Denis Tétrault

Hello everybody,

My name is Denis. I have been practicing instinctive eating since October 1989. I am living presently south of Montreal at the border of NY state. Since I have changed my way of eating, a lot of things have changed in my life. In 1992, I sold my accountant office and bought a forest farm where I am living now. I built a strawbale house also. For four years, I raised pigs outside all year round with shelters without door. The animals were free to enter or stay outside. Prior to the purchasing of the farm, I have spend times visiting some countries where I could stay and raise food all year round. I went to Costa Rica in 91, to Dominica in 92 and Martinique en 97-98. In 98-99 I spend the winter in Mali West Africa with one of my friend's family. When I left Mali after four months I had decided to go back there and start raising fruits and vegetables but when I went back in the summer, things had changed. As I was not feeling too secure there, I decided to come back home for a while. In this summer, I discovered a place in Hawaii called Pangaia and then I decided to sell everything and leave for Hawaii as I got cross information from one of my friends who had been there. But the selling of my property didn't work out yet as I expected and I am still working on that at the present time.

Now I will like to talk a little on my practice of instinctive eating. For the first 4 or 5 years, I did it pretty well but after that period, things have changed and I started to eat more raw foods and mixed the vegetables. Also, once in a while, I was going to a French restaurant and was eating raw meat.

Well I am not sure what exactly caused me to have a tumor on the neck. It started with a little one and it was often bleeding and not healing. I started to eat a little cooked foods on occasions with friends and this didn't help either. Anyway, I had that tumor increasing slowly but surely. I tried to fast for 10 days but since I am living alone, I stopped after that period because I thought I couldn't be able to help myself if I was to continue. I tried several others techniques but nothing seem to work. On the final step, I decided to have it removed since it's size had tripled from the last time I went to see a doctor a year ago. I had it removed by an esthetical surgeon and she told me that it was a skin cancer but one which is less severe and that she had taken everything out. I had noticed a significant change on my skin immediately after the operation.

They have prescribed drugs against the pain but I didn't have to use any since I didn't have any or so little that I was wondering at first if she had taking off the tumor.

Now I would like to mention that I liked very much working with my hands i.e. manually and I did practice permaculture here and also helped other people to start their garden using this principal.

As you certainly notice, English is not my first language since I learned it in the 60s at school for 1 and a half years in Alberta but the rest of the time I was in Quebec i.e. French speaking here. Well I stop here to keep it not too long to read.

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