Hi Joseph,

For everyone Joseph posted a message just a few postings ago and I wanted to reply to it on the main Blog.

I’ve had a diagnosis of M.E/CFS for about 20 months now and one of the first things I did when I got my diagnosis was to go Vegan. It wasn’t a hard decision to make as I had been thinking about doing it for about 6 months before I did, the only thing that had stopped me was the fact that I felt so unwell and I didn’t want to change anything before I knew what was going on in my body.

Now you have asked how this has impacted on my M.E? Well this is a hard one to answer, because I was so sick to start with and I was still very sick up until I took a few months off over Christmas this year to give myself a break and time to heal I can’t say. What I can say is that my Doctor thinks my recovery time after I have had a low is quicker and I look really healthy. This can be a pain too as people think if you look ok you can’t be sick, can it can cause some friction at work, but I try not to let that get to me.

I think one of the most important things about living with M.E is the fact that you have to stop spending all your time and energy fighting it. You kinda just have to go ok I’m sick today but if I rest I will hopefully not feel as bad tomorrow.
As far as Being Vegan goes it is now such a big part of my life. If someone said to me a few years ago that I would be Vegan, growing my own vegetables and thinking of moving to the country I would have thought you mad. I can’t understand why people put something that is dead and rotting in their bodies, it can’t be good for you. When they talk on the T.V about meat being hung for seven days to improve its flavour, I can’t help but remember a dead bird I once saw as a kid, it had only been dead a day when I first came across it and already it was starting to decay, by the time it was day two and three it was rotting, smelly and filled with maggots.

I guess what I’m trying to say is if you want to live and live well you should only put living food inside your body.
This brings me nicely on to Raw/Living Vegan food, now I’m not going to harp on about this bit because I don’t know a huge amount about it, but what I can tell you about is what effect it has had on me and how it has changed me. I should point out to you that I do run the other way a little when I look at Raw/Living food websites, the people on them look stick thin and I have to say a little unwell. Now I know they are not but I don’t think anyone should be that thin, but then that’s just my view.
I am about 90% raw at the moment and I would love to be 100% but I have to say I do still like to sit down with Baz and have a meal that I have cooked and eat at the same time. You see he’s not a big raw fan, though give him his due he did stick to Juicing for two weeks with me. I think he just likes warm food and that’s fine with me. Raw food dose take some time to make if you want something a bit more exciting than a salad and time is not my friend when I’m so busy at work.

So I should stop twittering on and get to my point… Which is ‘I feel so bloody good eating Raw’, I wish I could get everyone to do it. I’m sleeping about 6 hours max, my IBS has cleared up (apart from if I eat cooked food). I have had no big M.E symptoms in over a month, in fact I was tied for the first time the other day and it felt so good because it was a real tied not an M.E tied, I’d been up for over 24 hours and I just needed to sleep. I’ve lost some weight (this is always a good thing), I’ve not had a day off sick this month and even my boss has said I was getting better and my health wouldn’t be an issue in me getting a promotion.

This has turned out to be a really long posting (I always said I wouldn’t do that, but hay once in a while I’m sure you don’t mind). I will I’m sure post a bit more about being Raw but for now I will leave it there.

I hope this answers your question Joseph if you have any more or want to chat you can always e-mail me at veganbear@mac.com.

Bear. x