When I say ?advantages of raw milk? I don’t mean advantages over pasteurized milk. I’m talking about overfeeding with raw milk, and what the potential advantages may be of a milk diet vs. a mixed, whole foods diet used specifically for overfeeding and stimulating the metabolism.
Advantages include:
1) Milk is 100% raw, with lots of digestive enzymes including lipases, lactase, and proteases which assist in full assimilation of the milk.
2) Raw milk doesn’t contain trace amounts of harmful substances found in cooked foods, like lipid peroxides, heterocyclic amines, and polycyclic whatchamacallits
3) Raw milk contains nutrients that may be destroyed by cooking in other foods, such as heat-sensitive vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), thought to be one of the most lacking and important nutrients in the Western world.
4) Milk wants to be eaten. The whole purpose of milk is to be the ultimate food, and it is designed to be the optimal form of complete nutrition.
5) Milk is low in iron. Some believe that excessive consumption of dietary iron is a net-negative.
6) Milk is much higher in iodine than 99% of foods on earth.
7) Milk has far more minerals than you could ever get from a mixed diet. As my nutrition software shows below, I’m getting far more calcium, phosphorous, iodine, and selenium than most Westerners get in an entire week. Calcium is tough to get from other foods, and other foods contain anti-nutrients that increase calcium secretion.
8) Milk is alkalinizing ? this promotes maximal calcium absorption and utilization, and the typical modern diet tends to be very acid-forming, which leaches calcium from bones no matter how much you consume to help buffer the acid and keep body pH stable.
9) Milk has an excellent balance of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. By standard references, the ratio is 1.6. It’s very tough to hit these ratios with a mixed diet without eating tons of fish, and much of the omega 3 in cooked fish, and omega 6 in other foods, has been oxidized.
10) Milk is less filling. When trying to create a calorie surplus, milk is a great tool because it is generally less satiating on a calorie to calorie basis.
11) Milk contains tons of butyric acid. Butyric acid is a profound stimulator of the metabolism, found in highest concentration in butterfat. To see what butyric acid is capable of, and also see why the metabolism is without question the kingpin when it comes to preventing and reversing metabolic syndrome, read this post by Stephan Guyenet.
12) Milk contains no fiber. Fiber has some advantages, but it also generally decreases nutrient absorption, and in many can cause inflammation in the digestive tract. A milk diet may be very therapeutic for digestion and increased nutrient assimilation.
13) Milk contains no anti-nutrients like phytic acid or lectins found in plant foods to deter creatures from eating them, which are known to be net-negatives and bind with minerals in the case of phytic acid ? causing nutrients to be excreted.
14) Milk is more convenient and realistic for some. It requires no preparation or cleanup to just drink some milk.
15) Milk contains no fructose. Fructose is thought to be capable of slowing down the metabolism. Milk contains carbohydrate that breaks down into glucose which has the opposite effect, increasing leptin sensitivity and raising the metabolism.
16) Milk contains no oxidized cholesterol, like that found in cooked meats, pasteurized dairy, eggs, etc.
17) Lactobacillus are known to play positive roles in digestion and immune function, and drinking large quantities of milk by itself may be able to provide the digestive tract with the perfect environment for fostering colonization by “healthy bacteria.”
18) Milk may have unique immune system enhancing properties not found in other foods.
Here is the nutrient profile of my 6-quarts per day milk diet. Keep in mind that these are standard references for commercial milk. Raw milk has far less Vitamin D because it is not fortified, and contains more vitamin C because it is not pasteurized ? which supposedly destroys a great deal of it.
UPDATE:
I’m on day 9 of the raw milk diet now and things are going much better than earlier on in the experiment. I’m quite happy with it now, despite nearly tearing my a-hole from under-consuming my daily quota early on to keep the initial congestion down. Constipation is hard enough to avoid consuming the full quota. Going too low is a recipe for dis-ASS-ster.
Oh yeah, and with some good planning I am able to keep the posts coming at 180 Kitchen. You solid food eaters might like this quick egg dish:
http://180kitchen.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/veggie-egg-scramble/
You're making me want to drop everything and get me huge quantities of milk! So, besides how it comes out the other end, what are the disadvantages?
Matt,
About to start my day 27 consumption of eight quarts of raw milk. Oddly, for the first time on my diet, my oral body temperature upon waking, before rising was higher than 97.2 — 97.5. I checked both sides of my mouth several times each. Whether this means anything yet, I don't know. Don't want to get ahead of myself.
And you should throw up a post and/or video on Peskin and oxidized fish/omega 3 fatty acids when you get the chance to absorb that information completely. Same with oxidized meat and eggs.
Are there any advantages of consuming raw milk over yogurt made from raw milk?
Yogurt may have advantages over regular milk, not the other way around. Who knows. I was clabbering my milk into a tart, yogurt-like drink early on, but have abandoned that now that my stomach has gotten used to the lactose – it seems to have done that.
Derek-
The "EFA's" in raw milk are certainly unadulterated. For those that believe that quality matters more than quantity, like Peskin, raw milk is certainly the best source. Fish oil is super oxidized. Raw nuts and seeds are full of phytic acid, lectins, and difficult-to-digest ogligosaccharides. Not saying anyone should give much thought to any of that – it's pretty peripheral to the main areas of focus, but milk does have hard-to-deny advantages there.
Hawaii Girl-
There are potential disadvantages as well. Lactose intolerance, casein sensitivity, milk allergies, takes real diligence to do a full-blown milk fast, low in some key nutrients that humans may need moreso than young calves, potential risk of infectious illness like campylobacter, etc. Raw doesn't always mean superior either – cooked proteins tend to be easier to digest, but casein is one exception to that.
Matt,
Any comments on the temperature part? Would it really take three to four weeks to raise body temperature, almost randomly, or you think this is an anomaly?
Raw milk probably has a lot more vitamin k than your analysis indicates (assuming it is grass fed, which Organic Pastures is). Speaking of which, Whole Foods in California no longer sells raw milk. Apparently their insurer would not agree to indemnify them if any claim arose. The funny thing is that most of the food they sell is complete crap. But hey, at least its organic crap!
Scott
Yes, Weston A. Price would be thrilled to know that the health movement of today is all about selling organic versions of the foods he found to cause modern disease.
Derek-
Who knows? Often people continued on the milk diet for really long periods of time before their diseased conditions cleared up, and it wasn't a gradual thing.
Let you know if I see a sudden climb in temps as well. So far, just a small rise of about .2 degrees, but that's still big for 8 days (last time I checked).
"…and it wasn't a gradual thing."
Hmm. I have always been under the impression that things do clear up gradually. That said, when I first started dowsing myself with soymilk almost two years ago, it took my third day on soymilk to notice my speaking was slower than normal and slower than my mind, so that was rather acute.
I am following your milk fast with interest. I hope/plan to start my own fast within the next month or so.
I've been getting raw milk, cream, and butter for the last few years. I am hoping that the milk diet will cure my tendency to get constipated from dairy; raw milk, cream, cheeses…I love dairy but I really want to have an easier time digesting it…if that is possible.
So, I am a 120lb female…I think I'll have to consume about 5 qts per day, right? Do you just leave the next cup or more out of the fridge to come to room temp before you drink it? You don't ever put it on the stove for that purpose, do you?
Lucy
Matt,
I've been researching the vitamin D content of unfortified raw milk. Hard to find info these days, but there are some studies from the 40s suggesting that milk has between 4.8 IU per quart during the winter to 44 IU per quart during the summer.
Here's the link. If that's accurate, it certainly appears that raw milk is not a significant dietary source of D.
Chris
What nutrients essential to humans are lacking in raw milk? I think manganese and chromium? any others?
What about this whole alkalizing/acidifying thing… Is it hooey? I thought it was. In my raw days, no matter how green and alkalizing I ate, nothing changed. Do you believe it has merit, then, Matt? Or were you just adding it to the list?
I like how you point out that milk was MEANT to be consumed. At least, presuming we're meant to consume milk past the age of losing our baby teeth. Lactose intolerance would be bad, but doesn't clabbering/yogurt-ifying help with that?
Matt, do u know if regular pasteurized milk has the benefits of raw milk… When u say raw milk… do u mean unpasteurized… and if so, where do u buy such milk? Or do you mean raw as opposed to processed?
@Kirk
I like how you point out that milk was MEANT to be consumed. At least, presuming we're meant to consume milk past the age of losing our baby teeth. Lactose intolerance would be bad, but doesn't clabbering/yogurt-ifying help with that?
It is funny how all those dairy consuming cultures that Price observed manage to survive and thrive post-weaning consuming dairy as a main article of the diet. :-)
@Lucy
So, I am a 120lb female…I think I'll have to consume about 5 qts per day, right? Do you just leave the next cup or more out of the fridge to come to room temp before you drink it? You don't ever put it on the stove for that purpose, do you?
When I'm on the Milk Diet, I pour my entire allotment for the day into quart jars in the morning.
heeha' heeha' heeha'… raw beer… raw milk… raw beer …..heeha' heeha' heeha'….
troy
Oh, the poetry!
Matt,
I don't know how expansive 180 Degree Health is, but maybe at some point in the near future you can cover toothpaste, shampoo, facial tics, and deviated septums, and whether whole, natural foods can resolve problems associated with those topics, if they can be resolved. For example, conventional tootpaste versus alternative toothpaste versus no toothpaste/healthy eating. Analogously, conventional shampoo versus alternative shampoo versus no shampoo/other, like tallow.
And I don't know if I'm fully on board with the idea that exercise is not good when trying to bring body temperature up. My entire life, I've been told that exercise increases metabolism. It seems to follow logically that it does. Perhaps the logica is similar to weightlifting in that muscles are torn down before they're built up, albeit stronger.
Sorry to be OT, but can someone give some suggestions for breakfast. We have been eating eggs, with grits, occasionally bacon, occasionally oatmeal…one kid boycotts the stuff. I feel like we are going to start clucking. I was going to try the homemade sausage that Matt has in the cookbook, but I wasn't sure if that would be too much PUFA's. Really trying to avoid those as much as possible.
Any carb suggestions for b'fast too…recipes? We are avoiding gluten.
Michael,
Do you leave them all on the counter or take out one at a time to come up to room temp before drinking?
Lucy
Jamie – lol I feel the same re the eggs! I went from eating cereal with milk or toast every morning to cutting those things out as the volume of wheat & milk I was consuming was making me feel ill so I had to do something. I've been eating wild salmon, kippers, sweet potato, steak for breakfast, even chicken if I have some left over. I think I tried at first to only eat "breakfast" foods but that just got boring with just scrambled eggs or an omelette every day so I just thought what's wrong with eating foods I would eat at other times for breakfast instead. Have you looked at Nourished Kitchen website? There is a nice breakfast recipes on there too.
Hi Lucy,
I leave them all on the counter.
Harry L: It is possible to do a milk fast without raw milk. Collden and I have been doing that. We're using the best quality we can get (grass fed, lightly pasteurized, unhomogenized). You can get raw milk, by going to Realmilk.com and looking for a "Cow share" in your area.
I have seen results rather quickly. My temps were up after three days and after 10 days they have been consistently higher than normal. Liz also saw quick results on her milk fast.
Jamie,
I eat rice (set in my rice cooker the night before) and meat (previously cooked) every morning for breakfast. All I have to do is wake up and put it on my plate because there is zero cooking time. It is gluten and PUFA free. I don't eat pork, eggs, or milk so most breakfast foods are out for me.
Jamie,
Potatoes?
Just parboil a bunch of them, and put them in the fridge. If you had cut them up keep them in water and a little lemon juice or vinegar.
Then quickly dry them off cut them up (if you haven't already) and fry em up.
I don't have a lot of time in the morning so parboiling makes the process much quicker.
oh and the egg thing. The times I don't feel like eggs along with my potatoes I will have a large class of milk, some cheese, or cottage cheese.
Or of course the left overs from the night before.
Jennythenipper – I'm glad I read your comment as I don't have access to raw milk but I can find milk which is grass fed, pastaurised but not homogenised. The only problem I have before I start something drastic is that I have terrible digestion, I could be intolerent to something (still trying to work out what it is though) or I simply need to rev up my metabolism (my temps are low). The milk diet will either help me or not I guess….
@ Jamie: Have you ever looked into Quinoa. It is pretty tasty and has a nice nutrient content for a grain, mix in some berries and coconut milk…..
Also has anyone got any ideas why I would be getting a spaced out and anxious feeling plus shortness of breath after big mixed meals. Could this be blood sugar or adrenal issues struggling to cope with the cortisol release of a big meal? I have been HED for a few months now and still get this usually when I am run down though……
Kerry: Make sure you let the milk warm up to room temperature. This makes a huge difference for assimilation, I'm convinced. Also watch the video of Matt on the milk diet. He holds it in his mouth, swishing it around a bit to mix the milk with saliva. Start by drinking 3 ounce glasses like this a day and work up to it slowly. I did that for a week or so before I started drinking larger quantities without food.
Milk has really rocketed my temps upward. I was skeptical before I embarked on it after doing HED for 10 months with almost no temp increases, but 5 days in a row, over 98 degrees, I'm a believer.
OK, Michael I checked out your blog. I love the idea of laying down a couple of pemmican "pieces" for the zombie apocalypse or whatever. Also pemmican is the way to go for backpacking and canoeing.
I also really liked your steak reviews. I'll be requesting some new brands of meat at our co-op, since your favorite steak, the North Star Bison is produced a few hours away from me in WI.
Just getting my Raw Milk supply restarted soon, but about 3 years ago, a persistent knee problem expectantly disappeared in 2 days when i first started, and I swear my teeth kept getting whiter. A friend at woek who bought a share, drank about 10L+ a week, cream and all, and started to develop white patches on his teeth which almost looked like dabs of paint, a little freaky, then the supply ended so we never knew what the prolonged results might have looked like. Good Luck!
(btw, i plan to take snaps shots of my teeth…when i start again..)
Jenny it is interesting that the two gals trying the milk diet, so far, so such rapid temperature rises. 6 months of HED didn't affect my temperatures much either so this is inspiring me to try the milk diet, though my schedule would never allow for a full 4 weeks as I am away hiking weekends too much.
Jedi
I can't afford the time or money for a full milk diet, but I've been drinking about 2 liters of raw goat milk daily in addition to HED for the last week. My temps rose from about a 97-96 average to a steady 98.6 for the last two days!
I will add that I'm 18, always "ran hot" and only paleo-ed for about 2-3 months last winter, so I recognize that I didn't have as much damage to reverse as some.
I did have some trouble digesting dairy in the past, then nuts, then carbs, then most plants, uuuuggghhhh!!! Anyway, I can eat quite a bit of dairy or whatever I want now, that's the point of my tangent. :)
Have you tried slammin coconut oil to see if it helps your temps?
"Milk has really rocketed my temps upward. I was skeptical before I embarked on it after doing HED for 10 months with almost no temp increases, but 5 days in a row, over 98 degrees, I'm a believer. "
Wait a minute. Your still only on a half milk diet, aren't you? While your full milk diet period before might also have helped this seems to indicate that a semi-milk diet also has some great potential.
I'm glad I ordered that 1L Sigg bottle. I've finally seen the first cows out on pasture yesterday (it's still rather cold here in Germany for that time of the year) and I might if I am very lucky actually be able to get access to some goat's/sheep's milk. Time to give that stuff a go! Really looking forward to it!
Btw, Michael, you talked about how goat's milk actually is kinda superior to cow's milk. Does that also apply for sheep's milk? Just curious.
Yeah, MadMuh, I'm only doing 1-2 meals a day. I suspect that the reason its working is the extra calories. Though I was eating to appetite before, I had dieted so long, that I probably just couldn't really get my cals up that high. As Matt noted in his list milk tends to be less filling for the calories so its good for people like me who feel ridiculously full after 500-600 calorie meal. Or it could be that I'm finally getting the required calcium which is supposed to be critical for thyroid function. Either way, I think its definitely worth giving it a shot even if you can only go halvsies on it.
Jedi, yeah, maybe it's a chic thing. Both Liz and I have had babies, in the not so distant past so, maybe that has something to do with it. All I know is I've never consumed dairy at anything like this rate. Thank goodness I have a toddler to take the suspicion off me at the grocery store buying 3 gallons at a time!
According to http://www.thepaleodiet.com/nutritional_tools/acid.shtml dairy is slightly acidic.
@madMUHHH
While your full milk diet period before might also have helped this seems to indicate that a semi-milk diet also has some great potential.
A semi-milk diet can definitely be helpful. I will have that protocol on my up-coming site. My first ever milk diet was milk and fruit (blended into smoothies) and I did just fine.
The semi-milk diet protocol I once saw on the web included a bit of food, IIRC, including bread.
Btw, Michael, you talked about how goat's milk actually is kinda superior to cow's milk. Does that also apply for sheep's milk? Just curious.
It certainly is superior for those who can't handle cow's milk. Then some people can't even handle goat milk. But rare is the person who can't handle the milk from some animal.
I'm not sure goat milk is superior per se but goats are certainly a lot easier to keep than cattle. I think a lot of problems with cow's milk is attributable to modern genetically freakish cows coupled with extremely degenerated digestive systems.
Yes, sheep's milk is awesome, but good luck finding any. I have found approximately one source willing to sell me some over the years but it appears there is a growing sheep dairy industry, at least in the US. Great stuff, though.
Michael,
Your semi-milk diet is very similar to the type of diet that Ray Peat recommends(Fruit, Milk, Dairy products). How did you feel eating like that? How long did it last?
i e mailed Ray Peat about yogurt because i culture much of the raw milk that i buy each week.
my idea was that since lactic acid is a by product of milk digestion, that i'd be bypassing a step and would be less likely to have a problem w lactose….not that i ever did….
he responded by saying that the body produces lactic acid in response to stress (not just physical), and so adding more is not such a great idea.
of course, that's not a quote but it's the jist.
he apparently does not feel that there is a substitute for milk, straight up.
That sounds ridiculous jem. Also, if your body produces lactic acid as some sort of counter to stress, wouldn't it be a good thing, and getting it from food would relieve your body from making it?
Oral temperature upon waking before rising this morning increased again. 95.6 degrees. Even hit 95.7 once. I check each side of my mouth about two to three times total. Don't notice a remarkable change in my slow speech yet.
Jennythenipper,
You say your temperatures rose after three days on the milk diet at four to five quarts a day? I've been on eight quarts a day, and today is my twenty-eighth day, and only yesterday did I notice a rise in morning oral temperature for the first time above 97.2 F. I have no doubt that the metabolism and hormone balance can change within three days. I got myself into this slow speech/cognitive dysfunction thyroid mess three days after replacing my large milk consumption with soymilk consumption almost two years ago.
Ray Peat seems to have some conflicting ideas.
really, i have no idea and continue to culture….
now about acid/alkaline; if we know the entire mineral content we should be able to figure it out. after all, isn't it all about minerals; phosphorus and sulfer would be good examples of the acidifying and potassium, magnesium, sodium, alkalisers.
i'm sure someone can chime in w a more complete list.
jem,
There are quite a few diet "gurus" out there that often take a side on a dietary topic when they might not be right. "It's not in the bag, till it's in the bag" is an old saying in science. Look, there's two ways to look at nutrition and nutritional biochemistry. The macro level and the micro level. Personally, I enjoy delving a bit into the micro level for the hell of it, but you won't go wrong in health if you consume whole, organic natural foods, leaving out processed foods like refined grains and sugar. If you want to know why, that's fine, but the human body is so complex and scientific studies are sometimes, if not often, biased, so that it makes it sometimes, if not often, impossible to get a clear, accurate view of the truth of the matter. Remember, most people in nutrition are out to make money. Honestly, there's no need for ninety-nine percent of the people who work in the nutrition field. The perfect way to eat is not that complicated. Whole, natural foods, like I said before, preferably local to your region. So if you live along the Equator, your diet will be different than if you live in the temperate regions, which will be different than if you live in the Arctic.
Bottom line. Most of the debate back and forth in nutrition is pointless. Just information overload that clogs internet servers. Eat natural.
Yes, I mean raw milk, not pasteurized.
Raw milk gurus did say that pasteurized milk may be used, but that it is not preferable. They felt like a little citrus taken with it was helpful – probably for both digestion and to replace the vitamin C lost in pasteurization.
On acid/alkaline-
There is legitamacy to this, but you wouldn't necessarily notice a sudden change in pH from a change in diet or anything like that. Your body has buffer systems. For the most part, the biggest acidifier is protein, no matter what the source. When protein is ingested, it causes a large secretion of minerals to buffer the acid. But milk is so rich in calcium, which is the primary buffering agent, that overall I've gotta think it's extremely alkaline forming – moreso than anything else in the animal kingdom. Eskimos had a healthy pH, but they had greatly compromised bone health supposedly in order to keep that pH within its healthy range.
Just eat natural – I like it Derek. That's where I started at when I began this blog. It was the subtle intracacies that swept my curious little brain away. That and needing to reprimand all the people out there saying "x" natural food is "deadly" or "causes obesity." Nope, more complexity to it low-carbers, low-fatters, calorie phobes, and other wackos.
By the way, you can make homemade sausage with beef only instead of half ground pork. Still, ground pork doesn't contain much more PUFA than eggs – if any, if you're looking to toy around with the low-PUFA thing.
Oh yeah, and Derek-
I hope to do a dental-related post in June. I'll try to remember to throw in an official blurb about my preference for natural toothpastes.
Matt,
Cool cool. When you say, "Nope, more complexity to it low-carbers, low-fatters…", are you missing a word or words?
I just finished tearing through an array of documentaries from Journeyman Pictures on YouTube on Mongolia. Adult men, politicians, et cetera. Saw no men with male pattern baldness. And they do consume a lot of dairy it seems. There's something unique about this diet that absolutely intrigues me, both them being one of the only dairy consuming countries in Asia (Tibet, while not a country, consumes at least some dairy) and because of that, perhaps providing insight into diet and phenotype. Namely, a hearty meat and milk diet does not cause things like thinning hair. Yes, I know you knew this, but it's great to have another scenario out there. Mongolians do eat dumplings, meat and some spices covered with flour. Not sure if the flour is refined or not, but they seem to look young and healthy despite this flour? Andrew Zimmern just posted a video of this on YouTube for his show. This might be analogous to the Maasai and their consumption of cornmeal, which I read is now more and more refined.
I mention the politician example as important because if anyone were to seemingly have hair loss, it would be them. Just look at the US Senate. Finding a guy there with a full head of hair is like finding music on MTV. Or finding a feeling of not being overwhelmed on businessweek.com. But seriously, the videos on YouTube are proof in the pudding of pictures of health that is much harder to find in the US.
In my post above about my oral temperature today, I meant 97.6 and 97.7.
One thing I'm still interested in is milk/dairy versus blood. Many Asian groups, in addition to Mongolians, consume blood. When you think about it, we all consume blood when we consume raw or medium raw meat and fish. I would ask Loren Cordain or Robb Wolf what they think about this but the ship sailed on that theory for me. I just find it hard to stomach that they continue to justify a fallacy, in my opinion, instead of just cutting their losses and coming admitting they might have been wrong. Watch, in the coming years there will be archaelogical discoveries that will further disprove their theory. The only time I would do pretty much Paleo is if I lived in the Arctic.
Let me emphasize a point above. Why do you think Mongolians have seemingly no balding despite consumption of flour in dumplings?
In regard to eating naturally, I hope it's obvious that I mean food that evolution has dictated humans should eat. Not oleander. Not poison ivy. Not massive amounts of cinnamon. Not puffer fish whole. Nor brick tea. Those are natural clearly, but millions of years have taught us not to eat those things. As to the why we don't, I don't know, but I'm interested.
I don't think there's any blood in raw meat that we buy. I believe the redness is myoglobin
Lu I haven' tried slamming coconut oil and yep at 46 and after years of undereating my metabolism remains sluggish but I have no digestive problems, just a couple of allergies (mushrooms and cyprus trees ).
Jenny thanks for idea that I don't have to be fulltime on milk to reap some benefit. i started today and will do as many milk meals as i can over next 2-4 weeks. It tastes soo good. Mine isn't completely raw but is microfiltered.
my temps aren't terrible 36.5?C folllicular phase and around 36.8?C luteal phase but would love to hit 37?C+ also cutting calories using Matt's suggestions for a month didn't work at all for fatloss so need to try something else.
Thanks for all the ideas. I've considered lunch/dinner foods, but I'm not sure how well that will go over with everyone else. I guess i just have to try it. We do eat quinoa, but not for breakfast…yet.
Question..hubby and I had been gf/cf for a while and pretty low carb (150 grams for me and a little more for him). We've added dairy back and are eating balanced meals to fullness. He is now constipated. Is that a normal passing phase or do we need to change something?
He is probably not as on top of eating regularly since he doesn't eat breakfast until he gets to work and sometimes not at all….still it's better than before.
@DerekChaunessey…my son is high level autistic, tons of stomach problems, immune system problems, etc. He could/would not talk and had OCD. We took him to a developmental pediatrician and because of him, his autism is undetectable, stomach problems are still there but improved, and other than a bit of a speech problem (apraxia) no one would know that anything was wrong with him. The thing that his doc gave him that started him to talk was zinc (now he NEVER shuts up, LOL!). But when he eats something that he has a reaction to, his speech regresses and his speech therapist notices right away. So perhaps you have an allergy to something that caused your slow speech. It is interesting that he is allergic to soy and dairy (among other things).
Matt, this study is novel. It shows that consumption of milk from modern cows alters hormone levels in humans. What do you think?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19496976
This one explains why modern dairy practices affect milk composition. Very interesting. And alarming.
http://www.eps1.comlink.ne.jp/~mayus/eng/male.pdf
Max
I have never drunk milk by the glass before, didn't know it could taste so good, especially swilling it around the mouth like Matt showed on the video :)
Max, in the first article used 18 people in the study. Most say that with such a small sample group it is not indicative of much.
Also, Dr. Wong says "Also pasteurization also denatures (i.e. kills) the hormones health food purists are always complaining are in milk." You can also read more about fallacies of anti-milk and meat here:
http://www.totalityofbeing.com/FramelessPages/Articles/anti_milk_meat.html
Derek-
Male-pattern baldness arises from a metabolic state. Eating a little white flour dumplings with a diet based around fresh milk from pastured animals and meat from those animals is probably not enough to induce the full-on Western Diet effect.
And yes, the milk diet is definitely pushing me towards endorsing milk as part of a mixed diet in the future. I wasn't so sure about it, but now I feel pretty reassured.
Max-
No doubt we should have our suspicions about modern commercial milk.
Jamie-
Dairy can be very constipating for some. It has never constipated me until I drank 6 quarts per day. That was just a passing phase (knock on wood) on the milk diet for me though. Day 11 today and things are flowing almost normally.
Will-
It is theorized that much of autism has to do with mineral imbalances, where the body burns through zinc quickly and then turns to other minerals to do the same function, which is why mercury, lead, etc. rise in the body and are not excreted (hair follicles in autistics reveal far less mercury than normal).
Klinghardt is certainly worth some investigation for any parent of a kid with an ASD…
http://www.autismone.org/content/hemo-pyrrol-lactam-uria-hpu-lyme-disease-and-autism-dietritch-klinghardt-md-wwwliafoundation
BTW zinc is discussed in that video at the 12-minute mark.
Riles-
18 people are better than none. Of course that it would be optimal to replicate these findings with a bigger experiment. But this doesn’t turn the hormonal outcomes invalid. All of the males studied, both young and children, had lowered testosterone and increased estrogen levels after consuming the milk. This is enough for me to avoid dairy from cows bred with modern practices. But everyone is free to make decisions based on the availble data.
And no matter what Dr. Wong said about pasteurization denaturing hormones. The facts show that pasteurized milk from modern cows DO alter human hormonal profiles.
Max
Hey Matt,
Here's a healthy raw milk blend you may want to try:
Blend raw milk, coconut meat from fresh coconut, raw fertile eggs, cinnamon to kill off any possible deadly strains, nutmeg to heighten the senses, lemon squeeze as optional, and maybe coconut water from the milk if that is appetizing or just drink it by itself. Maybe add vanilla extract to improve the flavor.
Aajonus Vonderplanitz pointed out in a recent interview that the longest living tribe consumed some mangos, some pineapples, pig meat occasionally, raw fish, and 1 coconut a day. They lived to 150 years old on average.
Matt,
You're getting in 600mg of magnesium with 6 quarts a day of raw milk. If you're 185 pounds of body weight you want 850-1300mg of magnesium a day. Maybe that's causing the constipation.
I suspect that the reason its working is the extra calories. …As Matt noted in his list milk tends to be less filling for the calories so its good for people like me who feel ridiculously full after 500-600 calorie meal.
Makes sense. Also, digestion is a very calorie intensive process and sipping milk througout the day probably eases up that process. So I think it is likely to assume that the net gain of calories is higher when drinking milk than it would be when eating a solid meal.
Dan-
No more constipation. Just a rough adjustment. Crapping out baby food right now.
Your tips might come in handy for Aurora, who can only consume liquid foods right now. Her staple is half n' half, raw milk, 1 egg, and 2t cocoa powder blended up together.
Vonderplanitz is a retard Dan. I hate to break it to you. Vonderplanitz also said the Eskimos lived to be past 100 years old. They died of old age typically in their 60's – the most rapidly-aging peoples ever documented. I trust Stefansson's reports on this more than what coyotes tell me.
why would raw milk be constipating?
After reading fiber menace it seems to me that the only foods that can be truly constipating are those high in fiber.
Milk is high in exactly what counters constipation – fat and good bacteria.
Or perhaps it is pretty much fully absorbed, leaving no residue, giving the impression that one is constipated?..
After reading Fiber Menace I thought a lot of stupid things. Dairy is well known to be constipating – probably due to the casein as cheese is notorious for being the biggest constipator. Google search that and you'll get a list a mile long. The bulkiness of my stools has been out of this world. It hasn't been low-residue. We're talking 3-pounders here.
I could totally eviscerate Fiber Menace for you someday, and probably will.
I like this descprition of the digestion of healthy peoples on unrefined diets high in fiber…
p. 61, describing native stools?
?These are passed twice a day and are extended like a ribbon of toothpaste some 15in. long, and of the diameter of the middle finger.
p.62 ??if there is no unnatural stasis present, the consistency will always be soft and the diameter not appreciably greater than that of the middle finger.
-T.L. Cleave
Will,
Somebody mentioned once I might have been allergic to soy. I had no normal allergic reaction to soy. Just slow speech on my third day on almost a gallon a day, if not a gallon. I was replacing the amount of dairy milk I used to drink for years that I stopped six weeks before. Also add soy protein. But my speech is not so bad that it is very obvious. People around me most of the time wouldn't know, although I have had three people comment that I sound different. I emphasize syllables of words differently, which is a product of this. And I have pauses where there shouldn't be. Plus, I hold back on a lot of dry humor and what not, which people would obiously never know about. But I know. Seriously, I was the most-silver tongued gent I personally ever met, and I think I still am somewhere in me because when I write it doesn't affect me. How much zinc did your son take? I am wary of supplements because by definition, they are supplements and we should get our vitamins and minerals through diet. That said, I wouldn't rule them out in some occassions temporarily. But the human body is a symphony of everything working together, and it will be impossible to perhaps ever know how everything works. We'll be able to live forever first. As far as allergy, it seems to me that allergies are side effects of inflammation.
Matt,
My oral temperature this morning was 97.2 on my left side, then 97.0 on my right side, then 97.3 on left and 97.5 on right. Huh? I don't know if my thermometer is messed up or if this is normal. Perhaps body temperature is not always associated with a return to normal metabolism.
Will,
One other thing. Did you say your son could not talk at all or only had a bit of a speech problem?
Matt,
As far as the Mongolian diet, check out the video or two on YouTube that shows the president of Mongolia and the Mongolian Parliament, and you'll see ZERO middle-aged men with hair loss, much less any graying hair. I saw one elderly guy with gray hair but no thinning hair. And you have the state economic minister say he can't live without milk.
Has anybody here ever been to Tibet? I believe they consume milk in their tea, although they have other questionable food habits in, I believe, their consumption of brick tea sometimes, which is worse than Sour Patch kids for the teeth.
The site http://www.raw-milk-facts.com has a lot of information and references about raw milk, for example a list of different hormones and growth factors in raw milk, http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/hormones.html. One of the hormones in milk is erythropoietin (EPO), which in endurance sports is used in blood-doping, since it increases the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. There is also a small amount of thyroid and progesterone in milk, which is one of the reasons why Ray Peat recommends milk.
WAPF has a presentation, http://www.realmilk.com/ppt/index.html, where they give examples of many of the compounds in milk, a range of built in protective systems and components that help with the assimilation of the nutrients in the milk, that are destroyed or degraded by pasteurization.
Raw milk fat has the Wulzen factor or the anti-stiffness factor, which is attributed to prevent calcification of calcium of soft tissues like under the skin, in the joints, heart or other organs, and is said to help with arthritis. WAPF says that the Wulzen factor is only found in raw cream or raw animal fat, but the Wulzen factor is also found in other foods. Especially raw sugar cane, which can contain hundreds of times more Wulzen factor than raw cream.
At November 10, 1921, there was this article In The New York Times:
?LONG LIFE ON MILK DIET. Russian Savant Finds Caucasus Village With 18 Centenarians.
Derbent. Caucasia, Nov. 9. -The secret of long life resides in the use of soured cows' milk, cheese made from sheep's milk and white bread, according to Dr. Sadowein, professor of physical chemistry in the University of Kiev. He has found a village in the mountains near Temir Khan Shura, the new capital of the Daghestan Republic, where eigtheen men, out of a total population of 120, are more than 100 years old. Investigation showed that they ate the foods just named exclusively. Many persons transported here from the famine regions of Central Russia are migrating into the mountains, where this food is to be had in abundance.
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E01E1DD1539E133A25753C1A9679D946095D6CF)
White bread should mean white flour for this population as well, so it can be that white flour might not have to be very unhealthy. A benefit from white flour I can think of is that it can inhibit intestinal absorption of estrogens and other bad stuff that can come with other foods. But at the same time, white flour could probably also inhibit the absorption of beneficial nutrients.
Also some other foods have the ability to inhibit the absorption of estrogens. http://dogtorj.tripod.com/id46.html
Dr. Jorgen Bernard Jensen spent several years seeking out the oldest people of the world, and one of his keys to health and long life was to have some form of raw or clabbered milk product daily if possible.
http://www.arthritis-nature-cure.com/people.htm
One last thing about the Mongolian diet. Their national beverage is kimus, or fermented mare's milk. It's their version of beer. Interestingly, it seems kimus was known as a cure-all in the nineteenth century, and people like Leo Tolstoy partook in these. So perhaps alcohol consumption doesn't necessarily cause male pattern baldness or metabolic disease either. It should be noted that kimus has a lower alcoholic content than beer. And it seems vodka is relatively popular, although this may not be traditional, i.e., before Soviet rule in 1920.
I'm sure Matt knows a bit about their diet. I originally came across the Mongolian example in a prior post of his.
DerekChaunessey –
Tibetans often drink tea with yak butter in it, I'm not sure about milk, but it's not unlikely.
There was talk earlier in the comments about white flour consumption in in Tibet. Traditionally, toasted barley flour was used, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that this is often replaced with white flour these days.
I have made momos (Tibetan dumplings) with a very old Tibetan man and he uses wonton wrappers instead of making traditional barley tsampa. I guess this is just the direction our world seems headed in..
Lu,
Yak butter, yes. I should've said "dairy" instead of "milk".
You raise a good point. Even places in the world with traditional diets that are the most untouched from Western diets are still somewhat touched. Mongolia, for example, has Coca-Cola and candy. I just finished watching several more videos on Mongolia on YouTube and I did find one or two men who seemed bald and another older man with white hair, but the comparison between adult men there and adult men in the US is night and day. Those men may not be Mongolian or they may eat pretty poorly. Remember, not everyone in the US eats a typical American diet, either. ;-) In fact, I personally don't know anyone who eats according to this horrible American diet.
Matt,
This may be off-topic, but have you of the camp that soy is the devil incarnate, or do you distinguish between traditional, natural forms of soy and processed forms? Clearly various Asian peoples consume various forms of soy. Tofu, soy sauce, edamame, tempeh, natto, miso. And seem to be doing pretty well. No baldness, for example, which I consider perhaps representative of internal problems. But I know from personal experience that I was royally f***ed on too much soymilk. How do you remedy this? I know soy is not a traditional part of most diets of the world, but soy seems to be that one food that I may not know how to mesh with my ideal of eating only whole, natural foods. What is whole, natural? Roasted soy nuts? Edamame? Natural soymilk? This is needless to say a sore spot for me since I grew up pretty much on another legume, namely black beans, from Chipotle!
Just wanted you all to know that I was just laying down on my bed, completely at rest at everything… and I felt kind of warm so I took my oral temperature… and low and behold it said 98.7! That's the highest it's ever been midday!
Edit- I retook it, and it said 98.8!
The fruit and milk combo is genius.
Hey there again Matt,
You may want to add in a half teaspoon of fermented codliver oil a day, whether that be from capsule or liquid. Raw milk isn't very high in vitamins a and d which codliver oil gives you. That and you need more epa/dha in your diet when consuming raw milk. If you still need more omega 3s in there freshly ground flaxseeds will bring the rest of what you need.
Can't say how accurate Aajonus is as I don't know where to get the material he quotes from. He said the Masai live to be 140 years old.
Other than raw milk the Masai would consume organ meats and animal flesh. They got their vitamin A and K2 from the liver, the vitamin D from the sun. I don't know how they would do this but I think they would likely consume plenty of collagen from animal flesh too. Aajonus has a recommendation for a power drink where you consume various key organs. It's the closest thing I can think of that's close to what the Masai did. You can get collagen by making bone broth with cow's or chicken's feet.
The Masai would likely have gotten their epa and dha from the brains of animals they hunted.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/beef-products/3463/2
6 quarts of raw milk (no epa or dha)
Total Omega-3 fatty acids
4392
mg
Total Omega-6 fatty acids
7026
mg
If you're on a 4000 calories a day and followed Mary Enig's omega intake recommendation you would want:
7g omega 3
11g omega 6
lol Daniel, look at whose site you're posting on before telling Matt what he should be doing.
Also, you don't know how accurate Aajonus is? "He said the Masai live to be 140 years old." That's not enough?
Daniel Holt,
My opinion is that the best way to look at accruing the various vitamins and minerals is through what foods one is eating, not necessarily by the exact amount of vitamin or mineral in that food. I think measuring is a waste of time. I think the most fruitful way is not to follow any specific person's recommendations. Follow the ideal of whole, natural foods, preferably local to your region. I just summed up health and eating in one sentence.
Katerina,
How long have you been on the milk diet? Raw I presume? And how many quarts/liters per day?
<<>>
If she could either liquify flaxseed or purchase flaxseed oil that might do her some good. She may want to increase her intake to 5 eggs a day. I don't know if she's having cocoa and cacao but cacao is high in magnesium. You want cacao that is low in fat if you want a higher amount of magnesium, which I believe you'll find in cacao powder. 2 tblspns contains 168mg of magnesium. She wants her fat soluble vitamins from fermented codliver oil, half tspn a day. I would think it would be better to have vanilla extract rather than half and half but that's just me being nit pickey. Blending in coconut meat and water or having coconut milk separately throughout the day would be good too. Finally I would recommend an organ power drink such as Aajonus recommends but you need a special blender to liquefy it. May not taste good at all though. I can share the power drink if anybody is interested. It contains various organs and glands of animals.
Cheap source of cacao:
http://www.wildernessfamilynaturals.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=WFN&Product_Code=CACAOP5&Category_Code=
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831640/
Daniel Holt, you're too far in. 180 is a refugee camp not only for low-carbers and vegans but also for people like you.
Getting all these minerals and fat-soluble vitamins and eating raw organ meats and drinking stuff like homemade kombucha just didn't work for most as far as I can tell, even following all the rules. Also it's socially unhealthy for most.
@DerekChaunessey…my son could not talk at all. He babbled as an infant, got his shots and bang…he went silent. He was taking a liquid zinc supplement and he started talking right away. You couldn't understand everything he was saying but he would talk away. He would lay in his crib at night and just talk to himself and laugh and have a good old time. When we told the doc about this he said that the dose of zinc that we were giving him was overstimulating his brain so he couldn't sleep (5 or 10 mg maybe…can't remember). We cut his dose back and he was OK. Now he has a bit of a speech problem (apraxia) but it is getting better with speech therapy.
Matt, thanks for that link. I started watching it and found it very interesting but I have to set some time aside so I can watch the whole thing carefully. Thanks!
Hello Matt, thanks for having this blog about diet experiments. I have done the raw milk diet twice in the past, and both times on the 10th day I got a terrible headache. At that point I quit out of fear. Last year around this time I came down with terrible joint, tendon, and muscle pains accompanied with abdominal distress. After searching online I realized my problems were being caused by uric acid, and that most of my strange unexplainable problems since forever most likely had been, too. I found Dr. Alexander Haig's online books about uric acid, and it's changed my life. I learned a lot about why the milk diet can cure so many illnesses, and also why going on it can cause some painful side effects while you're getting the uric acid out of your body. I did several weeks of milk and raw cheese last month, but now I'm making kefir and adding a little bit of fruit and eating a little bit of raw cheese. My health has been improving since cutting almost all uric acid out of my diet. I went off it three times to experiment with low carb, raw Wai, and a WAPF type diet,(and I hate to say it, but raw cacao powder) but each time I regretted it.
I could go on and on, but this is a long enough comment for now.
I hope the diet does you well. I think by day 9 you looked as if your body went through some good changes.
Take care,
Betsy
Daniel,
I have been eating around 1% PUFA's for about 2 months now, before that I was eating about 3 to 4% which is still pretty low…
I am averaging less than one gram of omega 3 and about 2 to 2.5 gram of omega 6 per day. Yes, a 1% or less PUFA consumption is a somewhat stringent and artificial diet, but I was curious about its effects. So far, I have been impressed with the results.
Tell me when I am going to start showing the dreaded EFA deficiency symptoms, please.
According to conventional wisdom, I should have started showing signs of said deficiency about a month ago. However, my health, which was already pretty good, is even better. Hmmm, conventional wisdom fails me once again.
Lots of people channel Ray Peat as support for PUFA restriction; and he is indeed an excellent researcher. However, there are others who have come to similar conclusions about PUFA consumption. Chris Masterjohn, for instance, in his paper "How Essential Are the Essential Fatty Acids? concludes that: "The true requirement for EFA during growth and development is less than 0.5 percent of calories when supplied by most animal fats and less than 0.12 percent of calories when supplied by liver." He further maintains that individuals recovering from injury, those with degenerative diseases and those seeking to build muscle mass have similar requirements. The exception appears to be women who are attempting to conceive, or are pregnant or lactating, in which case the requirement may be as high as 1%. Moreover, he concludes that "In other healthy adults, however, the requirement is infinitesimal if it exists at all."
(All quotes taken from his paper summary.)
did you guys catch this blog?
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2010/04/practically-paleo-diet-reduces-markers.html
@Jedi:
I really don't understand why this posts get's thrown around so much in the blogosphere. I really, really like Don's blog but thought this was probably one of his most unnecessary and insignificant posts.
That study says nothing and in fact actually supports some of the points Matt made in his Leningrad post, but I already wrote something similar as a comment to that post.
Oh, wait! Or do you just mean the blog itself and not the specific article? If yes, well than I already kinda answered that, too. One of the best paleo blogs out there in my opinion.
no it was the article i meant, and i agree i think it supports 180 and many of Matt's posts ;)
Yes I saw Don's post.
He believes that lowered metabolism = better health and longevity but has failed to take notice of the subtle nuances.
No one here is trying to raise leptin per se, but restored leptin sensitivity, which lowers leptin as body fat levels decrease.
No one here is trying to raise insulin levels but overcome insulin resistance, so fasting levels decrease helping to trigger weight loss.
If Don wants people to be more satisfied on fewer calories, than I suggest overfeeding. I know of no other, more powerful tool other than fasting/ketosis, which is a short-term effect that can end in disaster.
If he wants to trigger lower blood sugars, the only way I know to perform that without causing a rebound effect is to overfeed on nutritious food – preferable with a starch bias. The lowest blood sugars on earth belong to the Kitavans, who eat 69% of their calories as carbohydrates. Not much support for low-carb there either, especially when the lowest carbers of all, the Eskimos, were very short-lived. The same could be said of the Rosedale article posted by anonymous above. Calorie restriction doesn't work if it causes rebound. Low-carb doesn't work if it causes negative metabolic adaptation and health problems (much of it attributed to high cortisol).
These gentlemen are exploring dead ends and getting boners over short-term results. My advantage is that I"m a big picture guy trying to come up with solutions instead of fish for supporting material to prove my points. I'm trying to disprove mine.
DML-
Low Pufa eating has been more of a positive for me too. All things lipid don't begin and end with Mary Enig. She was a mediocre researcher even when she was still sharp.
Betsy-
Uric acid is of tremendous importance, and I'll think you'll see it receive a lot more focus and attention in mainstream medicine in the future. Takes them a while though. What I'm intersted in is helping people's body's work correctly, so that uric acid levels do not become elevated no matter how much purine one takes in.
On Tibet-
I've stood on the border of Tibet and Nepal before, up in the hill country a week's walk away from the nearest road. They still pack in Coca Cola and whiskey, mostly to sell to tourists that come 'trekking' through their villages.
In the Northeast of Nepal where I was, it was mostly populated by Tibetan refugees that had left decades ago. They eat a lot of hard cheese, "milk tea," meat, etc. and are generally much larger, hardier, and well-developed than the agriculturalist Nepalis in the lower elevations – with better teeth. They are no Weston A. Price specimens though.
Derek-
Oh yeah, and soy. I do think some fermented soy is fine. Nothing excessive, but I'll still slay some Miso soup when I go out for Japanese food.
I wouldn't recommend your "Silk diet" though. Ouch.
Will,
I do remember taking 50 mg of zinc when I was on my soy diet, so to speak. I didn't notice a difference in about five weeks or so.
And I always wonder why Paleo people claim dairy is highly insulinotropic, or insulin-spiking, but has a low glycemic value. Perhaps they're referring to pasteurized milk, or they're knowingly upholding a fallacy for idiological reasons.
Derek- I'm not on the milk diet. I just started drinking a gallon of milk (non-homogenized, low-pasteurized) with two oranges a day. I've been eating about 2 normal meals other than that, but the milk/fruit combo is key for me. My energy is feeling more stable than ever before, and I lost two pounds since 2 weeks ago.
Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked :]
Derek,
My son was taking a liquid zinc (don't know if that makes a difference or not)…
http://www.kirkmanlabs.com/ViewProductDetails@Product_ID@315.aspx
…and I don't know if the form of zinc makes a difference either. I do know that my son had a TON of bloodwork (18 vials the first time when he was about 3) and he showed a low zinc to copper ratio, so maybe it's not the total zinc but how much zinc to copper. Also, since he was about 3, he probably only weighed about 30 pounds too.
I'm not trying to imply that zinc is your savior or that it would even help…just clarifying what my son's situation was.
Good luck!
Hi Matt,
In one of the comments above, you said:
Vonderplanitz is a retard Dan. I hate to break it to you. Vonderplanitz also said the Eskimos lived to be past 100 years old. They died of old age typically in their 60's – the most rapidly-aging peoples ever documented. I trust Stefansson's reports on this more than what coyotes tell me.
Do you attribute this rapid aging to rigorous environmental conditions or perhaps a deficiency in their diet (or neither) ?
Are there any lessons to be learned from the Inuit about what not to do ?
thanks
J
When it comes to the Inuit I would personally say they should not have gone over 25% protein as their caloric intake. Maybe it depends on the tribe when it comes to how long they lived. I never read the book Matt Stone quotes from but I would think the eskimos that consumed plenty of bone daily lived a lot longer. Maybe I'm wrong. Did this eskimos consume bone and still die around 60 years old Matt?
Another issue may be the cold temperatures killed off the probiotics in the meat. So the tribes that ate high meat the most lived longer. Those that were very efficient at storing meat during the times of the year it was scarce, bone too.
If I recall it correctly Ray Peat says that the Inuit age so fast because of all the omega 3 they consume.
Will,
Thanks for that. I finished day thirty of the milk diet Sunday. I'm going as long as it takes to resolve my speaking problem that has been going on for two years coming up soon. I would think that raw milk contains the necessary amount of vitamins and minerals, including zinc, that I need. I honestly can't believe the nightmare of the last two years. So out of left field.
"mention the politician example as important because if anyone were to seemingly have hair loss, it would be them. Just look at the US Senate. Finding a guy there with a full head of hair is like finding music on MTV."
Ha, that made me laugh.
Oh Vanderplatz. Good for a laugh if nothing else. I should have had a Vanderplatz follower in my if diet gurus were car mechanics post.
Matt, can't wait for your post eviscerating the Fiber Menace. You should probably then go back and put a link to it on your old pro-fiber menace posts!
Dairy is constipating. It's conventional wisdom and its an observable phenomenon. My kid who still gets the bulk of his calories from dairy (I've been thinking to ask Cheeseslave to make a toddler sized t-shirt) has battled it his whole life. However his digestion is better on mostly dairy than mostly refined carbs and fructose. A while ago you said kids do better on meat. I'd agree but with my kid it's been an uphill battle he only started eating meat a year ago and even that we pretty much have to coax him into it. We've been giving him bacon because, like the t-shirt at my butcher shop says, it's the gateway meat.
As for Mongolians eating blood, well so do English people (black pudding is a blood sausage) and it hasn't seemed to be a miracle cure. Damn delicious though. Put it with some bacon and you've really got something.
Go Katerina! Glad the milk is working for you.
J. Deezy-
It's hard to say exactly why the Eskimos aged so rapidly. Clearly they were in amazing health and suffered from few health problems, but life certainly was difficult.
They were actually one of the few peoples that did have to fast intermittently. Food was not as consistent there as it was elsewhere, such as in Kitava for example, or among the Masai.
They ate an extremely low-carb diet. Although this is presumably a low-insulin diet, there are other factors besides insulin to consider when it comes to longevity, and there's no indication that less carbohydrate consumption = lower blood glucose (glucose levels are much lower among Kitavans than what I've heard reported about Eskimos).
Their extremely high intakes of omega 3, like Peat believes, is probably the greatest reason for rapid aging.
A low-carb diet like theirs was known to cause bone loss, probably did raise cortisol, and came with some other disadvantages I'm sure.
http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins/43/Eaters_of_Raw_Flesh.htm
As for Fiber Menace:
It's true that fiber can exacerbate many digestive conditions – particularly insoluble fibers which are fermented by bacteria – often bacteria that are in a spot where they do not belong, such as the small intestine.
But fiber does not CAUSE digestive problems, and is actually a great protectorant against digestive disease.
As far as constipation is concerned, that is undoubtedly caused by slow transit time. Add more fiber to slow transit and you get thicker, denser, dryer stools. Decrease transit time via raising the metabolism and you pass small, moist, perfect stools on a high fiber diet.
Monastyrsky eats 1,500 calories per day and is a type 2 diabetic. Yes, fiber probably rips him a new anus every time he tries to ingest it, but there are other variables.
In short, sometimes fiber good. Sometimes fiber bad. Depends on the circumstances. But fiber is neither inherently good or inherently bad.
In short, sometimes fiber good. Sometimes fiber bad.
Matt, have you secretly embarked on a paleo diet or why has your witty writing been replaced by caveman-style sentences. :-P
I guess I'm probably the last one who should make fun of something like this.
Well, finally got my 1L Sigg bottle and will start replacing at least 1 meal with milk per day. I think I wanna get through all my exams this week before that, you can never know what might happen.
Madmuhh:Not so much caveman as Frankenstein from the SNL sketch "Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein."
Also what you said in reply to me before about Milk taking away some of the digestive load and therefore, my body is using fewer calories makes sense.
Me not on Paleo diet. Me not caveman. Me eat 100% neolithic food. Me did mean to write caveman sentences. Me not make them by accident.
The Masai had protein as 25% of their intake with 4000 calories a day but they also took in 8500mg of calcium not to mention the high levels of other minerals they had at 155 pounds of body weight, at 6'4 +.
6 quarts of raw milk:
216g of protein, 87g is converted to carbohydrates and the other 62g is dissipated
The 87g is 348 calories
216g of fat is 1944 calories
288g of carbs is 1152 calories
67g of protein for muscle repair is 268 calories
3712 calories altogether
Jennythenipper,
English do consume blood, in the form of blood pudding. They have other aspects of their diet, namely refined sugar and grains, that lend to adverse health effects vis a vis, other groups who eat blood and whole foods, primarily.
I've never had a problem whatsoever with dairy and digestion. I went through college consuming almost a gallon a diet. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps this wisdom is not as conventional as you think. ;-)
I'd call a gallon a day of milk out of the ordinary, especially in college. I was considered a wierdo because I actually drank milk and didn't just use the milk to wet my cereal like everyone else in my dorm.
No doubt, refined sugar and flour have a greater negative effect than all the black pud in the world could counter-act. A long time ago, Matt said a poor diet without sugar is better than a good diet with sugar on top.
I absolutely adore black pudding. And haggis.
On the milk diet I am concerned about not getting enough B5. What do you think?
Betsy
Matt,
Today is day thirty-two of the milk diet. I woke up with a headache. Thought it was dehydration, so had a handful of cups of water. This is one thing I notice on the milk diet — I often wake up relatively dehydrated.
Anyway, I had two quarts of milk after. The headache would not go away. Then I started to feel nauseous, and started throwing up. Had a whole orange, the first food besides milk I've had in quite some time, and promptly threw that up. Still feel nauseous right now. All that said, my body temperature reached 98.0 F for the first time in a long, long time. Not sure if that will stay but that's where I'm at now. Bernarr Macfadden did mention that a nausea would come around after about five to six weeks and a feeling of disgust for milk. But he also mentioned several cases of people being on milk for months and years, so not quiet sure how that resolves itself. Perhaps this nausea is not related to milk at all. Perhaps those people stopped every once in a while.
Based on the nutritional stats posted above, I'm getting 423% of my daily recommended amount of vitamin B-5 (pantothenic acid).
Derek-
Who knows? Your high temp could be a touch of fever as well. I would fast until you're ready to eat again for sure. Let me know how it goes.
i wonder if the peop who were on milk for….ever were on just milk. the guy he talks about being on it for life because he couldn't consume solids(?), for instance.
maybe he consumes eggnog or made some sort of shake or even chocolate milk….added juice?
maybe raw milk just became the base for long termers.
Matt,
I feel about one hundred percent better. I seriously went from morning to night yesterday with a pretty good headache. Won't take Tylenol or Advil. I took my oral temperature today, when feeling much better, and it is 98.2/98.3 F. What does this mean? My temperature increased almost one degree since before yesterday. Gonna fast I think today again (in addition to yesterday) and start back up tomorrow on day thirty-two, or day one of round two.
Thanks for not forgetting the old posts.
The headache would not go away. Then I started to feel nauseous, and started throwing up. Had a whole orange, the first food besides milk I've had in quite some time, and promptly threw that up. Still feel nauseous right now. All that said, my body temperature reached 98.0 F for the first time in a long, long time. Not sure if that will stay but that's where I'm at now. Bernarr Macfadden did mention that a nausea would come around after about five to six weeks and a feeling of disgust for milk. But he also mentioned several cases of people being on milk for months and years, so not quiet sure how that resolves itself. Perhaps this nausea is not related to milk at all. Perhaps those people stopped every once in a while.
Why would it be anything else? It shows up right when the author says it would. You weren't doing anything different. Your body has been on a nutritional holiday with more than enough milk on a daily basis. Perfect time.
This by the way is true of any kind of fast. Its the way the body rolls. I've known people on traditional fasts all of sudden start displaying all kind of strange disease like symptoms that promptly go away, usually in about 24 hours. In happened to me on my first ever fast. Give the body a chance to unburden itself and that is precisely what it will do.
Michael,
Your semi-milk diet is very similar to the type of diet that Ray Peat recommends(Fruit, Milk, Dairy products). How did you feel eating like that? How long did it last?
A couple of months. I felt great the entire time. That is not the specific protocol for the semi-milk diet/cure, its just how I did it.
Matt Stone said…
Based on the nutritional stats posted above, I'm getting 423% of my daily recommended amount of vitamin B-5 (pantothenic acid).
Thanks, Matt, I was only looking for B5. That's very comforting.
I'm glad to see that you're able to hang in there with the diet. I can see in your face that it's making a difference for you. I know what you mean about craving something warm and salty!
What type of diet are you planning on doing once you are done with the 30 days?
Betsy
I'm going to sign up for a milk share with the dairy I used to milk at in Montrose discussed in the campylobacter post. So I will be cointinuing to drink at least a couple gallons of milk per week.
I'm going to wean myself off of liquids pretty slowly. Mostly soup, cooked greens, and milk for the first week is my plan. Then add some fruit, then some cooked starch, and finally a little cooked meat/fish/shellfish.
By then it will almost be July, and time to get in shape for hiking season. Won't overdo it this summer, but I am still a pretty passionate mountain man in the peak of summer. I plan on eating pretty clean (no refined stuff) for a while. Something about purifying your body on an all-milk diet makes you feel a little more defensive. The idea of putting a lot restaurant food or white sugar in my body right now is comparable to a mother sending her virgin daughter out on a first date with Tommy Lee.
I can't believe this! I just took my temperature and it's 98.6. When I took it two or three days ago after reading about Derek's temp elevating after his headache, it was 98.2, which is much higher than it used to be. It had been fluctuating between 96 and 97.6 for years. Today I had a headache and wondered if maybe mine went up, too. That was quite a jump! It's funny because all those years when I was eating lots of vegetables, whole grains, beans, and then the past couple of years when I was eating good quality beef, chicken, and eggs, that didn't happen. So now I eat just few items, and one of them is sugar(I put it in my kefir), and my temperature goes up. For me at least, it's partly what I don't eat(uric acid) and then make sure I eat raw dairy. It took quite awhile of being off of uric acid, though, to get to this point. I would encourage you guys doing the pure diet to stick with it as long as you can, and if your specific issue doesn't completely clear up, try some form of a uric acid free diet til you get to where you want to be.
I have to say that all my issues aren't cleared up today, though. Besides the headache, today I was having some joint and abdominal pains.
Life is an experiment, isn't it?
Betsy
Nice Betsy. Interesting thoughts about the purine-free diet/uric acid and body temp. No doubt that a lot of the chronic inflammation that keeps cortisol up, leptin resistance activates, and body temperatures down may have a lot to do with uric acid. Appreciate the heads up and your feedback on that for sure.
And I'll definitely be sticking your quote…
"Life is an experiment"
… in my back pocket for future use. I love that. REALLY love that.
Matt,
I hope you'll do something on uric acid because from what I understand, there's not much that doesn't cause an increace.
It seems that dairy is good but not cream which excludes straight up raw milk.
Potato (you'll be happy about that) and chic pea seems okay and some vegies…but not the best ones.
I believe that this could be the cause of the woes of aging….
I'll have to poke around nephropal and see what he says.
Betsy, what do you eat?
Problems with uric acid stem from problems with excreting it properly. This is usually due to a metabolic problem, or poor nutritional status. Once again, it will probably come back in some way to the metabolism as a whole, and mitochondrial activity.
Right now I eat kefir either plain or blended with a couple of cherries or blueberries and sugar. Once a day I eat the curds of of the kefir blended with lime juice, vanilla powder, and sugar. That's it. I ran out of cheese, and so did the farm I go to, so I'm going to see if I feel better without for awhile. Also, I can't forget what Ray Peat says about the whey containing too much tryptophan for adults, so this weekend I'm going to try to make enough separated kefir to be able to eat just the curd part. I might try to eat some cucumbers this weekend, too. I'm really thirsty, and water doesn't seem to help. I might be taking in too much protein for the condition of my kidneys right now, and I am trying to eat only raw food. But I better check the purine list first because I have a way of sabotaging myself. One thing that I read that can cause too much uric acid in the body is leucocytosis. And eating cooked foods causes leucocytosis. My case is very extreme, so I have to be careful all the way around. I quit kombucha a couple of days ago, and I don't yet know if that's a good thing or bad thing. I'm very tempted to make a cup of nettle or break stone tea, but I'll try to get by another day or two without it. My hands feel swollen and I have puffiness under my eyes. The warm weather with longer daylight brings any uric acid stores into the bloodstream and it's hard on the kidneys.
I ate potatoes for 8 or 9 months and they are fine for a uric acid free diet. Often I would eat the potatoes and then drink the water I cooked them in and it would make me feel better. Then all of a sudden, maybe with the change of season I noticed that they were causing abdominal pain, so I had to cut them out. Removing uric acid is very tricky because there are so many things that affect the way you feel when your body is in overload…..barometric pressure, temperature, pH of the body, the food you eat in conjunction with the weather, probably stress (stress causes the adrenals to product more uric acid which can cause hyperuricemia), and I'm sure the list is longer but I'm tired and can't think very well.
There's a cookbook online called The Apsley Cookbook, I believe, which has a lot of very low purine recipes. However, it must have been published before they realized that cauliflower and oats contained appreciable amounts of purines. If I could eat even half of the foods in that book I would be happy. I may have to be on solely raw foods for the rest of my life, though. I would be happy to be able to eat a salad with some cheese and dressing made from cream. Maybe some day!
I've seen some sites that say that full fat dairy is a no no, but there are studies done that show that fat doesn't affect the amount of uric acid in the body. You might want to keep looking around on that before you cross it off your grocery list.
Matt, thanks for having this blog where people can brainstorm, which does help with the experimenting process.
I can't really explain right now what the fact that some people in Haiti have to eat dirt because they can't afford food does to my mind, but I just feel like mentioning it. Have to go, tired.
Take care,
Betsy
Betsy-
Before you fall too far into the Ray Peat vortex, you might want to google…
"Fructose-induced hyperuricemia"
White sugar is 50% fructose, and more capable of causing hyperuricemia than anything on the high-purine list – from a root/causal perspective (I know purine-rich foods may aggravate your condition, but they certainly didn't cause it).
Matt, I do realize that all Ray Peat's ideas are not true. But I can tell that purine rich foods aggravate my condition much more than sugar. Way back when I used to eat no sugar or fruit, and would make pots of split pea soup or cauliflower soup, I would have so many uric acid symptoms, but I didn't know what was causing them.
Actually, though, Ray Peat doesn't have a problem with uric acid. He even suggests that coffee is good for you because of it's caffeine, which is a purine. He says that uric acid is an antioxidant, and therefore, drink coffee for it's antioxidant factor.
I do know that I can't eat strawberries, oranges, or pineapples without them causing uric acid problems. Maybe that is what the studies mean. But Alexander Haig says that fruit can bring the uric acid into solution, which may be why it's causing hyperuricemia. I really don't know. I would have to find someone who never ate many purines and feed them lots of fruit and then measure their blood uric acid levels. I cannot really say what of anything is fact. All I can do is keep trying different foods and see what causes pain and what doesn't. One thing I know is I have to eat.
Betsy
Isn't the problem the body's ability to get rid of purine? I thought fructose was shown to interfere with this? Also, alcohol does as well. (Lots of meat, lots of booze=gout). Seems to me it's easier to cut fructose and alcohol than to quit eating foods with uric acid.
Yes. I don't think there's any question that fructose and alcohol are more the causal sources of the metabolic problem that results in poor purine metabolism.
But in my experience, cutting those out doesn't always cure the condition, and by far the most powerful "medicine" for it in the short-term, and keeping symptoms down, is to avoid purines and other things causing acute (not chronic) spikes in uric acid.
Matt,
Aren't purines found in meat, and perhaps other animal foods?
Do you think milk consumption is the reason why some cultures are traditionally taller than others? If you check the Wikipedia page for human height, it notes even northern Europeans were a lot shorter in the nineteenth century. And I assume their diet wasn't much different except for amount, namely that food was not as abundant.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for this article. It is a great summary of the benefits of a raw milk diet.
We found a great source for raw milk from Jersey fed cows about six months ago. I have struggled with colitis and “leaky gut” resulting in autoimmune disorders since childhood. I started drinking a lot of raw milk and my intestines felt absolutely wonderful. I had no intestinal pain which is rather remarkable since I have never been able to tolerate dairy at all.
The problem is I gained about ten pounds, and I already needed to lose 30. I did not exclusively drink milk though, but was drinking 1/2 gallon of milk and eating one to two small meals per day, and I did drink coffee.
My question is, since I REALLY want to loose weight and feel better, how much milk would you recommend I drink on the raw milk diet to heal the gut AND lose weight? I’ve read that you really need to drink a gallon a day, but I am so afraid of gaining weight. I am 46, and I think my metabolism has really slowed down.
That should say, “Jersey, grass fed cows.” Sorry.
I’ve enjoyed your coverage of the benefits of raw milk. I recently just finished working on an infographic that explores some amazing facts concerning milk, both pasteurized and raw. I thought I would share it with you in the hopes you might make some use of it. Here’s the link: http://onlinemastersinpublichealth.com/milk-matters/
Best,
Jack
What is the content of epa/dha in Raw milk and in Kefir?
Thanks for your help – Peace – Locke