Ryan’s Cure Story: Obesity, Injuries, Vision Problems, Brain Fog and More – Detox and Diet Success

Ryan posted his unfolding successful health recovery in our before and after forum at www.rawpaleodietforum.com.  Ryan wrote about how his life had transformed over the last 3 years due to finding out nuggets of truth about health.  Knowledge about detox and diets… then making actual changes in the way he lived, actually doing the detoxes, changing his diet… unlocking further intelligence and a new sense of consciousness / awareness. In the past 3 months he adjusted his diet from cooked paleo diet to raw paleo diet and achieved so much more. Ryan wrote with his heart and can be appreciated as personal a testimony to inspire others to learn about truth in health concepts to get out of the health mess they are currently in.  A way to be reborn, a way for a second life, a way way better life.

Read Ryan’s testimony in his own words:

(March 10, 2013)

Hello everybody. I gathered a few photos to show you how much I’ve changed over the last 3 years. The first photo is from 2008 and the second and third are from 2010. I appear to be in far worse condition in the first photo even though I was actually 40lbs lighter. This is likely due to consistently depriving myself of sleep during this period of time.

I had been overweight since I was 8 years old. At a very young age, I became absolutely addicted to sugary processed food. Some of my favorites were that of the hostess cake types. Hell, there were days in my teenage years that I could eat a third of a large cake and follow that with nearly a half gallon of processed milk. I also become accustom to eating large meals nearly every 2 hours and up until the moment I fell asleep. To top things off, I didn’t partake in much physical activity throughout my childhood and instead became addicted to video games. Sitting in front of a TV or computer for up to ten hours a day getting up only to eat was not unusual for me. By the time I was 14, the health problems really started showing up. Though in these days, I thought these things were normal… Anxiety started to take over my life and it had a firm grip on me until recent years. I was so self conscious, I wouldn’t talk to anyone. Hardly even to my own family and relatives.

At 18 years old, I was so frightened when thinking about my health, I would often cry when falling asleep. I felt like I might die of a heart attack at any moment due to experiencing regular chest pains and numbness of the left arm. At this point in time I finally decided to start exercising on a cheap stationary bike we picked up at a garage sale. I lost 30 pounds after several months but didn’t feel much better in reality.

Notice how my face appears to cringe up? I believe this was a result of a loss of symmetry in my skeletal structure. I developed a horrendous astigmatism with my left eye becoming next to useless. This appeared to tie into my social anxiety and seemed to further disconnect me from the world. My vision was very bad at the time. I only looked down at the floor as it was all I could see and I refused to wear glasses for the most part.
I also seemed to have some sort of nerve issues which caused certain muscles in my face and various parts of my body to tense up uncontrollably.

Believe it or not, these previous three photos were my better days. After I moved into an apartment with my buddy, shit really hit the fan. I wouldn’t allow photos of myself after this point. I started to become more friendly with people at my job and it was the wrong crowd. I was introduced to using painkillers for pleasure and me and my friend would drink large amounts of alcohol regularly. At the same time, I adopted a diet of little more than fast food. This went on for about 4 months and I watched myself deteriorate at an incredible speed. About 6 months prior, I had suffered a nasty ankle injury and never got it checked out. My job also required you to be on your feet moving all day. I never let it heal and instead limped on with my work. During this time in my apartment, it was if my bones turned into jello. Coupled with my ankle injury, this really messed up my alignment. Suddenly my rib cage was cracking when I just took a breath. I experienced great pains all throughout my rib cage and even succumbed to a couple slipped ribs. Suddenly I started to notice that a cluster of ribs underneath my right breast was bulging outward and was snapping very loudly when I twisted side to side. I also had the pleasure of developing nasty shin splints that refused to heal. But I was experiencing pain in every inch of my body. At this same time, my systemic candida infection got out of control. I developed terrible acne and my tongue was caked with thrush which I had to brush violently every night. Then came the heart palpations. They started off slow with just a few here and there. But by the end of this period, I was experiencing terrible palpations that took the breath out of me. They could go on for 3-5 minutes straight 10 times a day. By now, it seemed as if I was losing my ability to think, as well as my sanity. I don’t think I knew the meaning of stress up until this point.

So after this four month period, I stopped it all and started searching for an end to my misery. Well, the first thing I did was buy a colon cleanse kit as well as some quality probiotics. I had some very strong detox effects but nothing like that of the probiotics. I notice absolutely nothing when taking probiotics now, but back then — wow. I took them and two hours later I felt like I was in an oven. I started sweating and seemed to lose my sense of time. It was very apparent to me that time appeared to speed up and slow down. My heartbeat was intense! I tried to lay down but couldn’t, so I stumbled around my apartment for the next hour. After this, most of my digestion problems and IBS just seemed to melt away and I felt drastically better. But it certainly wasn’t enough. I bought a book discussing the health benefits of coconut oil. I started to take coconut oil everyday from this point up until only about 2 months ago. Starting with just a pea sized amount and moving up to 4 tablespoons. The detox(I believe this was the case) was intense. I felt sick as a dog for a couple weeks and even experienced sharp pains in my right side. I believe it was my gallbladder starting to pass some of the crap out. This is when I started seeing the biggest changes. So many, it’s almost difficult to list. Suddenly I could think again! I knew the meaning of brain fog after this. I also started to have more energy than I had ever experienced in my life and was losing weight at a remarkable rate.

As I continued on with the coconut oil, I knew that there was more to it. I came across the documentary forks over knives and it just seemed so convincing to me(Though I now know this is a joke). So I gave cooked veganism a try for about 3 months. During this time, I didn’t notice any improvement in my health. But I also didn’t eat a varied diet. I consumed a lot of rice and lentils as well as wheat. At some point I saw that these doctors recommended avoiding coconut oil and my mind was blown. I couldn’t believe it. So i started searching around the web and continued to come across information about meat and fat having healing properties. “So the animal protein isn’t evil after all?” I thought. ;D At that point, I read a huge critique of forks over knives and started to realize it was just vegan propaganda. So I started to include organic beef into my diet. It was likely grain fed as I didn’t know the difference really back then. My healing started to pick up again. I also started to include a regular dose of raw bee pollen in my diet. To my astonishment my vision started to become extremely colorful a few weeks after starting that. It was if I was nearly colorblind before. I should also note that my vision is drastically better today. It’s almost unbelievable. I went from being able to only see the ground to clearly see hilltops miles away.

Around the same time I started to look for solutions to my alignment issues. Of course I was regularly exercising at this point and weight lifting to some extent. I came across vibrams as well as information regarding sleeping on a solid surface to realign the body. I started sleeping on my floor atop a comforter. At first, it was extremely painful. The first few nights I could hardly sleep. But after that, I started to see improvement day by day in my problems. Solid surfaces are very comfortable to sleep on now. The vibrams were awful as well. My feet felt like a mangled mess. It was pretty horrible for the first couple of weeks trying to get used to them honestly. Also I had almost no flexability in my left ankle so movement was very awkward. I’ve since made the transition to completely barefoot jogging and sprinting. What a huge difference these two activities have made in my life.

So over time I continued to learn more about what to eat and I cut out grains, beans, etc. I started to include many raw foods in my diet and I eventually came to realize I was already nearly living a paleo lifestyle by the time I was really reading into it. So I followed a cooked paleo diet for 5 months or so up until 3 months ago when I decided to go totally raw after coming across this forum. At first I noticed I was not digesting the raw meat and fat well at all. It seemed to just pass through me untouched. But a week or so in I no longer had this issue.

I guess I’m starting to cut this short now as I’ve been at my computer for quite some time trying to collect my thoughts and it’s becoming tiresome.

Essentially what I’ve noticed in the last three months of raw paleo as compared to cooked paleo:

• The rest of my anxiety just seemed to fade away out of nowhere.
• My teeth feel much stronger and are in better alignment.
• I no longer have bad breath and I have very little body odor.
• My bones feel soooo much stronger and appear to have become much better aligned.
• My left ankle has made the most improvement in this last three months having almost the same flexability as my right.
• My excess skin has tightened up quite a bit and my skin feels healthier as well minus the bit of acne I still have on my forehead.
• I feel more intelligent and am able to concentrate much better.
• My digestion has drastically improved and I no longer notice it taking place.

Ryan commented on his after photos:

1. Same pose to show my excess. My weight loss has sort of halted at the moment, but my skin continues to tighten. I’m somewhat bothered by the fat that has accumulated on my hips.

2. The lighting is off in these photos so I do appear more pale than I actually am. It’s quite a bad hair day as well haha.

3. Unfortunately I haven’t been exercising all that much this winter and I haven’t been getting much sun either. But it’s starting to warm up and I’m very excited to spend much of my time outdoors. I’ve been taking raw fermented cod liver oil to combat this somewhat.

— my comments —

Ryan is an example of what happens when an intelligent man is fed with the correct information, learns, experiments, achieves improvements, upgrades intelligence, and learns even more and more until he is an expert on his own health and still open to further knowledge. This is just a whole new beginning of something wonderful. Ryan hopes his story inspires more people to wake up and take responsibility of their own health: “The thought of inspiring others to heal themselves is a joyful feeling.” — Ryan.