Hi Liza,

>Probably no better medicine on earth!  ;)<

Yes, I'm thinking this, and I've tried many, many 'natural/medicine'
approaches to health - eg improved diet with supplements, hormones,
amino-acids, etc., the whole package even based on measuring the levels of
all the different substances, and while it helped it never seemed to get to
the fundamental, underlying health-foundation.

>Did you have a problem with constipation, or for some reason
feel you need help to eliminate?<

I just know that during the past week, my stools temporarily became very
hard, mucousy and difficult to expel, so I felt some temporary help was in
order with the senna laxative - I didn't actually use a fiber-colon cleanse
as my food itself had lots of fiber. Once this came out, it was almost like
the floodgates broke loose.

>How do you know its toxic materials?  And how do you know its old, and
not just yesterday's foods?<

Well, I have a nose! For eight weeks of eating clean, almost all raw food,
after the first week my stools had very little odor the whole time. So the
fact that suddenly, while eating raw food with little fat that I'm
digesting very well with little gas, I'm eliminating stuff that is very
greasy and extremely rancid in odor, it was pretty obvious.

>Again - just a question to consider here - why do you feel its extra
material you're carrying around in your colon, and not just weak muscles
in your lower abdomen, due to age and not enough excercise there? Or
overeating having possibly stretched things out down there?<

I had some brief success with colon cleansing about two years ago. I was
eating a high fiber, low calorie, low protein diet to try to detoxify, and
taking psyllium and other fiber-based products, and after a few weeks I
began eliminating. It got to where some days I was eliminating from 6 to 8
times a day, and again with a pretty clean diet lots of foul odory stuff.
It was amazing that the total amount coming out qas much more than the
volume coming in. Another indication it was old was that I was eating lots
of chlorella every day and had been for weeks (to remove mercury since I
had had the fillings removed only a few months earlier), yet these
elimations had no green color at all but rather were ropes of light brown
material. During that time my little abdominal mound shrunk.

Unfortunately before the elimination process slowed on its own I brought it
to a complete halt one night by eating a potato then some 2% pasteurized
yogurt (pretty inevitable since on that diet I was always hungry). I was
unable to re-start the process, and within a month continuing on the diet I
ran into trouble - I had lost weight and developed hypothyroidism.

So for two years I've known this disease-causing stuff has been in there,
but until just the past week I could not find a safe way to get it out. And
I've eaten a good whole-foods, no-sugar diet the whole time, although an
occasional bad restaurant meal a few times a month on average didn't help
my cause. A few months ago I even had a series of colonics and all they did
was get new stuff out more quickly. I'm just so happy to have discovered
RAF since I think it will allow me to continue this process as long as I
need without developing the problems I had last time.

>The reason I mentioned it, is because it is so tempting to jump to
simplistic conclusions about which foods are doing what, and how our
health or mental problems can all be solved if we do such and such with
food, and adopt rigid diet regimes based on these erroneous conclusions,
and maybe be confused when our actual health doesn't seem to coincide
with our expectations about our imagined health.<

This is a good point. When I think of how I've struggled to overcome what
has been a vague chronic but comaratively minor illness - compared to
people with bad cases of MS, diabetes CFIDS or whatever - I'm very
realistic about the limits of specific healing regimens and skeptical of
claims that some particular diet will cure most or all illnesses
(especially diet alone).

>most definatly are not necessary for good health!<

I went to the farmers market at the UN Plaza the have each Sunday at San
Fran two weeks ago, and the thought occurred to me that everything a person
needs for good nutritional wellness was available there - lots of veggies,
some fruit, a few grain products, a few nuts and seeds, fresh pressed olive
oil, and some eggs and fish. All very fresh, and for very little money,
supplying high quality nutrition simply if these natural foods were the
only foods eaten, and eaten in a reasonable, common-sense balance (and of
course, mostly raw!). 

Paul