I always love hearing other people’s testimonies about how simply changing their diet to an all natural, raw vegan lifestyle helped them eliminate their health issues. And when they are healed, they no longer need to see the doctor, spend money on pharmaceuticals, or need to continue to take prescription drugs that poison their system. There are thousands of testimonies on the web of people who have been healed of all kinds of debilitating and chronic diseases, easily lost weight, and gained significantly more energy. Below are just a few people who overcame their health issues and are making a difference by helping others do the same.

In his book, Your Natural Diet, David Klein writes about how he got fed up with seeing doctors, having a myriad of tests run, and taking tons of prescription medicine for his Colitis and Crohn’s diseases. Someone told him about eating a whole living food diet, and to eliminate all animal products. It wasn’t easy, but when he started to make that transition, his colitis and IBS flare-ups began to subside. He committed to a 100% raw food vegan diet, and immediately began to feel better than he ever had felt before. This was almost 20 years ago. He went on to get his Ph.D in nutrition, and has been counseling others in transitioning to a natural vegan diet ever since. Today over 1,000 clients have been healed since 1993 on his medically endorsed vegan diet healing plan. On one of his sites: http://www.colitis-crohns.com/ he says:

“99% of our clients heal and feel great in 2 to 8 weeks by their own self-healing power. This is not a quick fix. No other plan results in health. Find out why natural hygiene is the true path to health. …”

His testimony is amazing, as are many, many others who have made the change to a vegan, whole food, natural diet. I still refer to one of his great books: Your Natural Diet, I would encourage anyone interested in learning more about the “diet that heals” to get this book.

David Wolfe is another very well known raw foodist and is considered by peers to be one of the world’s leading authorities on nutrition. David is the author of Naked Chocolate, Eating For Beauty and The Sunfood Diet Success System. David works, in conjunction with Sunfood Nutrition™, to develop, market and distribute some of the world’s most wonderful and exotic organic food items. David and Sunfood Nutrition™ (formerly Nature’s First Law) were the first to bring raw and organic: cacao beans/nibs (raw chocolate), goji berries, Incan berries, cacao butter, cacao powder, powdered encapsulated mangosteen, maca extract and cold-pressed coconut oil into general distribution in North America. Known for extraordinary quality control and ethical production, these products and many others developed by David and Sunfood Nutrition™ lead the field. David Wolfe has degrees in mechanical and environmental engineering, political science, a juris doctor in law, and a masters in living-food nutrition. He has studied at many institutions including Oxford University. Currently, David still participates in higher education as a professor of nutrition for Dr. Gabriel Cousens’ masters degree program on live-food nutrition. David Wolfe is the middle son of two medical doctors, which provides him with a unique perspective in the health field. Since 1995, David Wolfe has given over 1,000 health lectures and seminars in the United States, Canada, Europe, the South Pacific, Central America and South America. He hosts at least six health, fitness and adventure retreats each year at various retreat centers around the world. David is the founder of the non-profit Fruit Tree Planting Foundation (www.ftpf.org) whose goal is to plant 18 billion fruit trees on planet Earth. David is also the founder of, and leading contributor to, the internet’s only Peak Performance and Nutrition online magazine: www.thebestdayever.com. David may not have any real great testimonies about personal healing, but for someone who travels constantly, doing seminars, and sharing his knowledge, his busy schedule is a testimony in and of itself for the raw food diet. You can see some videos I posted about him here.

Shelly Keck-Borsits went to hell and back with her health issues for many years before she made the connection of a raw, vegan food diet and her health. I wrote a post about her testimony here: http://raw4healing.com/health/dying-to-get-well and how she documented her story in a free ebook that you can download and read here:

http://www.abcinternetmarketing.com/dtgw/ebook/free/rawfoods/DTGW.pdf

She also bravely writes about the little known corporate conspiracy and cover up by the food manufacturing industries, and the medical and pharmaceutical industries. They are not concerned about improving your health, they’re primarily in business to make money, at the risk of your health!

I could write for days about all the testimonies of people getting healed by simply following a pure, natural, vegan diet. Not even necessarily 100% raw food, as it may seem pretty radical to some people. I’ve heard of health improvements on an 85% raw food diet. The main thing is to make the decision to stop eating packaged, processed, canned, pasteurized “food”. Food manufacturers spend more money on packaging and fancy color pictures on the boxes than they do on the junk inside!! More money is spent on preservatives, food colorings, and MSG than on the so-called food itself! It’s all about getting the consumer to see it, and then want it. They don’t care if it’s healthy for you. Remember, like I’ve said in my other posts, just follow the money trail.

But let me focus on the title of this post: Raw Food Diet Cures Fibromyalgia. I recently read Alissa Cohen’s book: “Living On Live Food” (which includes a DVD) and enjoyed it very much. She teaches a raw food certification course, and she shares many tasty recipes as well as her own personal story. She was, what she calls a ‘quasi-vegetarian’ when she was sixteen. She wasn’t specifically concerned about health benefits, animal rights issues, or environmental concerns at the time. She just didn’t like red meat that much. Around this same time, she started working out in a gym, and began reading books on health and fitness. She read “Fit for Life”, “Diet for a Small Planet” and others promoting the vegetarian philosophy.

When she read John Robbin’s “Diet for a New America”, she immediately became a confirmed vegetarian. She was fascinated with Robbin’s theories on the physiological impact of eating animals, his exposition on its social, ecological, and economic consequences really blew her away. (It really impacted me, too, when I read John’s book; highly recommended reading!) As a result, she began reading more about how whole foods have a major influence on the overall health of our bodies.

Alissa thought that since she wasn’t eating meat, chicken, fish or eggs, that she was healthier than most people. But she was experiencing chronic illness, including constant yeast infections, and bladder infections. She was tired a lot, her skin was breaking out, she was having frequent headaches, and she couldn’t keep her weight down.

Seeing the doctor only aggravated her problem. He put her on antibiotics, which helped for a week or two. But she was constantly getting colds, her immune system was being weakened due to the continuous round of drugs she was taking. The various doctors she was seeing kept telling her she had a yeast infection, and kept prescribing her antibiotics and other drugs. This regime went on for two years! And she was getting worse. At the age of twenty-two, she began to feel like a very old lady, with no energy, tired and achy all the time.

Finally, a doctor recommended laparoscopy. This was to be exploratory surgery involving a fiber optical instrument to be inserted into the abdominal wall through the navel in order to examine the organs. It was painful and intrusive, and yielded no new information. And yet, further exploratory surgery was suggested. That’s when she said NO! No more!

As her depression grew worse, she began to listen to her gut feelings and researched holistic practices. When she wandered into a local health food store, and discovered a book call “The Yeast Connection”, she writes that “Purchasing and reading that book was a life changing decision for me.” She learned how the food she was eating was contributing to her yeast infection. She visited a holistic practitioner who confirmed what she had read in the book and he told her that changing her diet will help to rid herself of the yeast infections, and improve her immune system as well.

She had Candida and Fibromyalgia and a host of other ailments and after seeing the holistic practitioner, she immediately changed her diet to nothing but 100% raw vegan food. She found that when she ate so called good vegetarian foods (steamed veggies, rice, tofu, etc.) she would feel lethargic and foggy-headed. But her body would buzz and her energy began to soar when she ate raw fruits, vegetable, nuts and seeds. Her back didn’t hurt, her Candida went away within days! She couldn’t ignore how she felt when she ate raw compared to when she ate cooked food. The concept of eating whole foods full of life energy and enzymes made so much more sense than eating dead cooked foods.

At the time, the only information available was Dr. Ann Wigmore’s book “Recipes For a Longer Life”. She teaches how living foods create live bodies, dead foods produce dead bodies. This impacted Alissa so much she began eating only raw foods.

After just a few months on the raw food diet, Alissa had no symptoms of Fibromyalgia, her Candida was gone and she felt better then she had since her teenage years. Her energy shot through the roof and she began to look younger and younger, and was more positive and happy. Soon, she began to share this diet with others and found they got the same kind of results. She knew she had found the perfect way to eat for her and, for others as well.

Since then, Alissa became a nutritional counselor, polarity therapist and personal fitness trainer. She has certifications in energetic bodywork, holistic counseling and nutrition, and opened her own health food store. She was experimenting with raw food before much information was out there, and as result, began to teach herself and work with many well-respected teachers and trailblazers in the raw food movement.

So what is the best way to get into raw foods?

Everyone is different. The very first time I learned about raw foods was actually several years ago. I was researching the benefits of a vegan diet, and stumbled on some information about raw foods. I had also read Dr. Ann Wigmore’s book back in the late 1970’s about the health benefits, and cancer fighting properties of a raw food diet, but it just seemed like too much work. And that is really what many people first think when learning about a raw food diet. There is a little bit of a learning curve as well. Preparing meals with fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds is VERY different than what we grew up with. Learning to make a ‘cheese’ with raw cashew nuts or pine nuts, corn tortillas with a dehydrator, and noodles with zucchini is radically different than what we’re used to. But the benefits are so awesome, I can never go back.

I’ve been almost 100% raw for nearly a year now, having been a total vegan for many years before that. But it wasn’t until I started eating more raw fruits and vegetables, and learning to prepare delicious raw food meals, when my own health issues began to disappear. My skin rashes and scalp problems cleared up, my muscle and joint pains are gone, I no longer wake up with stiff, swollen hands in the morning (water retention), my hypoglycemia is gone, I sleep less, I weigh less than I did in high school, and I have more energy than I’ve ever had in my whole life. And my husband has lost over 30 pounds in less than three months, is able to reduce his asthma medicine, and has more energy than ever before.

For some people that decide to start eating a whole, living and raw food diet, they feel they need to transition slowly, while others are ready to jump right in. Generally, it is recommended that people should start 100% raw right away. Usually, when people go slow they simply just never get there. They’re not committed, and get side tracked and eventually lose momentum. When you’re not eating 100% raw, the results are slower and the motivation is lost since the results are not quick enough. Read books, search the internet, attend some local raw food classes and find out for yourself what the best way to do this diet is. I do think that raw food is for everyone but that doesn’t mean that everyone should have the same raw food diet. This diet can be tailored to your needs and your situation. No one way will work for everyone, some people eat mostly fruit, some more fats and proteins, others more of a mono diet and so forth. You need to experiment and see for yourself what works best.

I have found that for those new to this lifestyle, the easiest and healthiest way to transition is to go on a ‘juice feast’. A juice feast is simply blending fruits and vegetables in a high speed blender, and literally ‘drinking your food.’ This provides your body with the maximum amount of nutrition, is very filling and satisfying, and at the same time, it allows your body to detox. Many health issues are the result of built up toxins and poisons in your system from eating a standard American diet (SAD). On a juice feast, you don’t have to worry about preparing special raw food meals, take the time read some raw food books with recipes, and do some shopping. Some juice feasts can last from three days to 92 days, like the current Global Juice Feasting program.

There are some problems when people transition to a raw food diet. They might get too strict. They try to eat a mono diet. They start fasting. They cut out nuts. They start thinking one food is not good, that fruits are too high in sugar, they shouldn’t have as much fat, they should not eat too much, etc. Eating raw food is drastically different to what most people are used to eating. What makes people think that eating an extra piece of fruit or more raw nuts will be the worst think in the world when just a week before they were eating pizza, ice cream and Mexican food? On this diet, people tend to go to the extreme. Raw food is extreme enough for most people. Just relax around it and have fun with it. And some people think that a raw food diet consists of nothing but fruit and salads all the time. Oh, it is so much more than that! There are so many awesome and wonderful, easy to prepare raw food recipes that are alive with flavor, and full of nutrition and enzymes.

Another major pitfall is not having food in your house. You need to make sure you have enough food so that when you get hungry you can eat! For some reason when people go raw, they don t think they need to have a lot of raw food in their home. But you would have cooked food if you were eating a cooked food diet! Make sure you know how to make some good raw food meals so when you re hungry you know how to whip something up so you don t find yourself driving to the nearest fast food chain restaurant.

In summary, if you are really serious about improving your health, losing weight, and having more energy than you know what to do with, then you want to learn all you can about how to change your diet to a natural, vegan raw food lifestyle. Think of it as an investment, not only in your own health, but in your family, children and even your friends. Once you begin to share the benefits of this new lifestyle, think of the impact you will have on those around you. Especially children. Do you realize that children raised on a raw food diet are healthier, smarter, and have far less discipline problems? They do not have ADHD symptoms, obesity problems, (both of which are now considered to be at epidemic proportions with our children today), or even discipline issues. If parents were to change their diet in addition to putting their children on a raw food diet for just two weeks, they would never look back. I know I never did!!