Recently the “carnivore diet” has become quite popular, thanks in part to the famous
University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, as well as his daughter Mikhaila having used
this meat-only diet to alleviate certain health issues
"and she said to me quit eating greens and I thought Oh, really?!
I'm eating cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, and chicken and beef.
It's like I have to cut out the goddamn greens?
Within a week I was 25% less anxious in the morning.
Within 2 weeks I was 75% and I've been better every single day.
Disclaimer number 2, I am not recommending this to anyone."
Needless to say, this diet steps on a lot of toes, especially if you happen to advocate
for a plant-based diet.
Even if you’re on a low carb or keto diet, this still probably sounds extreme considering
you can’t even have avocadoes or macadamia nuts.
Dr. Shawn baker, a big carnivore diet advocate has been on the diet for about 7 years and
runs a website called meatheals.com.
As of August 26th, 99 people have shared their stories of how they improved their health
by eating only meat - healing things like depression, various gut issues, and rheumatoid
arthritis with 77 of them experiencing weight loss, 61 of them commenting on improved mood
and 31 people seeing improvements in their skin.
And, There are plenty more stories to be found elsewhere on the internet.
So, whatever diet camp you happen to be in, investigating why this diet seems to help
people could provide some useful information that you may apply to your own diet, even
if you have no intention of eating a bunch of meat.
So what about this diet is causing so many reported improvements in health?
In this video, we’ll look at: Nutrients
Fiber Why a lack of plants may be beneficial to
help some people
The first concern you may have is: if you’re only eating meat, won’t you get scurvy or
some Vitamin deficiencies?
In the 1960 book “The Fat of the Land” by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, he describes his
experience living with the Inuit of Canada beginning in 1910.
He explained that “If meat needs carbohydrates and other vegetable additives to make it wholesome,
then the poor Eskimos should have been in wretched state.
But, to the contrary, they seemed to me the healthiest people I had ever lived with..”
He also said that the Inuit remained completely scurvy-free, “except for a few who worked
for white men, [and] ate their food…”
First of all, certain animal parts like the liver contain vitamin C, so you could simply
eat some liver or if you’re more adventurous, the adrenal gland, brain and spinal cord of
animals are high in vitamin C.
But...
it seems that some of the recent advocates of the carnivore diet are scurvy free and
doing just fine while rarely consuming organ meats.
It was discovered by Birch and Dann in 1953 that even the the skeletal, cardiac and smooth
muscle of animal meat contains Vitamin C, but that’s somehow been forgotten.
However, is this small amount enough?
An interesting thing to consider is that your body works differently on this type of diet.
Because glucose (carbohydrate) and vitamin C are structured similarly, they actually
compete for glucose transporters, so too much glucose can inhibit vitamin C transport.
Simply put the less glucose you consume, the more efficiently you can utilize Vitamin C,
so the less Vitamin C you require.
The near zero carb nature of the carnivore diet should help people maintain proper levels
of other nutrients as well.
This paper looking at 50 people doing a paleolithic ketogenic diet found that all but one person
had adequate levels of magnesium without supplementation.
Considering up to 50% of Americans are magnesium deficient, this is significant.
The study also found that the lower people’s glucose, the better their magnesium levels.
Other studies have found glucose to lower levels of plasma potassium, so the carnivore
diet should also help maintain good potassium levels.
Here’s a sample day of carnivore eating - Beef, Beef Liver, Egg Yolks, Gouda Cheese
and Clams - I’m not saying this is the ideal mix of foods, but it will easily cover pretty
much all your RDI’S.
Magnesium and Potassium seem pretty low, but as I just mentioned, the nature of the carnivore
diet should have you doing fine on the relatively low dietary levels of magnesium and potassium,
and we’ll get to fiber in a minute, but insoluble fiber can bind to magnesium so the
lack of fiber in this diet can actually help with magnesium status.
Nonetheless, if you experience cramping after the adaptation period you might want to supplement
these minerals or get your levels checked.
Also, 70g of salmon roe or just 2 tsp of cod liver oil will easily cover Vitamin E and
D and boost your Vitamin A. If you don’t want dairy in your diet, you can get more
vitamin K2 from grass fed beef tallow - and you’d want to make sure and supplement in
more fat from tallow or bone marrow anyway.
Also, I would really recommend wild caught or pasture raised animals eating a natural
nourishing diet and be wary of fish oil oxidation.
But wait a minute...
Thiamin is looking a little low at just 54% of the RDI.
This brings us to another example of more efficient usage of nutrients on this diet.
As Dr. Chris Masterjohn explains in this video of his: Burning carbohydrate for energy requires
twice as much thiamin as fat, so your requirements for thiamin are going to be drastically lower
and easier to meet on this diet.
The next concern you may have about this diet is… whether you could actually make any
progress on the toilet.
After all, it’s “common knowledge” that fiber is necessary for preventing constipation.
And people have been frightened by the ill effects of constipation for literally thousands
of years.
A paper by James Whorton states that As far back as the 16th century BC, an Egyptian pharmaceutical
papyrus - the Ebers Papyrus, explains that constipation could lead to the poisoning of
the body by material released from decomposing waste in the intestines.
This theoretical condition was called autointoxication, and it influenced medicine for more than three
millennia.
As James Whorton says, this fear of autointoxication lead to the marketing of all kinds of anti-constipation
foods and drugs in the early 1900’s when “Literally hundreds of brands of bowel cleansers
competed for consumer dollars.”
But Jump forward to 2011, despite bowel irregularity occuring in 15% of adults and 9% of children,
this preface to “Best Practice & Research: Clinical Gastroenterology,” says “our
understanding of the pathophysiology of constipation, both in paediatric and adult populations remains
primitive.”
But I thought the cure for constipation was obvious.
The makers of Bran cereal have been telling us with their television commercials starting
in the 1950’s to just chuck some fiber down there.
"Kellog's Cracklin' Bran, High Fiber Good taste."
"It helps keep you fit inside.
Inside???"
"Try this.
Colon Blow.
Sounds Delicious."
"Experts recommend increasing your dietary fiber intake as a drug free way to promote
regularity."
"A few weeks ago, I was having problems staying regular."
But, is fiber really the answer?
“When we have a look at the current governmental advice, they consider that fiber is the best
available treatment for constipation…”
Dr. Paul Mason presents here a case controlled study that looks at 63 patients with constipation
and high and low fiber diets were compared in them.
“And this also included a zero fiber diet that required the complete cessation of all
vegetables, cereals, fruits, and rice."
As we can see, people experienced worsened symptoms on a high fiber diet, then on a reduced
fiber diet, people experienced a modest reduction in symptoms.
So the question is, what happened to those on the zero fiber diet?
“This is not a mistake.
I didn't just forget to put something in the slide.
Not one patient on the zero fiber diet had any symptoms.
And these findings were highly statistically significant, highly.
Every single person in the low zero fiber group ended up having one bowel action per
day every day.
Those in the high fiber group?
One bowel action on average every 6.83 days.”
Now, herbivores eat a huge amount of fiber without getting constipated, ...but their
digestive tract is designed for this: they generally have much bigger cecums for fermenting
the fiber.
And for some people fiber may seem to help get things going, but you have to remember
it also increases your need to have bowel movements as you've increased the amount of
indigestible material that needs to be expelled.
This might not be enough for you to challenge fiber’s rule over the bowel, so I recommend
watching the full talk by Dr. Paul Mason or reading the book “Fiber Menace” by Konstantin
Monastyrsky.
At this point you may be worried about the gut microbiome.
Wouldn’t cutting out fiber kill off all our good bacteria?
Not necessarily - bacteria have specific conditions for their growth, some prefer oxygen, some
don’t.
Some like fiber, some don’t and so on.
This study found that Canadian Arctic inuit still maintain a diverse microbiome but they
do have lower diversity in the Prevotella bacteria.
Prevotella has been shown to improve glucose metabolism.
Meaning their diet may worsen their glucose metabolism a bit, but remember they consume
hardly any glucose in the first place.
And… prevotella is linked to chronic inflammatory conditions, such as arthritis.
In any case, as Dr. Paul Mason points out, research is really not at a point to make
definitive claims about fiber causing changes in the microbiome that are necessary for good
health.
Though, It is apparent that nuking your microbiome with antibiotics is very likely a bad idea.
When I first heard about this diet, I wasn’t surprised that some people had benefits - after
all, the diet cuts out processed food, wheat, soy, sugar, and vegetable oils.
Zero Fiber is one thing, but what really surprised me was that people were experiencing improvements
after going from simply meat and greens to just meat.
So, why would cutting out greens from an already clean diet help?
Well, it comes down to a simple fact of biology - living things really don’t like being
eaten.
Just like a gazelle has predators, so do plants: "But none attacks its prey with more fury
than the seaweed shark."
A gazelle can run away to avoid being eaten, but what can a plant do when a bug or human
shows up?
While we are masters of locomotion, plants are fantastic chemists.
I’m talking about secondary metabolites, or “plant toxins.”
One of the perks of us humans being intelligent is that we’ve learned to avoid the highly
poisonous plants and have developed methods for deactivating the toxins of others.
Though in certain cases, some people can have problems with plant food toxins which don’t
affect the rest of the population.
For example, I grew up in the heat of Texas yet didn’t have any problems with the photosensitizers
in Lime or Celery.
Unfortunately, these poor girls did...
Experiencing “Second degree burns from limes.”
Photo sensitizers, technically called “furanocoumarins” are toxins in plants that make animals and
humans sensitive to light.
And virtually all plant foods we normally consume have some level of defense against
plant eaters.
According to this 1990 paper titled “Dietary pesticides (99% all natural)*,” led by Biochemist
Bruce N. Ames, “99% of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants
produce to defend themselves.
Only 52 natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests, and about
half (27) are rodent carcinogens; these 27 are shown to be present in many common foods.”
The paper goes on to list 57 different.
plant foods with these carcinogens and Table 1 identifies forty-nine natural pesticides
and metabolites found in cabbage alone.
Now, Before it sounds like I’m saying shopping in the produce section is slowly killing you,
let me point out that we’re not rats and that hormesis has to be taken into account.
Hormesis is essentially the concept of a “good stress” - that is, “the dose makes the
poison,” or “what harms me in the right way and not too much makes me stronger.”
For example, just like you or me, broccoli really doesn’t like to be chewed on.
So, when broccoli is cut or chomped on, glucoraphanin in the broccoli is activated through an enzyme
myrosinase to form an isothiocyanate, a toxin called sulforaphane.
This molecule is designed to kill small living creatures, but for us, it can be good, it’s
a mild stress that our bodies gear up for and the end result is we wind up stronger.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick has an extensive video explaining the vast and impressive potential
benefits of this compound: everything from preventing cancers, ameliorating existing
cancers to lowering inflammation and preventing cognitive decline.
But we can’t say all the defense mechanisms of every plant food result in a hormetic effect
for everyone.
This table, from a presentation done by Dr. Maelan Fontes shows a couple different types
of Bioactive Plant compounds that can be damaging.
One is the antinutrient Phytic acid, or “phytates” which come from grains, nuts and legumes and
bind to nutrients like Calcium, Iron, Potassium, Magnesium, Manganese and Zinc, making them
less absorbable.
But, the phytic acid doesn’t just impair you from absorbing the nutrients in the seed
itself, it also impairs absorption of nutrients from other foods you eat.
For example, as this study found, when you consume zinc rich oysters with black beans,
you’ll absorb about half of that zinc.
And when you consume them with corn tortillas, you’ll absorb almost none of that zinc.
Another substance found in common plant food with low level toxicity is oxalate - it is
found in Bran, Beets, Soy, Blueberries, Lime Peel, Orange peel, Nuts and several other
things.
Since oxalate is usually more concentrated in the leaves of plants, Spinach is particularly
high in it.
According to Haschek and Rousseau's Handbook of Toxicologic Pathology, “ Insoluble plant
oxalates include calcium oxalate.
When animals eat these plants the crystals are immediately irritating, causing mechanical
damage to the oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract.”
Obviously the levels in food that we normally eat are way too low to cause any immediately
apparent effects, but high levels of oxalate are no joke.
In 1989, a 53 year old diabetic, alcoholic man died after having 6g worth of oxalate
from sorrel soup - this is the equivalent of about half kilo of spinach.
However, keep in mind this person was already severely metabolically impaired.
About 2.5 kilos or 5.5 pounds of spinach has a 50% chance of killing a healthy person.
However, as Sally Norton argues in this talk, while the oxalate levels found in food may
not produce any quickly apparent effects, problems can arise when you repeatedly expose
yourself to oxalates through your diet by eating things like spinach, almonds and cashews.
"You can easily exceed your tolerance for oxalate, even though it looks like your kidneys
are just fine.
4% of what you're eating is being retained in tissues left behind causing issues."
Tiny oxalate crystals can accumulate in the body and you can find them in the bone, the
skin and the glands.
Accumulation in the thyroid impairs thyroid function, accumulation in the breast has been
linked to cancer, and accumulation in the kidneys leads to kidney stones.
70 to 80% of all kidney stones are made of calcium oxalate.
So if you have kidney stones, poor kidney function or poor thyroid function, you may
feel better on a low, under 50mg oxalate diet.
This means no more than six leaves of spinach per day.
There are so many secondary metabolites we could about, but the point is plants really
don’t want you to eat them and these defense mechanisms are in virtually every single plant
food.
The gliadin protein in wheat disrupts the physical barrier of the gut causing inflammation.
Protease inhibitors in things like grains, nuts, seeds, and soy inhibit some of the enzymes
that help us digest protein.
Soy also contains phytoestrogens which bind to estrogen receptors and cause hormonal issues.
Goitrogens are found in soy, other legumes and cruciferous vegetables and hamper thyroid
health.
Saponins, which are found in soy, beans, peas, lentils and other legumes are used as emulsifiers
in the food and cosmetic industry and can damage the gut lining, making it more permeable
or “leaky.”
There’s also a huge variety of plant lectins that some people can be very sensitive to.
But of course there are tons of studies talking about the vast benefits of all kinds of plant
compounds.
And A lot of people seem to thrive on a plant based diet.
So, surely it comes down to how each person responds to these substances.
One level of a secondary metabolite from plants may be a beneficial hormetic stress for one
person while at the same time being a detrimental toxin for another.
When dealing with some chronic ailment, many people try several different elimination diets
to find out what’s triggering their symptoms.
So if you suspect you have some sensitivity, you could just do all of the elimination diets
at once and add foods back in later.
The carnivore diet happens to be a low lectin, low FODMAP, low sulphite, low oxalate, low
salicylate, low phytate, super low carb and no fiber diet.
"I haven't heard any negative stories about people doing this.
Well I have a negative story.
One of the things that both Mikhaila and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet
and then ate something we weren't supposed to, the reaction was absolutely catastrophic."
Now this video only scratches the surface of this diet - there’s still many things
to discuss like nutrient density and bioavailability, but surely one key factor in why many people
are experiencing improvements is this meat only diet acts like the ultimate elimination
diet.
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