I've been WFPB for 5 years before switching to Raw Vegan 80/10/10 and I have to say there is a large difference in my feelings of depression. On WFPB I had times especially when the weather got darker and colder (I live in Michigan USA) that seasonal affective disorder does set in and the feelings of depression get harder. I did take Lexapro for about 20 years of my life in total with occasionally being on other prescribed depression meds too. For the last 6 months I've been taking 5HTP which is a more natural depression supplement that comes from an African plant called Griffonia simplicifolia and it works well for me and has a lot less bad symptoms when compared to the prescribed depression meds. Recently I went from taking two doses per day down to one because being raw vegan and life getting better and better and in this cycle of continuous improvement I don't feel like taking it. I'm amazed and at the same time surprised to admit it but after years of struggling with depression I think the eating of addicting toxic foods and not truly satiating myself on a raw vegan 80 10 10 diet is the main culprit behind my depression. That too and the suppressed emotions I had and not truly feeling and dealing with my emotions which I'm learning can only fully be done by eating raw vegan 80 10 10. It makes me sad that all of those years I took those depression meds that made me numb not knowing that the healing was so much more simple and could have erased many years of not truly living. I took a dose of the 5HTP today but I'm honestly thinking of stopping to take it just to see how I feel. The 5HTP means 5 hydroxy tryptophan and basically it is a precursor for serotonin so it essentially helps your mind to create serotonin. I've been very happy and satisfied especially the last two weeks. I do think taking Vitamin D3 is a help to me too with mental health and for me that is a good one to have because in Michigan we have many months of Cold weather and days where you don't get much sunlight so that makes it difficult to get the minimum 15 minutes a day that Dr. Graham recommends. So I will continue to take this but on days when I get enough sun I do not take it so it is very much a seasonal supplement. I'd love to be supplement free but I don't want to be without Vitamin D3 as I think it is important for me to take. As for the 5HTP I've tried in the past years that I've been on it to get off of it completely when I took it in past years but was always unsuccessful. I do think that some day I will be free from this supplement as well being on raw vegan 80/10/10 and that thought makes me happy. I'm not so sure if my mental health has recovered enough to be able to fully handle being off of this supplement but starting tomorrow I'm going to stop taking it and see how I feel. Does anyone else here currently or in the past have they struggled with depression? Taken supplements or meds that helped or therapy?

I'm getting bored with my daily big salads so I thought I'd ask the community for smoothie recipes? I want to have greens in them and could mix in other salad things like cucumber, mushrooms, or etc. I don't have a Vitamix blender or anything fancy for smoothies yet just a basic blender but can puree so should be able to make smoothies I just haven't gotten creative yet

If 95% of all disease is caused by what you eat, then the other 5% is SHINGLES!! Working 2nd shift I got run down and have been afflicted by shingles for 2.5 weeks. I'm organic 80/10/10 for 15 years at 72 years old, raw vegan for 32 years. 1 in 3 adults over 50 will get it. Anyone with shingles experience please comment. I refused the vax and the pharmaceuticals and have been on a suppliment/herbal regime. It is starting to weaken. Most painful experience of my life and I've been around a while!

Hi, I would love to get Doug's or anyone else's in put on this. I found an article about human vs monkey anatomy and diet comparisons, and I read it very carefully. It is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10378206/. First I want to say I very much prefer 801010rv to a cooked diet. But a couple of things in this article made me question it: 1) our digestive tracts aren't the same as monkeys. Human small intestines are twice as big as most monkeys and our large intenstines are half as long. The author said the monkey's large intestines absorb nutrients from the greens that they eat. My understanding is that the small intestines absorb digested food. There are some scientists who say we've been eating cooked food for 800,000 years which is long enough for us to evolve a digestive system suited for that--longer small intestines for absorption of cooked food? and shorter long intestines since we can cook our vegetables and don't need to digest them raw? and 2) the fruit monkeys eat is very different from cultivated fruits we eat today. Our fruits have much less fiber and more fructose and less glucose. However, if you take into account that sucrose is half glucose and half fructose, the amount of fructose vs glucose (when including sucrose contributions) is not terribly different. For monkey fruits, glucose is 60-50% and for our fruits, glucose is 50-40%, typically. but monkey fruits do have quite a bit more fiber it seems and aren't as sweet in general. So that suggests our fruit is not the same as our ancestors ate. However, neither are our cooked veggies and starches. I just began to wonder if our cultivated fruits are too low in fiber and too high in sugar to be optimal. and...if we should be eating some cooked veggies, which allows a larger variety and gives you more nutrients even though some are destroyed in cooking--but the articles I've seen say that you get 50% of your vitamins and all your minerals from cooked food (when you eat the broth as well).

Is it true what Harvey Diamond says in Fit For Life that fruit does not digest in the stomach but goes straight to the intestinal track?