Hi all,

Though a strong believer in raw, I have been living on a mostly cooked
diet. This is because after a few days in raw land (about 4-6), my
breath becomes a lethal weapon (causing my wife to joke about my
"instinko" diet, and make half-joking threats to sleep in another room,
since the whole bedroom reeks of my mediciny breath.)

In the past, I tried everything possible to counter this: massive
quantities of chlorophyll, pranayama, speeding detox, waiting it out,
etc, but with zero luck.

This time I started taking massive quantities of cassia every morning.
(Started with one disk, then worked my way up to 15). Though my diet is
not instincto (I do things like blended salads), I follow the guidelines
of taking cassia early morning, then avoiding food till an early lunch
of fruit.

The cassia works very predictably: after about an hour and 15 minutes
after I eat, my stomach starts feeling cramped. About an hour after that
the bowels move (rather dramatically.) And when you go, you really HAVE
TO GO! (So I arrange my schedule around this.)

Anyway, I'm approaching 6 FULL weeks of RAW, and by breath is still
normal!
The cassia also appears to have prevented the other symptoms I normally
get when I go raw, such as fatigue/lethargy and mild skin problems.

The stomach cramps when on 15 cassia disks can be rather severe, so I
have now cut back to about 5. I'll up the dosage if there are any
symptoms of mediciny breath. The disks are really tasty, and I fear that
if I kept eating till a taste change, I'd probably consume most of my
stash.

I got my initial stash of cassia from a friend who smuggled them in from
Pangaia. (Apparently the US Agriculture Dept. frowns on imports of fruit
from Hawaii.) When I ran out, I got Manis to "de-pod" and bottle some.
It turns out that if you ship the disks in a bottle, then they don't
constitute fruit, hence don't risk getting confiscated.

The other change I made in my raw experiment this time was the addition
of RAF (egg whites and sashimi). This seems to have made a difference as
well. On my previous vegan raw diets, after a few days I get a light,
disconnected feeling, which is pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.
It seems that the RAF has a kind of "grounding" effect. i.e. routine
aches and tensions are still draining out, yet I remain comfortably
connected with my body, if that makes any sense. The only downside :-(
is that yoga is less pleasurable, since there is a lower delta between
the post-work-pre-yoga stressed-out me, and the post-yoga relaxed me.

I was inspired by Zephyr's book, and by Kirt, to give the cassia a shot,
and I'm really grateful. A couple of things still bother me:
Eating just the raw egg whites and risking the B deficiency, or
including the yolks. (My cholesterol was extremely high even when I was
a vegan. I don't want to take any risks till I have more facts than just
a passing reference in Severen's book that whole raw eggs will not
hurt.)

I also think that the RAF is preventing that perpetually hungry feeling
that I used to have in past vegan raw experiments.

My strength levels have increased. ( I gauge them by the amount of time
I can stay in a handstand. I had left off for about 4 weeks after being
into raw, then went into a handstand and found I was able to stay up
significantly longsr.) My stamina has increased. (I measure this by the
number of sunsalutes I can do.)
My thinking and concentration have improved significantly as well.
Furthermore, after about 10 hours of almost-continual staring at my
monitor screen, my eyes don't appear to bother me as much.

One thing that bothers me is that I'm starting to look too thin. I'm
normally 6'2" and 190-200lb. I was about 180lb when I started the
experiment. Now I'm down to about 175 after six weeks of raw, and I
don't want to get any thinner. I don't think I'm losing any significant
muscle mass, but for my own vain reasons, I think I need to gain more
muscle to compensate for the fat I'm losing. (I'm losing it everywhere
else except around my stomach :-().

I have raw egg-whites, barley green powder and fruit for lunch (try to
stay in the zone.) Actually, I have two lunches at 10/11AM and 3/4PM.
At 8PM have sashimi or egg-whites, followed by a creative salad of
sprouts, veggies, avocado, seaweed. Finally fruit. (I have been adding
brewer's yeast and miso - I wonder if this violates raw.)

I'm really excited about getting over the hurdle of detox bad breath.
Six weeks on raw is even better than I thought it would be!
This may sound silly, but I think the de-toxification has a similar
cathartic effect on the mind and emotions: I feel I'm calmer and
happier. Maybe it is because my body is less tense. WOW! all this stuff
in 6 weeks! I thought it would take months of detox pains first. I think
cassia is awesome!

My flexibility doesn't appear to have improved though, and my Yoga is
about the same (a bit less pleasurable as I described earlier). My
martial arts training has improved as well, due to my stamina
improvements. I also get less frustrated from lack of progress. I'm also
a lot more alert in the evenings and mornings, hence it helps my
attempts at meditation.

Regards,

Roy