500 Words – Day 005 – Why Am I No Longer a Raw Vegan -923-

Why am I no longer a raw vegan?

Simply put…Insufficient electrolytes and subsequent imbalances. Not enough of ALL of the needed electrolytes, with excesses of some, like potassium.

Water and electrolytes are essential to our health. Electrolytes take on a positive or negative charge when they dissolve in your body fluid. This enables them to conduct electricity and move electrical charges or signals throughout your body. These charges are crucial to many functions that keep you alive, including the operation of your brain, nerves, and muscles, and the creation of new tissue.

Simply put, bad things happen over long frames of time that often go unnoticed because of the slow crawl towards the disease states of these deficiencies.

I am not suggesting salting your foods by any means. But I am suggesting looking at the ways to get ENOUGH of ALL of the needed electrolytes for OPTIMAL human functionality and longevity of years.

And a raw vegan diet in my humble opinion is not a way to accomplish that end.

I intend to attend my birthday at 120 years with a body that looks and feels no more than a robust 34. And I will do what it takes to get there. Even admitting when I have been wrong in practice.

See you in 2092.


To further clarify my point. Because I would hate to see people walk away from a whole-food/plant-based diet when they don’t need to.

We can get enough of the right stuff in from a whole-food/plant-based diet, but we need to be sure to be getting ENOUGH of ALL of the right stuff in their organic forms. Calcium, magnesium, chloride, phosphate, potassium, and sodium are the 6 most important electrolytes that our bodies need to function properly.

These electrolytes are minerals in our body that have an electric charge. They are in our blood, urine, tissues, and other body fluids. Electrolytes are important because they help balance the amount of water in our bodies. Balance our body’s acid/base (pH) levels. Their job is to move nutrients into our cells and waste out those cells. They ensure that your brain, heart, skin, muscles, nerves work the way they are crafted to.

Our body cannot function properly if these are not being consumed in sufficient amounts. And if you get too many, our kidneys are there to remove any excesses. On the flip side, our body cannot make these on its own and has to work harder to correct the imbalances by lowering the levels of all the electrolytes across the board spending our vital energies and bodily fluids that could be used elsewhere.

The problem with a fruitarian, frugivore, or any other raw diet is that the so-called “approved,” selections oftentimes won’t provide enough of the required electrolytes for continuous optimal function resulting in disfunction. Not because there is something wrong with being a frugivore as some can do so successfully, but that most people on Earth live far enough outside of the temperate zones where there is plenty and often times find themselves eating more of one kind rather than a rich variety.

The kinds of foods that do contain ENOUGH of ALL the required electrolytes cannot be assimilated in their raw state. Hence, the suggestion is to eat your vegetables in the form of a slow-cooked soup.

Pick any or all of our common fruits consumed on a typical raw vegan, frugivore, or fruitarian diet and go through the above listed 6 electrolytes and see how much each of those is found in sweet juicy fruits and gentle leafy greens. It should become obvious to anyone how problematic it would be and how difficult it would be to get enough from eating raw alone in most parts of the world we live in today. The only one you might get enough of is potassium.

Yet a homemade bowl of slow-cooked vegetable soup that contains dark leafy greens, legumes, lentils, and sweet potato for dinner a few nights a week would solve this problem sufficiently. The attached picture will give you an idea.
And to be clear, I am not suggesting the use of table salt. It is not necessary. But it sure does taste good.

Sodium is necessary for our muscles and nerves to function properly. It also helps by controlling the fluids in our body that impact blood pressure.

Chloride is important in that it balances out other electrolytes. It also balances acidity and alkalinity, maintaining healthy pH, and is essential for nutrient assimilation.

Potassium is important for overall muscle contraction which in turn also regulates our heart and blood pressure. It assists in the transmission of nerve impulses. It also contributes to bone health.

Magnesium is important to the production of what we call proteins; our body’s machinery that does most of the heavy lifting along with the instructions for those biological machines so that they can function properly in both stable and changing environments. The rhythm of our heart depends on it. It is a regulator of glucose levels in our blood and enhances our immune functions.

Calcium is important for strong bones and healthy teeth. It is an important regulator of nerve impulses and muscular movements. It also assists in the formation of blood clotting factors.

Phosphate enhances the work of calcium by strengthening bones and teeth. It also assists in the production of energy needed for soft tissue growth and repair.

Bicarbonate plays a key role in balancing our body’s pH levels while helping control electrical signaling at the cellular level in conjunction with sodium, potassium, and chloride.

500 Words – Day 004 -A Facebook Answer. What I would do. What I did -796-

There is nothing…noooothing that can replace what chewing does physiologically.

Let me address this then I can share a few other things with you.

I personally believe that it is the biggest single factor under our control that can change the course of our body health overall.

I am a survivor of cancer and even before I was diagnosed my body started me headed in a healing direction for which I am very grateful. One of the first things I started doing was chewing my food 100X. I literally started liquefying everything like a juicer and then swallowing the worn out flavorless pulp. I wouldn’t try that overnight but you might want to work up to that as quickly as you can comfortably. This practice alone will began a long term change that improved many things in my life. Not only did my oral health improve but my jaw corrected to a better alignment and my sinuses are much healthier too.

It literally fixes a whole load of problems.

I don’t count anymore because I eventually learned to just chew everything until there is no liquid left. However long that took. It has been so revolutionary to me that I dedicated a whole site to it…LoL https://chewdigest.com

NO mouth breathing. It was little rough at first but over time my sinuses improved greatly because of these two physical practices that focused on my mouth and nose. My inputs.

My body has a natural cycle; a rhythm. Very much like clockwork. I found that my body performs its best when I do the following religiously.

This is one practice that has worked very well for me. You might try it on for size. My body likes this one as it follows a very simple schedule that has nothing to do with me but the day/night cycles.

During the Spring and Summer months of the year 2021 I followed this very specific way of feeding to improve my overall health and it did amazing things to move my health forward. A cleansing diet. And it ultimately led me to where I am at today that I call “Following the Equatorial Sun.” My long-term maintenance phase.

  1. 12 Noon to 8 PM: Feed
  2. 8 PM to 4 AM: Assimilate what you ate from 12-8.
  3. 4 AM to 12 Noon: Eliminate and cleanse.

I eat no solid foods outside the feeding window. I’m ready to fall asleep before 9 and laying down with something good to read or write ready to fall asleep. My body takes off during this 8-hour shift. So I go to bed. I usually wake up around midnight and have a glass of water or two then back to bed. But sometimes I’m inspired to write and will for a couple of hours. Then I sleep in till 6’ish.
I almost always wake up religiously at 4 AM. Strangely when our body’s assimilation shift is over. It’s like it hands me back the keys…LoL
When I first get up I juice 2 limes, 1 lemon, and 1 orange and top off in a pint glass with water. I will have a big cup of decaffeinated green tea usually after 9 am with some honey and lemon in it.

If I can’t make it till Noon I will have an orange. That usually gets me there.
I eat only fruit from Noon till 6 PM. I eat only one thing at a time but enough to fill me up. 2-3 times till dinner which is a huge leafy green salad with all the other good tomato, cucumber, carrot, etc., and then done by 8.

A few other factors I removed from my diet that made HUGE improvements in circulation and hydration levels were coffee, dark chocolate, and SALT. It’s all the same no matter the color, price, or origin…LoL. I know we love these things, but we don’t need them and they are not much of a help in wanting to achieve my fullest potential of 120 years with a body that looks and feels no more than 34.

This is basically a high-performance lifestyle/diet that optimally observes what my body needs to heal, recover and rebuild at the fastest rate. I intuited most of this on my own by trial and error over a 3.5 year period. I’ve written about that too…LoL.

It was more than just a dietary change but a tuning if you will of my will with the will of my body.

And it just keeps getting better for me every day. I’m almost 50 and people think I’m in around 30 when they meet me. And that is after cancer too.
I can’t tell you what your body wants, but I know what worked for me. And I don’t think I am anyone special. My body was wrecked and I was scared straight.

Read more about my current dietary practice called, “Following the Equatorial Sun.”

500 Words – Day 003 – Welcome to the World of Addiction -622-

Why Instant Gratification is Killing Us All. Welcome to the World of Addiction. Now go home.

WE WANT THE DOPAMINE, AND WE WANT IT NOW DAMMIT!!!

Is it easy to eat a whole-food/plant-based diet?

YES and NO.

It’s even harder to eat one that is completely uncooked. It takes a lot of discipline, although it can be done. I speak from experience.

I have more than 5 years of sobriety and am very thankful for A.A. as a support program that helped me attain that goal. After much reflection on what it means to be an addict driven by compulsive behaviors and less-than-stellar decisions, it has become very clear to me that alcohol was not the only thing I was addicted to. And I have a feeling we, as humans, are all addicts to one degree or another.

I discovered this as I moved away from eating foods made with animals. Not during the transition, but once they were gone. Cooked foods followed shortly thereafter. And with those things off the table added salt pretty much disappeared. There was nothing to put it on…LoL! Everything now was already full of flavor and didn’t need any help.

This…THIS is when I found out just how much of an addict I had been all of my life and what the true source of my many addictions was. Anything processed by the hands of man.

I have yet to look for scientific data to back me up, but I am pretty certain it has everything to do with the bacterial colonies that our body has to build up in our gut to deal with, ‘ALL THINGS PROCESSED.’ And the reason it must employ this additional digestive process is that OUR body is not meant to consume processed foods by nature, design, or evolution, whichever creative paradigm you believe in.

According to our best understanding, the human microbiome may weigh as much as five pounds. The microbiome is what some would refer to as our ‘gut buddies.’ And some people have more than others.

It is my suggestion that the combination of this biological process along with the introduction to processed foods in the last 200 years that we have all become creatures of habit or addicts. Not addicted to any specific foods really, but the reward one gets from eating processed foods. The instant gratification we get from putting anything processed in our body is the problem because we are taking a shortcut directly to the reward. We are skipping past all of the hard work of growing and harvesting our foods. We are skipping past all of the hard work chewing every last bite to a dehydrated, flavorless pulp before swallowing. And this is the problem.

Instant gratification by removing the risk and hard work that was part and parcel of human development over many thousands of years. And this is where an uncooked whole-food/plant-based diet is hard. At least at first because we have to get used to not being rewarded instantly, and that is a hard thing to walk away from.

WE WANT THE DOPAMINE, AND WE WANT IT NOW DAMMIT!!!

And this is where 5+ years of sobriety and understanding addiction to alcohol really helped me out. It made it very clear that consuming anything processed results in addiction and compulsive behaviors. We literally CRAVE the stuff. And I have a feeling processed food manufacturers know this.

All that to say…If you choose this lifestyle, it won’t be an easy transition. No easier than quitting smoking, alcohol, drugs, you name it. It is all addiction, plain and simple and it is not you craving those foods but the gut buddies(bacteria) inside of you that our processed/cooked food diets planted deep inside of our gut.

500 Words – Day 002 – Fruitarian vs. Centenarian -553-

“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken.”

I’ve been studying human physiology and disease pathology for the last 4.5 years. A part of that study has been dedicated to observing the practices of the longest living people on Earth. Our centenarians. Groups of people that live in these specific five places called Blue Zones.

1. Okinawa, Japan
2. Sardinia, Italy
3. Nicoya, Costa Rica
4. Ikaria, Greece
5. Loma Linda, California.

There are a number of things that they have in common. One of them is a whole-food/plant-based diet. To be a little more specific, people in these so-called Blue Zones typically eat a 95% plant-based diet that’s rich in legumes, whole grains, vegetables, and nuts, all of which can help reduce the risk of death.

Strangely…None of these groups are fruitarians.

In late 2020, I was introduced to a practice called Natural Hygiene. The natural hygiene diet is a system of healthy living whereby moral, physical, and environmental pollution is strictly avoided, and natural, healthy food is chosen in preference over processed foods. The principle is to provide everything the body needs to be healthy and to avoid anything that may hinder health and well-being.

One of the hallmarks of this system, as it is practiced today, is a diet that primarily consists of juicy sweet fruit and gentle leafy greens. Small amounts of nuts and seeds are also on the approved list. This system also tends to focus on a practice called food combining and also the opposite which is mono-meals where only one kind of fruit is eaten until the consumer is full and then rotating through a variety of fruits and gentle leafy greens.

I have been practicing this way of eating for the past year myself and have found it to be very VERY beneficial in its ability to help the body heal and cleanse itself from the inside out. This will always be a part of my dietary practice.

But is eating this way what the human body needs to find its way to its fullest potential of living to 120 years and possibly well beyond to a place above 144 with a body that looks no more than today’s middle age?

I cannot say for sure, because there are no models that exist outside of religious texts that demonstrate this much less suggest this. And those practitioners that have been promoting this way of eating over the last 100-150 years have never themselves accomplished our fullest human longevity potential, much less in large communities. Or even small groups for that matter. Most haven’t even lived any longer than any average Joe that didn’t have any particular practice, but those in the Blue Zones have.

For me, I will continue on looking for better answers, and practicing what I preach. I will be continually pressing into the practices of what I can observe is working in the each and everyday practices of those that also practice what they preach. But I will not be so stubborn as to ignore the proofs that exist in our day in favor of rigid structures of beliefs in contrast to actual evidence of that which actually brings forth fruit.

I will continue to learn, grow and adapt. A wise man I knew once said, “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken.” Thanks for the wisdom Chuck(Smith).

500 Words – Day 001 – Are We Getting Enough of the Right Stuff? -961-

In late 2020, I was introduced to a concept of health and wellness called the Terrain Model of Natural Hygiene. It is a way of understanding human physiology and disease pathology that is a more hands-off approach coupled with a whole-food/plant-based diet. A diet where adherents also take a hands-off approach to the foods they eat. Consuming foods the way they come out of the ground or fall from the tree. Consuming foods in a raw state without any prior processing or heating.

This made a lot of sense to me, considering I had been moving in this direction slowly over the two to three years leading up to my introduction of this way of thinking and living. In 2019, after a prolonged fast, I decided to remove all dairy from my diet. No more milk, cheese, or butter of any kind. A bummer at first, but I got over it pretty quickly, and my physical and emotional state started making a turn for the better that I didn’t expect or plan on. Shortly after that, and as a result of my studies, I concluded that it would be best also to step away from all things related to beef and pork. And then over the following year leading up to the summer of 2020, I removed eating any kind of meat whatsoever. No more fish or fowl as well. I did keep eggs in my diet until the end of November 2020. That was when I was introduced to a group on Facebook that promoted Natural Hygiene and the consumption of a fully unprocessed whole-food/plant-based diet.

This group, in particular, even goes so far as to suggest that much of what we call vegetables is not appropriate for human consumption and that the healthiest diets consist of only fruit and leafy greens. Some might consider this a little extreme, but I had already done most of the hard work in removing all animal-based food sources over the prior eighteen months.

Was it hard at first? Absolutely, I was eating as much as I wanted to, but never quite felt like I was fully satisfied until I started consuming a rather large salad every morning to set me off in the right direction for the day. From there it was all fruit and some occasional nuts until the evening. And what I can say for sure is that this way of eating is just what the doctor ordered. It really helped my body move to the next level of health and overall hygiene. But then there came a point where my body felt like something was missing. I began to suspect that this diet is/was not the full answer. That it is/was good for healing or cleansing, but that it alone was not what the body needs for ongoing health and wellness if one is trying to reach their fullest human potential.

I was really hoping I would be able to say that eating fresh fruit and leafy greens was all that was necessary for complete nutrition. I was standing at a crossroads and it was time to turn a corner.

Can we live on juicy fruits and leafy greens alone in our modern world? I cannot say that in good conscience. I cannot say that has been my experience because I am well convinced that the WAY our modern produce is grown for those of us that need to buy it is squarely where the blame is to be found. Not in the diet itself. Yes, plant-based/whole foods are still the answer, but alone they are just not quite enough on their own. Not until a more sustainable way of soil management is implemented on a larger scale. Fortunately, there are people that are currently working on that.

Not only do we need to be getting the right KIND of foods, but we also need to be getting a sufficient amount of the nutrients that are supposed to be in those foods.

Some might want to suggest that you can supplement vitamins and minerals in a daily capsule, but I would wholeheartedly say they likely make no difference. Especially considering, long-term studies of those in their 90’s demonstrate that there are no health benefits conferred to those that took a supplement daily versus those that did not. We are likely just making expensive urine for someone else’s benefit.

Simply put, our body needs the things that we call vitamins and minerals, but only in the form that nature creates them, bound up in their natural plant-based/whole food forms.

Two good options that can fill in some of the missing dietary components, even though not technically raw, in their cooked form, sweet potato, and legumes(beans) do seem to provide some of the things that would be missing in a fully uncooked whole-food/plant-based. Because of this, I would recommend limiting the intake of these two treating them like you would any supplement, consumed in smaller amounts. Sweet potatoes once or twice a week. Legumes could be consumed daily but should be limited in quantity to less than one cup, like in hummus as an example.

Another one which I’ve had the pleasure of trying out for the last month is called Daily Green Boost. Found at www.dailygreenboost.com. Currently, I am on their monthly auto-ship subscription program where they send out 4 bottles per month. They even cover the cost of shipping for a grand total of $91.76/mo.

It really seems to be filling in on anything else that might be lacking in my diet. I’ve even gone so far as to commit myself to this supplementation protocol for 6-9 months to see what difference it makes.


Are We Getting Enough of the Right Stuff?

by Michael J. Loomis