groggy mornings.....

[kaybee]

I am wrecked in the mornings when I wake up....feel like I got hit by a truck every morning, mostly my head hurts and my brain feels FUZZY....sometimes to where Im up for a few hours and have to go crawl back in bed to "try again" and start the day over again an hour or too later, and I usually feel better then... Im OK by the afternoons, even when I have class and have to force myself to stay functional, then im usuallly ok by the afternoons, and well in the evenings, but its like it takes my brain half a day to wake up and i feel groggy (and my skin looks like garbage) always in the mornings. like im not fully functional and my reaction time is forever and i just feel "slow" :(

Anybody any ideas whats going on? Ive been on and off raw for about 10 months, sometimes 100% or almost 100% at times, but then august and september were really mixed, october was mostly raw except with the inclusion of bread for a few stretches of a few days at a time. the last couple weeks have been almost 100% with the exception of a couple cheats (but not consistent cheats, just a few times.)

'This isnt a new problem with raw, has been going on for a while, although not every day. but its still bad even on raw. any ideas whats causing it? I usually start the morning with juice, often apple lemon parsley, cuz I thought that was a good detox combination, then I have fruit and maybe some almonds during the morning, then whatever (raw) the rest of the day... but anyway, i just am WRECKED in the mornings... even now its 1:00 pm and i still feel groggy...like im just not with it...


if its detox, how do i make it go faster or go away?

thanks for any advice--

kaybee

[Conscious Midwife]

Room temp water first thing in the AM before you do anything

then

IF it's possibly blood sugar related try a smoothie with orange juice and bananas just for the healthy pick up and besure to have a fat of choice like a few nuts or slices of avacado.

[Revvell]

Yanno, so often people blame eating raw foods as the cause of their problems. Check what you eat before going to bed. Then see how you feel in the a.m. Is it EVERY morning you feel like this? What else has changed? Toothpaste? Purchased a down comfortor or started using one recently? How about blankets? Wool, cotton or synthetic?

It's also possible you're sensitive to some of the fruits/nuts you are eating especially if you're still eating cooked. Are you soaking the almonds? Are you drinking o.j. or any particular juice in the a.m.'s?

Without knowing more about your lifestyle it's really difficult to say what's going on.

Revvell

[Lay-Lay]

Yeah, what is your routine? What is your typical diet like? Intake that is? food prep procedures?

[kaybee]

hey--please dont get me wrong--im not trying to blame this on raw, just trying to figure out whats going on....


heres a little more info:

I did move in the last month, but it was the same in the last place I was living as well. it almost like my brain doesnt get the "wake up" signal until half way through the day, and it doesnt matter if im going to bed early or late.

I'm eating mostly whole raw foods and simple recipes, no dehydrated stuff as i dont have a dehydrator; not really grains (or quinoa or buckwheat either, as they just dont make me feel good). mostly a lot of fruits and greens and some vegetables, organic cold pressed olive oil, some almonds, and a fair amount of sesame seeds and some flax, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, some sprouted lentils and sprouted sunflower and alfalfa mix,and honey. Ive also been tracking my stuff on fitday, (which I know some of you strongly disagree with though...) to see that Im getting sufficient nutrients. Yeah, I know the RDA's are flawed for raw foods, and flawed in general, and that different peoples bodies need difft amounts of stuff at difft times, but i figure if i at least make sure im getting the RDA, it cant hurt, right? better too much than not enough...) according to fitday, which may or may not have some degree of accuracy, my intake is pretty good, though selenium and niacin are consistently lower than RDA... I am eating somewhere between 2000-3000 calories a day, mostly grazing throughout the day

usually start with juice, either apple parsley lemon
or carrot with some kind of greens

then banans, apples, oranges, maybe some almonds until lunchtime, then usually some sort of a salad for lunch or dinner and probably a smoothie sometime during the day and more fruit at night, sometime later in afternoon or evening usually have 1/2 cup or so of sesame or some other kind of seeds ground and mixed with honey; thats my substitute when i feel like i need something really "solid" in my stomach

sometimes I'll manage to get another glass of juice in sometime during the day too...(carrot/green)

when i eat almonds or sunflower seeds usually they are soaked, sesame seeds are not.

when i have salads they are usually greens with olive oil, or olive oil, honey and garlic or something like grated carrots with olive oil lemon juice honey or a tahini dressing, or a salad with fennel, carrots, olives and oranges. or sprouted lentils.

smoothies are bananas, other fruit (apples, pears, persimmons,) and sometimes soaked almonds and/or greens or ground sesame seeds.

no dried fruits except occasional raisins; cant get the others here...

i cant use avocados because i cant get them here.

im drinking bottled water and using it to rinse as much as possible since apparently there are endocrine disruptors in the tap water here (i.e. used, recycled birth control pill hormones have gotten into the water supply here..) but i cant afford nor deal with the hassle of hauling enough water from the store to wash all of my vegetables only in bottled water all of the time.

I am getting a fair amount of exercise walking around the city every day but not nearly as much as ive been used to having a highly physically demanding job for the last 5 years up till the last few months...

Another thought....I wonder could part of it just be the pollution here--im in rome and it seems really dirty....although this problem with my body and my brain not really "waking up" until later in the day has been going on far longer than just since I've lived here....

thanks

kb

[Sharon in Colorado]

I often feel this way in the morning when I indulge in something that I shouldn't be indulging in!

[Lay-Lay]

I was having similiar experience about a month and a half ago and I expressed it here on this forum and it was suggested that I add green smoothies to my diet.

Oh my, that was the answer for me. My energy levels and health went through the roof. I feel so fantastic and will NEVER go another day without my green smoothies.

I did not see in your post that you were having green smoothies and you said you were getting "some vegetables". You may be needing a boost of leafy greens and I no no way of consuming enough without green smoothies or energy soup. You may want to give it a try.

Hope you feel better soon!

[eatyourbroccoli]

happens to me every time i eat later than 8 pm. i usually go to bed around midnight. give your body more time to digest before going to bed. seriously..it will help a LOT. and try not to eat fat at night, since that digests much slower.

[luckitri]

kaybee - there are so many things to consider. As soon as I read your post I thought - pollution.....I did NOT think raw. One time I lived around the corner from a meth lab and didn't know it. Another time someone was doing something with vehicles (chop - shop ?) in their garage. These people do their thing at night when you are not likely to be tramping around the neighborhood figuring out where the fumes come from. One place I lived something would come it the air that I could not smell but it would burn my nose, eyes and lungs and hinder my breathing. I don't know what it was. We lived there 3 years before we could move. All these times I suffered in the am.

Your intuition said pollution. I have never been to Rome but I know many people do not want to think about pollution in their favorite places. I should ask my sister - she grew up in Firenze...and she know alot of people.

[DavidZaneMason]

Options (if my science is correct! Ha! ha!):

Melatonin levels help regulate sleepiness. Strong sunlight in the morning will help reduce melatonin levels and promote wakefullness. A rise in overall body temperature will also help promote wakefullness. A vigorous morning walk for 20 or 30 minutes (as you might have known) will help promote wakefullness. Watching your fat intake.....simplifying your meals (with less combining)...drinking more pure water or light juices.........and ceasing to eat as soon after dark as possible will all help. Establishing a routine is important.....as is avoiding associating your bed with anything other than sleep.

-Just some suggestions - which I hope are useful. By the way, I thought Rome was AWESOME. Couldn't much stand the smoke at Termini station though! ;)

-David Mason

[rawnora]

Kaybee,
You are right to look at your diet first, because that is most likely the cause of the problem.

A few thoughts about what you're eating now. Oils are very bad, they are extremely hard to break down and the body has no other choice but to eliminate them, which is costly of bodily energy. If you need a dense snack at bedtime, there are better things than seeds and honey. Seeds are not easily digestible either (although some are better than others; sesame are not the best), and honey has acids in it that do not break down at all and require the body to pull minerals from the teeth and bones for neutralization. Nuts are better than seeds, for the most part, although soaked sunflower seeds are along the same order as nuts. Garlic, parsley and fennel have toxins in them that irritate the digestive system (garlic is the worst of these), and legumes like lentils are largely indigestible, even if they're sprouted. Likewise, carrots are starchy and do not get fully digested either, even if they're juiced.

It is the overwhelming of your body with foods that it cannot fully digest that is most likely causing your grogginess. Whatever the body can't break down, it must either eliminate or store. It can easily eliminate the waste that is produced by foods that are normal for human beings, but its capacity is easily overwhelmed when we eat foods that create inordinate waste like oils, legumes, starchy veggies, toxic herbs and seeds. Of course these foods are relatively healthful when compared to the foods you're likely eating during your 'cheating' episodes. These will greatly add to the problem as well.

Eatyourbroccoli is right about not eating too late, also. If you eat less than 3 hours before bedtime (or more if you're eating things like nuts and combined foods), your body will not be able to devote its attention to the regeneration of nerve energy, which is what it does during sleep. It is the lack of nerve energy that makes us feel like we need to go on sleeping in the morning and if you feel this way it can only mean that something got in the way of your body's ability to create enough. Digestion, especially of difficult foods like the ones I named above, will do this in a big way. It is ONLY during sleep that the body can regenerate its supply of nerve energy. Nerve energy to our bodies is like the battery in a car. You can have a full gas tank but if the battery is dead, you're not going anywhere.

If a person who was eating optimally (only fruits, tender greens, nuts and seeds in small quantities, all unadulterated and properly combined) was experiencing your symptoms, I'd say it's the body doing some deep cleansing. In these cases it's very temporary, lasting only a couple days at most usually, and is sometimes accompanied by other acute symptoms. But the fact that the symptom is persistent combined with what you're eating indicates to me that it's not deep cleansing. The body cannot cleanse stored wastes when it's having to deal with foods that require so much work.

The dilemma that all raw fooders have to deal with is that they feel MUCH better physically without those borderline foods but they feel emotionally unsatisfied, even bereaved, when they give them up. All you can do is minimize the work you're giving your body and eat only as much of those transitional foods as is necessary to keep you satisfied and on track. Giving them up entirely is what's best for the body.

I don't know how long you've been raw but it appears you may have reached the point where you have to start cleaning your diet up a bit, or live with continued symptoms. I'm one of those who does not advocate the tracking of nutrients on sites like Fitday. It's not that the RDAs are unreliable (altho they are) it's that doing this directs our attention away from the important stuff, the stuff that can pay BIG dividends in health (like refining the diet, learning which foods are best and how to properly combine them, etc.) to things that don't matter (how many calories, fats, nutrients, etc., we're consuming).

Just some food for thought. I hope you find it useful!

Wishing the best,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com