the significant increase in the size of the human brain. DHA makes up the highest percentage of the fatty acids in the human brain, facilitating visual and cognitive function, forming brain receptors for neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, and serving as a storage molecule that the body can reconvert to another essential fatty acid - EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) - if needed. So if anything, it seems that we need plenty of land animal fats AND fish oil. This is our evolutionary heritage as human beings, not monkeys.
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I would agree that short term bursts of vegetarianism/fruitarianism may be temporarily beneficial. As a long term solution, it simply cannot provide the body and the brain with the specific nutrients (namely DHA, Iodine, saturated fats, complete amino acid - protein profiles) that it needs to maintain a healthy system, as Gaby mentioned.
A well formulated vegan or vegetarian diet does seem to have some amazing results when transitioning from a standard western diet though. This is likely due to the massive antioxidant content and detoxification capacities of the fruit/vegetables when consumed in large quantities. It is also worth noting that vegetables are potent sources of nitrogen. This is important since dietary nitrogen is partly a precursor to the hormone/neurotransmitter Nitric Oxide. In the body, nitric oxide stimulates vasodilation (the expansion/relaxation of blood vessels) which lowers blood pressure and allows more blood to reach the skin surface. There are some who postulate that this effect allows more UV light to penetrate the blood and become assimilated into the system. Hence why vegans/vegetarians may temporarily achieve great results.
Most importantly, what should be considered is the environmental conditions in which a fruitarian diet can be sustained. At the equatorial regions, fruit and certain vegetables grow all year round. This is coupled with long light cycles and a warm climate. All of these factors constitute specific information that is recieved by the body system, so the information encoded within food alone cannot be isolated from the information recieved from the environment. For example: High light cycles in summer time present the body with more oxidative stress, hence the natural abundance of antioxidants in plant foods may be natures way to counteract that.
Winter time generally is the opposite, and cold environments favour a more ketogenic approach.
This stresses the importance of eating locally and seasonally. The information contained within the food should ideally match up with your own local/seasonal environment. Anyone who lives in the northern hemisphere cannot expect to eat fruit in the winter time without experiencing issues, simply because their environment does not allow for such conditions naturally. By doing so, the body is recieving mixed signals. Fruit tells the body it is summer time, whereas the environment tells the body it is winter time. This is kinda like a mismatch in the system. I would speculate that this induces a chaotic, disordered and incoherent state within the body... thereby increasing entropy in the body-information system.
Similarly, the human body is probably not designed to eat ketogenic all year round, because this may again cause an environmental mismatch. I am tending toward believing that a fluctuation between ketogenic and glucose metabolism is most likely a beneficial approach.
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"Similarly, the human body is probably not designed to eat ketogenic all year round, because this may again cause an environmental mismatch. I am tending toward believing that a fluctuation between ketogenic and glucose metabolism is most likely a beneficial approach."
I agree - our dietary experiments are tending in this direction. Eating keto is very beneficial (and necessary) for some conditions and under certain circumstances, but long term, eating local and seasonal following a general paleo-plus plan is probably ideal.
One thing, however, modern grains should be pretty much off the table at all times; there are plenty of wild substitutes. Also, some things can be eaten once in awhile, but if eaten regularly, cause problems: most dairy products, for example, and for many people, eggs.
Nothing is simple and everyone is different, but a fruit diet long term is, as Gaby points out, how to shrink your brain and turn into a monkey.
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