Vegan/Paleo Update

I've been promising an update for several months regarding our conversion to a Paleo-ish diet two years ago from 31 years of vegetarianism, the last 25 of them as mostly raw, vegans.

Since my veganism ended as is reported by most long term vegans, with immune system failure - my wife and I both were hit with rheumatoid arthritis - you just wake up one day and you have it (!) - I have had trouble writing.

At first I couldn't type, write or hold on to anything.  So I had to hold a glass with both hands and really focus on it.  Life was pretty horrible.  Until my wife started having the same kind of symptoms, I had thought I had damaged a major nerve trimming trees, though there was no actual incident.

I have since also had exams that have shown no actual nerve damage, so that was pretty amazing to me, especially when it started to look like it was veganism that was the culprit.

So, I am sorry that I have not been able to write much and I am grateful to all the other people who have let me share their writing with you over the last few years when I could not write (or hardly think) myself.

One thing that has improved dramatically since we started our experiment - mostly following the guidelines from the Weston-Price Foundation was that our RA started getting better instead of worse - pretty much right away and now more slowly continues to improve.

Gratefully, I can type and write again.  I'm not quite as fast as I used to be, but my speed and accuracy gradually has been improving really a lot - so that makes me feel more up to the job of trying to have my fingers keep up with my thoughts again.

Also, I have been able to play guitar again.  As a singer-songwriter who generally has played guitar 3-6 hours daily for about 30 years, it was devastating to arrive here in the Detroit area where I had an agent who had been waiting 3 years to represent me here (and promised very steady work locally) to wake up one day and not be able to hold much less play a guitar.

I put all my guitars up for sale.  Of course, 4 years ago the economy was still in such free-fall that everyone was selling everything they owned and the demand for used music equipment was about zero. 
So that period was both painful and frustrating.  It's hard to let go of an instrument you love and have years of your life invested in and extra painful to then find nobody wants it.

Thankfully, a few months after we started our changeover, I found that I could play a little.  That was about  two and a half years after I had lost my ability.  I was really surprised.

I still couldn't make a fist so both my fingering and picking were very slow, deliberate and most often misplaced, but after a little over two years (I usually don't count that first transitional year where we were so emotionally traumatized by our new food that we did a lot of backsliding) I can play well enough to enjoy it a bit now and I make many fewer mistakes.

I really thought I would never play again, so I am very happy about this and I credit my natural diet completely.

I am considering the possibility that I might be able to record or even perform again - perhaps even within the next year!

Well, this was a short update.  That is probably the best kind for me right now.

I will be trying to write more myself here from now on and will include many more diet updates as well as my thoughts about religion and government.

I know everyone will be very interested in my report on what happens to poop when you make such a drastic dietary change - I'll be trying to get up the nerve to post that sometime.