My Long Journey Back to the Raw Lifestyle

For a few years I was “Ravishingly Raw” bringing myself back from the brink of ruin physically. I was one of those unlucky people that was struck with Lupus. My sister and I both got struck with it in the same month of the same year only hers was severe and mine was mild in comparison. I was also unlucky enough for the ANA blood test to show a very low presence of anything auto-immune, but it had the Rheumatologist baffled. I had tremors, then lost some of my ability to walk and I was so embarrassed by the fact that as a result I was also incontinent. I was tested for everything under the sun neurological, but in the end I was given a diagnoses of fibromyalgia and Lupus. The doctor explained to me that in some people, Lupus can actually not show up on a blood test, but because I also had a family history of it, that he gave me a diagnosis of both. It was quite strange having both, and he explained both of them to me, and differences between the two different disorders. I was given an extremely high dose of prednisone, and I was told that the prednisone was for the Lupus and it would not help with the fibromyalgia. So double the pain, until the day when my legs started getting numb and feeling really heavy. Then I didn’t feel any pain at all in them. I also had a hard time moving them…the pain was gone, but so was all feeling from the waist down.

After a year of dealing with the medications and the fact that there was no cure for either disorder, I decided to slowly transition to a raw food diet. I started by taking out things that I really didn’t care for anyway, and then started removing other kinds of cooked and processed foods from my diet.

During the transition to the raw diet, I didn’t notice any thing changing in my body or feel any better. But! when I finally took the leap to a raw food diet, within six weeks I lost sixty pounds and felt better than I ever felt in long time. I maintained it for another few years until I started getting tremors again. Being raw, I sent the Lupus into remission for a few years. At the time I didn’t know there were other “triggers” for bringing Lupus out of remission. When my hair started falling out, I thought it was due to my diet and I felt defeated thinking that maybe the raw foods had nothing to do with me getting better and that my diet was making me malnourished. But that wasn’t the case! I wouldn’t find out for another year and a half that I had become very allergic to mold. (That is a good story for another time.) It was at that time that the doctor told me that it was actually the mold allergy that is a trigger for my Lupus. He wanted to pump me full of steroids again and I let him, much to my horror, that course of prednisone brought on drug induced Cushings Disease. Fun huh?

So now that I am moving to New Mexico I am planning on transitioning back to a raw lifestyle. What that will look like is any one’s guess! It is supposed to be very dry in NM (not the place I dreamed of being, by the way!) and if there is no more humidity and mold spores to occupy my airspace, I may be able to take a bash at being raw again.

This blog entry was an introductory of sorts to bring everyone up to speed on what my journey has been to this point, and the rest of my postings will be my journey forward…my struggles and my victories. I will also be posting recipes and my “take” on the raw food lifestyle.