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EventsCould an all-meat diet cure some diseases?
, medical review by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD
in Autoimmunity, Meat 
Is reversing several diseases possible by solely changing your diet? Mikhaila Peterson had suffered from autoimmune diseases since she was only two years old and it didn’t get better with age. Everything changed when she quite radically changed her diets. In this article in The Atlantic, Mikhaila is being interviewed about her interesting story.
Peterson described an adolescence that involved multiple debilitating medical diagnoses, beginning with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Some unknown process had triggered her body’s immune system to attack her joints. The joint problems culminated in hip and ankle replacements in her teens, coupled with “extreme fatigue, depression and anxiety, brain fog, and sleep problems.” In fifth grade, she was diagnosed with depression, and then later something called idiopathic hypersomnia
She did everything the doctors told her, but nothing helped. Then she made a big change. She started to cut out different foods from her diet. Starting with gluten, moving on to dairy, soy, lectins and so on. At last, she had eliminated everything but beef and salt from her diet, and all of her symptoms went into remission.
Today Mikhaila is 26 years old and a mother. As long as she sticks to her all-meat diet she is a healthy young woman. She hopes to help and inspire others through her blog and her one-on-one counseling.
Read her full story here:
The Atlantic: The Jordan Peterson all-meat diet
Comment by Dr. Eenfeldt
Stories like these are powerful examples of the potential power of a lifestyle change, and they give ideas for important future research. However, it’s important to note that stories like these can’t by themselves prove cause and effect – this requires controlled studies of a larger number of people.
The article also raises some fairly obvious questions, for example about the environmental sustainability of a diet like this, were it to be selected by a larger percentage of humanity.
The questions about whether a diet like this could be compared to an eating disorder requires us to be very open minded, I believe. That would depend on the reason for choosing it, and how the diet makes a person feel. If there is no urgent health reason for it, and the diet makes someone feel anxious and restricted and obsessed, this may very well be cause for a lot of concern. But that’s not necessarily the case. And as Mikaela Peterson rightly puts it: “it’s extremely disrespectful to people with health issues caused by food to be lumped into the same category as people with eating disorders.”
We’ll post a big guide to the carnivore diet on Diet Doctor later this year, where we look closely at the pros and cons, and the experience and science that support the diet (or not).
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Some argue they are much more beneficial to the earth than is agriculture. Once you've taken off the grasses and planted something, you've killed the soil.
I even learned by doing a very clean Whole 30 how much plants affect me. For instance, zoodles made with zucchini, I can't eat these. They cause me gastric distress. It wasn't until I ate mainly meat with limited vegetables and then had zoodles I could tell what happened. The same for hot sauces or hot peppers -- I thought the reaction I was getting was just due to the heat. Now, I realize I have an allergic reaction to hot peppers. I still eat them, but try to do so rarely.
until I found my answer and it is the fiber that my body cannot tolerate.
I've just started carnivore and within the last two weeks, the improvements are insane. So, in my case, it may be the poisons in the plants and the fiber.
Honestly, I'm so tired of navel-gazing over my diet. Meat and eggs are working so I'm sticking with them.
On the subject of adopting a carnivore diet, listening to Mikhaela Peterson’s youtube video, I decided to try eating only animal foods for one week. Two years ago I suffered from a severe arthritis attack in both my knees, and I wanted to find out if there would be any improvement in the pain level. There was! After one week, there was only some very slight discomfort. Walking was pleasurable again. Also interesting to note that my blood ketone levels increased during that week from a usual average of 0.8 to 1.7. But after one week, I was bored eating nothing but animal foods. I have resumed adding vegetables. My knee discomfort has returned, albeit not as severe as before, and my ketone levels dropped to around 0.5. I will increase protein intake and limit but not remove vegetables. It was an interesting experiment.
life long depression and self esteem problems are greatly diminished. Eating is so individual..obviously
I feel way better on fatty meat and greens..nuts and berries.
"This verges into the realm of an eating disorder. The National Eating Disorder Association lists among common symptoms 'refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food.' ”
Can't this also be said regarding people who are vegetarians and vegans? But no, a plant-based diet is the only diet on the planet that will lead you to health and wealth and fortune and fame. Or so says my vegan doctor. I told him I do eat a plant-based diet, I just pass the plants through a cow first.
“ Who Would You Warn Against a Ketogenic Diet?”
Paul:
“Everyone else.”
He believes a ketogenic diet is more likely to cause autoimmune disease than cure it, due to the depletion of the mucus layer of the intestine, which puts bacteria directly into contact with immune cells. (Carbohydrates are necessary to maintain this protective mucus layer.) For example, there's a theory that connects a bacterial infection with a low carb-diet and high mammalian meat consumption, leading to Hashimoto's.
When Paul first went paleo, he experimented with a standard ketogenic diet, with no attention to nutrition. After 18 months, he actually developed scurvy, along with other health problems.
Terry:
She doesn't recommend a ketogenic diet to be the first troubleshooting step for people with autoimmune disease (nor an elimination diet like the AIP for that matter). If people don't see results on regular Wahls Paleo, she recommends functional medicine assessment. Her bias is to preserve as much diversity of food as possible, since nutrient deficiencies lead to disease.
However, she recommends everyone eat a low-glycemic diet.
Often quoted when discussing fibre in the diet.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375348/