Super Sick on First Day of Raw

[Gelfling]

So I started yesterday and it was going fine until later in the evening. I started with a headache, and then it felt like a sinus headache. I soon got very hungry but very sick feeling at the same time. I was starting to get dizzy and shaky. I work during the day and go to school at night, and I actually had to leave class. I went to the hospital but it was so busy that I just left. I stopped by the store and bought some soup because I was really craving it, and was feeling even more dizzy. As soon as I got home I threw up. I rested for a few minutes and had some soup and felt better after that except for a small headache. This morning my husband took me out to breakfast and I had some potatoes and a bagel. I called off of work because I was still feeling weak and a little shaky, even after a big breakfast. It's about 2pm now, and I'm still weak. I'm having some cranberry juice and an apple, don't feel like eating much. What is going on and how can I fix it?

[KombuchaCHIC]

I've never heard of anyone having detox symptoms after just one day. Maybe you're coming down with something else? It sounds like the flu to me.

[trancedancer]

My question would be what is your normal diet like? Seems that you are so full of chemicals and other bad things that your body was rebeling after almost one day of the good, healthy eating. Do you drink a lot of coffee, eat a lot of sugar, fat, alcohol etc? Please don't think you have to answer these questions on here but ask yourself and be honest. You might have to take the raw slower or do a good full body cleanse first.

[Gelfling]

What should I do to do a full body cleanse? Is that also going to make me very sick?

[trancedancer]

The one that I use for a great cleanse is "Nutri Cleanse" it is a 7 day cleanse. I do it twice a year.

[greenbunny]

The way that I got onto raw foods and the way I suggest to everyone that asks me about it is to go very slow and make it fun and yummy switches and additions little by little to let the body slowly adapt and to make it extremely enjoyable so that you have nothing but good associations with eating raw. There is no way of knowing what affected you so badly - you might have eaten something bad for you, gotten sick the same day or your blood sugar might have gone plummeting from not having caffeine or sugar, both of which need to be come off of slowly. A great way of starting is to make yourself a smoothie as a snack every day for a little while or just drink some fresh squeezed orange juice. Add one new thing every couple of weeks or even once a month. I started doing this with my husband - giving him a smoothie as a mid-morning snack and then months later making him a big salad for dinner instead of his big heavy meals. Even when I stopped having the salad he insisted on making it for himself and now even if he goes out to a restaurant and is tempted with all the other food he still wants a salad because it feels so good to him and now that he's used to it eating a big heavy meal at night just isn't appealing. Live foods should make you feel great every step of the way or you're going to fast imho. That way you just want to keep going. You spent years eating dense foods so it's not fair to expect your body to make such a leap so fast. Go slow and have fun when you're feeling better.

greenbunny

[Tappy]

Dear Gelfling,

Sounds like a healing crisis/cleansing reaction to me.

I would read one of Victoria Boutenko's books charting her journey. I'm not sure which one it is, I think it might be Raw Family - I dont think her books are too expensive either as they're only small.

I'm sure it's a cleansing reaction you're having. When I turned all raw for 3 months last year, 100% from being fully not, I had a cold for 4 weeks. I also felt fluey for some of it. But I knew it was the cleansing crisis/reaction so just went with it. I figured if I could just get through the day, I knew I would get better and feel a high at some point and sure enough I did. Those were the best 3 months I've ever had!!! So productive, exhilirating. Changed my life really.

Last week after having not eaten much raw since Sept last year (when I finished the 3 months) I started doing 100% Victoria Boutenko's smoothies, and I thought I was going to get the flu those first two days, I felt terrible and hoped it would pass. Thank God it did and on the third day onwards and since I felt absolutely brilliant (I don't mean to sound sickening - well, I should'nt as I said I had a cold for 4 weeks straight, I never get colds when I first began).

In her books even though she and her husband had eaten junk for many years and were in a really sorry state of affairs with some life-threatening and some near life-threatening problems, they're healing crises only lasted I think it was two days. So,....juust stick with it and know that you'll turn around.

ALso read in as many places you can about people's experiences. Thebestdayever.com was a goldmine for me but I really think rawfood.com would be great too. I only found here rawfoodchat.com today, so hopefully it's grand too.

All the best

[Tappy]

The Healing Crisis
AKA: The Cleansing Reaction, The Detox Reaction, and The Herxheimer Reaction
What is it?
Also known as the "Herxheimer Reaction", this reaction occurs when the body tries to eliminate toxins at a faster rate than they can be properly disposed of. The more toxic one's bodily systems are, the more severe the detoxification, or healing crisis. It is characterized by a temporary increase in symptoms during the cleansing or detox process which may be mild or severe. You may feel worse and therefore conclude that the treatment is not working. But these reactions are instead signs that the treatment is working and that your body is going through the process of cleaning itself of impurities, toxins and imbalances.
Such reactions are temporary and can occur immediately -- or within several days, or even several weeks, of a detox. Symptoms usually pass within 1-3 days, but on rare occasions can last several weeks. If you are suffering from a major illness, the symptoms you experience during the healing crisis may be identical to the disease itself. Sometimes discomfort during the healing crisis is of greater intensity than when you were developing the chronic disease. This may explain why there may be a brief flare-up in one's condition. Often the crisis will come after you feel your very best. Most people feel somewhat ill during the first few days of a cleanse because it is at that point that your body dumps toxins into the blood stream for elimination. With a more serious condition there may be many small crises to go through before the final one is possible. In any case, a cleansing & purifying process is underway, and stored wastes are in a free-flowing state.
Cause:
The healing crisis is the result of every body-system, in concert, working to eliminate waste products through all elimination channels and set the stage for regeneration. The end result: old tissues are replaced with new. When any treatment or cleansing program causes a large scale die-off of bacteria, a significant amount of endotoxins (toxins within the bacteria itself) are released into the body. The more bacteria present, and the stronger their endotoxins, the stronger the cleansing reaction. When any treatment or detox causes the organs of the body (particularly the liver, which is a storehouse of drug and poison residues) to release their stored poisons and toxins, a cleansing reaction may occur. Any program, such as fasting, which causes a rapid breakdown of fat cells (which are a storehouse for toxins), can cause a healing crisis as toxins previously lodged in the fat cells are released into the blood stream.

Symptoms:
The healing crisis will usually bring about past conditions in whatever order the body is capable of handling at that time. People often forget the diseases or injuries they have had in the past, but are usually reminded during the crisis. There are a wide variety of reactions that may manifest during a healing crisis, the most common are:

Increased joint or muscle pain

Diarrhea
Extreme fatigue and/or its opposite, restlessness
Cramps
Headache (believed to be caused by buildup of toxins in the blood)
Aches, Pains
Arthritic flair up
Insomnia
Nausea
Sinus congestion
Fever (usually low grade) and/or chills
Frequent urination and/or urinary tract discharges
Drop in blood pressure
Skin eruptions, including: boils, hives, and rashes.
Cold or flu-like symptoms
Strong emotions: anger, despair, sadness, fear, etc.
Suppressed memories arise
Anxiety
Mood swings
New phobias develop

Easing Your Way Through the Healing Crisis:
Drink plenty of fresh water (especially water), juices, and herbal teas to flush the body of toxins. Some professionals recommend distilled water as the best. Drink from 2 to 4 quarts(liters) per day. This will help flush the toxins out of your system and speed along the detoxification.
If you are feeling fatigued, or sleepy, your body is talking to you, and telling you to rest. Be kind to yourself, and get the rest that you need.
Symptoms frequently disappear immediately after a good bowel movement, use an enema to provide relief.
For other symptoms, meditation, EFT, acupuncture or a good massage might be helpful to speed up the healing process, and reduce the discomfort.
And, on rare occasions, a reduction of the dosage or temporary cessation may be required.

[Tappy]

By the way the amount of goodies you can get into a green smoothie as per Victoria Boutenkos recommendations

e.g. I did one today for my dad, it was , now I only ever manage to eat about 2 sprigs of parsley even though it is a huge superfood, I put about 80 sprigs in with 2 mangos blended up in a Vitamix.

The blending of the food is important, see Victoria Boutenko's groundbreaking book on amongst many other wonderful, new & innovative proportion of foods, low stomach acid (which most of us have) and where that is the case, "most minerals including such important ones as iron, zinc, calium, and the B-complex vitamins (folic acid and others) need certain amounts o fstomch acids in order to be absorbed at all.

So many of us develop gray hair at a certain age due to nutrient deficiencies which roots back to this low stomach acid unable to uptake the nutrients to keep the hair gray for example. Ann WIgmore who was a big blender, after 25 years of being on a raw diet her hair went black again. Her students not trusting her had it sent to a lab, when she was 82 to see if it was dyed and it was not.

But Victoria's book talks about having nearly 50% of the diet greens and the other 50% fruit, obviously going into it gently, you can still eat your normal life but add her smoothies in with it, in her magical formulas/ratios and discoveries - make them palatable and doable for the first time - instead of drowning the food in oil and having avocados and nuts, which it seems in her experience (mine too) leaves you feel very tired and fatigued after years of that.

Her book really is amazing, she talks about how you can't tell an animals age but you can tell a human's age to within 5 years and that an eagle, zebra, and two other animals I don't remember which all, as do many animals only wear down in the last 2 weeks of their life. We have to eat more akin, as it details in the books, to the chimps who share an estimated 99.4% of our genes. As if often reported too, it is only domesticated animals who suffer from the illnesses we do, neve