Chapter 2 – What Was Missing In Our Raw Food Plan?

My husband, our two youngest children, and I have been eating an only raw foods diet since January of 1994, more than eleven years. We went on this radical diet out of complete despair when our medical doctors didn’t leave us any chances to recover from our horrible illnesses.

My husband, Igor, had been constantly ill since his early childhood. By the tender age of 17 he had already survived nine surgeries. Having progressive hyperthyroidism and chronic rheumatoid arthritis, at 38 he was a total health wreck. I had to lace his shoes on rainy days because his arthritic spine would not bend. lgor’s heart rate was 140+ most of the time, his eyes were tearing on sunny days and his hands were shaky. Igor constantly felt fatigued and was in pain almost all the time. lgor’s “thyroid” doctor told him that he would die in less than two months if he would not agree to have his thyroid gland removed. His “arthritis” doctor told him to prepare to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair.

I was diagnosed with the same disease that took my father; arrhythmia, or an irregular heart beat. My legs were constantly swollen from edema. I weighed 280 pounds, and I was continuously gaining more. My left arm frequently became numb at night and I was afraid that I would die and my children would become orphans. I remember always feeling tired and depressed.

Our daughter Valya was born and allergies and would often cough heavily all through the night. Our son Sergei was diagnosed with juvenile type I diabetes.

One day, after crying through the entire night, I decided that we had to take a different action if we wanted to get different results. That was when we started to try various healing modalities and eventually arrived at the idea of becoming raw foodists. At he time we didn’t know anything about making fancy raw dishes or even that we could dehydrate flax crackers. Nevertheless, by turning off the pilot in our stove and discontinuing all cooking, we were able to heal all of our incurable, life-threatening diseases. Our health was improving so quickly that in three and a half months all four of us ran the Bolder Boulder 10K road race with the 40,000 other runners.

Even Sergei’s blood sugar stabilized due to his new diet and regular jogging. Since beginning to eat raw food, he has never again experienced any form of diabetic symptoms. We were greatly surprised not only by how quickly our health was restored to normal, but by how much healthier we were than ever before. We have described the detailed story of our miraculous healing in our book Raw Family: A True Story of Awakening.

After several years of being raw foodists, however, each one of us began to feel like we had reached a plateau where our healing process stopped and even somewhat began to go backwards. After approximately seven years on a completely raw diet, once in a while, more and more often, we started feeling discontent with our existing food program. I began to have a heavy feeling in my stomach after eating almost any kind of raw food, especially a salad with dressing. Because of that, I staled to eat less greens and more fruits and nuts. I began to gain weight. My husband started to develop a lot of gray hair. My family members felt confused about our diet and seemed often to have the question, “what should we eat?” There were odd times when we felt hungry but did not desire any foods that were “legal” for us to eat on a typical raw food diet: fruits, nuts, seeds, grains or dried fruit. Salads (with dressings) were delicious but made us tired and sleepy. We felt trapped. I remember Igor looking inside the fridge, saying over and over again, “I wish I wanted some of this stuff” … Such periods did not last. We blamed it all on overeating and were able to refresh our appetites by fasts. exercise, hikes or by working more. In my family we strongly believe that raw food is the only way to go and therefore we encouraged each other to maintain our raw diet no matter what, always coming up with new tricks. Many of my friends told me about similar experiences at which point they gave up being 100% raw and began to add cooked food back into their meals. In my family, we continued to stay on raw food due to our constant support of each other.

A burning question began to grow stronger in my heart with each day. The question was, “Is there anything missing in our diet?” The answer would come right away: “Nope. Nothing could be better than a raw food diet.”

Yet, however tiny, the unwanted signs of less than perfect health kept surfacing in minor but noticeable symptoms such as a wart on a hand or a gray hair that brought doubts and questions about the completeness of the raw food diet in its present form. Finally, when my children complained about the increased sensitivity of their teeth, I reached a state where I couldn’t think about anything besides this health puzzle. I drove everybody around me crazy with my constant discussion of what could possibly he missing.

In my eager quest, I started collecting data about every single food that existed for humans. As my grandmother used to say, “Seek and ye shall find.” After many wrong guesses, I finally found the correct answer. I found one particular food group that matched ALL human nutritional needs: greens. The truth is, in my family, we were not eating enough greens. Moreover, we did not like them. We knew that greens were important, but we never heard anywhere exactly how much greens we needed in our diet. We had only a vague recommendation to eat as much as possible. In order to find out how much greens we needed to eat, I decided to study the eating habits of chimpanzees since they are one of the closest creatures to human beings.