Putative Iris Color Change
A number of "gurus" in the varied fields of iridology, raw foods diets, and various natural healing systems (e.g., some naturopaths, some "alternative" cancer clinics, some practitioners of Body Eelctronics, etc.) have claimed repeatedly over the past 30 years or so that all brown eyes are a symptom of toxin accumulation in the tissues, and that as a person heals, then their iris color will shift, through green, toward blue, or perhaps even an endpoint of light gray (this latter belief seems to be peculiar to some schools of iridology which sprung from Bernard Jensen's tradtion, and also to some old-line traditions within Body Electronics.) 

Details
This belief, or perhaps "mythology", about blue eyes being the only "healthy" eyes is nothing new.  If you were to search the web, or take a look in the archives of the Live-foods e-mail list group (devoted to RVAF diet eaters) at Yahoo Groups, you will discover that various kinds of alternative healers, iridologists, and raw foodists of varied ilk have been claiming for years, since at least 1965, that all brown eyes are a sign of "toxins" and congestion in tissues throughout the body, and that when the person becomes really healthy, their eyes become totally blue or light gray, presumably thus reflecting the improved state of tissue health throughout the body.  Among others, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, the father of an RVAF diet system known as the Primal Diet, has stated this and it seems to be one of the principles which guides his consulting practice; a small number of adherents of his diet and his method of iridology seem to be rather obsessive about iris color and the change toward lighter colors.

John Ray, ND, the recently deceased founder of Body Electronics, a spiritual and energy-based healing system which included, as one pillar, an all-raw diet, also claimed this.  Incidentally, for a very in-depth examination of the issue of iris color change, as well as putative skin color change (claims of skin growing lighter in color) and hair color change observed in followers of the Body Electronics system, please see the page on this site devoted to Body Electronics, entitled Observations on Body Electronics and Healing .  Some of the adherents and advocates of this belief have refined it further (I belive that the late Bernard Jensen was one, although he also seemed to believe that it is impossible for most people to significantly shift their iris color in a lifetime....) and stated that there are really two different eye colors in humans: "true brown" and "true blue", and that many folks who appear to have brown eyes really are "true blue", but have a "layer" or "curtain" of discoloration over the underlying blue iris which makes it appear brown; the overlay or curtain of discoloration is believed to be due to tissue toxins (usually believed to have been acumulated from a cooked or processed foods diet or from environmental toxins or drugs.)   

Many of the systems and practitioners mentioned herein believe that the above hypothesis is true, at least until the person in question gets rid of the tissue toxins (usually believed to have been acumulated from a cooked or processed foods diet or from environmental toxins or drugs), at which time their eye color will purportedly revert to blue (or gray.)  This matter -- pros, cons, possibilities, what is really observed in practice -- has been discussed ad infinitum (in the archives) on the Live-foods list at Yahoo Groups and likely on numerous other raw foods lists as wel, in the RVAF warld as well as the raw vegan world.  I have no desire to re-visit the issue too deeply at this time except to state the following observations, for what they are worth:

• I do not believe unilaterally that this contention about iris color change is necessarily wholly true.
• I do believe that there may be some truth to it, at least for some people who do not have truly dark eyes.  It may be true that some people have true brown irises, and that these cannot change color. It also may be that you can be perfectly healthy even if your eyes are not blue, even if you have the so-called "not true brown", aka "true blue" iris color. 
• I have heard anecdotal stories of a number of folks whose iris color has lightened considerably after starting a raw Paleo diet (aka an RVAF diet), and also for many who have switched to a largely-cooked Paleo diet as well (in some cases, their iris color changes seem to have taken longer.) 
• I have several RVAF-eating friends whose iris color has shifted significantly and noticeably toward blue after eating RVAF for a year. I one case, the isises of a female friend with brown eyes appeared to have shifted largely to green, with a bit of blue, in about three to five months while on an RVAF diet.
• My own eyes shifted quite radically in a very short period of time, from all brown to partially blue/green, in the late 1980's, as a result of some esoteric energy healing techniques which I was practicing, as well as a rather clean (but not yet Paleo) cooked diet along with intake of very large quantities of raw seaweed and "prehistoric colloidal minerals from ancient lake bed deposits", which contain about 81 different elements. 
• The shift to blue color of my irises noted above was so noticeable that strangers noticed that my eyes seemed blue even across  a crowded lecture room while I was in acupuncture school in the early 1990's.
• My eye color shifts have been so severe that at one time (early 1990's) the motor vehicles department in my then-state of residence (Pennsylvania, while I was  in graduate school), at renewal of my drive's license, changed my eye color from "brown" to "blue".  I now live in Maryland, which has stopped recording eye color on driver's licenses (probably because the space aliens are changing everyone's iris colo.... oops, never mind....). 
• My friends claim to have noticed that my own eyes have shifted even further -- albeit rather slowly and gradually -- towards blue since I started an RVAF diet in early 2000. Paradoxically, my friends have noticed that the shift to blue seems to have speeded up when I abandoned 100% raw RVAF about 9 months ago and went instead to about 85% RVAF with the remaining 15% being cooked Paleo foods (meats, fish, veggies, etc.)
• Several of my friends and acquaintances claim to have noticed that my irises and theirs have started to lighten more rapidly since we each started consuming on a daily basis a fermented antioxidant nutritional supplement known as EM, and related nutritional brews, all fermented with a special cluster of antioxidative microorganisms know as EM or EM-1.  To learn more about EM and its uses in human nutrition, see the EM Information website, particularly the sections on the use of EM for human and health purposes.  (see also bullet item below for more such reports...)
• In a closely related vein to the bullet item above, I have recently come across several articles, in a collection of research papers on the use of EM products (including EM-X) in health and healing (Proceedings of the 1st International EM Medical Conference in Okinawa, Japan in November 2001; see note 1 below), which also claimed highly significant lightening of the iris color in patients who were being treated for chronic diseases with EM (aka EM1, or EM-1) fermented antioxidant nutritional supplement products. One such article was by a naturopath, another by an acupuncturist, and, I believe, a third by an MD, each of whom had used EM products with selected chronically ill patients.  I have heard more such reports anecdotally from various EM researchers.  To learn more about various EM products available on the market for human consumption, please see the EM-Related Products page on the Antiox Brew website.
• Aajonus Vonderplanitz, founder of the Primal Diet (an RVAF diet)  has stated many times that his friend and Primal Diet client Lori experienced  a massive iris color shift from all-brown to all-blue in the three years while he worked with her, all due to her RVAF diet.  He has shown me before-and-after photos of Lori's irises which seem to strongly support that contention.  Aajonus has further claimed to have seen such radical shifts in iris color from brown to blue in many hundreds, if not thousands, of his nutritonal consulting clients (all adherents of his Primal Diet), and also in his own case (his eyes at present are definitely totally blue, and he claims that they were totally brown at age 20 when he was quite ill.) He has shown photos which appear to document these radical iris color shifts for many dozens of his clients to his clients, students, and acquaintances over the past few years. 
• I have met a number of alternative health practitioners, mostly naturopaths, but also one MD/DO who ran an alternative cancer clinic in Mexico which employed radical methods of "bowel cleansing", who have claimed to have seen massive shifts in iris color from brown to blue in certain chronic disease patients as they "cleansed" or "detoxified" via natural healing methods.
• a number of parctitioners/teachers of raw vegan diet systems claim to have seen massive shifts in iris color from brown to blue in themselves or in friends or family members after having ingested a raw vegan diet for at least a half-year.  If interested, you can easily find their web pages in a quick web search on Google.
• Strangely, I have not observed much of a lightening of iris color, if any, in raw vegan folks after the first few months, nor in most long-term raw vegans, nor in folks (often but not always raw foodists) who engage in lots of long-term fasting for "health" reasons.  My observation is that I seem to hear far more reports of iris color shift from folks following raw or partly-raw diets which include raw animal foods as well, or so-called RVAF diets.
• Despite some claims made by early promulgators of the Body Electronics (BE) system, I have not observed much iris color chonge, if any, in any of the hundreds of Body Electronics practitioners I have known over the years, and I have encountered very few practitionars/teachers of BE who have claimed to have seen such iris color shifts first-hand in any BE practitioners.  On the other hand, most BE practitioners are rather notorious, at least in the USA and Hawaii, for not adhering to the dietary and nutritional supplement principles (largely raw foods) of the diet, but rather for eating what other, more disciplined, BE adherents and instructors have described as "junk food". So this may not be a good field test of BE and its effects upon iris color....
• See the item immediately below.. it is highly relevant....

This cluster of symptoms is often known as "cleansing symptoms" or "retrace symptoms" in many of the alternative health fields, including acupuncture, iridology, homeopathy, naturopathy, Body Electronics, and the Biological Terrain (BT or BTI) systems.  Thses symptoms may involve chills, sweating, bad body odor, increased urination, foul-smelling urine, diarrhea, foul-smelling feces, flu symptoms, aches and pains, fever, or rashes.  Now, the problem with this is that folks in the Western world are rather impatient with temporary discomfort, and many, even those suffering chronic disease who have been forewarned by their practitioners about the temproary nature of such cleansing symptoms, simply abandon any of the above-listed modalities within a short time after the transient cleansing symptoms set in.  Thus, they may never stick with such systems or practices long enough to witness any significant improvement in health or even any possible change in iris color.

Lastly, let me say that my dear hound dog Toby has all-brown eyes, and I love him dearly anyway and think he is just fine!  Also, my dear Bantam hen Henrietta, now sitting broody on 10 eggs, also has all-brown eyes despite a largely-raw diet, and she appears to be quite robust, healthy and fun.  Lastly, the biker chick whom I met in the bar last week and with whom I was snuggling had brown eyes and she also seemed quite robust, strong and healthy and acceptable... oops, never mind.....

On Iridology
While we are on the topic of iridology, allow me to briefly state my own beliefs about iridology as an alternative diagnostic tool.  I think it largely is bunk, but that it has good potential in the right hands.  In my experience, most iridologists seem to "go by the book", using text-book interpretations of what various colors or spots on the iris mean in terms of health, usually via "geographic" mapped corrspondences (e.g.,"a spot here means heart disease", and "a spot there means live trouble".) I disagree rather violently with such practitioners.  I personally feel, based upon the limited number of practitioners and cases I have observed, plus the published reports of several studies and tests, and even the reports of ex-iridologists, that anyone practicing such a mapping method is bound to be wrong most of the time, and highly inaccurate.  I have never yet met any iridologist who "went by the book" who was not almost entirely incorrect in their claims when I asked them to look at my eyes.  However, I have met one or two iridologists who combine their own methods of iridology with close examination of the skin, face and hair, along with what I would call excellent "intuitive" access, and who have seeemed to be quite accurate, even to the point of noticing an old puncture injury to my back from 35 years earlier (without having seen my back and while knowing nothing of my medical history) and telling me, accurately, that the treating doctor had used lots of iodine in the deep wound. 
 

note 1:  By the way, to forestall any possible inquiries from folks askng me how to get copies of the articles, the EMRO and EMCO folks have temporarily removed the two volume Proceedings of the 1st International EM Medical Conference, held in Okinawa, Japan in November 2001 (also known as Clinical and Basic Medical Research on EM-X, Volumes 1 & 2), and cited above, from distribution in the US and Japan, due to the fact that one or more of their products are in active review process with the FDA and the Japanese sister organization of the FDA, and EMRO/EMCO wish to avoid any appearance of making medical or drug-like claims for EM products at this time.  So, these volumes are not available for sale, distribution or copying in the Western world at this time.  I was fortunately given a set of these two volumes as a gift by a fellow EM researcher who has studied extensively with Dr. Higa, but I have signed a non-distribution agreement. Therefore, I cannot distribute copies of all or part of the articles in the proceedings.  Any inquiries sent despite this caveat will be ingored and discarded. 

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Vinny Pinto, Frederick, Maryland, USA