How to Become Smarter (63 page)
Treatment
:
Supportive care; in case of severe illness, antibiotic therapy is indicated: tetracycline, gentamicin, doxycycline, or cefotaxime.
References for PCR primers for food testing
:
[
561
,
562
]
Infection
:
Vibrio vulnificus
(bacterium)
Treatment
:
Supportive care and antibiotics: tetracycline, doxycycline, or ceftazidime.
References for PCR primers for food testing
:
[
561
]
Infection
:
Yersinia enterocolitica
(bacterium)
Treatment
:
Supportive care; if disease is invasive (e.g., septicemia), antibiotics are indicated: gentamicin, cefotaxime, doxycycline or ciprofloxacin.
References for PCR primers for food testing
:
[
547
]
Other relevant treatments.
This section describes treatments not listed in the current practice guidelines, but this author found them effective in his self-experimentation. These treatments also appear to have a good rationale for their use. A clinician may consider using these therapies in addition to the treatments recommended by the practice guidelines.
In my experience, one can reduce the symptoms of a bacterial or viral infection that may result from consumption of raw animal foods, such as nausea, weakness/fatigue, fever, headache, muscle pain or abdominal pain, by means of cold hydrotherapy [
357
,
399
,
411
-
414
,
571
], as described in more detail in
Chapter Two
. The frequency of adapted cold showers is discretionary and can vary from once to thrice a day. A patient can use head showers (for headache) more frequently (see the section “
Can a cold shower cause a cold or the flu?
” in Chapter Two). The combination of cold hydrotherapy with analgesic/antipyretic drugs is more effective than either treatment alone. Potential adverse effects of cold showers are reviewed in the
last section
of Chapter Two. Cold hydrotherapy can be useful as supportive care, in addition to, not instead of antimicrobial drugs.
Diarrhea, in my personal experience, can be treated effectively using complete colon cleansing by means of tap water enemas. There are some relevant published reports as well [
572
-
574
]. This procedure is not comfortable but is effective and may stop diarrhea after a single session. A person can achieve complete colon cleanliness after a total of 4 to 6 liters of intermittent inflow/outflow. Careful torso bending exercise and abdominal massage during colonics may facilitate effective cleansing. Use of warm water and application of vaseline to the speculum may reduce discomfort. Caution should be exercised with enemas, especially if entry of water causes pain or discomfort. It is best to seek assistance of a qualified healthcare professional with this procedure if this is the first time a person attempts to have a colonic. Complete emptying and thorough washing of the large intestine with water will dramatically reduce the amount of bacteria and bacterial toxins in the lumen of the colon and thus bring about a relief of diarrhea. Potential adverse effects of colon hydrotherapy include temporary discomfort or abdominal pain during the procedure, a temporary electrolyte imbalance in the large intestine, and extremely rare cases of intestinal wall perforation. Electrolyte imbalances can be prevented by the use of saline instead of water. Colon hydrotherapy may not be effective if diarrhea originates in the small intestine.
It is impossible to diagnose most mental disorders (depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and others) by a laboratory test [
340
]. Therefore, you could say that these disorders represent a “minor pathological change” in the brain, even though the suffering can be tremendous. These disorders can have biological manifestations, such as slightly increased blood levels of stress hormones. But these changes are within the normal range, and thus psychiatrists cannot use them for diagnosis. These observations suggest that the “minor physical change” in the brain that causes a mental disorder can be reversible and therefore lifestyle changes and other non-invasive treatments can be effective in psychiatry. To date, there are no proven “natural remedies” for most mental disorders, with rare exceptions such as St. John’s Wort and sleep deprivation for depression (there are also a few successful trials of exercise for depression). Sleep deprivation can produce a significant clinical improvement within 24 hours in about 60% of patients (unfortunately, the relapse is also quick). Most other therapies, including SSRIs, require several weeks for clinical benefits to materialize.
If somebody conducts clinical trials and shows that certain dietary changes, for example, the antidepressant diet from
Chapter Four
, are clinically effective in depressed patients, then this approach can become an additional treatment option. In this case, it will be possible to use that option alone or in combination with existing treatments, such as psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. If a treatment has a scientific rationale and there is scientific evidence that it is effective, then it falls into the category of “medicine” and such attributes as “natural,” “complementary,” “alternative,” or “integrative,” are not necessary. People use these labels when there is no scientific rationale or when there is no scientific evidence that a treatment is effective, or both. At present, the antidepressant diet appears to have scientific rationale, but has no scientific evidence.
Some conventional treatments do not have a good explanation for their mode of action. In some cases, researchers found the explanation many decades after widespread use of these treatments began in clinical practice. The examples include lithium carbonate for bipolar disorder and electroconvulsive therapy for depression. A more recent example is SSRIs for the treatment of anxiety disorders. Clinical trials have shown that these drugs are effective and physicians prescribe them routinely. Nevertheless, at the time of this writing, there is no theory that can explain the use of SSRIs in anxiety. In other words, this treatment is not a theory-driven approach and looks like “complementary medicine.”
Warning
: This section of the book is for information purposes only and readers should avoid consuming raw animal products because they carry a significant risk of infectious disease, possibly a risk of a life-threatening illness (
Table 1
). Raw pork and meat processed with the same equipment as raw pork are especially dangerous because they carry a risk of a potentially fatal infection with pork tapeworm. The main text describes several safe diets that are as effective or even more effective than the diets that include raw animal foods.
Since the diet of early hominids and the diet of our closest relatives living in the wild (chimpanzees) consists mostly of raw fruits and vegetables and raw meat and excludes all artificial ingredients [
43
,
46
], it would be interesting to see the effects of this kind of diet on modern humans. For convenience, I call this diet the “ancestral diet” throughout this book. I experimented (as a single participant) with diets that include raw animal products in 1998, 2002-2003, and in 2008. Within each of those years, the total duration of experiments was several months (most recently, there was a one-week experiment in 2011, as described below).
The most typical raw diet had the following composition (percentages represent proportion by weight): fish and ground meat (beef, turkey, or chicken): 35-40%; either no grains or aqueous extract of whole-grain wheat flour (
Appendix I
) 0-40%; fruits and vegetables (or juices that are free of additives): 20-40%; ground nuts (for example, walnut, pecan, filbert) 2-5%. Ground meat had a fat content of 10% or higher. Uncooked meat is too tough to chew without grinding, whereas uncooked fish is easy to chew. All food additives, spices, and herbal extracts are forbidden. Pasteurization of fruit or vegetable juices and cooking of up to 90% of fruits and vegetables by boiling or steaming make no difference: this partially cooked diet has the same effects as a 100% raw diet. Addition of pasteurized low-fat milk (free of dietary supplements) to this diet, up to 10-20% of the content by weight, also makes no difference in effects on mental state.
If a person lives on a standard diet recommended by food pyramids and switches to the ancestral diet, the subjective changes that this person can observe within one to three days are the following: increased capacity for work, improved internal mood, increased self-esteem, and reduced fatigue. The ancestral diet quickly improves depressed mood (within several days) and it can also brighten up normal mood. Reading of complex texts and writing become much easier. The ability to understand and concentrate on complex reading material is excellent. Attention control and impulse control are excellent. There is noticeable clarification of the mind and many (but not all) problems that seemed difficult or insurmountable previously now appear easy and trivial. This high-protein diet can reduce procrastination, but it is less effective than the depressant diet (
Chapter Five
). The ancestral diet can be effective against such symptoms as bad breath and dry mouth. If the ancestral diet contains sufficient amounts of fish and ground meat, then it can facilitate complete sleep deprivation for 2-3 days. This effect of the raw high-protein diet on alertness is consistent with a previous report [
575
]. Finally, the ancestral diet activates the digestive tract and is effective against
constipation
.
Judging by the mental clarity questionnaire (
Appendix IV
), fluid intelligence will increase as a result of the ancestral diet. As for objective proof, scores on general aptitude tests or on tests of intelligence should increase. I was able to achieve huge GRE General Test scores after following the ancestral diet for about 4 days (see
the end
of Appendix VI). My score (2320 total) corresponds to an IQ score above 149, according to some calculations [
20
-
22
]. Preparation for the test (while on a cooked high-protein diet) took about 4 months. Note that my poor-to-mediocre academic performance during my teenage years suggests that my intelligence is about average when I am on a regular modern diet (see
the end
of Appendix VI).
The major problem with diets that include raw animal foods is that occasionally (every several weeks to every several months) one is likely to go through episodes of infectious disease. This frequency of problems corresponds to raw animal products that come from a relatively safe source: when I lived in the United States, I bought ground meat only at supermarkets and only meat that was labeled with the seal “Inspected by USDA.” The frequency of episodes of infectious illness can increase several-fold if animal products come from an unsafe source. I also bought only sea or oceanic fish as it is believed by raw-fooders to carry fewer human pathogens compared to fresh-water fish. Going back to the episodes of infectious disease, the following symptoms may present: fever, general weakness, muscle pain or headache, diarrhea, abdominal pain. On one or two occasions, I also had skin dryness and lesions. Some of these episodes may be mild and short, but others can be severe and protracted (several weeks) and people with a weakened immune system may not survive.
Another major problem is that consumption of raw meat and fish is socially unacceptable in most cultures. Particularly, if you reside in the U.S. or in Russia, you risk becoming a social outcast if you start to openly consume raw meat and fish. Nonetheless, in some cultures, raw animal foods are more socially acceptable. For example, in Belgium and Italy, consumption of raw ground beef is not unusual [
202
] and ethnic groups inhabiting the far North eat raw meat and fish on a daily basis [
55
-
58
]. My guess is that raw animal products may become more socially acceptable if and when new technological developments make them safe for human consumption.
B
Other undesirable effects of the ancestral diet: if I use it longer than 2-3 weeks, it can lead to sleep disturbances (insomnia) with a tendency toward a low need for sleep. If I continue the diet despite changes in sleep, there is a risk of developing symptoms of hypomania. Internal mood may become persistently elevated, which may pose a problem for some intellectual tasks such as writing. This diet may also increase sweating.
If 20-30% of animal products are cooked (by boiling or steaming), then sleep and mood can become normal, but most of the aforementioned beneficial effects are preserved. This type of partially cooked ancestral diet is more sustainable than a 100% raw diet, suggesting that humans have adapted to cooked food genetically and require a certain percentage of cooked food in the diet for normal functioning. Even this type of diet may become unsustainable after several months, and such symptoms as hyperactivity, restlessness, and insomnia may present. Addition of large amounts of cooked whole grains (e.g., boiled shredded wheat) and cooking of all animal products can help to calm down and return to normalcy.