Those with Raynaud's

[Nat]

Do you take any supplements and do you remember what your B12 level was?

[Nat]

If your iron levels are normal, then this could be secondary anemia caused by chronic disease, as in the case of autoimmune disease. Your body has iron, but it is not using it properly. Here is a pretty amazing study that shows the role serine proteases plays in iron absorption. They described this as a 'novel and exciting finding.' This would explain normal iron levels, but low MCV.


http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/10/3063.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=IC94FAmKug1SV5n

[jazzlover]

WHEW! Somehow I need to get all this down so I can email it to my PCP, who is an Internal Med doc.

What kind of supplements are you interested in? I take tons, actually!

[Nat]

I was just asking about supplements because some can mask a B12 deficiency. Here is some info on that.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/398654-what-vitamin-can-mask-vitamin-b12-deficiency/

I don't take any myself.

[Nat]

Confused, here is a good website to get some information on raw milk. I think a better word for raw milk might be unprocessed milk. That is all it is, milk that hasn't been processed.
www.realmilk.com

This is a small segment from my book.

"Mark McAffee of Organic Pastures, a raw milk dairy, has sold thousands of gallons of milk with no ill effects reported. Independent tests were performed between McAffee's raw milk and commercial pasteurized milk. Disease pathogens, including salmonella, listeria, and E.coli, were added to both the raw and pasteurized milk. The raw milk, which contains beneficial bacteria, would not support the growth of pathogens and they all died off. However, in the pasteurized milk, the pathogenic bacteria thrived and proliferated. In the absence of beneficial bacteria, harmful bacteria can more easily take hold."

It is important to visit your dairy and make sure you are comfortable with what you see. Ask questions, talk to other customers etc. This is a whole new ballgame. The point is to get back involved with your food. This will be your medicine, so it needs to be the highest quality you can find.

[anita]

Confused,

You are right about the raw milk.  You 'can' get sick (with various things) from raw milk.  This is why raw milk is illegal in many states. 

I still know people who swear by it, but use caution because there is NO regulation for raw milk and/or it's processing. 

Ask your doctor about it.  I'm not saying it 'will' make you sick, but our autoimmune systems 'may' respond differently to the bacteria in raw milk.

[Carebear]

As a Food Scientist and a retired dairy farmer, I would never drink unpasteurized milk myself. 

Of course this is a personal decision.

[Still in the hunt]

my hands will go ic cold but never get that reynauds look,, they dont get purple or anything like that,, they just get ice cold,

[Nat]

Here is some in depth information on the safety of raw milk.

http://www.realmilk.com/ppt/index.html

I think Carebear is right. This is a personal decision. We live in an era of access to information like never before in human history. Regardless of what we are "told" we have the choice to investigate it further for ourselves. 

Some of the questions to have answered would be: Why is milk pasteurized? Does making a food sterile make it safe to drink? Will it harm me in other ways? Is this what nature intended?

Raw milk will begin to sour within days. It is highly perishable. This is your signal to turn it into sour cream, kefir, yogurt etc.  The highly perishable nature of milk would make it impossible to transport and store on an industrial level. I have personally seen milk at Walmart dated 6 months from the expiration.

Oftentimes we are convinced something is true simply because we are told it is. This was the case with me with canola oil. Once while preparing dinner, I reached in my pantry for a "healthy oil" to stir fry with. I had been led to believe that it was healthy and I had accepted what I had been told as true without question. "Wait a minute", I thought, "What is a canola plant?" When I couldn't answer that question, I knew what I would spend the next few hours doing. What I discovered made me realize that I had been on autopilot. We can't assume that just because something is marketed as healthy (or unhealthy) that it truly is.

So, what is a canola plant? Not something you would plant in your garden I'm sure. Canola oil comes from the rapeseed plant. The rapeseed plant is the same plant that gave us mustard gas in WW1. It is toxic. Even the insects won't eat it. It is also cheap and plentiful. Canadian scientists figured out how to extract the chemical that would kill you immediately, and then began to market the remainder as a health food; hence the name, "canola oil", which is derived from 'Canadian oil'.

Producers of canola oil contribute five percent of their profits to the Canola Oil Marketing Fund. I could go on and on about its structure and whether this oil, that can only be created in a laboratory is something or bodies recognize.  However, if it wasn't a food 100 years ago, it's not a food now. At least it shouldn't be. Raw milk has been a  valuable, nutritious food that we have consumed for centuries. (land of milk and honey)

Drinking raw milk from a commercial dairy would not be wise in my opinion.  That is not the milks fault. The animals are treated inhumanely and fed an unnatural diet of corn of other inedible foodstuffs such as cottonseed oil. They are also given massive amounts of antibiotics and a cocktail of hormones. The animals are sick and diseased and these pathogens are passed into the milk. Pasteurization under these conditions would be necessary. During the pasteurization process, all of the 60 living enzymes have been destroyed. Each one of them there for a reason. So has all the beneficial bacteria. The proteins have been damaged and will be unrecogizable and even dangerous to your body. Pasteurized milk is the number one allergic food in the country for this reason.

[Carebear]

Nat,

Pasteurization is not the same as sterilization.  Pasteurization is carried out to kill only heat susceptible organisms and their spores, while sterilization will kill all organisms.  Beneficial microorganisms (mainly bacteria) are left alive when pasteurizing.

I just wanted to add that in Canada at least, all raw milk is tested for antibiotics prior to processing.  If detected, the entire load of milk is dumped and does not get into our food system.  The farmer will not receive payment either.

[Nat]

Here is some info from the Real Milk website on what happens during the pasteurization and ultra pasteurization process. The latter does destroy even the heat resistant bacteria. Most modern milk is ultra pasteurized. For the purposes of restoring missing enzymes, these are all lost during the pasteurization process. That is how they know he process is complete; every living enzyme is destroyed. Also, a vital component of reversing the autoimmune disease process is lost entirely-vitamin B12.

"Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity. Raw milk sours naturally but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk. Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. But times have changed and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. And pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria for Johne?s disease suspected of causing Crohn's disease in humans with which most confinement cows are infected. Much commercial milk is now ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life. Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds. Clean raw milk from certified healthy cows is available commercially in several states and may be bought directly from the farm in many more."


Care, there is nothing wrong with healthy debate and open discussion. I hope no one sees this as anything but. I am not offended when someone presents a different viewpoint other than my own.
Yes, our viewpoints are different, and we both obviously feel strongly about our opinion on the matter. That is O.k. I believe the denaturing and industrialization of our food supply is one of the reasons we are sick. I hope anyone reading this will gain knowledge that will help them make decisions that will benefit them. Nothing more.

[Carebear]

Nat,

I was employed in the dairy industry for over two decades... on the farm, in private industry, and in government regulatory agencies.  These are not my opinions.  These are my experiences.

I apologize to everyone for hijacking this thread...back to Raynaud's. 

[jazzlover]

Confused and others.. Google Raynaud's if you want to see what the fingers look like when an episode happens. It can be damaging to the tissue. Mine has never gone on for more than about 15 min when the fingers have turned white, purple, red. Thank goodness!!

No problems with hijacking that i see. I have been fascinated by Nat's contributions. And thanks for your input too, Carebear. I would worry most about bruccelosis.  But Nat did make a very important point that I agree with. "However, in the pasteurized milk, the pathogenic bacteria thrived and proliferated. In the absence of beneficial bacteria, harmful bacteria can more easily take hold."

I believe that!!

I found out we have raw milk available about 30 miles from here. But I know I could not drive there every week. Right now I'm having really bad neck/back pain and driving one mile to the grocery store causes pain.

[Nat]

Jazz, I hope you feel better soon.

Patty, I was going to post this study for your daughter on the connection to homocysteine and Scleroderma. This study states homocysteine is "significantly higher".

http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:17047894

Also, You can access this one by title."Homocysteine Plasma Concentration is Related to Severity of Lung Impairment in Scleroderma." In the conclusion it states,"Our data support the hypothesis that homocysteine could be involved in the pathogenic process of scleroderma pulmonary involvement."