The Raw

So I ate dinner at a raw food restaurant last night. It was a spiritual experience and I think I'm going to try a raw diet (As best I can). I'm already a vegan and eat a decent amount but I spoke with some people there who swear by the healing qualities of the diet. Its a little more difficult because of the roughage involved, and in a bind I wouldn't be able to "just get a salad". But there are lots of other ways and even going 70% raw could very well yield some benefits. I've only been more sick since I started putting my trust in my doctors and I'm tired of their run-around.

Was anyone here ever tried this? Known someone that has? I'll use this thread to let you know how it goes.

First, here are a few things that I've learned about raw foods and UC:

- Raw foods in general are easier to digest because they lack preservatives and have not undergone any processing which make food more difficult to digest. And its all about easy digestion right?
- Certain processes used in raw diet can provide significant intestinal support because they are capable of brining out certain Enzymes. Pickles are a good example of this, as well as providing much needed electrolytes.

I'll post more as I learn.

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A location in Twin Peaks.

*Am I not allowed to post images in this forum?

I read a few books about the raw food diet/movement/whatever, & thought it sounded great for UC, so I tried it for a bit. Not a good idea, for me at least. The roughage darn near killed me & all the fiber was not kind to my colon. But good luck- hope you have better results than me! I'm better off sticking to cooked veggies & getting any digestive enzymes from a supplement- I take a good quality multi-vitamin w/enzymes. And truly, you can't beat good old chicken for easy to digest protein. Or fish. I used to be a vegetarian, by the way, & found after much soul-searching that that particular diet was just not conducive to healing an inflamed colon.

my sister who was a vegan for a long time tried the raw food thing and didn't last very long. She doesn't have UC or anything it was just too strict. We were both raised vegetarian off and on and we both have gone back on forth on it. It is interesting that most diets that people try for IBD tend to be high on protein(meat) and low on carbs. I am kindof interested in trying to fix my diet to help with UC but that mindset of no carbs and lots of meat is so different than the way I was raised -I don't know if I could do it. I would try the raw food thing and see how it goes - by the way my sister got me an excellent cookbook called "How it all Vegan" - if you haven't seen it , it has alot of good recipes in it.

princesa said...
David Klein is the big proponent of a raw food diet for UC.


http://www.living-foods.com/festival/speakers/klein.html

Wow, thank you, this was very inspiring. How did you find out about him?

I have been trying a somewhat semi raw food diet. I did notice some improvements at first but currently seem to be in a little slump but its pretty early to tell. I have been trying to stay mostly raw for 2 weeks or so. I have read David Kleins book but I didn't follow the guidelines (takes discipline).

My diet looks something like this: leafy greens with bananas smoothies, fish, chicken, juicing fresh carrots with cabbage, steamed vegetables. I was eating salads but am going to try and stay away from them for now because I think it's too rough to digest. I have read good things about raw diets on the internet and have seen positive results from people on youtube. A raw diet also follows the allowed foods for the SCD diet which has had good results for many people. I will keep my results posted and we can share food ideas and updates with each other.