CHANGES FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL NOW

AFTER 2 MONTHS I noticed that I had stronger hair and nails, which became whiter! I was on a 80% right diet with occasional splurges on cheese (I chose goat as it is lower in protein. In allergies, it is the proteins that we cannot digest).

IN 3RD MONTH (as soon as I started taking probiotics and stopped eating all irritating foods) I noticed the eczema rash vanishing for the first time! This is also when I learned that I was allergic to tomatoes and vinegars.
Eczema remained only around my fingers, but it completely vanished from both sides of my palms! Itching happened only if I unknowingly ate a food that I was allergic to (or it contained traces of it - like citrus and tomato). My body was extremely sensitive!

IN 4TH MONTH my skin is 90% completely renewed and eczema free!!! Even the skin on my  index finger which used to be all ruined and lost it's sense of feeling, even that skin got renewed and the feeling returned!!!! Only skin around my fingers is still a bit dry and sensitive, BUT NO SIGN OF ECZEMA! That is so amazing - the power of food - the right food for me is so wonderful!!! I am loving my hands now!

IN 5TH MONTH. I had a tomato and had no reaction! I learned that my body is able to digest small amounts of tomatoes without allergic reactions. Eczema is still gone and I am doing great! I am finding natural, raw vegan substitutes for desserts and learning how to prepare them. Yes, I still struggle from time to time when I see what other people have on their plates, but my will is strong. I know the pain that that kind of food caused me (physically and emotionally) and knowledge of that pain motivated me to stay on my Healthy Path. I am so glad.
I developed a motto: If it takes 1-5 min to eat and enjoy something and it will then take a whole day of eczema agony (scratching my skin off), then it is not worth it!

6TH MONTH: My skin is 100% normal, no dryness, no sign that there was eczema there ever! I must stay on this diet since it is obviously the best diet for my body, the only one that supports it and heals it! Frankly I do not have any desire any more for foods that made me sick in the first place! This is the time when I did not crave unhealthy foods any more!

I however did notice something very new - My raw food intake has been quite greater than in the beginning, it was just easier to eat super rich salads than to cook. Result: I HAVE A LOT MORE ENERGY THAN EVER BEFORE! I tire less frequently and if I do tire I get up faster! I need less sleep! Before I needed 8 hours (I could always stretch it to 10) and now I am done sleeping after 6 or 7. Even if I only get 4 hours of sleep, I go through my day with no tiredness, bags under my eyes or sleepiness! Wow! :-)

FURTHER CLEANSE:
When I began to eat basically 99% raw vegan foods, my body got enough energy to begin to "clean the house".I got typical symptoms of "healing crisis", when the old toxins that were inside my organs and tissues begin to be flushed away, often through the skin. 

Dr Stanley Bass  N.D.D.C.PhD says >>When the quality of food coming into the body is of higher quality than the tissue that the body is made of, the body begins to discard the lower grade materials and tissues and makes room for the superior materials that make new and healthier tissue.<<

The symptoms I got were: hives all over my torso, eczema on a couple of fingers, terrible tiredness, occasional sweat chills and constipation.

COFFEE ENEMAS AND JUICING

I read that this process can take months and I knew how to speed it up. I began to study lectures by Charlotte Gerson (see the upper page Holistic Doctors) and knew I needed to start doing coffee enemas! Coffee enemas are a great help in detoxification, for the caffeine in the rectum stimulates the liver to release a lot of bile. The toxins that liver held inside itself are released in that bile. The bile is flushed into the colon, so daily coffee enemas are needed in order to keep eliminating the toxins and preventing them from being reabsorbed into the blood stream.

Another thing that is flushed out with the toxic bile are some nutrients. Those we must replenish with 2-3 glasses of vegetable juices per 1 coffee enema! If we do not do that part we can become anemic!
Before you begin this cleanse, you  m u s t  educate yourself on the details of it (what kind of coffee to use what kind not to use, how to administer it, what to expect etc)
It is very important that we know exactly what we are doing! Here is Charlotte Gerson's lecture on coffee enemas and detoxification. Her father, Max Gerson began using coffee enemas in his practice with great results. He is the one who spent his life researching the process of detoxification and juicing!

MY 'Speedy' DETOX:
I purchased Omega 8005 juicer (see a demo link to your right) and began juicing 2-3x a day and doing 1 coffee enema a day for 3 months! My healing crisis symptoms went away very quickly.
During this time I released a lot of toxins:
- old mucus from my colon walls,
- orange sulfur from liver (sulfur is from antibiotics which I took a decent share in my life)
- and even a few liver stones!!!!
After 3 months I felt it was enough and resumed 1 coffee enema per week for another 2 months until I felt i was done. So in a rough sense I had 6 months of detoxification under my belt and after that time I was in a new cycle with 0 detox symptoms of any kind! Finally! :-)

p.s.
based on my later research you do not have to do what I have done in order to detoxify. You can get there without coffee enemas. You may have more external detox symptoms, but you will go through them nonetheless (see Donia Alawi's story).

You can also do fruit fast with green juices. I would actually recommend unless you feel attracted to do what I have done. Fruit fasting is amazing as fruits are super hydrating, have a lot of energy, nutrients and are excellent cleansers. It is easier to fill up on fruits than salads. You can eat them, you can make fruit smoothies, fruits with greens smoothies, etc.
It is far more enjoyable and beneficial to do this than try to eat salads all day. Just add at least one green juice or smoothie a day. You can have salad too (use orange + lemon for dressing or if allergic, use mango+cucumber or mango+celery) but without starchy vegetables as they do not mix well with fruit. Use tomato on your salad and sprouts.

JUICING:
Juicing made a huge difference in my health:
- the whites on my nails went away (I could never eat enough greens to achieve that),
- my energy increased dramatically,
- I got color in my cheeks
- I began jogging again (I have not done that in years)!
- I sleep 5-6 hours now and feel completely rested
- I look and feel lighter and healthier
This is also the most important part in alkalizing the body, giving it a lot of nutrients! Charlotte Gerson speaks on juicing as well, so I recommend that you follow her steps.

It has been over a year and a half since I first changed my diet. I went from 75% raw vegan to 99% raw vegan and back to 75% raw vegan. This ratio changes based on my lifestyle and what is possible for me at a moment. But juicing is the main part of my diet, without juicing my body would not receive nearly enough nutrients! I do NOT take any vitamin pills since I find them useless! The only nutrients that are compatible with my body are natural, organic, in their natural state.
Whole is always better than the parts!

Wishing you eczema free life! kb

How I Began

I began by following the diet by Donia, a lady whose website has helped me.
I wanted to do EXACTLY what she did in order to get the same result.
I was yet to buy the right juicer, but it was a start....
I had to eat a bit more than her, but that was ok, we live in different bodies.

I had NO MORE breads, cheese, milk, soy, any lecithin (which they put everywhere), wheat, meat, sugar, chocolate, processed foods, cereal, beans (except lima beans), bad oils, margarine, etc... I could have some salmon once a week or goat cheese if I had to. I had to find manna bread which is made of sprouted rye (not wheat) and it was yummy, like a cake!
My husband was making funny faces because I started cooking! I am not a cooking type - my previous label I used to wear - well, no more! I do cook now!

My stomach was very sensitive as it was too acidic. My breakfast became fruit smoothies. Changing breakfast was a bit strange but I must add that after a week or so, when my body became more alkaline it felt amazing and it remains my favorite way to begin a day! I feel light yet full.

During my grocery shopping I had to remember to buy really large amounts of fruits and veggies. I would eat 3-4 bananas a day, 2-3 apples, and other fruit such as grapes, pears, pineapple, etcI had to learn to eat more vegetables than fruit. Juicer is a perfect solution for this goal!


So my eating system was like that :
BREAKFAST - Fruit smoothie (banana, apple (those two are a must) and pear or peach or what you want). I like to add 2 spoons of cold pressed coconut oil.
LUNCH - steamed or sauteed veggies, with salmon or brown rice. Lightly steamed veggies are alkaline, but rice and salmon are not, so I would have one or the other, not both together.
I ate salmon or goat cheese once a week for a couple of months, then I gave up animal products all together. That was my choice, it does not have to be yours as well. 
LUNCH 2 -large salad with avocado
DINNER - a green juice would be ideal.
I had salads for dinner until I got a juicer. My salads contained (with kale and chard and spinach for greens) with raw carrot, celery, avocado, steamed string beans (I like that) and sometimes baked potatoes. My dinner was by 8pm.
If I was hungry later I would have something easy to digest, something natural and moist, like apple+carrot mesh, or banana+apple mesh, or dates, or cucumber salad, etc


During this time, my first 2 months I did not see any improvement on my hands. My only consolation was that Donia saw her first results after 3 months (do read her amazing story!). I was reading her words every time I was dying to rub the bones off my hands! (so to speak)
Each body performs cleansing in its own way and time.
For mine it took 3 months to see improvements on my hands and in the 4th month eczema was gone! :-)  My hair and nails looked stronger and shinier, I felt better too!

STEP 1 - preparation

PREPARATION
The diet is based on 75% alkaline foods and 25% acidic foods. That creates a nice chemical balance withing the body. No extremes.
The scientists have discovered that sick people's body ph balance was acidic while healthy ones' was alkaline

1) SUPPLEMENTS - MOST IMPORTANT!

Probiotics 3x a day with food for healthy colon bacterias (or as it says on the bottle). I get them in a pill for which is way more potent than eating those beneficial bacterias in plain yogurt! Find the kind that agrees with you the best.
You will need Acidophiles and Bifidus. That is the basic and most potent for a healthy colon! Buy the ones that are stored in refrigerator, they are the best!
Our toxic lifestyle (chlorinated water, antibiotics, meats, dairy, white flour, etc) depleats the body of the good, natural flora, bacterias and promotes overgrowth of bad bacteria (candida is one of them) which is the first step towards constipation, toxic overload of the liver, blood, skin problems, bad breath, bad body odor, fungi, etc

Digestive Enzymes: they aid us in digesting food in the stomach. We take them before eating, especially any cooked meals! Best to get those that are derived from food, not synthetic ones. I recommend SBG Zymes Plus. They are also microblended with Blue Green Algae which is a great supplement!

Fruits and vegetables contain digestive enzymes in them so when we eat them raw we can digest them. When we cook them or blend them, the enzymes are destroyed and the body has to take them from our organs (pancreas) in order to do digest. That is very stressful for the body, especially if the production of the enzymes is lesser (as we age) and the body has to take them from the bones which pulls calcium out of solution (enzymes keep minerals and vitamins in, they bind them together).


Blue Green Algae contains 40+ minerals essential for our health (again, our foods used to have them in them from the soil, but due to the industrail farming they now contain perhaps 8 instead of 50 minerals!)

ORGANIC COLD PRESSED Hemp Oil and Flax Seed Oil are packed with Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids. They have the highest rate of Omega 3. According to Erasmus, Oil expert, Hempp oil is the best oil there is. Flax seed oil follows is by the hair.
These oils are essential, the body uses them to repair skin, cell maintenance, vein maintenance, etc
You cannot cook with them. Use them in your smoothies, pour them over you salad, in your juices, etc

2) FOODS

stick with organic foods! Avoid any food that is packaged, in a box container etc. Let it be fresh and living if possible. In this detoxifying process we DO NOT need any additional chemicals and preservatives. Go to your local Whole Foods Market or Farmer's Market, they have a wider variety of veggies and fruit. Ask people how they would prepare this or that. You will be surprised at how many foods you were missing before! You will begin to see what it really means to eat healthy and you will feel it, too!

Protein: frequently asked question! In our culture there is a false belief that we need a lot of proteins in order to live or feel well. That is not so. We are not carnivore beings, we are plant eaters (based on our digestive system and obvious proof that one cannot gain health on meat alone, but can do so on plant based diet alone)! We need our vegetable based proteins, not animal ones! You will get enough of it in one cup of oatmeal or carrot juice or a small hand full of nuts or a big hand full of kale and spinach.

People often feel hungry when they stop eating meat. That has nothing to do with lack of protein as it does with NOT ENOUGH OF CALORIES. Meat is a slow and hard to digest food and it is full of calories. It sits in out stomach for quite some time, giving us a feeling of fullness. Eating meat-free foods only means that we have to eat more often and get educated about vegetables.

3) JUICING

The purpose is to give the body as many nutrients as possible and when we drink our vegetables, we can drink a lot more than what we could eat. Plus we have a bad habit of not chewing our food well enough, so a lot of the nutrients which are IN the food, cannot be extracted since the food just "falls through us". By juicing it you eliminate that problem.
 Another very very important tip about juicing is having the right juicer! We cannot have the usual electric ones which have a blade inside. They rotate too fast, create too much heat and throw food particles all over the glass container. That treatment kills a lot of very important enzymes which are in the food and which is what our body needs!
The best juicer that is not too expensive is Omega 8005. It does not blend, cut your food, but it works on a press principle. It squeezes food and separates pulp from juice so that you can drink in 1 glass 4 carrots, 3 kale leaves, 2 apples, cucumber, etc which would take a lot longer to eat. See a demo here: 

You can also add another attachment (comes with) and juice with pulp, you can also make nut butters, fruit sorbet, and more. I own it and I love it!

SMOOTHIES 

Blenders like Vitamix are great to make nut sauces and many more things, but the extremely fast blending speed creates too much heat which is what kills the enzymes in food! Raw foodists who use this blender use also a lot of ice to keep the heat down.
In order to make my morning smoothes I use a cheap slower blender and instead of water I use fresh squeezed juice from my press juicer. That way each ingredient is full of enzymes and I only add bananas and pear and blend for 3 sec.

4) CLEANING THE COLON

I found it extremely beneficial! I would recommend COLON HYDROTHERAPY first. There a therapist will clean your WHOLE colon! It may take 2 sessions to achieve that. In our colon we have years of old toxins glued to its walls, disabling us to absorb nutrients and slowing down the colon's movements.Colon hydrotherapy also removes all bad bacteria and parasites. You will also notice loss in weight and be surprised how much of your weight was actual feces!
After that as you take probiotics to keep the colon's friendly bacteria flourishing and you will begin to juice and eat alkaline food with a high raw intake, you will not need colon hydrotherapy more than once a year.
You can also do enemas at home if constipation occurs. I do it once a week. I use distilled water per 1-2 or more gallons of water and in it I put 1 spoon of organic coffee. Coffee is acidic and so is our colon. Just water may be too harsh for it. NEVER use tap water as it contains chlorine which is a toxic gas known to kill all bacterias, including the beneficial ones!

6) WEIGHT LOSS
Chances are you will lose weight. I did. People have different body metabolisms and not everyone will lose a lot of weight. The main thing is calories! Keep them in and keep them coming and you will be fine!

For men who are concerned in this area, see the video in the link on your right: HOW TO GAIN WEIGHT ON VEGAN OR RAW DIET. It is a body builder, 15 years vegan male speaking about his diet and workout and showing off his muscles. He consumes a lot of soy. I do not recommend this during a healing process. Use other protein sources such as hemp protein which is a lot easier to digest and healthier, or grain, nuts etc. And remember that protein is for tissue building, NOT weight gaining! If you are not pumping muscles and just want to gain weight, eat starches!


7) HOUSEHOLD
Try to stay away from toxic chemicals. Do not touch them, do not inhale them. Try to use natural cleaning supplies, like baking soda and white distilled vinegar.
Throw away aluminum cooking ware and buy stainless steel! Aluminum leaks in high heat!

9) DO NOT CHEAT

Going out with friends and eating what they are eating despite your plan is not going to produce the results. People will tell you "Oh, it is ok to cheat just this time". Do not listen to others! Start empowering yourself with the power of your own will! You can do it! I did! Many others did,too!

10) One last tip : Remember, the 1st month is the worst one! After that you will begin to actually enjoy your new diet of simple dishes! You will be stronger when going out with family on picnics and you will be the only one bringing your own food. It will become ok. You will be ok with it! And you will actually gain self control! Wow!









These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This is anecdotal evidence based on my own experience and observations. Following or using my personal treatment as illustrated in this blog is at your own risk.