Raw Milk Diet

[Katee]

I've read that some doctors back in the 30s and 40s would have their patients on strict bed rest and give them raw milk, only raw milk, and nothing but raw milk as a healing diet. Recently i have read of some other folks doing this now days, but no one does bed rest.

There are a couple of problems with this for me. One is, while i like a bit of milk in moderation, i'm not that fond of milk. The other is that the raw milk i prefer, Jersey milk bottled in glass, is pricey and only available in quarts. As i buy this 2 hours from home, transporting 5 days of milk home is a challenge. (Folks on this diet generally drink between 3 and 5 quarts a day.)

I know some folks believe that milk is not a proper food for people, and i'm not going to get pulled into that discussion.

Recently i've been concerned (and feeling a bit desperate) about my loss of functioning, and was willing to try what i needed to. So the week after 4th of July i purchased the milk and began. To begin i thought i would try it for 10 days.

In some ways it wasn't very hard. I found it easier than the hCG diet. I didn't get hungry. I did flavor it with some stevia and almond flavoring. I tend toward anorexic behavior at times, and don't really care for food all that much, so i didn't find that too hard most of the time.

Within a day my pain level went up considerably. I was uncomfortable but determined to stick out the 10 days, hoping that i was having a "healing crisis" rather than generalized inflammation. By the color of my urine, i thought i was probably detoxing, too. By the end of day 7 the pain (and urine color) returned to normal levels for me.

I continued for the 10 days, took a break for a couple of days, did another week with a break, and then another week again.

I had no expectations for this, but i was a bit hopeful it would help for a change. And it did.

There are two positive, identifiable changes i noticed. One, i don't have more energy, but i seem to have more endurance for the energy i have and i don't "crash" as i frequently did before. The second is a bit harder to explain.

As i frequently do not sleep well, i sometimes have to take daytime naps, but i fight having to do so and only do it if unavoidable. The reason is that naps have a very, very negative impact on me. I wake feeling as though i have been repeatedly kicked. I ache all over, and have almost zero energy. After a nap, i am unable to do anything in the house at all. I can not even begin to explain how devastatingly detrimental a nap is to my functioning and energy.

After the milk diet 10 days, i'm able to take a daytime nap and wake only slightly tired.

Oh, i did drop a little bit of weight on this, about 5 pounds, but i don't think i will maintain the drop. And i am having much less brain-fog. It had gotten to the point where i was frequently feeling foggy and faint, and beginning to think i wouldn't be able to drive much longer.

I averaged about 3 to 3-1/2 quarts a day. Toward the end (knowing how much cream was in a quart), i bought a couple of quarts of fat-free milk and would mix a little with the full fat to drop the fat content down. I'm not against fat at all, and would NEVER recommend doing this diet with fat-free milk (i think it would be dangerous), but i did want just a bit less cream. I won't do that too much, however, because the fat-free milk is sold at the same price, and to add insult to injury, they then sell the cream for $11/pint!

I probably will do this again in the future, but not in summer! I like summer fruits (especially peaches and raspberries) too much. I can see doing this twice a year, fall and late winter or early spring, to try to increase my functioning.

The next time around i won't sweeten/flavor the milk. I found that after sweetening/flavoring the milk, if i drank the milk straight, my cravings for sweets increased unbelievably. As part of my intent was to reduce cravings, i found this reaction disturbing. In fact, cravings haven't really changed at all. Another factor was that elimination was a challenge without fiber to help the solids pass through the digestive system.

However, over all i had a positive experience and am pleased with the result. Wanted to report this so if someone else is interested. I honestly didn't do a lot of research on this before undertaking it. You can Google "the raw milk diet" and see pretty much everything you might want.

[highlander]

I did a 3-week raw milk fast when I was 16 and felt wonderful. If I had access to raw milk I'd do that on a regular basis.

[Islander]

Thank you for posting this, Katee, because it's such a good example of the different effects the same foods can have on people.

I'm one of those who never liked milk, even in all the years I owned milch cows. Butter, cheese, yogurt, yup, but not fluid milk. And even if it was beneficial, I like the flavors & textures of foods too much ever to restrict myself to that degree. But that's not the point. Recently I bought a gallon of raw organic just to make cottage cheese...and rediscovered how much I adore homemade cottage cheese — the real thing! So over the next couple of weeks I bought 3-4 more gallons, made more cheese, made sour cream, and used some of the whey in smoothies.

Meanwhile the arthritis in my hands was increasing. The swelling grew, the pain kept me awake at night, I could barely type and made a dozen typos in a paragraph. At first I blamed the weeding, which does aggravate the arthritis. But it went way beyond that...and even when I stopped because I just couldn't make my hands work in the garden, the pain and inflammation persisted. So I asked myself, What has changed? And then it struck me.

So I discontinued the cheese, the dairy, everything but butter. And voila: hands have improved...not pain-free, that may never happen, but back to near-normal. So I have my answer. I'll miss that cottage cheese, but weighed against the pain and the nuisance factor, it's a no-brainer. Milk is just not for everyone.

[mellowsong]

That's fascinating Katee. Thanks for sharing your experience. When I was doing raw milk kefir, I'd actually considered this a time or 2 but never did. So very happy it turned out to be positive