What's the deal with raw food???

Have you ever had a friend that you call and talk to every day when you are single? A person you look forward to sharing and bitching and talking and griping to? And for some reason, when you talk to that person whole worlds of insight open up that you never even realized before? And it gets to the point were you joke that you are dating, even though it is only a daily 8:30 am morning call while you both brush your teeth? That is Anna Werderitch in my life. We don’t do the daily phone calls any more, but she is still my ‘go to’ friend with regards to all my deep life quibbles.

Anna is a Licensed Acupuncturist and Herbalist. We met in school. Her enthusiasm and knowledge of plant and animal medicines calms my bones. Back in the early days, when we had an acupuncture practice together, we were trying to figure out our specialties without creating limits. We were both passionate about supporting women, and had both just become doulas. While meeting with a senior acupuncturist in the community, he spelled it out for us.

“You are gonna have to choose. What’s it gonna be? Are you going to make the babies or birth the babies?”

We looked at each other with tears in our eyes and we both new instantly our heart's choice.

“I wanna make the babies!” Anna cried. And she does. She is a sought after acupuncturist who has supported many women overcome fertility challenges.

As the tears welled up inside me I felt the words tumble out, “I wanna birth the babies!”.

Anna was the first person to witness me declare my soul’s calling as a midwife.

As soon as I got diagnosed with the c, I called her up and asked her to be in charge of my nutrition to create more choices for my health and well being in the hopes of limiting the toxic side effect of the plethora of medications. Together we keep changing and modifying my diet, but for the most part everything you read in my blog regarding my nutritional choices has been passed through Anna.

"So, what is the deal with raw food anyways? Isn't it filled with bacteria and bad for you?"

I’m hearing this a lot lately. So, I will grab a soap box and explain.

Many, many years ago, people used to either have or live near a local farm. We’d eat as dictated by the seasons and eat yummy dairy and meat products from animals that were well cared for and treated. These animal wear not sick, they were healthy. And the milk and meat products they produced did not contain sickness, but contained life force, good bacteria, the enzymes needed to digest the food and health!

Flash forward to nationalized agriculture. People started to take nature and turn it into a business. Animals were inhumanely treated and getting diseases. And way back then, in 1880, when pasturization was introduced, there were no refrigerators, or choline or sterilization techniques that we had today. The milk and meat products they produced contained those diseases. Instead of treated the animals kindly, the thought became, “How can we sell dairy and meat products that have disease in them? hmmmmm, let’s Pasturize everything and the bad diseases will be gone!!" (along with all the good nutrients). And yes, if you are going to eat mass produced foods that has no integrity behind them please do NOT eat them raw!! Make sure they are pasturized, or you too will get sick!

Modern raw milk products are produced by people who treat their cows well. Here is a quote from Organic Pastures, my resource for raw dairy: “ Our individually named cows are never given antibiotics, hormones, or GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). Only organic green pasture and approved naturopathic methods are used to feed and care for the cows. Preventative, nature-based healthcare keeps the herd healthy all year. “. (coz you know, there is a theory out there that Genetically Modified Food treated with hormones causes cancer! And that is the stuff my generation grew up on!).

The advantage to not pasteurizing this food is that you get all the natural enzymes that nature intended to digest the food going in. Raw foods are considered alkaline in nature, so if your stomach has a lot of acid, don’t you think raw, cooling alkaline food would feel better? And the Raw Cow Colostrum works on the same theory of mom’s colostrums. It is the ‘superfood’ of the milk, containing not only pro-biotics and enzymes, but also immunoglobulins! (but note to all cancer/chemo people reading this, I have stopped with the colostrum because it also contains a growth hormone that is good for creating new cells in the intestines, but I'm not sure if that would be good for my hormone sensitive cancer).

When you choose food that is raw, you are choosing food that has been grown and processed with a level of care that you do not find in pasturized food. There is a big difference in not only tasted but also in nutrition and life force between fresh squeezed orange juice and orange juice that is from a carton.

Now, all this food comes with a warning from our government, but isn’t our government the same organization that will not support the ‘health’ in our ‘healthcare’? Why would I trust them to tell me the truth around raw foods, when the person in charge of that health warning looks unhealthy? Any doctor who is a good doctor will state their doctor point of view, and tell you they are not trained in nutrition or herbs and that they could not only comment, but they trust that “you” will make good choices for your own body. And that is what I have surrounded myself with on my medical team.

I have chosen my medical team because they practice good medicine by allowing me to work with informed consent. My medical team does not tell me what to do, but they give me the information, the data and their 2-cents so that I can make and take responsibility for my informed choice. And when they do have a strong opinion (like I need to do the 6 full rounds of chemo to have it work) I listen!

As Doctor G stated, the scientific data is inconclusive regarding raw foods causing neutrapinic fever or not. The data may concur that our own bodies bacteria cause it and it is not coming from outside sources.

I am honoring my bodies craving for fats by offering it healthy fats: raw milk, butter, cream, avocados, eggs, raw almonds... so I do not make myself sick with unhealthy fats: cookies, cakes, deserts... And it is pretty effortless when I listen to my bodies needs.

And this is an unscientific experiment, as there is no other study but moi that I know of, but the numbness and neuropathy has decreased significantly since I started back up on the raw dairy. Intuitively I feel like the good fats are coating my nervous system to support it during this physiologically stressful time.

More raw milk facts: http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw-medicine.html

Organic Pastures, where I get my raw milk from: http://www.organicpastures.com/faq.html

And an all around easy to read fabu book on whole foods: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingslover. http://www.kingsolver.com/home/index.asp