“My life was managed from headache to headache.”

By Ray Roberts

When I turned 40, migraine headaches entered my life. At first, I did not know that I had a migraine, as I had never experienced headaches. They were always on the same side of my head and lasted 36 to 48 hours, and they were devastating. They recurred about every 3 to 4 weeks. After each headache there was a two-week window where I was good and then I would start to worry.

I saw multiple doctors, had a cat scan, and started to take drugs for the pain, oral and then injections that I would self-administer. My life was managed from headache to headache.

I hated the drugs and was desperate to get off them. I scoured libraries and book sources for help and read and studied everything I could find. I tried various strategies, such as no sugar for a month (negative result) and exercising during a headache—I once went for a two-hour jog in the middle of the night (did not help).

Although there seemed to be various triggers, the only one that I could really control was what I put into my mouth, and so I would unsuccessfully change this or that in my diet. My weight started to drop from a high of 190 lb (I am 6‘1” with a medium build) to 175 lb.

After many years, a breakthrough came when I discovered a book titled Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman. This book was my introduction to therapeutic fasting. I had done many 24-hour fasts as an active Church member, but that was the extent of my fasting experience.

I fasted for 72 hours and then went on a strict elimination diet for 30 days, followed by another 72-hour fast. The elimination diet consisted of a limited number of foods, all whole food, plant based, although at the time I knew nothing of this type of diet. There was no headache during this period, and I was euphoric. I intended to fast for a week after the 30 days of the elimination diet, but my work was very physical, and I was forced to break the fast after 3 days.

I went 7 weeks without a headache, an amazing exhilarating experience. The headaches did return, but this success told me I was on to something. Something changed in my metabolism after this experience, and my weight dropped at one point to 144 lb within a few weeks. I started to eat differently realizing that this made a huge difference in my health and especially my battle with migraines. I felt amazing. My weight has now settled around 155 lb for last 18 or so years.

I started to study nutrition, physiology and fasting. I experimented briefly with keto diets on two different occasions, and both times had a very negative experience and felt ill. As my research broadened, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) eating came into my purview, and I spent many hours learning with diet gurus such as Michael Gregor (nutritionfacts.org), John McDougall, T. Colin Campbell (The China Study) and others.

My lifestyle slowly evolved into a WFPB diet and intermittent fasting. I now eat mostly in the evening. I believe this strategy concentrates my insulin secretion to a few hours each day, making me insulin sensitive. A whole food plant-based diet has a similar effect on insulin although the daily mini fast enhances the insulin sensitivity, a factor that seemed to be important in managing my migraine headaches. Rather than surging up and down throughout the day, my glucose would rise for a few hours after eating and then remain low and constant the remainder of the day.

My headaches are under control with a rare minor breakthrough that I can manage with Tylenol. Perhaps growing older helps as well as it is hard to separate all the factors involved, but I am healthy and happy.

As I got deeper into WFPB diet, I realized that it paralleled the Word of Wisdom. I re-discovered the Word of Wisdom and Jane Birch’s website while researching WFPB. The promises in this revelation are among the most astounding in all of scripture: Health in the navel and marrow in the bones [our bone marrow is the source of immune cells], hidden treasures of knowledge, to run and walk without weariness, and a promise that the destroying angel will pass us by.

These blessings are only fully realized as Word of Wisdom is lived in its fullness, the do’s and the don’ts.

I have an interesting take on the Word of Wisdom that I don’t think has been mentioned before. The following is my opinion. Verse 2 states “showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days” I believe this statement is significant.

One of my interests is genetics, specifically population genetics. Several years ago, I discovered a book Genetic Entropy by John Stanford. This book is very readable and understandable for anyone with a high school education. The premise is that all genomes are accumulating mutations although they are mostly very slightly deleterious, an analogy would be a car slowly rusting out over time. Each successive generation is more mutated that the previous, (by inference as one goes back in time there is less mutation and at one time would have been perfect as in Adam and Eve).

This is very apparent in our bodies, every cell division accumulates on average 3 nucleotide mutations and is responsible for aging. Each of our cells has a total of 6 billion nucleotides so this process is slow but cumulative. The same process occurs on a species level. Each succeeding generation accumulates 100 mutations (virtually all very slightly negative). We can now verify this through genome sequencing. If you follow this to its logical conclusion it will result in what population geneticists call “catastrophe error” or inability to reproduce.

So back to the Word of Wisdom, I think we (humanity) have arrived at a point in our evolution on earth where animal products need to be used sparingly. Since the fall of Adam there is something like 300 generations, each one more mutated that than the previous. Animal products are currently (for our generations in latter days) harder to digest and assimilate. They cause slight inflammation, contain higher level of toxins and probably other slightly negative but cumulative effects that we may not understand. These were not so pronounced in earlier periods as the human genome was less mutated and more robust, and so the Lord has stated “for the temporal salvation of saints in latter days”

Ray Roberts is a 73-year-old veterinarian, semi-retired, living in Raymond, Alberta, Canada. His career was predominately large animal. Ray and his wife have just celebrated 50 years of marriage They have 5 children and 19 grandchildren. They have served two senior couple missions, one in Salt Lake and one in Philippines. Ray enjoys hiking, biking, gardening, pickle ball, history, currents events, and scripture study.