Why I Quit The Carnivore Diet

eating a carnivore diet led to full resolution of my autoimmune condition eczema itchy rashes and Asthma that I'd had for my whole life but after a year and a half I quit the carnivore diet in this video I'm going to tell you why and talk about the pros and cons of eating carnivore so from the outset I want to say that a carnivore diet eating only animal Foods meat fish chicken eggs animal fat organs salt plus minus some people eat coffee on this type of diet is an incredibly powerful way of eating it's an Elimination

Diet and it's helped so many people including myself reverse autoimmune diseases get to the bottom of which foods are triggering their gut issues it's helped a lot of people lose weight and feel massively better overall I mean I am such a fan of the carniv war diet that I wrote a book about it in 2019 which is still something that I'm proud of and I still agree with many of the ideas talked about in that book but if you are eating a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet and you are thriving this video is not

meant to change your mind if anything this video is meant to be a high five keep doing what you're doing keep thriving and I'm glad that you found a way of eating that works for you but I know that like myself there are a lot of people who eat carnivore or ketogenic diets and they run into issues the point of this video is to offer those of you that might be doing carnivore or keto and struggling maybe with some of the same things that I struggled with another way or other ways of thinking about diet

to help you get back on track for health again this video is not to knock carnivore it's not to knock keto it's not to tell you to stop eating that way if you're thriving keep doing it this is what I keep saying in my social media content over and over if you're thriving don't change anything about your diet but if you're not whether you're having sleep issues or muscle cramps or low Lio or weight loss Plateau or any of these things it's time to question your nutritional assumptions and there are other ways of thinking about

diet so what happened with me after about a year to a year and a half of a carnivore diet I began to notice issues probably in my case arising due to electrolyte insufficiency connected with consistently very low insulin because I wasn't really eating any carbohydrates and the protein I was eating probably wasn't as insulinogenic as it needed to be this led to muscle cramps I had problems with sleep I had heart palpitations fluttering of my heart I had something called hypnogogic jerks where I would fall asleep but jerk myself awake like I was falling multiple

times that was very stressful and very traumatic it led to very poor sleep for a little while that eventually was possibly remedied by magnesium IVs but the reason I got low in magnesium in the first place was probably due to a ketogenic diet in my case I had declining lab values that were important to me specifically lower total testosterone higher sex hormone binding globulin which leads to a lower free testosterone and a lower free testosterone index and I had the sense that I was cold or a little bit cold all the time and when I

looked at my labs my thyroid levels specifically my total T3 and free T3 were not ideal in my case after a year to a year and a half on a ketogenic carnivore diet of only meat organs and fat and salt I began to have some issues and I started to think about what I could do to remedy those issues I'll talk about what I think all of these were connected with in this video but ultimately the solution for me was adding back carbohydrates if any of you have followed my story in the past you know

where this goes I've since transitioned to something that I think of as an animal-based diet where I still eat meat and organs animal fat and salt but get carbohydrates from things like fruit honey and raw dairy and I'll talk about my decisions or why I choose those as my carbohydrate sources later in this video now interestingly as you can imagine when I added fruit to my diet and honey to my diet the carnivore Community was a little bit shaken by this uh a little bit traumatized and there were many in the carnivore community and continue

to be those in the carnivore Community suggesting that I did the carnivore diet wrong does this sound familiar this is a lot of times what happens in vegan C when people leave veganism and then the vegans that are still doing a vegan diet accuse them of doing a vegan diet wrong people said that I ate too many organs and that was the reason that I didn't do well on a carnivore diet well I eat the same amount of organs now with carbohydrates and I feel much better so I don't think that was the problem I

suppose people have proposed all sorts of other convoluted reasons why a carnivore diet didn't work for me and as I said in the beginning of the video I know a carnivore diet works for a lot of people but I think there are a lot of us out there also that strictly eating meat or eating meat in organs doesn't really cut it long term because I think that for most people carbohydrates are a valuable part of human physiology and I'll talk about why as I mentioned earlier I think one of the main things that went wrong

with me was not having enough carbohydrates and though insulin a peptide hormone gets demonized I think insulin is actually our friend and I'll talk about why since going through all of this on a carnivore diet and beginning to wonder why things went kind of off track for me especially in terms of my electrolytes I've since learned that insulin has a crucial role in signaling at the kidney to hold on to electrolytes specifically sodium but connected with sodium insulin is going to affect the resorption the way your body reabsorbs and holds on to all sorts of

electrolytes all sorts of minerals sodium potassium chloride magnesium and others and this is essential for optimal human health this is why I think so many people on ketogenic diets end up having to increase their salt to massive levels because they're not having enough insulin signaling at the level of the kidney all of this is fixable with carbohydrates in the diet as you can see from this study insulin's impact on renal sodium transport and blood pressure at the level of the kidneys that help our body hold on to these minerals and I want to make it

clear that I do not believe that insulin induced insulin resistance is the reason that some of you may have obesity or diabetes insulin induced insulin resistance this idea that eating too many carbohydrates leads to insulin resistance in humans this has really never been shown in real human clinical data there are other mechanisms at play at the level of mitochondria if you don't believe me that carbohydrates are benign for humans things like glucose or fructose or galactose consider the fact that the human body makes glucose and if you don't eat it your body W make it

that is how essential it is to your physiology if you fear fructose I will share a short amount of information in this video to corroborate the assertion that fructose is not harmful for humans specifically when it is consumed in natural form quote unquote in things like fruit and honey where it always occurs with glucose and it is in a food Matrix fructose consumed in that way looks very different in human physiology than free fructose isolated fructose or processed fructose that is high fructose corn serum I believe that the majority the vast majority of fructose hate

fructose fearing is based around animal studies in rats and mice which we know have different physiology rats and mice do much more denovo lipogenesis with fructose than humans do significantly more meaning they make fructose into triglycerides and fat to a significantly greater extent than humans do so that physiology in rats and mice is very different than our physiology and is not translated to humans or those assertions around fructose are based on high fructose corn syrup processed sugars or they are looking at animal models where fructose is overfed in isolation without glucose to animals leading to

fructose malabsorption and that leads to lipopolysaccharide and therein lies the problem in animal models very clearly but I want to clearly state that eating carbohydrates especially in the form of fruit and honey is not what caus your diabetes and it is possible to eat moderate amounts of those while you have diabetes and obesity and become healthier I'll talk about that at the end of this video as well so I want to spend a few minutes talking about why I don't think ketogenic diets are ideal for humans high level there is evidence in humans that ketogenic

diets that is limitation of carbohydrates leads to increased stress hormones that is cortisol epinephrine also known as adrenaline and glucagon now the cortisol and epinephrine May attenuate long term but glucagon is always going to be elevated when you are low carb or limiting your carbohydrates and glucagon is clearly a stress hormone in humans there are multiple studies showing that adding carbohydrates to athletes or to humans that are not doing intense exercise improves all sorts of metrics improves cortisol metrics improves recovery from exercise or improves thyroid hormones this sort of essential thermostat that your body has

that tells your body where the metabolic rate should be and guess what if you want to stay lean if you want to be healthy and have energy and feel good and have libbido or if you want to lose weight you want your body's metabolism to work well you want your thyroid to be moving your body's thermostat to the highest level possible at all times so consider some of these downsides of ketogenic diets here's a paper a short-term ketogenic diet impairs markers of bone health markers of bone remodeling were impaired after short-term low carb high fat

diet changes in the thyroid thid hormonal status in patients receiving ketogenic diet due to intractable EP epilepsy here's another study showing that the thyroid hormones are negatively affected by ketogenic diets this is done in children this is done in patients receiving a ketogenic diet due to epilepsy the conclusions the ketogenic diet caused thyroid malfunction and L thyroxin may be required this is the first report documenting the effect of a ketogenic diet on thyroid function thyroid function should be monitored regularly in epileptic patients treated with a ketogenic diet I would go so far as to say

that anyone doing a ketogenic diet even if that diet is working for you should have regular checks of TSH T4 T3 free T3 free T4 and reverse T3 I have very rarely seen optimal levels especially of total T3 and free T3 in people doing long-term ketogenic diets which I think is a real clear signal that our bodies Thrive with carbohydrates and see carbohydrates as a signal of abundance you want your thyroid to work well we know that when your thyroid is not working optimally there are increased rates of all sorts of things especially cardiovascular disease

what about cortisol cortisol is very clearly a stress hormone that is absolutely induced when you limit carbohydrates in humans there are studies like this one dietary macronutrient content Alters cortisol metabolism independently of body weight changes in obese men as you can see in the conclusions a low carbohydrate diet Alters cortisol metabolism independently of weight loss in obese men this enhances cortisol regeneration by 11 beta hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1 and reduces cortisol inactivation by a-ring reductases in liver the authors of this study found that an obese men who were doing low carbohydrate diets that is 4% carbohydrates

for four weeks levels of cortisol were increased due to reduced inactivation and increased regeneration by an enzyme specifically known as 11 beta hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1 the name of that enzyme isn't important what is important is the idea that on low carbohydrate diets more cortisol remains in your body at least for 4-we trials like this one because of increased regeneration and decreased deactivation of cortisol that is not a good thing for humans long term excess cortisol leads to all sorts of issues in humans you do not want your cortisol levels to be higher obviously there are

some physiologic utilities to cortisol specifically a cortisol Awakening response first thing in the morning that helps wake you up but consistently elevated cortisol levels due to stresses induced in the Body by limitation of carbohydrates is probably not a good thing for many humans returning to the idea of thyroid specifically here's another study showing that in six healthy males with 11 days of three diets all having the same amount of calories and differing amounts of carbohydrates specifically 85 44 and 2% carbohydrates so in this study there were healthy males who had 11 days of three different

diets based on their carbohydrate levels 85% as carbohydrates 44% as carb hydrates and 2% of carbohydrates and what they found was that all of these diets were isocaloric but in the lowest level of carbohydrates what they found was in The Men Who had levels of carbohydrates at 2% in their diet there was increased protein catabolism that is increased breakdown of protein and lowering of the hormone T3 so very clear in this study that low carbohydrate diets increased protein catabolism and lowered thyroid hormones like T3 it's also been noted repeatedly in exercise studies in men that

giving carbohydrates improves free testosterone and decreases cortisol after intensive exercise training here's a study showing an example of that and in those who are exercising or doing intense exercise of any kind carbohydrate clearly improves the attenuation of the immune system after those exercises as you can see here in this study very clearly the authors say consuming carbohydrate but not glutamine or other amino acids during exercise ATT ues the rise in stress hormones meaning that the stress hormones went up less such as cortisol and appears to limit the degree of excised induced imuno supression at least

for non-fatiguing bouts of exercise so I think it's pretty clear that when it comes to ketogenic diets and exercise performance there is a benefit to having carbohydrates when it comes to ketogenic diets and thyroid hormone status there's a benefit to having carbohydrates when it comes to ketogenic diets and electrolyte levels there's a benefit to having carbohydrates in your diet and when it comes to ketogenic diets and sex hormones like testosterone or free testosterone index there is a benefit to having carbohydrates in your diet in my experiment fruit and honey seem to have been the best

carbohydrates for me along with lactose in raw milk I've done previous videos on why I don't think fruit is harmful for humans I've done previous videos on honey and I've done previous videos on Rod Dairy but I will summarize all of my thoughts there briefly I want to mention that I've also done videos on why I'm not a fan of grains specifically things like oatmeal or quinoa which contain saponins which contain phytic acid which are not degraded to any significant extent with cooking specifically in oatmeal many people's favorite source of carbohydrates you would need to

soak that oatmeal for 3 to four days uh at room temperature or higher than room temperature then soak it for another 24 hours in a pH solution of four to five and then boil it or pressure cook it to have the majority of the phytic acid reduced there are rigorous protocols that must be followed to reduce any significant amount of the phytic acid in oatmeal again I've done whole videos on oatmeal if you're interested in phytic acid anomal but I think that in general grains are not a great source of carbohydrates for humans as always

if you eat grains and you seem to do well with them maybe not a big deal but if you are not thriving if you are having issues for a lot of people cutting grains out whether it's wheat oatmeal quinoa or for some people even rice especially brown rice can be a problem now for the sake of scientific experimentation I've put white rice into my diet sometimes and I'll tell you guys that I just don't feel as good with white rice the majority of the time when I eat it so generally I don't eat white rice

and my carbohydrates come from fruit and honey and raw milk again do what works for you but know that the grains that is oats wheat quinoa rice these do have more defense chemicals and will need more rigorous processes to be detoxified if you're having gut issues if you're having headaches or fatigue or unresolved autoimmune issues a lot of times getting rid of those is a good idea the same goes for beans I've done many videos on beans why I'm not a huge fan of beans at all beans contain significant amounts of phytic acid digestive enzyme

Inhibitors and I think they are a very poor source of nutrition for humans again like the grains you must go through a rigorous process to detoxify beans this isn't to say that some people if they want to soak their beans for four or five days at 45 degrees centigrade and then put them in an acid solution to sprout them for a day and then pressure cook them you might be able to eat some beans that are reasonably non-toxic for humans but that is a lot of work and clearly those beans do not want to get

eaten by humans so it's not that you can't eat sources of carbohydrates like grains or beans it's just that they require much much more intensive preparation to actually be less toxic for humans than things like fruit and honey and I'll get to those in a moment for some people root vegetables are better tolerated than grains or beans and I think this is reasonable if you can do white potatoes and you pressure cook them and you're fine with them great when I've tried e white potatoes it seems to re-trigger my Eczema so I I think that

for me at least this Nightshade type of root is not agreeing with my body and my immune system again some people do fine with it so see what works for you in terms of carbohydrates but I do think having some sources of carbohydrates in your diet will improve your overall health the reasons that I've selected fruit and honey is because to me it just makes sense intuitively that these are the foods that plants kind of want us to eat fruit is the colorful seasonal part of fruits remember that humans evolved at the equator for most

of our existence so I think that all of us have the mechanisms to eat fruit in significant amounts if you don't want to eat fruit that's out of season where you are that's great but I don't think many of us need to go to that level of stringency with regard to our fruit consumption some people don't tolerate all fruit as well as other fruits but see what works for you honey is something that again is available all year round at the equator when I was in Africa with a hza they loved honey they ate it

without any remorse and I got to share honey comb with actual larvae in it and we also got honey from stingless bees and that honey was some of the best I've ever had in the world when it comes to fruit people get kind of triggered especially in ketogenic and carnivore circles but the fact remains that there are no well-conducted studies in humans showing that fruit or fruit juice induce any degree of metabolic dysfunction now even in the fructose fearing World many of the pundits will say that fruit is okay because it contains fiber which is

not something I'm going to address in this podcast necessarily I'm not a huge fan of fiber but if you want to get some Fiber in your fruit that's great but fruit juice is almost unanimously vilified I don't really understand why because when you look at the literature there are studies upon studies showing that fruit juice is helpful for humans in so many different ways there are studies showing that watermelon juice improves heart rate variability during an oral glucose Challenge and actually attenuates many of the problems that happen when you give somebody pure glucose in a

glucose challenge there are multiple studies with orange juice showing that it improves total antioxidant status and decreases lipid peroxidation in humans there are studies with cherry juice showing decreased level of lipid peroxidation as well there are studies showing that 100% fresh orange juice improved blood glucose and improved insulin levels in healthy subjects and there are other studies showing that orange juice ingestion decreased lipid peroxidation in healthy adult women this is just the tip of the iceberg guys there are probably 30 to 40 studies with fruit juice alone showing that fruit juice improves everything from lipid

peroxidation glucose indices insulin sensitivity and athal function fruit juice especially when raw and fresh and not contaminated with processed sugars or hypose corn syrup looks to be healthy for humans then people will say well what about honey honey can't possibly be healthy for humans honey is known to raise testosterone levels in men which is a probably a good thing honey has even been studied in human randomized control trials in diabetics and found to lower fasting blood glucose yes I said lower fasting blood glucose in an 8-week trial patients were given up to 125 to 150

gram of honey per day at the end of the trial and they ended up with lower fasting glucose at the end of the trial now notably in this trial the hemoglobin A1c an average reflection of the blood sugar was slightly higher about 7 to 10 milligrams per deciliter higher blood glucose equivalence in patients getting the honey which is not surprising when you give a diabetic more carbohydrates their blood sugar would be slightly higher but their fasting blood glucose was lower suggesting improved insulin sensitivity and I suspect that even in diabetics moderate amounts of honey could

be used long-term without any detrimental effects potentially positive effects and in fact there are entire reviews written like this one a review of the protective effects of Honey against metabolic syndrome so it's very clear that there's a significant amount of evidence that both fruit and honey can improve all sorts of metrics in line with improved metabolic Health in humans one caveat adjust your carbohydrate intake to you to your lifestyle to how active you are I think some people have criticized my lifestyle or my recommendation for people to consider adding carbohydrates in the form of fruit

and honey or raw milk back to their diets by saying that I'm active or that I live in a place near the equator and I'm getting lots of sun and I think that those criticisms are well taken but generally inaccurate no matter where you live no matter how active you are including some carbohydrates in your diet is a reasonable thing do you need as many carbohydrates as me no you don't but getting some in your diet I believe will help if you are struggling with any of the issues or any of these problems that I

mentioned or something like these on a carnivore or ketogenic diet that's again why I'm doing this whole video when I talk about fruit and honey some people mention concerns about duum I'll just say briefly about duum that I think that the best way to lower your body's levels of dyum are to have your mitochondrial electron transport chain work very well to make the metabolic water at the end of the electron transport chain which will be duum depleted and in order to do that I believe there is strong biochemical and physiologic evidence in humans that you

should be eating carbohydrates I think that if you want to spend tons of money shipping duum depleted water across the world you can but I don't believe that fruit and honey will have any significant effect on the duum levels in most people's bodies especially in the context of your overall metabolic health and the degree to which your mitochondria work some people have also looked at fruit and honey and had fears that they would increase glycation I don't think there's any solid evidence that it happens at all there's actually evidence that fructose decreases hemoglobin A1c in

humans and on the flip side something that I don't think is talked about enough is the idea that ketogenic diets increase Advanced glycation and products specifically things like methyl glyoxal which are not great for humans as we can see from studies like this ketogenic diets lead to increased methylglyoxal in the human body so if you're worried about Advanced glycation end products I would worry a lot less about fruit and honey and a lot more about being in ketosis methylglyoxal as you can see in this study not a good thing in terms of aging and oxidative

stress you do not want more methylglyoxal being produced in your your body and as you saw in the first study ketogenic diets clearly increase the amount of methyglyoxal in your cells and in your organism so at the end of all of this let me return to the first thing I said carnivore diet significantly improved my Eczema I believe that ketogenic diets carnivore diets have helped so many people but if you are struggling on these diets understand that they don't work for everyone yes there is bio-individuality and perhaps there are some people for which these diets

work better than others maybe my genes were not adapted to a carnivore diet or ketogenic diet as well as yours so those of you who are doing carnivore diets and ketogenic diets and thriving like I said in the beginning awesome keep going this video is for those in the space who may be thinking about those diets who may be doing those diets and not finding the results that they want they may be having low thyroid symptoms low sex hormone symptoms low libido sleep disturbances weight loss plateaus and for the reasons I outlined in this video

increased cortisol decreased thyroid hormone production increased shbg decreased testosterone production possibly increas Advanced glycation end products coupled with the fact that I don't think you need to fear fruit and honey natural sources of sugar lead me to suggest that if you're struggling on either one of those diets that you consider something like an animal- based diet organs meat fruit honey raw da there are different sources of carbohydrates that you can include ultimately this is about experimenting figuring out what works for you but I think it's important to put ideas into this space to offer people

levers to pull to try and understand what may be best for you so with that that's what I humbly offer is my story of why I quit the carnivore diet and I believe it's a very valuable powerful way of eating for a lot of people but I think there's more to the story and there are better ways to adjust our diets for most humans see you guys in the next video