From this standpoint, then, the Hygienic diet is not so much different from the evolutionary diet as it is simply a restriction of it (as is true of all vegetarian diets). The foods we are eating are fine foods, but they are a subset of what the human body evolved on, and some individuals with the right kind of constitution or genetic plasticity--say, closer out toward the ends of the statistical "bell curve" of the average genetic make-up--can handle that restriction while others can't. And as we said previously, there are jots and tittles that experienced Hygienists may know how to implement in order to compensate to make the diet work for additional people. But they don't work for everyone.

A look at the most serious potential problems. First, here are a couple of severe problems we have seen. Keep in mind these are the most severe we have seen, and they are individual cases, but they are real possibilities.

• Case of congestive heart failure in a decades-long Sheltonian hygienist. Probably the most sobering was that a year or two ago one older member who ended up dropping out of the M2M wrote to us that they had developed congestive heart failure. They said Hygienic practitioners told them it was due to lack of adequate protein and B-12 over an extended period. [No comment here as to potential accuracy of this attribution.] We later heard word from them through an intermediary in the M2M that it may have been due to having followed a diet too high in fruits percentage-wise for many years prior to that.* This even though they were apparently not extreme about it like a "fruitarian" would be, but had simply followed a traditional vegan Hygienic regimen over many, many years, only one higher in fruits. This particular situation I don't think anyone in the M2M really had much of a stock Hygienic explanation for. Most were simply stunned. I do think, however, it at least drove home the point with most people that diets too high in fruits are wise to stay away from.

• Case of rickets in a vegan toddler eating a Natural Hygiene-style diet. Another sobering occurrence was that in the most recent issue of the M2M, one of our participants reported that their two or three-year-old infant son--who was still breastfeeding (or had been until recently) and who, along with the mother, was eating vegan Hygienic foods, including getting sunlight regularly--had developed bowed legs as a manifestation of rickets due to vitamin D deficiency.* After getting professional help that included an initial megadose of vitamin D, the father began feeding the son raw goat's milk and cheese, and added a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement, with the result that the son's legs are improving and areas in his teeth where enamel had been missing are now re-enameling.

• Cases of vitamin B-12 deficiency. As a perhaps less severe problem, but one that occurs somewhat more frequently, we have had several members on the Hygienic diet (even when not all-raw) report very low levels or deficiencies of vitamin B-12. These have been discovered on blood tests not just by mainstream doctors but also by Hygienic practitioners, the latter taking the problem seriously. To my knowledge, the low B-12 levels have so far responded quickly to supplementation which is often recommended by Hygienic doctors these days.

• Continual diarrhea or poorly formed stools can develop in some individuals after some months on the diet. This would occur mostly with people eating all-raw. This seems to be due to the very high roughage content which some individuals simply cannot handle well.

• Some women's periods become quite erratic or may disappear.

• Some people experience insomnia or unrestful sleep on an all-raw [and/or vegan] diet and get run down and chronically tired.

• Another contingent of people has very little energy eating all-raw and drag around all day. An alternate manifestation of this would be feeling languid much of the time or sleepy during the day even with regular nightly sleep.

• A mental effect sometimes seen may be lack of normal motivation to get regular daily tasks done--no "joie de vivre" ("joy in living").

• Some individuals cannot maintain their weight well and become thinner than even they may think is healthy. We have one individual in the M2M who had this problem and who was a huge eater, adhering to the Hygienic diet since 1989, who has finally been gaining weight after having included regular raw animal flesh for the past couple of years. The volume of food required has dropped dramatically.

• Most, although not all, athletic individuals, particularly endurance athletes, find they perform better when they include cooked starches in their diet--and that relying primarily on the sugars in fruits on a raw-food diet, and the calories in nuts and so forth, does not seem to provide the proper mix of carbohydrate fuels that provide the sustained energy they want.

• Perhaps the most common complaint of all is that more than just a few people are "hungry all the time." Some then become obsessed with eating and have to eat or piece all day long.

• Another common complaint is that sex drive decreases markedly for some, even to the point of virtually disappearing. This can occur in both males or females, but the complaint is heard the most often from men, many of whom are not accepting of, or happy with, the stock Hygienic explanation of a simple lack of "overstimulation," or the typical vegetarian view that it is a "spiritual" advance.

• Some people experience more frequent respiratory problems and colds on an all-raw diet, even when they have been on the diet long-term, which might indicate a lowered immune system. For example, one individual who has been vegan since 1989, and Hygienic since 1991, has noted an increase in colds/respiratory problems whenever the raw component of their diet has climbed above the 80-90% range or so. When they include cooked grains and starches in their diet, they feel better, are not so hungry all the time, sleep more soundly, and the colds cease.

• Some people's nervous systems become more reactive and subject to upset, which may be connected to the insomnia problem that some experience.

• How can things end up bad when they started out so good? As we mentioned earlier, the key conversion mechanism for convincing people of the Natural Hygiene system--or other "clean-diet" approaches--is that when they go on a cleaner diet, almost everyone improves initially because of the detoxification that takes place. People often feel so incredibly good initially on a clean diet that they cannot believe--they do not want to believe--it could somehow go sour.

  However, over the longer term, many people's bodies simply may not be extracting sufficient nutrition from the diet and they begin to decline, or develop various symptoms even if they still feel okay, presumably due to deficiencies after their reserves are exhausted. Except in the case of B-12, these are not usually your typical "deficiency-disease" symptoms--like the case of rickets that was mentioned earlier. They are more subtle, but they have their effect, and they can be slowly debilitating over long-enough periods of time.

• The lulling effect of imperceptibly slow declines in health. From a psychological standpoint, the most interesting thing about this syndrome is that it occurs slowly enough that people often mentally adjust to the lowered state of health and do not perceive it as such, particularly since they so strongly do not want to believe it is happening. Instead, they continue to feel they are doing fine--sometimes even when they describe some of the above symptoms, which they may interpret as improvements that indicate "continued detox"--while people who know them may tell them otherwise. Yet because of the extreme anti-authoritarianism, they don't listen to what others are telling them, until finally, the problems reach a point they can't deny them anymore.

• Emotional "certainty" shuts down one's ability to rationally assess symptoms. By the time this happens, though, people have been so thoroughly convinced of the entire Hygienic dietary system by their initial successes, and particularly are so won over mentally by the detoxification paradigm, that they are now psychologically invested in the "rightness" of everything about the Hygienic system, and cannot believe there could be any shortcomings in it, since it seems so internally self-consistent logically.

• The willingness to make sober judgments of current symptoms is perpetually displaced into the future. Since they got results to start with, they feel their problems now must be only a temporary setback, or evidence of further detoxification taking place or that further detoxification or patience for further healing is needed, or if not that, if they can just correct a few details, all will be well again and they will be back on the road to superior health. "The better you get, the more energy the body has to expel the toxins, and the more powerful and healing the crises become!" This is the thinking, which in earlier stages of detoxification might be true, but is increasingly questionable the longer one follows the program, which is the case for many of the symptoms we outlined above.

The dynamic, of course, is a little different for those who are getting good results. They, too, are plenty interested in being right about Hygiene, but since it has worked for them, they have a more solid sense of "certainty" about it, which of course they project to others. And because they have this greater sense of certainty, these individuals tend to become the repositories of traditional wisdom which is dispensed to the less fortunate. Those who are successful have a tendency to blame the other persons' behaviors ("you aren't following all the itty-bitty details right") or to doubt the failures are failures at all, seeing them rather as expressions of the truths of Hygiene at work when its principles are violated, proving once again its rightness.

Those who are successful are partners in reinforcing the tendency not to see failures as real failures. That's one of the biggest things holding all this in place: Those for whom Hygiene has worked cannot afford to consider failures as failures of Hygiene either, because just like everyone, they uphold the ideal that it must work for all, and so if it does not, it is also a threat to their own beliefs in spite of their success. This shared ideal is what binds the successes and failures together in common cause. The less successful imbibe the certainty of the more successful to maintain the faith.

This syndrome is of course not unique to Hygiene, but occurs with any idealistic system where there are both significant successes and failures. The important point to note here is that it shuts down the mind's openness to new interpretations. And if the mind cannot look at alternative explanations, what you will often see is that the favored paradigm gets pushed to extreme limits by those who are failing at it in order to try to reach some sort of resolution.

• In order to prove that the system does in fact work, people redouble their efforts at detoxification, and often attempt to go on an even stricter diet. And/or:

• Considering perhaps they may not be getting enough of some nutrient after all, they begin to get more perfectionistic about the many vegetarian dietary details that are possible to manipulate. After all, one characteristic of exercising more control is the need to pay attention to the additional details that are necessary in order to implement such increased control. And if the details one used to pay attention to aren't working anymore, one must become more attentive to even smaller details.

GO TO NEXT SECTION OF PART 3

(How Absolute Dietary Purity Becomes a Fruitless "Grail Quest")

Return to beginning of interviews

SEE BIBLIOGRAPHY

SEE TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR: PART 1 PART 2 PART 3

GO TO PART 1 - Setting the Record Straight on Humanity's Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets

GO TO PART 2 - Fire and Cooking in Human Evolution

GO TO PART 3 - The Psychology of Idealistic Diets / Successes & Failures of Vegetarian Diets

Back to Frank Talk by Long-Time Insiders