Why Raw?

Everyone wants to know two things from me as of late.  The first is why would you eat a rawfood diet? (We’ll get to the second one in the next blog.) People seem baffled that I, the skinny ballet dancer with more defined muscles than an anatomy book has listed, who has preached his love of steak and potatoes for 25 years, would ever consider going on a ‘diet,’ especially one consisting of rabbit food.  

Hmmm, why?

In one word, Tendonitis.  

But, the journey really started about two years ago during my first season with San Francisco Ballet.  I had a chronic injury of some kind - I can’t exactly remember what - and I was very nervous about the medications and treatments my doctor recommended.  That’s when my good friend, Emanuela Gay, offered to take me on as a client with her classical homeopathy practice.  It was worth a try.  Immediately the treatment had a profound effect on my mental state.  I became much more stable in my perception and reaction to people in my daily life.  That’s big for a sensitive artist like me.  Next, my acne went away.  After ten years of trying everything from benzoyl peroxide washes to Accutane, homeopathy solved it.  The treatment also cured my shin splints and I haven’t had one since.  But, the biggest selling point for me was when I went to stay with my sister for a week and for the first time ever I did not have an allergic reaction to her cat. Wow, that was amazing.  I have had terrible allergies all my life and thought I would have to live on a daily dose of Claritin. 

Sold on homeopathic medicine, the next turning point happened in January 2009.  My mom was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma, a very serious and deadly skin cancer.  Through the research that my mom, many of our close friends and I began doing we discovered that medicine outside of the US has found the cause and the cure for cancer.  It is diet.  The over-processed world we live in is suppressing the body’s natural ability to heal itself, and making a perfect design susceptible to cancerous cells.  I became a fan and started advocating the Gerson therapy to my mom.  My homeopath recommended the Bruess juice diet and my mom eventually settled for the diet prescribed by Dr. Budwig that centered around the healing powers from the fats we get from raw foods.  All of them were German doctors who believed in a raw, vegetarian diet.  My mother is now in remission and her doctors were impressed to see her exhibit significantly less side effects to the western medication probably due to her new diet.  This experience led me to the Slow Food movement, and the books by Michael Pollan.  They turned me into a huge supporter of local and organic produce and I became a much more responsible and aware meat eater.  I also started juicing daily. 

Then I hit a low.  While in China with SFB I went off my homeopathic remedy.  I got sick, depressed and my tendonitis returned with a fury.  Once back in the US, my homeopath got me back on my remedy and started recommending two juices daily from a diet that she had recently adopted and with which she was experiencing many benefits.  It’s The Sunfood Diet.  The juices consisted of a smoothie of 4 oranges and 3 tbsp. flaxseed oil in the morning and a green juice made with cucumber, celery, a leafy green such as kale or chard and an apple.  I loved it.  I stopped wanting coffee, and I craved my green juice after work.  My health - both mental and physical - started to get better - everything but the tendonitis which got worse during our annual run of the Nutcrakcer.  That’s when I finally started to consider submitting to a week-long dose of Celebrex for relief.  My homeopath gave me freedom to make my own decision, but urged me to do a little research online before making the decision.  Well, I did.  And after visiting just one website, the official website for Celebrex, and reading the details about side effects, I was determined to find an alternative.  What I found was amazing.  Over and over, website after website, I read that one of the most successful, alternative, non-toxic, most natural and most effective cures for chronic inflammation such as tendonitis and arthritis is something called MSM.  What is MSM?  Methylsulphonylmethane.  It is the substance our body uses to create sulfur, something that the rest of the life on earth receives through rain water and raw foods.  However, an average human today misses this important ingredient in a typical diet of cooked and processed foods and purified, chemically treated water. I needed no further persuasion.  On December 28, 2009, just two days before the new decade, I started with one week on a mostly raw food diet and more specifically, following the guidelines of David Wolfe and his book, The Sunfood Diet Success System.  I have been eating 80% Sun food ever since.