The Joe Rogan Experience - #1164 - Mikhaila Peterson

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

Mikhaila Peterson is a food blogger tracking her experiences with the Carnivore Diet at "Don't Eat That" http://mikhailapeterson.com/

Five, four, three, two, one. And we're live? Yes. Hello. Hello. What's happening? Not much. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you here. Your father speaks very highly of you. That's good. What is it like to have Jordan Peterson as a dad? Is it weird? Do you have to check yourself constantly? Make sure you're on steady ground and not say anything ridiculous no not at all not at all I didn't realize it was weird until I went away to university and then kind of saw like just was away for a while and

then when I came back to the house especially because the house is full of like paintings and masks and statues and like 32 different paint colors. And they came back and was like, oh, maybe he's a bit eccentric. No, he's definitely eccentric. We were talking off air about what it was like to watch your dad become famous and become famous in his 50s, right? Yeah, like 54, 55. That's when he became famous. Before that, relatively unknown respected

professor one issue with this one transgender bill the the preferred pronouns bill and then boom off to the races yeah it was strange it was yeah it was super weird especially how the media was portraying him and how what was actually happening at the events wasn't what was being portrayed in the media so that was weird to watch and then people recognizing him on the street is strange it's yes when you say what what happened in real life was not was what was being portrayed like what was different um mostly what he was saying so most of what he said is on film anyway so you can go to youtube and see what he's been saying like not there's not like some secret that's going around but

what's been portrayed has been so much more negative than what he's actually said or they'll take like sound bites and just weave a story that isn't quite true which i didn't read for some reason i now it looks silly but for some reason i just thought that what the media was portraying was honest always yeah yeah me too yeah yeah and it's not well they're writers you know and what's there's a real issue today um that that issue i've talked about this before but the issue is clicks um yeah it's not just about what's the facts of the story. It's about these publications are struggling to stay alive.

And one of the only ways that they can get people to click on stories is salacious headlines, make things really clickbaity. And that's what they focus on. And they focus on negative aspects that are going to get people riled up. They have to have an angle. And I've talked to people who are writers who will write something and then I'll talk to them and I'll say, hey, man, this is not what we talked about or what happened. And they said, I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't even write that.

The headline was completely written by the editor. So the editor came in, changed it all up, changed this, put some dot, dot, dots out of things, you know, like the, so cut off sentences so that they seemed more, you know, just more controversial than they really are because they didn't allow the counterpoint of, you know, sometimes you say something and then you say, or it could be this.

Well, the or it could be this part is cut out. You know, they do things like that just to stay alive because I think when, I mean, really big publications, whether it's the New York Times or the Boston Globe, big publications are struggling for their life right now. Because people don't want to buy newspapers anymore. And getting people to read things online is very difficult. And you have to do something salacious. You have to do something that's enticing for them to click on it.

Yeah, I guess, but wouldn't you say that's just driving them down? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Yeah, they're fucked. It's a bad place to be. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, it opens up the door for alternative media, but some of those

alternative media sources don't have journalistic integrity either. So then it becomes a real issue. You know, that's a problem with a lot of online news shows. It's like they take a very obvious editorial spin as well on the news. And if you just read or watch their show, you would go, oh, well, it's this way because these guys are saying it's this way. But it might not be that way. There's no real objective source.

It's very hard to find a good objective source. I mean, sometimes I count on the New York Times, but there's been some things that I've read from the New York Times that I know are not accurate. Oh, I think they had a terrible article about dad in like June or something. Well, he didn't make it any easier on himself by using that forced monogamy argument. Term? No. Yeah, enforced monogamy argument or term.

Because I don't, even with the, when you understand it as a psychological concept, that it is a culturally enforced idea, I still don't think that applies to incels. I don't. I just don't think it has. I don't think it makes any difference at all. And he and I discussed it on the podcast. I'm like, you're not, just because you say it's a good idea and the culture agrees it's a good idea for people to be monogamous, I don't necessarily think that that is going to help these guys at all.

I don't think we know what's going to help those guys. Yeah. Well, obviously they're all individuals and their situations vary but what we're talking about for people like what the fuck are they talking about there was a quote in the New York Times where this woman was asking him what to do about these incels which are involuntary celibates and one of them had driven a car into a crowd of people and killed a bunch of people because he was frustrated because he couldn't find a mate and your dad suggested that

um in culturally enforced monogamy would be perhaps a solution for that and then a bunch of people went crazy saying that like women he's saying that women should sacrifice themselves and fuck these guys so that they don't drive cars into crowds. It was the whole – everybody made a mistake. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's an answer for those guys. I really don't. But –

No. But that, those kind of articles are like the editorial articles and opinion articles. It's really, it's a different thing than reporting on the news, right? Yeah. I thought, I thought, so honesty was always a big thing in our house and was like, don't lie because if you lie, eventually the lie will surface and it'll be so much bigger than the hell you get from telling the truth. So I kind of just assumed that the media did that. Yeah.

The world just worked like that. Yeah. Nope. No. I know that now. Yeah. So you and your dad are both on this wacky diet. Mm-hmm.

You're both on this wacky carnivore diet. And this is probably one of the most controversial things in relation to food today. When people discuss diets, there's a lot of people that are vegetarian or vegan or trying ketogenic diets or paleo. or paleo. But when you say carnivore, that is one of the ones where people just universally seem to like step back, roll their eyes. Most people don't think it's a good idea. They don't even know why they don't think it's a good idea. And then you tell them about people like you or my friend Chris Bell, who has similar autoimmune issues, and he's had two hip replacements. He's only 36. Wow.

And I think he had both of them done by the time he was 30, right? Pretty sure because he's had them for quite a few years. Massive joint pain, all sorts of issue. And you got a hip replacement. How old were you? 17 and an ankle replacement, 17. That's crazy. It was a rough year. That's crazy. Um, what do you, so your whole life you've had arthritis issues or? Yeah. Um, so I started walking kind of funny when I was two, according to my mom and she brought me to the doctor and they said just having growing pains or something. When I was seven, I was diagnosed with juvenile

rheumatoid arthritis and I had like 37 joints affected. And then I was put on immune suppressants in grade four. So I was actually the first kid in Canada to be put on this biologic called Enbrel. So I was on Enbrel and methotrexate forever, like leading up to the hip and ankle replacement. And they did help reduce some of the pain, but I still ended up with no cartilage in my joint and hip, my hip and ankle when I was 17. And this is just from the effects of arthritis and the inflammation and swelling and just chewed the cartilage up? So I wasn't even particularly swollen. I didn't have a very like inflammatory, visually inflammatory arthritis. So my rheumatologist who'd been at SickKids for

20 years said that I had the worst arthritis she'd ever seen. So it was very severe. It wasn't particularly like swollen. My joints just disintegrated. Wow. And what do they think causes something like this? They didn't know. So it was eventually, after the hip and ankle replacement, the diagnosis was changed to juvenile idiopathic arthritis. So it was literally like, we don't know.

Wow. And how did you go from these medications, pharmaceutical medications, to getting into this carnivore diet thing? What was this path? Well, okay, I'll give you a background of the path. We were very science-oriented, especially dad. So even though mom kind of wanted to delve into diet and was like, we should go sugar free or stop eating, you know, whatever, make sure you eat whole grains, like all that stuff. We never gave diet a chance because there was no scientific evidence for it. So I basically got sicker and sicker and sicker. By the time I got to university, I ended up with arthritis. I was severely depressed. I was on antidepressants as well. I had idiopathic hypersomnia. I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. My whole body was itchy all the time. That started when I was about 14.

and so that was when I started university and then my diet just got disastrous in university and I was like drinking all the time and eating like pizza and beer and I gained like 30 pounds in the first year and ginger ale a lot of ginger ale anyway I gained about 30 pounds in the first year my mental health declined even further. And I didn't really know what was going on. And then I started getting skin issues. So I started getting rashes, cystic acne. And I was like, okay, I can deal with like four really awful health problems, but I can't deal with things affecting my skin. On top of that, there's too many things. I went to dermatologists and they basically told me I was anxious and like causing these rashes by itching. So that was the dermatologist's opinion, which was very unhelpful.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time. I was eventually prescribed Adderall for the hypersomnia. So I spent all my time Googling, reading papers, trying to get a background on skin disorders. googling reading papers trying to get a background on skin disorders and eventually I came across this celiac disease rash online and that's what I had it looked exactly the same so I cut out gluten I read a whole bunch about like the effects of gluten on the gut and thought oh there's actually some evidence that gluten isn't good for people why aren't people being told this like why didn't my doctor test me for celiac disease? Because celiac disease couples with autoimmune disorders all the time.

Like, they test type 1 kids for celiac disease. But for some reason, they don't test kids with arthritis for celiac disease. So I cut out gluten. And that kind of helped. Maybe like 20%. But it was hard to tell because it was the summer. I was like, maybe I'm just feeling better from the summer. My rash kind of went down, but it was hard to tell because it was the summer. I was like, maybe I'm just feeling better from the summer. My rash kind of went down, but it was still there. And then, so September 2015,

my mom dragged me to a naturopath and they gave me this sheet of foods and like try this elimination diet. And I looked at the sheet and thought, this doesn't make any sense. Like why can I eat lemons and not oranges? And why are almonds on there, but other nuts are off so i cut so i thought okay if i'm going to do an elimination diet which i didn't believe in at all um i'll cut down to what i considered safe foods and i had no idea what i was doing so i just thought okay vegetables are pretty safe i'll get rid of nightshades because people talk about them being bad nightshades what is nightshades nightshades like tomatoes eggplant kind of foods. For some reason, I just knew that they were- I've never heard of them referred to as nightshades.

I feel like literally everybody has heard them referred to as nightshades. No. Have you heard them? I've heard the term, but not- I couldn't tell you what it was. I wouldn't have been able to say it was tomatoes and eggplants, I don't think. Maybe it's just Canada. I don't think it's Canada.

Is it a Canadian thing? I don't think so. No? Okayada i don't think it's canada i don't think so no okay let the youtube comments decide definitely don't let them decide okay um it's like calling demons for help anyway go ahead um anyway i cut down so i was eating mostly like green vegetables i was still eating rice at that point because I thought everybody eats rice. Rice is safe and meat. But I cut out like dairy, most grains, soy, sugar, processed foods. And then in the next month, my joints got way better and my skin healed and my skin never healed.

Like for a couple of years, I'd always have these flare ups. It my skin healed. And my skin never healed. Like for a couple years, I'd always have these flare ups, it never went away. And that was just on a like, relatively low carb diet, just like, just less. I don't know, I was still eating rice, right? But it was still mostly meat and vegetables. And I thought, okay, maybe there's something to this. And then I made almond flour, gluten free, sugar free, dairy free almond flour banana muffins. And I ate a bunch of those one night and I woke up and the next day my wrists were sore. And I thought, okay, maybe that's weird. And then I had a bunch more of the muffins because the muffins were good. And, and then I went away to a cottage that weekend and I couldn't walk because of my

knees. And I never had flare ups that badly. Like I used to get, my shoulder was always sore when I slept. So I took Tylenol three at night for sleeping and my wrists were stiff, but I never had like a flare up. Like I couldn't walk. Um, so that was that weekend. So then I went back to the diet and got really strict with it. And then things were better. Like my skin was better. I, I lost, this was weird. I lost five pounds, which wasn't a lot, but I went down three pant sizes. So it was all bloating that I didn't realize was bloating because it never fluctuated. So that was the first month. And then 2015. And then I started trying to reintroduce foods because I was having cravings and I missed going out to eat with my friends and everything. So I tried to read the first

thing I tried to reintroduce was sour patch candy, because I was having really intense sugar. Don't look at me like that. I was having really intense sugar cravings. And I looked at the package and I thought, okay, no one's allergic to sugar. There's no dairy. There's no gluten. There's no soy. This will be fine.

And I really wanted to eat them. And I had those. And the next day, my whole body was itchy again. And it was like mosquito bites everywhere, itchy. So I thought, okay, maybe that was a bad idea. So I waited a couple of weeks and I tried to reintroduce almond butter,

organic almond butter, because I wanted something fast, protein fast. And then I had, it's like abdominal cramping, diarrhea, then this itch came back. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. So for the next year, well, I'll slow down. We've got some time. So that was the almond butter. So then I waited a while, and I felt pretty good. And this was November 2015. And then I started feeling really good, and I went off of my antidepressants. And I had been taking antidepressants since I was in grade five,

a really high dose of an SSRI, which had been very helpful. But... Did you wean yourself off? And did you do it under a doctor's supervision? No, I didn't. You didn't wean yourself off? I weaned myself down. So I went down to half and then I went to a quarter and then I went to an eighth and then I stopped taking it. Over how long a period of time? It was nothing really.

Over two weeks? It was two weeks, yeah. I didn't have withdrawal symptoms. I think maybe I was lucky that way. And so your diet at this point was? So at that point I was eating rice occasionally, but it was mostly like broccoli, salad, chicken, beef, fish, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper. At that point, I was also eating pears and apples. So it was kind of like paleo, kind of.

Very restricted paleo, dairy-free. And so you're feeling good. You're off your medication. Your joints feel better. No more rashes. No more rashes, yeah. So everything seems to be improving. I was shocked when the depression lifted because I thought that runs in my family. That's familial. We have some sort of brain chemistry problem that can't possibly be diet. I thought the skin, maybe that was diet

because of this gluten link. And then maybe because of the celiac gene that I got tested for, maybe the arthritis was part of that, but I never thought mood was associated with it. So that was a surprise in November. Anyway, I went off of the antidepressants and then about a month later, I tried to reintroduce soy. And this is when things started getting really weird that year. So I was having... Why are you reintroducing things if you're having all these positive benefits? I was having cravings like crazy and I would miss eating out. And I thought there were probably like four or five foods

I was really sensitive to. And if I could just figure out what they were, I could eat pretty normally. I didn't realize, like I didn't know what was going on. Okay. If I had known, I would have done it much differently. Right. But I tried to reintroduce soy because at that point I still thought soy was a health food.

So I ate a huge meal of like edamame beans and bean sprouts and miso soup that I made myself. So it was gluten-free and soy sauce and tofu. I literally ate soy in every form. And I had the same kind of reaction with almond butter. I had immediately got bloated. I had diarrhea, like within maybe 20, 30 minutes of eating it. And I thought, okay, that sucks. I guess I can't eat soy. And then about four hours later, my legs got itchy and then my whole body got itchy. And I was like, okay, that sucks. I'm

clearly I'm reacting to soy. And then the next morning, the depression came back. And it came back like, that was the worst depressive experience I've ever had. I was medication free. And it came back in the morning, and I got in the shower. And I just like I bawled in the shower and thought, how could I be so naive to think that my horrible autoimmune disorder and the depression and everything was caused by food? Like what an idiotic thing to think. How could I be that hopeful? And then I had to remind myself, OK, no, you ate a whole bunch of this food. Then you had this like digestive distress.

Then you got itchy. And now the depression is back. There's clearly a pattern here. had this like digestive distress then you got itchy and now the depression is back there's clearly a pattern here but it was hard to think like that when i got that depressed so that day was like i spent a lot of that day crying then the next day got worse and this is this is when it gets weird um so that night i went over to my parents and i was just like i don't know what's going on. Right. Um, and they're like, well, do you want to take a car back to your apartment?

And I said, I don't think I can drive. Like I can't, I just can't think, I don't know what's going on. So my brother, um, drove me home and I was like on the verge of having a panic attack for no reason. Right. It was just like, my heart rate was increasing. I was trying to find my keys and I turned around to look at my brother in the car and his head was a like a kind of a demon this I know how this sounds but he had like a demon head for about a second and a half and he looked at me and then he turned and then it was my brother again so i was standing so you're hallucinating for like uh yeah about a second

and a half other hallucinations um that year yes before that no that year yeah after this i'll get into it so you ate soy and started tripping yeah two days. I know how it sounds. That's how it sounded to me, too. Have you found comparable stories online? So obviously I did as much research as I could possibly do. To soy, no. To gluten, to people who are schizophrenic from gluten, yeah. There are people with celiac disease who have schizophrenia induced by gluten. So I found that, but I didn't find anything for other foods.

But does schizophrenia include hallucinations? Rarely visual, but I did find a case study of a woman who was seeing demons from her celiac disease gluten. Now, when you say you looked over and you saw your brother and his head was a demon head, like, describe it. Like, no, I found... Vivid? No, it was like, you know when it's really dark in a room? Uh-huh. And I don't know if you've experienced this,

but it's really dark in a room, and then you kind of see things in the dark? Mm-hmm. It was more like that. It was dark at night and it was like i was so anxious so you're so distraught you're a mess and maybe you just caused yourself to well something this idea okay yeah i mean and i saw it like i can remember what it looks like but it wasn't a vivid demon or something it was like but it was there okay so you're freaking out

i'm so i'm freaking out so i'm like okay that's not good so i find my keys and i go upstairs and then i went into my bedroom like shut the blinds turned on all the lights and then like smoked as much weed as i could possibly smoke to try and calm myself down and then hid under the blankets all night i would think that would be the worst thing to do after you see a demon you'd think that but then if you smoke that's i've had that comment before but enough and it calmed me down okay so then i spent the next couple of weeks basically stoned because i didn't know when it was going to end i didn't know what was going on and i couldn't find anybody on the internet who had had the same experience as me and then about two and a half weeks later it started going away and so when you say it you mean the depression depression the arthritis it wasn't just the depression that came that's just the worst no i didn't go back i i mean i didn't eat

soy again but i went back to the initial diet i was eating. So essentially just this one meal, this one great meal of soy threw you off for a couple of weeks, radically. Yeah. Like almost four, like three weeks. But after two weeks it started getting better. Okay. But the symptoms were like, so this deplorable, the itching started, I had bloating and then the depression came back. And then about a week later, my skin started breaking out. And then maybe 10 days later, my arthritis came back. So I wrote all my symptoms down every day because I was going crazy and I didn't know what was going on. And I wanted to write it down to see what was going on.

So then it started lifting and I started feeling better again. And I was like, okay, thank God that's over. And then waited a while. Things were good again. My symptoms went away. And then over the next year, I tried to reintroduce foods over and over and over again. And I was making like I tried whey protein powder and that did nothing ever got to as bad as that soy experience. But I had a number of other experiences where it was the worst depression I've ever experienced. And it was on the verge of seeing, like, I don't know, seeing faces in things. Okay, so you're having all these health issues. How do you get to the carnivore diet? So I decide about a year later, I decide, hey, maybe I don't want to keep cycling in and out of a horrible autoimmune and mental problems maybe i'll just stick with the original diet and then i got pregnant and so then my autoimmune symptoms flared again during the pregnancy yeah like right away as soon as i found out i was pregnant it was like before i found out i was pregnant that my

autoimmune symptoms came back so my legs were were itchy again. I was, my joints were stiff. My skin was breaking out. My anxiety was back and it was hard to tell, well, what part of this is pregnancy and what part of this is an autoimmune disorder. So throughout my pregnancy, I cut down on all the carbs I was eating. So I cut out fruit. I cut out sweet potatoes. I went down to meat and greens. And I think dad was on here one time and he was on a meat and greens diet. So that was during that part. So we're both on a meat and greens diet.

Mostly because we didn't realize you didn't need greens to survive. So we were eating meat and greens. And then I had. Did you say mostly because we realized you didn't need greens to survive we didn't realize only meat was an option yeah yeah we hadn't realized that we didn't know that so it was meat and salad and it was a very simple salad with like olive oil apple cider vinegar salt pepper cucumbers lettuces spinach pretty simple salad right and then meat and fish so we did that for about a year and then i had my daughter and then i didn't get better so then i found out okay so these symptoms

aren't really pregnancy related it's just me now and for some reason i've lost the tolerance to these foods i used to be able to eat and in you're just eating salad and meat yeah and i'm still having autoimmune symptoms now symptoms that you used to have not when you're eating not everything not nearly as bad not nearly as bad like my fatigue wasn't back my anxiety was manageable without medication um but you hadn't achieved the levels of health that you had when you were eliminating things from your diet earlier. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like I reached a really good point and then I got pregnant and I couldn't reach that point again.

Okay. So then this is 2017. So it's like November and I'm getting really frustrated about being itchy. I'm just randomly itchy again and randomly arthritic. And you're just eating meat and vegetables. Just meat and salad. Yeah. And I thought, okay, maybe I just have an autoimmune disorder and I can't control it with diet anymore. Maybe I'm just stuck like this. And so I Googled, like out of desperation,

I think I Googled allergic to everything food-wise, something like that into Google. And I found this story about Charlene Anderson, who's been mentioned a couple of times, And I found this story about Charlene Anderson, who's been mentioned a couple of times, and she'd been diagnosed with Lyme disease and has been eating nothing but like red meat for 18 years. And there are pictures of her family online. And I thought, OK, I know I'm not. I think I Googled allergic to everything except meat. So I found her. Then I found that Sean Baker episode you did, and he'd been doing it for two years. And I think that night I thought, screw it.

I literally have nothing to lose here. I'm only cutting out salad. So that's when I switched over. That was December. And then I switched over and the itching got better pretty quickly, like within the first couple of days. But then my digestion just got totally screwed up. So like bloating and diarrhea every time I ate.

And after about a week, I thought, okay, this is a bad idea. Obviously. Bloating and diarrhea every time you ate meat. Just meat. Just meat. And salt. Yeah. So I thought this is a bad idea. Obviously this isn't working. My body doesn't like it. So I reintroduced salad again. It was literally lettuce, apple cider vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. That's what I reintroduced. And I woke up the next day and the itch was back and my joints were stiff. And I thought, okay, if I have to choose between itching and arthritis or diarrhea, I'm going to choose the diarrhea. I was in a rough place. I guess. So I stuck it out. And at six weeks of just doing this,

the bloating went away, the diarrhea went away, and everything started to improve. So that was mid-January. But I was still pretty skeptical because I thought, I thought maybe the reason the carnivore diet worked for people was because they just accidentally cut out everything that wasn't working for them. Processed foods, sugar, you know, grains, all that. So I tried to reintroduce olives, like organic olives in olive oil. And that was February. And then I had this itching came back with the depression um my skin broke out and it was minor in comparison to like soy so you think essentially to give us the cliff notes you're allergic to everything yeah that's fucking crazy it's crazy but then here's the thing

i started this blog so the blogs don't eat. And I started this blog because I thought if for some reason there's someone else out there like me and they're Googling these things, it'd be nice for them to know that they're not alone. Right. And I've found other people like this who are equally as sensitive. I'm sure. I mean, look, if you exist, there's probably quite a few people that have that issue. It makes sense. It makes sense that we all have different tolerances and we all have different allergies. I mean, some people are allergic to cats.

Some people have no problem with peanuts. Some people eat a Brazil nut and they die. This is just, we know this. So this is one of the problems with diet is that people want to think that a diet that works for them works for everybody. And it doesn't work that way. And people want you to follow their diet, no matter what it is, whether it's vegan or paleo. People are very ideological with that. They would love for you to do exactly what they're doing so to reinforce what they're doing is correct.

There's a lot of pushback against this carnivore diet idea. there's a lot of pushback against this carnivore diet idea. But I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that someone like you might actually really be allergic to everything. Yeah, I mean, I was like very sick. And from coming from that place to now, I can see how sick I was. And it was like I was dying. I was on a whole bunch of medication. Did you ever do anything with probiotics? Yeah. I can't how sick I was. And it was like I was dying. I was on a whole bunch of medication. Did you ever do anything with probiotics?

Yeah. I can't tolerate probiotics. You can't tolerate them. No. So the original idea was heal my gut, repopulate with bacteria that maybe I'm missing, and then maybe incorporate more foods. Right. So what happened when you tried to do that? Same autoimmune flare-up.

Okay. But this is the same autoimmune flare-up that you got when you ate salad? No, not quite. Not quite as bad? Not, it was different. It was like with salad, there's more of the arthritis and like body pain. And then... With probiotics, what'd you get?

Mood issues. Mood issues. So like really volatile. And itchy. Right. So I still got the itch. Yeah. So I think it was I probably had leaky gut. And so the probiotics were just going everywhere.

One of the things your dad brought up to me when he was here was emulsifiers. Yeah. Yeah. And then I started reading up on it after he discussed it with me. And it's something I never even considered before. But fast rising yeast and all these different emulsifiers that they put in bread and various foods. They're terrible for you. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Terrible for your stomach. And they're so prevalent. They're everywhere. Yeah. Soy lecithin. It's in everything. It's in everything.

Yeah. And then I started really paying attention to it and I've read several articles on it and a couple of studies. It's crazy how this is something that's never even discussed and it has all sorts of negative effects on your gut and your gut lining. It's awful. Yeah. Combining that and then it looks like grains aren't so good for people.

Combining that and grains, it's no wonder people are ill. Some people. Some people. Most people, though. If you look at like obesity or... I wouldn't go most. I would say some. I'd say most people are sedentary.

That's one of the primary issues. Yeah, but I don't think that's the issue. What do you mean? I mean, okay, mean? I mean, okay, say, I mean, I guess I'm not a great example, but I mean, people start gaining weight if they're lucky when they're middle-aged, if they're unlucky when they're around 25 and they start gaining weight. I don't think it's from lack of exercise. I think it's from diet. Yeah, I think diet has a lot to do with it. Yeah, for sure. But it's also lack of exercise. do with it yeah for sure um but it's also lack of exercise i don't know i'm not convinced because people who've gone on to this carnivore diet especially lose that weight right but there's

a lot of people out there that are not overweight that don't follow the carnivore diet so how do you explain that well i'd like to see anybody above the age of 50 and on a standard standard american diet well what is a standard American diet. Well, what is a standard American diet? I mean, if you're saying, are they eating terrible? No, I just mean standard American diet. I mean, do they watch what they eat? I mean, these blanket statements are a real issue.

And that's one of the reasons why your diet is fascinating. It's because, like, you know, I don't think you can make blanket statements when it comes to people and diet you know that i think there's some people out there that are goddamn food dumpsters you could throw anything in there and they're fine they just don't they don't seem to have issues they don't get closer to that yeah my brother is pretty well he's not so good with like lactose but he's pretty stable compared to me anyway well you know michael phelps that olympic swimmer yeah it's like ten thousand dollars a day and several pizzas yeah i know i read about him fucking jacked there's no problems at all he's not fat it's because but that's an issue of enormous like expenditure of energy i mean mean, he's constantly exercising and his body has ridiculous calorie

requirements. Caloric. So, I mean, it's hard to say, but I think sedentary lifestyle is a giant part of it. Most of what people do is what we're doing right now. Most of what people do is sit down. But is that because they don't feel like running around? Because some people, like people who exercise, generally you have to put in a little bit of effort to make yourself go exercise. But a lot of people who are overweight and sick don't have enough energy to do that. I don't know about that. Some of them maybe, but I think some of them just don't have discipline. There's an issue with that as well. There's also an issue with momentum. You're not used not used to doing it it's not a part of your life it's not something that you're accustomed to pushing yourself there's been many many many many many many many days where i didn't want to work

out i just didn't feel like i had the energy and i just forced myself and i think there's very few people out there that know how to force themselves that's a learn yeah that's a learned skill it's that that kind of discipline and focus you have to have real rigid requirements of yourself where you don't allow yourself to back out of things and you don't allow yourself to slack off

and I don't think people put those kind of requirements on themselves as if it's a daily principle of life what you must get done. You know, you must brush your teeth, you must exercise for 45 minutes. And if you did that, I think you'd be healthier and happier

and your body would perform more smoothly. And if you require your body to do things like that, I think it rises to the occasion. There are very few people that have that kind of discipline. So because of that, they come up with excuses and excuses are a giant part of the problem. It's not simply a physical health issue. There's also mental aspects of it and discipline is a big one. I just know way too many people who are weak mentally and I can't, I can't just chalk it

off to only, you know, their physical, the way they physically feel because I felt like shit a hundred times. And then I worked out and then I felt way better. It's just a fact of life. That's real. And people don't know how to do that. And if you're used to doing this, get in your car, sit down, drive to the office, sit down, go to the lunch, sit down, go to the board meeting, sit down, get in your car on the way home, sit down, get home in front of the TV, sit down you know go to the board meeting sit down get in your car on the way home

sit down get home in front of the tv sit down then go to the gym fuck off they don't have any energy you know their body's not their body's like i don't have it in me to do this and i don't believe that i don't believe that i think it's it's a lot of it is the the mindset so i i partly agree with that but because and i know i'm, I was a very sick individual. You're in a different case. You have real, legitimate, diagnosed physical issues. This is a very different thing. You have a severe autoimmune disorder.

I mean, listen, you get your hip replaced and you're fucking 17. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. You don't hear that. This is a different, I'm talking about the average fat fuck just sitting around being lazy. That's really what it is. It's like I'm sure a lot of it is diet and a lot of that diet affects their physical health.

But there's been many, many people that have just put their foot down and said, enough. I'm going to change my life. And they don't take any excuses and they feel way, way better. Diet is most certainly a part of that, but there's also a discipline aspect. And these things are not mutually exclusive. They exist together. They're all together. And they work symbiotically.

The way your mindset affects the choices you make with your diet and the mindset also affects the choices you make in terms of like whether or not you require yourself to exercise. And I think these are critical aspects that people like to gloss over or they like to make excuses about and they get very angry if you don't accept those excuses and that's a sign that they're trying to enforce this standard and this idea and push it on you and give themselves an excuse. It's one of the reasons why they get angry. It's one thing if someone has a legit physical issue like you do, but there's a lot of people who do not.

They just have poor diet choices. They have a sedentary lifestyle, and they have the momentum of this sedentary lifestyle that's holding them back. They're accustomed to being lazy. Okay. I kind of agree. I just, from like my perspective, I've seen my dad and he was very, like you can see from the videos from 2014 before he started going low carb and everything, he was carrying about 50 extra pounds and he didn't exercise and he didn't have enough energy to exercise, but it didn't look like that. That's not true. He just didn't do it.

No, I don't believe that. But when you say he didn't have enough energy to exercise, did he walk around? Well, yeah, but you can drag yourself through things. And you can drag yourself through an exercise routine. You can. But you most certainly can. You most certainly can.

You don't have to do a lot. You just have to do something. You walk up hills. You jump a little rope. You take a little tiny kettlebell. You do a couple cleans and presses. You do a few tiny kettlebell. You do a couple cleans and presses. You do a few push-ups. You do a few sit-ups.

You get your blood pumping. You're moving. You're alive. You're exercising. To say you don't have enough energy to exercise, that's crazy. Can you walk to the refrigerator? Then you can exercise. I'm not saying that you have to run marathons.

You can exercise. And everyone should fucking exercise. I agree. Everyone should exercise. everyone should fucking exercise. I agree. Everyone should exercise. Don't ever say people are so crazy. They want you to believe I don't have the energy to exercise. God damn it. Everyone does. If you're alive, you can exercise. I believe that. I've been there. I know I'm a different case, but I've seen my dad there. And then here's the thing. Once he fixed up his diet, once he went to this carnivore diet, he's exercising now. Sure. He's got less weight on his body. He feels better.

And he has energy. That's wonderful. He could have exercised then too. He would have felt shittier for sure. Wouldn't have felt as good as he's feeling now. But to give people this excuse, I don't have the energy to exercise. That is crazy to say. Can you walk to the fucking refrigerator? Yes. Well, you can exercise. You don't have to do anything crazy. Just walk around the block. There's 80-year-old ladies who take yoga with me. They're fucking really old, and they're in there.

They're going after it. They could easily say, I don't have the energy to do that. But they don't. It's a mental attitude. They make a decision. I agree. There's a lot of it's discipline. You're going to get people who just want to exercise.

You don't have to kill yourself. You don't have to go to a CrossFit class and try to do the workout of the day. You don't have to go nuts and do clean and presses with 150 pounds. You don't have to do that. But you have to do something. Just get your blood moving. Your body has requirements. It wants to move.

It really does. And when it does, you feel better. But people like to give themselves this excuse. I do not have the energy to do this. Whatever. If you decide that, that's true. But if you watch a motivational video, there's a hundred of them on YouTube, thousands even. Go watch one.

You'll get fired up. You're like, fuck it. I'm going to jump some rope. You jump some rope. You do something. Just do some pushups. Do something. Do some bodyweight squats.

You'll feel better. But it's also like learning that. Learning that and having that as a part of your daily life. It has to be, you know, again, I'm not talking about someone like you who's in the throes of this autoimmune disorder where you're getting your hip replaced at 17. I'm not talking about someone with like serious degenerative illness. I'm talking about just a regular person who's overweight. You can do it. There's a lady who's like 450 pounds and takes yoga with me. She's enormous. She's in there.

She's probably really embarrassing. Very hard to do. Yeah. You know? And she's in there. Anyone can do it. We can do it. And again, I'm not saying do what Michael Phelps does.

I'm just saying just do something. Gotta do something. We have fucked up lifestyles. Yeah. The lifestyles. Yeah. The lifestyles that people have are just, the human body is not designed to sit down all day and it's certainly not designed to be stuck in traffic and be in an office and just be, you know, fluorescent lights and just sitting there in front of a fucking computer monitor watching your soul get sucked through the LCD screen.

It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think we've got to be really careful with just the way we describe things. It's like, say, I don't have the energy to do something. Like, fuck off.

Stop. I don't know. I believe it still. That was good, but I'm still not convinced. You're still not convinced. Well, I think you change your diet. It helps.

And then you can exercise. You can exercise without changing your diet. There's a lot of people do. They do, yeah. And partly that's discipline. Yes. But partly that's being able to. I'm still, I don't know.

You haven't convinced me completely. So what do you think is holding them back? Well, I think if you're carrying around extra weight like a quite a bit of extra weight and you say i don't have enough energy there's something serious going on that isn't just oh i have a few extra pounds and i don't think we know exactly what that looks like but a lot of that has to do with energy i mean dad was sleeping he was sleeping for two hours a day in the middle of the day and he was impossible to wake up he couldn't wake up i had to like shake him and right couldn't wake him up dad told me he was on a standard diet of like sandwiches and pasta and things along those lines so you have that big insulin dump yeah yeah but

i mean most people who don't have enough energy are and a lot of those people don't realize like we were eating whole grains we didn't know that whole grains were just grains. We thought that whole grains were healthy. So I was having sandwiches for lunch. Because I was having cheese and bread. And that was protein. Right. But your dad has autoimmune disorders as well.

Yeah. Pretty significant. Right. And depression. Depression was pretty significant. That was the main one. That was very significant. Yeah. I think. You you know it's hard to it's hard to also figure out like what is depression

like you say you have depression to a person who doesn't have depression like myself i hear that and i go okay what does that mean yeah what does it mean you feel bad what does it mean does it mean there's like a thick wet blanket over your life that you can't get out of? Yeah, it means like there's a couple of things. The closest it's it's impossible to think of when you're not depressed. But the closest I get to is if you're in a really, really stressful situation and a whole bunch of things go wrong at the same time. That stress you feel is kind of like a really, really mild version of being depressed. that stress you feel is kind of like a really, really mild version of being depressed. But being depressed is like if you look at something, the colors seem muted.

You don't get joy out of anything. Like this color of the sky. Reds, like just colors. Everything's in gray scale. Kind of feels like you're walking through molasses. And then you have a whole bunch of anxieties pop up all the time that are like worst case scenarios of everything in your entire life that won't happen. But that's all you can think of all the time. That's partly anxiety, but it's hell. Like I having arthritis, I would choose arthritis a million times over than this depression that just wrecks you.

So what leads you to the carnivore diet? This lady has been living on it for 18 years. You read about her and that she's still alive without eating. And her Lyme disease gone and she looks great. There's a before and after picture. She looks great. And is she taking vitamins as well? Nothing.

Nothing. Beef and salt. Right. So this is what you hear. So this anecdotal story is what leads you to give that a try. Well, I thought, yeah. This is 2017. So December.

December. Almost. Yeah. So not quite a year. Okay. So I switched over and then I had these transition symptoms. Diarrhea. Yeah.

That was basically it. Some craving. It's bold to hang in there with six weeks of diarrhea. Yeah. But the alternative was like anxiety and itching and arthritis. Well, you were also probably at the end of your rope, right? Where you're like, Jesus Christ, I can't even eat miso soup. Right?

Yeah. There's nothing. I was like, I don't care about salad. I've already given up everything I love. Just take it away. And then after six weeks, it got better. And then I reintroduced olives and that went badly. And I thought, okay, I'm done with the reintroductions.

I'm just sticking with meat. Your dad said he's going to try to reintroduce mushrooms. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. He seems to be weirdly sensitive too, like in the same category as me. But instead of getting arthritis and all these other things as well, he just gets the depression, which is the worst one. Well, he said he introduced something to his diet and he didn't sleep for like 24 days yeah so that's not even possible well dead no it that's what it felt like i had the same

we i had the same thing we ate the same thing i think it was sulfites and apple cider in a stew i made i don't know what it was i think that that's what it was. And yeah, and then it was the itching came back and the doom came in, this depression came in. And then that's, that's weird. And it hasn't happened very many times, but I got stuck with insomnia and it felt like we weren't sleeping. So you slept like a little bit and you wake up probably. Yeah. It does not what it felt like, but I'm sure, you you know it's not physically possible to stay awake for that long but i don't feel like sleeping what's the world record that someone's ever stayed awake i think it's only like 10 days yeah i think it's 11 10 or 11 yeah something along those lines god why would he do that was it just a test person

11 days and 25 minutes 25 minutes what at that 26th minute, that dude went down hard. Wow, that's crazy. So obviously your dad must, unless your dad stomped the shit out of that world record. No, I'm sure he was sleeping, but it was like, it didn't feel like that, and it wasn't very much. It's just crazy that one thing. Do you remember what it was that he reintroduced to his diet? That might have been, it wasn't a reintroduction. We were just still eating apples at that point, and it was a cider, and it had sulfites added. And I looked at it and thought, whatever, it's like parts per million sulfites.

It'll be fine. And then that was the only thing that was new. So do you think that as you get onto this elimination diet and you start taking things out you get more sensitive yeah you get more sensitive so it's like one of the things that had that i noticed in in a big way is when i cut sugar out of my diet if i have sugar now like if i go crazy and have an ice cream sundae i hit a fucking wall so hard where i can't even get up. Yeah.

I have to sit down on the couch. I'm like, oh, it takes like an hour or two for it to get out of my system. So for like an hour, I just sit there and I'm like, oh God, I feel like shit. And then two hours later, I'm like, okay, it's done. It's passed. That's it. It's two hours. Yeah.

About two hours. It's like 24 days for me. Yeah. I believe you. I believe you. But for me, it's just for two hours. I mean, and again, it's not, I'm not depressed for two hours. I just feel like I have a brick in my stomach and I feel like I'm on a tranquilizer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So most of the, that's how I lived a whole bunch of my life. That's great. The tranquilizer, like the idiopathic hypersomnia. It was like, I was falling asleep during exams i drove home on the highway one time when i was 22 and i was falling asleep at the wheel and i was like oh my god like i can't stay awake passing out and i like moved over into a lane and

a truck came by and honked at me and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die and then i went on adderall whoa i was like i need to stay awake or I'm going to die. It was terrifying. Did you get off the Adderall? Yeah, yeah. I'm off of everything. And the Adderall, so I stopped taking the immune suppressants when I cut out gluten just to see how my arthritic flare-ups would go if anything would happen. Then I got off of the antidepressants November 2015. Then I got off of the antidepressants November 2015. And then my fatigue lifted in January 2016. So I got off the Adderall right away then.

I was taking a lot. And it was great when I was in that feeling like I was on tranquilizers. It was great. But once you don't need it, it's kind of awful being on that amount of amphetamine all the time. I know so many people that are on that shit. It's so disturbing to me how many people are taking that and they talk about their productivity and they're always... It makes you feel like you're being productive. I don't know if it actually makes you more productive.

And it just destroys your short-term memory. Does it? Destroyed mine. I was taking a lot, though. I was on 40 milligrams a day in the morning, a long release. It's one of those things I've always a lot though. I was on 40 milligrams a day in the morning, long release. It's one of those things I've always thought about trying. I'm like, hmm, maybe one day.

If you have energy, if you have energy, I don't think it gives you the kick like if you're exhausted all the time. It's just kind of unpleasant and it makes you like weirdly antisocial. Hmm. Okay. So you haven't been on this diet for a year no what has the change once you got over the diarrhea what has the change been like so um the arthritis and like the autoimmune stuff went away fairly quickly when i was still having diarrhea i went away the mood started to pick up six weeks into the diet. And then in May, so I'd been December,

January, March, April, May. So five months into it, I had a huge improvement. So things just got better and better every day. And I finally got to the point where I was pre-pregnancy. So since May, I would say it's still getting better. So it's only been three months that you've been okay? No, I've been okay since January. But my mood went from like an 8 to like a 9.5, like great in May.

So I was feeling good after I started, after the first six weeks. But then things got a lot better in May. It seems to be just improving. Now, what kind of blood work are you getting while you're doing all this? Are you going and getting tested for nutritional deficiencies? Because one of the issues that many people who are nutritionists or who are studying biology have with this carnivore diet is that meat, just meat, is very deficient in

many, many nutrients. It's just, it's very deficient in vitamin C. It's deficient in several things that we think that you need in order to live. Yeah. Well, I did get blood work done because people were asking and not because I particularly trust blood work because my blood work was always pretty normal. I was always low in zinc and vitamin D since I was a kid. Even when you had severe arthritis? Yeah. Everything was normal. I had no blood markers and I was like dying.

What about for inflammation? My white blood cell count was high. Okay. So that can be a sign of like infection. Right. So that was high. My vitamin D and my zinc were low. Right.

But that's not. That's what showed up. But that wouldn't be normal, right? If you went and you got your blood tested and they showed you have a high white blood cell count, they would go, there's an issue here. It wasn't abnormal enough to have caused the problems I was experiencing. But how different was it from the norm? White blood cell count um well i had white bloods raised white blood cell count and i had white blood cells in my urine and that's that's a little

weird because that is generally like well some sort of bacterial infection which i didn't have symptoms of so that was a little weird but that was never focused on from the doctors. Why not? Well, that seems like that's, that's an issue. If normal people don't have that, and you have problems that normal people don't have, I would say like your blood work is not, I mean, your blood work is not normal. That's not normal. No, but I mean, I was on all the medications they could put me on. So there wasn't, and they never looked at diet. So I was kind of at a standstill. Right.

But when you said that you don't trust blood work and then. Well, I did get it done. Right. Mostly for the blog so that everybody could see I wasn't dying. I can pull it up. Okay. That was one of the issues with Sean Baker. Sean got his blood work done.

And one of the things that people notice is that there's quite a few issues there. And one of them was very, very low testosterone, which is crazy because he's a gorilla yeah he's a big huge six foot five 250 pound dude so it's like well he doesn't look deficient in testosterone like what the hell's going on here yeah I don't have testosterone readings he also said that part of that might you know he and I have gone back and forth about this he said part of that might have been had to do with taking the test um when he had uh done like a very heavy weight lifting workout the day before like he'd done squats and deadlifts and all kinds of stuff and so maybe broke his body down a bit yeah which kind of makes sense it would be nice for like a medical professional to take some of these groups

of people doing this diet and just do a study so we could actually get some information yeah instead of like everything's anecdotal and i put my stuff up but just because so i can show it to you but everything is normal everything is normal my ferritin is slightly slightly elevated but like people ferritin uh iron okay so that's slightly elevated um because you're eating a lot of red meat but that's not bad not necessarily and it was still like my doctor said he didn't care it wasn't elevated enough but like what about vitamins um so for vitamins vitamins my zinc is still low my vitamin d is still low. My vitamin D is still low. That hasn't recovered. It's been like

that. It's been like that forever. Well, it's hard in Canada. Like I have some pictures on Instagram and I'm green because there's no light for like six months. Um, and then I'm outside all summer, so I'm probably deficient. I think that has something to do with the autoimmune disorder. I tried supplementing with really high-dose vitamin D and didn't see any benefits. And I don't take supplements anymore. The high-dose vitamin D, I tried once when I was 21 for about a year. And then again when I was doing the low-carb diet. But what about now when your issues with vitamin D are in your blood?

I just got my blood work back. Okay. So I was doing no supplements so that I could see what happened. Also, I probably wouldn't recommend high dose of vitamin D. I would just recommend supplementing with a normal dose of vitamin D. I think I'm just going to wait and see and get tested in a year. I'm not too concerned and see what happens because here's what's interesting. When I went to the low-carb diet, my B vitamins were low.

So this was during the pregnancy. I got this first test, and it was my B12 was fine, but everything else was low. Folate was low, B1, B3, B6, and biotin're all low on the low carb diet right uh and my naturopath said maybe you have a microbiome problem whatever that means whenever someone says my naturopath said i just go yeah what else i was like you need a crystal in your pocket yeah keep a crystal with you at all times i you know what they were there telling me to cut out gluten for years and I was like, what do you know?

Right. Crazy person. Yeah. I could have probably stopped some suffering. You need to put a dream catcher on your wall. Put a dream catcher

above your bed. That'll help. Hmm. Anyway, this new micronutrients test, vitamin D and calcium, not calcium, vitamin D and zinc are still low, but all my Bs have gone up. So none of my Bs, folate is still borderline, but it was deficient before and all my other Bs

have gone up to normal. What about vitamin C? Oh, vitamin C was always normal. Vitamin C hasn't changed at all. That's fascinating because that's one of the ones I think people are deficient if you are on this diet. Well, I did some background reading because I thought people died of scurvy if they didn't eat vegetables, just like everybody thinks that. Right. But it turns out vitamin C and glucose compete. Right. So if you don't eat glucose, you just don't use as much vitamin c yeah and i haven't been supplementing but my vitamin c is totally fine yeah sean baker sent

me something about that something along those lines that uh some of the vitamin c that you're taking in is competing with glucose and that you need far less of it and it's far more effective. So there is some vitamin C in beef. Yeah. Are you choosing to eat grass-fed beef or you do care? So initially I tried to get rid of all the variables because I didn't know what I was reacting to. So I was eating grass-fed, antibiotic-free, all that stuff.

And now I'm eating, mostly I try to stay away from the antibiotic and hormone meat, but I'm eating grain finish because it's just so much cheaper than grass fed. And it doesn't I have no problems with it. How would you know whether or not beef has antibiotics or hormones in it? You just trust the labeling. Right. That's it. But I've gone out to eat in restaurants where I'm sure the meat's lower quality and I haven't had an autoimmune flare up with that.

in restaurants where I'm sure the meat's lower quality and I haven't had an autoimmune flare-up with that. So when you go out to eat, you know, one of the things you posted the other day was that you had a steak that had pepper on it. Yeah, I had pepper on Monday. Pepper, like ground pepper and you're freaking out? I was freaking out on Monday, yeah. I was like, I don't know what happens. Wow. It's okay. I'm fine. But yeah, I was was freaking out I was stressed out for the whole day but it's like if it flares first of all these flare ups don't happen instantly so it gives you enough time to freak out about if they're going to happen for a couple days

and then it's like a month of an autoimmune disorder and depression and brain fog and not being able to think and it's horrible so yeah I'm freaked out but I'm okay the one thing I found really helps the one thing i found really helps the only thing i found that helps these reactions is an infrared sauna if i get in there like once a day and sweat only an infrared one what about a regular one um do you know honestly no i don't

know you don't know so the idea just the elevated heat temperature whether it's infrared or not yeah i don't know if it's i've just read all the benefits of infrared. What are the benefits over a regular sauna? Well, there's like longevity studies from Finland. Those are done in a regular sauna. That's a regular sauna. Yeah, the ones that are done that show the decrease in mortality of 40%. That's a regular sauna.

That's a regular sauna. Yeah. What about mitochondrial health? Why don't you Google that, please? There's a study, maybe Rhonda Patrick has it up on her website, but, because I asked her whether I should get a regular sauna or a

infrared, and she said the studies that were done were done with a regular sauna, but she said the real issue is that your body's producing heat shock proteins. So whether it's infrared or regular, the real issue is your body's in this extreme 170 degree temperature produces these cytokines and these cytokines, cytokines,

cytokines, and your body is reacting to this incredible temperature. And this is what produces anti-inflammation effect. I would think for someone like you with arthritis in particular, anything that reduces inflammation would be a great benefit. So sauna would be awesome. Yeah, no, it's great. I just, if I'm reacting, like sauna makes me feel like 20% better, like a lot better after I get out. If I'm not reacting, I don't sweat as much when I get in and it's nice, but it's not like a huge relief like it is when I'm reacting.

It's giant for me. I mean, I don't have the autoimmune issues that you have, but boy, for me, it's just, it's a game changer. I get in there for 20 minutes, half hour, and I get out of there. It's just like, everything just feels better. Yeah. And it hits me like about 20 minutes after I get out, I get this mood up and it's just like, ha. Once your body, I think that what that is, is your temperature normalizes and your body temperature normalizes after your body temperature normalizes after you're out of that heat. And then everything's just like, oh. Yeah.

No, it's great. Yeah. It's great. Have you done cryotherapy? Yeah. Similar feeling, right? Yeah. Not as good, I don't think.

No. But similar feeling. It's better actually for pain. So I have my ankle replacement still gives me problems because it's an ankle replacement. So I've done cryotherapy for that. And that works better for pain, I think, than the sauna does. Now, what do they do when they replace your ankle? Do they cut off the bottom of the joint and recap it and put something else there?

So they cut off the bottom of the tibia. It's a big bone. Tibia. And then they replace the top of the talibia. It's a big bone. Tibia. And then they replaced the top of the talus. It sucks. And I got it done in 2009 when the ankle joints weren't as good as they are now. So now I'm left with this, like, old ankle joint, and I'm 26. So I have to get it looked at because it's giving me problems. Are you going to get another

one? Oh God, no, I hope not. I think they're just going to try and fix it. Get some super dope carbon fiber new model. I know they don't have that. Nobody's like making anything cool. No, no. It seems like they're constantly improving that. I mean, that's what it looks like on YouTube, but that's not really what it looks like In real life No No I was like Maybe I could just

Get a new foot I could get a better foot Right I want a new foot Do you want a new foot Well Some robot foot Maybe

Go to the nail salon Like what the fuck is this Depends on the robot foot You'd be down For a robot foot If it like Took away all your pain Oh my god yeah

If I could run again I can't run With an ankle replacement What about your hip replacement my hip replacement is fine yeah but they i have friends that got a hip replacement they said running's out of the question it's out of the idea like there's no way you can't run i could run on the hip replacement really yeah i can limp along with my ankle but the hip replacement gives me no problems it's great but i thought that the load that is placed on the hip is not i don't think they recommend activities like that all the time

all the time but even like a um what's an elliptical like that's pretty low impact and i can't do that because of my ankle but my hip is fine have Have you ever tried a VersaClimber? No. We have one out there. I don't even know. It's an angled, like a beam with handles on it, and you do this. Phenomenal cardio. It's amazing. Works your core because you're at an angle, so you're kind of planking almost a little bit while you're doing it.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That might work better. Yeah, you do sprints with it and then do like Tabatas, like 20 tens. Wow. Like 20 seconds on, 10 second break, 20 seconds on, 10 second break. It's phenomenal. Hmm.

Yeah, it's one of the best exercises in terms of cardio. Huh. I stopped, so. Can you do a bike? I can't really do anything with this ankle. But I did start, yeah, it's a huge pain. I'm going to need to get surgery. I think I'm getting something done in January.

And what are they going to do? So basically bone has grown into the joint. So it's basically fused. So I just don't have any movement. And it kind of hurts. And it doesn't hurt like it hurt when I needed it replaced, but it hurts. So they're going to go in and clean out all the bone and pray that that works.

Jesus. So that's what my January is going to be. Does this make you think that, like, if you got on this diet when you were younger, you could have avoided all this shit? This is why I'm not very pleased with the medical community. Well, how did they know? I mean, they didn't know back then. But they could have said, I don't know, they could have looked at the celiac thing.

Then I would have at least been clued in that gluten was a problem. And maybe just removing that would have been good enough. Well, it seems that the amount of research that they would have to do, I mean, think about how many different things you had to look at to come to that conclusion. The time you had to spend. Yeah, like three years. Yeah. And Canada has public i mean you have public health care right so it's it's it's weird right they're not as motivated

they're not it's not ideal for people with very special problems right it's good for general public and it's great if you don't have money and you need to get taken care of but they have a lot of people coming in and out right it's constant i'm getting the surgery done in north carolina wow just fucking turn you back on canada huh i could wait around for like three and a half years for a surgeon that's not as good yeah yeah that um on this infrared thing i'm finding very interesting stuff because i remember reading what you said, but I'm not finding that. And I've only found stuff that – like I found a Ben Greenfield – I think it was a transcription of a podcast he did with Rhonda. And something else very similar, which is information from Dr. Joel Kahn that says only sunlight and far infrared saunas have been shown to increase core temperature for effective detoxification.

Because you can stay longer in the threshold area. They want it around 130 degrees. You can be there up to 45 minutes or so. And I guess you can't unless you can withstand it in a regular heat one. Because it's heating the air around you, not light heating your body. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So the infrared one is heating your body in specific

rather than you being in the heat. Correct. Oh, interesting. So you can do it longer, and that's where the benefits... How much longer? How long are you supposed to do it for? It's at least 30 minutes. But that's what I do anyway.

I don't know the difference. So infrared sauna is good if you're a pussy. That's where I didn't want to say that. But hey, maybe that's what they're saying. I don't know. Well, it seems like you get more benefit with less suffering. That's what it would seem like. Because you could do it longer.

I think that's what they're getting at. But yeah, I don't know if that's the reason why. I don't know if people have to just quit after 20 minutes and they can't get to the 30. Well, people do, man. It does get uncomfortable, but if you get the same benefits and you can avoid the discomfort, why wouldn't you do that, right? It's just uncomfortable right before you start sweating. You're like, oh, I'm really hot, and then you start sweating and it's not as bad. There's a new company that's making an infrared sauna that you work out in.

It's got a chin-up bar in, and it's got all these, like, resistance cables. The other part of this, too, which is, I'd have to go more into science, is that I don't know, is that the LEDs, like the infrared light, can penetrate your skin, whereas the heat maybe can't. Because it's just heat, and it's heating up your skin. It's not, like, infrared is literally a wave. It's a just heat. It's heating up your skin. It's not, like infrared is literally a wave. It's a light wave. It's a different kind of. It invigorates your mitochondria.

It works at that level. So maybe the studies that they did in, what was it, in Norway? Finland, I think. Finland, yeah. Maybe they just didn't have infrared there. Maybe, I don't know. Because like those Russian banyas, they do the regular saunas. They use regular saunas and they go hot, cold, hot, cold.

And they've had some pretty awesome benefits of that. So there might be something to that because they're using light. Dentists are using light now to harden fillings. So that's pretty new. Yeah. Science. She blinded me with science. Fascinating stuff.

It is all very fascinating stuff. But so sauna definitely helps you either way. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like I've read some studies on it working at a mitochondrial level. I don't know anything about it. I've just there's something to it. And it after about half an hour is the only thing that's helped.

I've tried like I tried everything to get rid of these reactions faster, like detoxification things or mostly just different, weird, different sort of detoxification things, and nothing's helped except the sauna. They still last for as long, but they're not as awful. So I was telling you that this guy, Kevin Bass, who is a PhD and a scientist, and he contacted me, and I contacted him. Put on my glasses so I can see better. And we went back and forth about this online, and so he sent me a bunch of stuff, what he thinks. And one of them is nutrient deficiency and that uh immunosuppression from a nutrient deficiency and that in the idea is that maybe in having less nutrients and having less

your dietary immunosuppression via deficiency might be helping you. And he said basically crazier things have happened and that you reported still having symptoms when you get sick, even on a carnivore diet. And he said that it shows that the carnivore diet is a symptomatic treatment. It's not because she's removed the offending antigen. What? Yeah.

I don't even know if I understood all that properly. Well, this is a very long, he wrote a very, very long piece on this. And I appreciate that he took the time to do this. One of the things that he's saying is like vitamin A, that this diet could be vitamin A deficient, vitamin C deficient. We went over that. The thing is I have. Vitamin E deficient, vitamin K deficient. So you got your results back.

So you got tested. And my vitamin K is normal. Vitamin A is normal. Normal like above it says anything above 30 is okay for vitamin K2. Mine's 40. Everything above 70 is okay for vitamin A. Mine's 79. He said also that a lot of your symptoms, including joint destruction, fatigue, depression, etc.,

can be caused by the drugs that are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Although our rheumatoid arthritis came first, though. Right. But then the joint destruction. Was that post you being on those medications? How are those studies even done? How do you test if it's the drugs or the arthritis causing it? I don't know. I mean, this is his take on this.

These are the potential scenarios. I mean, without rejecting it totally, you were on those drugs far, far earlier than your joints destroyed, right? Yeah. I started the drugs grade four and then grade 11 were the replacements. Yeah. This whole thing is a very fascinating subject because people are not having the response that nutritionists would like them to have. No. Right. Nutritionists would like you guys to be freaking out and falling apart. And everybody seems to be doing well. I have a friend of mine who lives in San Diego,

has been on the carnivore diet for a while. And, you know, he's a Navy SEAL. He said he feels fucking fantastic. He said, you know, he said he just tried it out, see what it was like. He's never felt better in his whole life. Yeah. Elimination diets. This is a big thing, like getting yourself down to a very small number of foods, you know, and that this seems to have some sort of a large benefit for people as well. Yeah. I mean, I think it would depend on the foods.

Yeah, it's like your body not having too much to manage. And that people with autoimmune disorders and diseases having less to manage could potentially be what is benefiting you as well. I don't think it's less, though, because if you survived only off of soy, you're not going to do well. I think it depends what you're eating. One of the things that he's saying, too, is that when you get sick, the systemic inflammation probably opens up your intestinal barrier, which causes autoimmune systems to kick in again. He said the same thing happens with any food that causes your intestinal barrier to open up. And he said, why is this happening? I don't understand.

And that you and your father both think this could be some sort of hereditary thing. Have you guys done any 23andMe testing? Yeah. And what is that? Have you been genotyped for different gene disorders, perhaps? something on her website right uh i ran it through that i ran it through prometheus um nothing shocking shows up i have the celiac gene dad doesn't so that's not exactly the issue um that was it wow the whole thing is just it's it's one of the more interesting things is how people they always want to attach all these other things to it the environmental concerns and the the concern for you know the the health and welfare of these animals and that you're supporting factory farming and always it gets very it gets very um ideological oh yeah super fast real quick right but it's not what we're talking about no i also i don't like It gets very ideological. Oh, yeah. Super fast. Real quick, right? But that's not what we're talking about. No, I also, I don't like, I'm concerned about other people who are suffering as much as I was suffering.

Yeah. That's it. Right. Before you're concerned with animals and everything else. Like, way before. Like, try living, if your choice is to live with an autoimmune disorder and like die slowly that way you can do that and not eat meat if you want to well there's it's also i think a disingenuous argument because 97 of the people in the world eat meat or some crazy number it's easy to tell other people that when you're

not experiencing those symptoms it's also yeah i definitely. It's definitely easier if you're not experiencing those symptoms. But there's so much meat eating going on already. And if people really can benefit greatly from just an all meat diet, you know, what are you going to tell them? Don't do that. Go vegan. Keep suffering. Go vegan and be covered in hives and itching and be in depressed states the rest of your life. Yeah. It's such a hot subject. It is, yeah. And I feel like this is something that we're going to have more insight on over the next few years.

Oh, yeah. People are starting to study it now and it's starting to be, I mean you know sean baker who's you know he's a physician and then you've got some really um dedicated athletes that are trying it now like you know zach bitter who he what does he own on the north american record for 24 hour race wow he or not for 24 hours, for 100 miles. He ran 100 miles in 11 hours and 40 minutes. Wow. Which is just fucking insane. And he eats almost nothing but meat. Yeah.

It's almost his entire diet. He supplements with high levels of glucose, like those gels and shit like that, and ramps his carbs way up when he's going to do 100 mile races and things like that. But that's obviously a ridiculous requirement on his body. He's asking his body to run 100 fucking miles in 11 hours and 40 minutes. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

That's crazy. He also weighs five pounds. I'm just joking. He weighs like 140. I'm just joking. He weighs like 140. But it's just, you know, his diet shows that it is possible to do extreme physical feats while you're on this. Yeah.

He does a podcast also with Sean Baker. So this is something that people are really starting to study now. And there's a lot of argument. There's a lot of hesit there's a lot of hesitancy a lot of anger oh i read some article today criticizing you and your dad i know yeah that's okay i find it kind of like i can understand a lot of people who go on the carnivore diet get really like vegan haiti well that's what they were doing they were saying well that's true but what they were doing is they're going off about the environment this This was like methane gas produced by cows. I don't think I saw this article.

It's not a good argument because this is happening. If you're a person, okay? I'm not saying that we don't all have a responsibility to do our part to try to save the environment. But if you're a person who's deathly ill, you go to the supermarket, there's a lot of fucking beef. You can go buy beef. It's right there. And if you could buy that beef and it fixes you. Why don't you stop and think about the ecological concerns, the environmental concerns, and

then the physical concerns of people that are forced to take on these fucking ridiculous pharmaceutical medications and introduce those into their lives. And think about you're also empowering these pharmaceutical companies and they're lobbying to stop natural cures. They're trying to make kratom illegal. There's a lot of fuckery that's involved in pharmaceutical companies that we're well aware of. A lot of cherry-picking studies.

They'll do 100 studies. One of them shows that there might be some benefit to this. Ninety nine shows it fucks you up and they ignore those and they're allowed to do this. There's a lot of weird shit that we really should take into consideration before we support any sort of pharmaceutical alternative. And pharmaceutical drugs aren't demons. There's a lot of people that benefit greatly from pharmaceutical drugs. I did. I don't think I would have been able to figure this out unless I'd been on Adderall and had the energy to Google.

I'm sure. I mean, look, there's benefits. They're not all bad. They're not all good. But I don't like that argument. Like, hey, if you go on the carnivore diet, you're contributing to methane that's fucking up the world. Like, okay, is it better or worse than pharmaceutical drugs? Is it better or worse than what they're doing?

Is it better or worse than the fact that, look, pharmaceutical drugs are in the water supply. They've done tests on reservoirs and found pharmaceutical drugs in them. They found pharmaceutical drugs in rivers. In fish? Yeah. It's like, shut the fuck up. There's a lot going on here don't

don't if you're gonna look at this you better look at it in a if you want to make an argument against it you better be balanced about this because otherwise you're showing your ideological bend like to say that it's about methane and about cows and factory farming not really no there's a lot going on there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on, yeah. This is a long and nuanced discussion. And if you're painting this article in one way and talking only about the negative health and negative environmental concerns that are associated with beef production, like, look, that beef production is going on no matter whether you like it or not. If you think we can curb it back and slow it down a little bit, that would be wonderful. But we have to look at it accurately.

And also, I believe they've proven that methane – Google if this is true – that methane production from cows – and this only makes sense – is far less when they're on a natural diet, when they're pasture raised, than it is if they're corn fed. But it makes sense because they have all sorts of- Yeah, corn? Yeah, they have all sorts of issues- Yeah, that seems like a bad idea.

When they're eating grain. That could easily be a part of the problem is they're trying to fatten these cows up quicker and they're forcing them to eat something that's not natural for their body. Have you ever seen that King Corn documentary? No. Great documentary. King Korn? Yeah, it's a mind fuck.

It's how corn's in everything? Everything. And then your DNA, like your whole body's like filled with corn. Yeah, it's crazy because there's so much. I don't want to hear that. It's crazy. These guys did tests on the carbon in their body and they found how much corn is in their body.

Yeah, I think it was the carbon in their body and they found how much corn is in their body. Yeah. I think it was the carbon in their body. Whatever it was, they just – and they go through the supermarket aisle and they find how many things have corn in them. Yeah. And that corn is subsidized by the government. Yeah. Soy. Corn and soy and everything.

Yeah. The articles – but again, this is also part of the problem. These people who are writing these articles about your diet and about your dad and his – Part of this is just taking a shot at dad. So that's the other problem. Yeah, certainly a lot of that. But no, the articles aren't great. I mean it would be nice if someone instead of saying maybe she didn't have arthritis

or maybe she's just placeboing herself into this or maybe it's deprivation that's making her feel better. It'd be nice if someone actually did a study. What does it say, Jamie? It says cows are being fed a new diet that can reduce the amount of burping and cut emission methane

by 20%. It's from a 2008 article on AP. What are they being fed? What's this new diet? It didn't specifically say, I don't think. They're being fed other cows. Here you go. What does it say? Okay. Special machine is used to cut the straw.

Okay, but still. Yeah. Mixed with sludge, silage, wheat, maize, soya, or sugar beet, which can be mixed with. See if you Google methane by cows who are pasture raised. Methane by cows. Methane produced by cows who are grass fed.

See if there's any articles about that. I thought I read that it was grain-fed cows that produced less methane. Really? Which isn't what I would have guessed. That's interesting. Grass-fed cattle do more methane. What is that? Produce, do more methane?

What is that? The fuck? I'm not reading that. Yeah, they fucked up. Grass-fed cattle produce, do more methane because it's harder to digest. Okay-fed cattle do produce more methane because it's harder to digest. Okay, obviously do produce more methane because it's harder to digest grass than grain. However, some argue grass that is continually grazed by grass-fed cattle sequesters enough carbon to make up the difference in methane. Okay, that's what it is.

And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere. Okay. Yeah, there's a big story behind there. Right. So that's why it's better for the environment if they eat grass, which totally makes sense because they've been eating grass for a million years. Yeah. Yeah. So here you are.

Here you are on this diet now, and you've started to – what are you doing? Consulting people online so i am now yeah i started about a month ago and how what does that involve people skype me and basically want to see me and how i'm still alive only eating beef and then they ask me how to cook and things because nobody knows how to cook meat without anything on it. Well, how do you cook with just beef? They don't know what to do. They're like, what oil do you use?

I don't use oil. I think most of these people, I've been talking to a lot of them. I use tallow. I use tallow a lot. But most of these people are really sick and really desperate, and they haven't had any help from the medical system. And so far, and this is completely true, anybody who's gone on to this like beef and salt and water diet, anybody I've seen who's been able to stick through that transition period where you like get off of carbs. And explosive diarrhea.

Not everyone gets that. Dad didn't get that. Who are the lucky ones ones it's like it seems to be 50 50 it looks like the sicker you are seven yeah no it seems to be but like seriously 50 of people and it seems like the sicker you are the more likely you are to get that and i don't know if it's a inability to digest that amount of fat right away or if it's a microbiome switch right or, but it seems to hit 50% of people and the other 50% just switch over. But everybody gets some sort of

carb withdrawal, especially if you go from like a standard American diet over then it's insane cravings. Oh, do you, do you get your ketones checked? Have you done that? I did. Um, I went to paleo FX, uh, this year and I got my ketones checked and they were ridiculously high. That was with a breath test. And then I have the urine strip test, which I know aren't as accurate, but I haven't gone out of ketosis. My diet's about 80% calories from fat. How's that? I eat ribs, which are really fatty. I eat ribeye sometimes, but I've been eating more and more fat. So just calorically, I'm getting about 80% from the fat. See, I eat a lot of meat, but I'm eating really lean meat because I'm eating a lot of wild game. I'm not getting as much fat.

I think the fat's the good stuff. I think it's definitely, it has a factor. I just finished, I didn't finish, I'm halfway through a book called Fat of the Land by, I'm going to butcher this, but like Wilhelmur Stefansson. And it was this dude who went to live with Inuit people in Canada for five years and he ate like they ate. And it's amazing, like historically, it shows how they dressed and how they lived and what parts of the animal they ate. And so he lived off of what they ate, which was basically just meat and sometimes eggs for five years. And then he came back. I don't know if he was in England or in the States, but he came back and said, hey, look how healthy I am. All I eat is meat. This is like the 30s. And they said, no way you're supposed to have scurvy. So him and his partner, who is his last name's Anderson,

went to Bellevue Hospital, and they stayed under monitor just eating meat for a year. And there are six studies done on them, and you can find them online. And they monitored like vitamin levels. They monitor everything because kidney function, because back then, like nothing's changed in the last hundred years, they said, you're supposed to be dead of scurvy. So I'm reading that book and he says fat was one of the main things they ate. They also didn't eat any salt. Hmm. No, they were eating like whale blubber and seal fat.

Some mostly caribou. Caribou. They also had the brain. No. Yeah, but they, I i ate he said they gave a lot of the really lean cuts to the dogs so they ate a lot of the fattier cuts they ate the brain they ate fat behind he goes into some serious detail they ate fat behind the eyes yeah um they boiled a lot they boiled bones for the marrow so they got fat out of that. And then for part of the year, they'd also eat seal. The fat behind the eyes tastes like, it's like bread, like dough.

You know that? Yeah. I haven't had that. Yeah, I had it with the first deer I shot. We ate the fat behind the eyes. Is it good? No. No.

It's just, it's not the best okay but it's it's definitely it's just weird like like dough that's weird yeah huh yeah it's a good book though and it there's another person who was just eating meat and for some reason people have forgotten about him so like maybe the best to eat would be those really fat japanese cows those Those Kobe beef cows or Wagyu. Because those are fat as fuck. Yeah. Those things, you look at those marbled cuts and you're like, what are you doing to that cow? I don't know.

It's terrible though. Probably nothing good. Nothing good. No. Those poor cows. Yeah. What I've been doing recently, which is a lot cheaper, is getting ground beef, which is lean, and adding tallow and just frying it. Oh, that makes sense.

And it's way cheaper than steak, but it's super fatty. It's just spoonfuls of tallow in there. And you just eat it. Just put it in a bowl and eat it. Are you getting bored with this at all? No. Not at all. So after the first week sucked, the first month kind of sucked.

I mean, that was one of the reason it sucked but i was also like a missing salad i was having and i only went from greens down so it was a pretty easy transition kind of um but is the rest of your family on this diet as well as your husband yeah he's on it as well yeah really and how does he have any issues health issues he was depressed a pretty severe depression really and what what was causing his depression like foods he had the same issues as me and i know how that sounds but my dad was like this seems to be genetic how can you have it too whoa but so it's not genetic that's interesting that you did that reaction well he was like this is a little incredulous

well i mean those food reactions were kind of strange you know people have like weird sympathetic disorders you know like someone around them has something they start to develop the same symptoms so that's what dad was thinking it wasn't like this though he'll turn green his skin turns a different color when he eats the wrong thing yeah Yeah. I mean, not like green, but he gets pale. You can see it. Huh. Oh, one thing I wanted to address when I was on here. In Sean Baker's episode, he said something about eating apples that gave him low back pain.

And you were like, apples gave you low back pain? And people in the comments were freaking out. Right. That's a symptom that happens to me too. And it's not apples. Low back pain. Yeah. When my mood drops, I get lower back pain

and so does dad. And it's funny to freak out about until you get it, but that's very commonly associated with depression and it is triggered by food with me too. Well, I know that that's triggered by some people that have lower back issues when they eat inflammation causing foods like pasta and sugar. Yeah. Hmm. I went to a physical therapist once when I had a bulging disc in my neck, and she suggested that I cut out gluten. I thought she's a crazy person.

I was like, what are you talking about? Cut out gluten? She goes, I know it sounds crazy, but a lot of these things cause issues, and they cause inflammation. That was like the first steps that I took. That was the first step. Yeah. Gluten.

Yeah. Well, also the first steps that I took to understand that foods cause inflammation. I had never thought of that at all. I said, no, no. Someone yanked on my neck and now my neck's hurt. I'm trying to fix it. How do I fix my neck? And when she was saying this, that the reduction of inflammation causing foods would lead to healing in certain issues.

I was very incredulous. I was like, it sounds like some fucking wacky chiropractic bullshit. Yeah. But there's something to it. And, you know, there's, there's something to, first of all, the weight reduction. As soon as you cut out all these sugary foods and your body's just carrying less stuff around, you're carrying less meat. I mean, and people don't realize how much that is.

Do a workout. Do like a body weight workout. Now do that same body weight workout with a 40 pound vest on. It's way harder. Fucking way harder. Yeah. And most people out there wandering around at least 40 pounds overweight. At least 40 pounds.

Yeah. It's a lot of weight. It's a lot of weight. It's a lot of weight. You know, I do this. I have this, um, this backpack that I put metal plates on. It's by this company called Outdoorsmans. And it's like basically like the frame of a hiking backpack.

You snap it in and it puts an Olympic plate on the back and locks it in place. Oh, wow. So that it really centers in your back as opposed to like a lot of people do weighted hikes, but they put sandbags in there and it kind of shifts and moves around. But this was like really centers it and locks it in place. But if I do 45 pounds and I go hiking around, like it kind of kicks my ass. It's hard going up the hills with 45 pounds. Think about what most people just go through life with.

A lot of people go, your dad was 50, 50 pounds overweight. Think of that. It's a lot of weight. That wears your ass out. I mean that, and then that's one of the reasons why people say they don't have the energy to exercise because they're carrying around all this weight. I always look at like really heavy overweight persons, people. And I look at their legs. I'm like, that dude probably can kick through a wall. Someone could teach him how to kick. Like think about how much weight you're carrying around all the time. Their knees are probably super strong. Like all the tissue around their legs is constantly carrying this heavy load upstairs.

Yeah. Like if you could lose weight, you'd probably have amazing legs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look at diet. So how do you go though from this to doing consulting and is it is it a big leap to like i mean you're just trying to figure your own life out to try to help other people online you don't

have a degree in nutrition or anything right god no well but what am i going to get a degree in nutrition for they still teach people to eat grain so that was never in the books. Do you think that today, like if you went to a university today, like a really good school, do you think they would still be saying that grains are a good idea to eat? I do. I don't know that,

so I could be wrong. But yeah, I would say it's still pretty food pyramid-y. Well, I don't know if they go the old way with like when you were reading dr seuss books the bottom is all rice and wheat i don't think it's really changed i think it's like eat a good mix of make sure you get your fruits and vegetables but is that whole grain that's what they tell you when you're pregnant but for most people i don't think so grain really we've been eating grain for

what like maybe 20 000 years in some areas more like 10,000 years and in some areas 2,000 years and if you're Native American like 200 years we haven't been eating grain for very long why do people suddenly think they can digest that just because we're people so you don't believe rice rice is a grain rice I think is a lot less inflammatory than some grains like the gluten grains are obviously a lot harder on people and even i tolerated rice kind of for a while um but yeah i don't i think grains feed a lot of people and so that's why the agricultural era came around now we can feed tons of people but doesn't make people thrive and i don't think

it's good for their gut i don't think that's surprising considering we haven't been eating it long enough to evolve with it. But other than grain, what other issues do you have with what you'd call like a paleo diet or a healthy diet? With vegetables. Do you think there's an issue eating vegetables? I think it really depends on the person. I think that this beef salt and water diet is a really good elimination diet. And if you're seriously suffering and you have like nothing to lose, you can give it a go, suffer through the transition period,

and then try and once you feel okay, try and reintroduce foods and see where you stand. What about vitamin supplementation though? And like why wouldn't you tell people, why wouldn't you recommend multivitamins or a multivitamin pack that covers all your basics? I say if you want, if you're really concerned about vitamins, get vitamin infusions. I react to multivitamins. So the fillers, there aren't any pure vitamins you can take unless you take them in powder form. So you can get, like, vitamin C powder, potassium powder.

But it's hard to get the other vitamins in powder form. And I react to everything. So even the fillers. So you react to the gelatin capsules? Yeah. I probably wouldn't react to pure gelatin capsules, but like filler. What do you mean by what kind of filler? Microcrystalline cellulose is in a lot of them.

Why do they put that stuff in there? Well, a lot of them is to like bind it together. You know, if it's like a tablet, then most of that is like powdery stuff that isn't the actual vitamin. What about capsules? Um, I don't know. I haven't tested it out like by, because it's this month long reaction. I pretty much just say, get rid of all the variables you can get rid of and start from scratch. And then you can see if, if things are bothering you. If you're worried about vitamins, get infusions. Right. But what I was saying is that you were talking about these binders. Do they exist in capsules as well? Yeah. You have to check the ingredients. It's very hard to get vitamins that are pure unless they're in powdered form or they're by

infusion. I couldn't find a multivitamin I could take. A lot of the vitamin K is derived from soy. So I'll react to that amount of soy. Wow. So in the infusions, you're talking about IV. Yeah. And I did that during my pregnancy because just in case. I don't react to that at all. It's fine. I didn't see a benefit.

It didn't make me feel any better. How do you react to fish oil? Not well, but it was hard to tell because I was reacting to other things at the same time. So I don't eat chicken anymore and I don't eat fish anymore because it doesn't make me feel as good as beef. But it doesn't give you a bad reaction? Not like soy or grains, but it's't give you a bad reaction not like soy or grains but it's not pleasant but if someone took you out to a restaurant

and lobster was on the menu you wouldn't eat a lobster no wow no dessert no but the thing is the cravings go away after you transition over

so I don't even care how often do you eat a day three times usually if I'm doing more I eat more after you transition over. So I don't even care. How often do you eat a day? Three times usually. If I'm doing more, I eat more. Otherwise, I'm eating about two and a half pounds a day. If they're fattier, then I'll eat less. So you're just like a walking beef catastrophe.

Yeah. It's great though. It's amazing. And I drink sparkling water, which I love. Perrier excites me. So just Perrier and beef and salt that's it now what do you think about people that say that this idea might work in the short term in the short term but in the long term it's not sustainable I don't even know what kind of response to have to that like

what I was doing before. It happens with people on vegan diets, right? What happens with people on vegan diets is they start off, they feel great. They're like, oh my God, this is the diet for me. This is amazing. Then over time, their body starts reacting to the lack of nutrients, lack of cholesterol, lack of saturated fat. And it's different bodies. I mean, obviously, some people have no problem with it.

But some people have like legit, like Chris Kresser is a perfect example. He started out with a macrobiotic vegan diet and had real serious reactions to it over time. Yeah. Started out doing well. And then over time, started to break his body down. How long did it take? I forget. But when he started reintroducing meat back into his diet, he had a massive ramp up.

You know, it's a massive ramp up. Ramp up like he got worse? Health-wise. Oh, yeah. It felt fantastic. All of a sudden, everything started kicking in again. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm not worried about it. I was so sick before, and now I'm better. I was concerned I was going to die in the long run before. Now I'm feeling good. I don't see why I would just randomly get sick suddenly. I'm getting my vitamins tested because people are curious, but I don't have any symptoms. And who's the, besides this woman, have you been in contact with this woman that's been doing this for 18 years? Not personally, no.

But there are. Where does she live? Somewhere in the States. And so Sean Baker is probably the loudest proponent and one of the most vocal and most uh public and he's been doing it i believe two years um my friend chris bell's been doing it for a while as well i think he's less than a year but he eats apples he loves apples i had a hard time giving up apples that's's funny. Seriously. It's because I limited, like I went down on all my sugar and then I was eating hordes of apples.

And that was my sugar. Right. And that was hard to kick. And apples somehow or another give you low back pain. Among other things. But yeah. Huh. It comes along with a depression and arthritis.

The whole thing is a really interesting conversation because there's so much going on with it. And it's not an objective conversation for the most part. Like many people that get into this, they get into this. It's very charged. It's charged almost politically. It's charged ideologically. It's charged whether it's ethically and morally. It's charged where people are very skeptical. Also, they have this diet that they believe in, that they've been following.

And so anything that's contrary to that, they reject. Yeah, well, I used to be like people when I was really sick, people would come up and go, well, have you looked at your diet? It's like, what? Fuck you. I have an autoimmune disorder. I'm dying. When I was really sick, people would come up and go, well, have you looked at your diet? And I was like, what? Fuck you. I have an autoimmune disorder. I'm dying. Have I like, what, stopped eating sugar and all my problems will go away?

Like, thanks. So I've been on the other end of the spectrum. And I used to get mad when people said, but it was like condescending, right? Have you tried exercising? Have you looked at your diet? And I was like, I'm dying. Isn't it funny now though Have you looked at your diet? And I was like, I'm dying. Isn't it funny? Now, though, when you look back on it, how crazy is it? This wasn't even a conversation 10 years ago, right?

Like, 10 years ago, did you ever hear this? No. That's what's so weird. Like, the cutting the sugar out and cutting the carbs out, this is so new. It's so new. And this, like, meat diet's really new and but by the way but when i say new i mean in terms of like being popular really popular or like yeah or something people have heard of yeah it's it's it's really interesting it's and when i see your

dad and how healthy he is and how he looks so good. His skin looks younger. It looks thinner. Like it's like, it's like he's all sucked in. Yeah. Looks like, yeah, looks healthy. I know he looks like a different person than the person I knew.

And I look like a different person than the person I knew. My face looks different in a good way. Yeah. Well, I think there's something definite, definitely healthy about getting a lot of fat. Yeah. And this is something that I think we've ignored with our obsession with carbs.

And one of the things that is a giant benefit for people that cut the carbs out is the way you feel about food. Like you don't get these massive cravings. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, I used to. So when I used to go out to eat, I was starving all the time. I just felt like I was starving. And I'd eat, and then I would feel so full.

And it turns out it was bloating, right? But I didn't know that. I would just feel so full that I would literally have to ask people to take my plate away, or I would keep eating, because I was starving but stuffed. And that was just my state all the time. You know what's fucked up? No matter how full I am, if you put a plate of French fries with salt on in front of me, I will go after those bitches.

I can't help myself. I'll eat one. I'm like, oh, it's so good. And then with some ketchup, like fat steak fries that are like kind of well done-ish with some salt on them and ketchup. There's just something about that trick, that biological trick that those goddamn potatoes play on you. Yeah. It's kind of addictive. It's so addictive. I know. And it turns out that even the amount of salad I was eating, lettuce, it was still kind of addictive because

I had lettuce cravings. Lettuce cravings? Yeah, I mean not like my apple cravings, not like my sugar cravings, but they were there. So when you just eat only meat, your body takes that meat and through a process of glucogenesis converts it to glucose, right? Yeah. So I haven't been out of ketosis. I'm always in ketosis, but my glucose is normal. That's what's weird, the fact that you're always in ketosis, because most people think that if you eat too much protein. Yeah, but that's the thing is if you like convert what I'm eating to the fat ratio, 80% of my calories I'm getting from fat. Are you doing this on an app or something? I'm mostly typing in the cuts and then I can kind of add in how much tallow I'm adding to lean ground beef. And how much tallow do you add?

Do you do it by tablespoon? I do it, yeah, I do it kind of by tablespoon. I just scoop it in. But if I was measuring it, I'd like four, five. Do you heat the tallow up first and then cook the beef into it, or do you just mix them all together? I just mix everything together. It's way more satisfying, though, because eating lean ground beef just isn't great. Gets dry.

Gets dry, yeah. Just try ground elk. It's even worse. Oh, wow. It's delicious, but it's so sinewy. But when I mix it with butter and stuff like that, it tastes much better. Yeah, so I'm just mixing it with tallow. It's great.

Sorry. What's going on on my voice here. So when you're looking at the future and you're saying, okay, this is going well. This is much better than anything I've ever done before. I feel so much better.

Do you feel like this is the way you're going to eat for the rest of your life? Yeah. And do you think it's sustainable? Yeah. And do you think it's sustainable? Yeah. No, I'm not arguing against it. I'm just wondering. Sustainable in what way?

Nutritionally. Oh my God, yeah. I think so. I'll keep getting my vitamins tested, but this book that I've been reading about this guy who lived with Inuit, that's what they ate. They were healthy.

They didn't have teeth that fell out. Like, they weren't sick like we're sick. The Inuits are the people that went up there. The Inuit. That's what they ate. They were healthy. They didn't have teeth that fell out. Like they weren't sick like we're sick. The Inuits are the people that went up there. The Inuits. Yeah, but the Inuits, didn't they evolve that way? I mean, if you stop and think about it. But didn't we evolve that way too? I don't know.

I mean, we can't say we changed like 10,000 years ago in order to eat grain. Looks like we've evolved to hunt, kind of. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but different people that grew up in different areas of the world i think they have i mean isn't that been proven that there's different nutritional requirements that different people have if you're you grew up in different areas i don't think so no i haven't read that no what is that that diet that people... There's like some diet that they try to... Was it based on blood work?

Oh, the blood type diet? Yeah. The idea is that different people that have different blood types, they're coming from different parts of the world. Yeah. I don't know. You're skeptical. I haven't really looked...

Well, man, so my diet's basically the blood type zero. It's funny that you're skeptical about diets. I know. Dad told me, like, he went over and he said, I don't think I can eat fish. I think fish is giving me a flare up. And my response was like, well, that's not possible. I'm like, all I'm eating is meat. And I still have the same response.

And then I told you I don't eat chicken. Well, when I switched over, chicken started to make me not feel good when I was eating it. What about ostrich? I haven't tried ostrich. I've just given up on birds. Ruminant animals seem fine. I tried bison.

Bison was fine. Bison? What do you call it? Bison? Is that a Canadian? I'm just going to go with that's a Canadian thing. That's probably bison. God, I hope it's a Canadian thing.

Well, dad says it, so it's his fault. Oh. Ostrich is interesting because it's red. It's a bird, but it's a red meat. That's interesting. Yeah. They have ostrich burgers at Fuddruckers. You can get an ostrich burger.

They're fucking good, dude. You got that ribeye of the sky bird. I haven't had that. That's a sandhill crane. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a sandhill crane is a really dark red. Ribeye of the sky. That's what they call them.

Yeah. They hunt them, and they cook it, and it's a really delicious, lean, but soft, juicy, tender red meat. Huh. Yeah. What do you got? You got a photo of it? Yeah. Look at it. That's what it red meat. Huh. Yeah. What do you got? You got a photo of it? Yeah. Look at it.

That's what it looks like. What? Yep. Sandhill crane. Wild Canada goose? Yeah. I don't think we're allowed to eat that in Canada. Well, you're not allowed to eat some migrating geese, right?

But Sandhill crane, I bet you could eat. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I wonder. I have some buddies that hunted those in Texas, and they said they were fantastic. Said it's some of the best meat they've ever eaten in their life. Wow.

I wonder if you could eat that. But I wouldn't want you to eat it and then get fucking hives and shit. Yeah, no. And blame me. Joe! Depressed for five weeks. Yeah, yeah. Diarrhea, everything everything all over again. Yeah

So your plan is just uh sparkling water and steak forever Yeah, and I mean It could be more like I could be surviving off of eggplant. It could be worse. Oh, yeah I enjoy everything I eat all the time. Yeah, right. I love it and I don't get bored. I thought If there's one thing I have to eat forever I hope it's steak because I'm not going to get bored of steak. And like I said, the first month was kind of rough,

but then the cravings go away and now it's like every meal. I'm like, hmm, steak. Do you get hate from vegan people? Not really. I don't think I'm as inflammatory as some people because I can understand. I mean, if you're idly ideology

ideologically possessed that's different but if you go on the vegan diet you cut out processed foods you get rid of dairy dairy was a huge trigger for me um and you feel better then i can understand why you'd be going around saying the vegan diet is the way to eat right so i can can i can understand where those people are coming from. If you're ideologically possessed and you're saying, well, it's the environment, all this stuff, I don't really care. So no, I don't get... I've got like a couple of emails about me spreading lies. It's just like...

Wow. I just, I don't really don't care. There's a lot of loonies out there, a lot of loony people. But that is the issue with the vegan diet is that it carries with it a moral high ground. Yeah. That other diets don't. Yeah. And that's too bad.

Like that part sucks. The people trying to figure out their health and going to that because it's they're trying to figure something out. That's different. But the whole moral thing, like, just let it go. Well, listen, I think this is very interesting stuff. You know, I don't have your health issues, and I think very few people do. But obviously for you, it's made some massive impact. Yeah.

And for your father as well. I mean, it's really, it's very, very interesting. And like I said, my friend lives in San Diego. No problems. I mean, he's loving it. I know several other people that have jumped on board as well, too, and they're seeing big benefits from it. I mean, it's almost enough to make me want to try it, but. You should try.

Well, the problem is. It doesn't take long. Yeah, but I have hundreds of pounds of wild game meat. That's perfect. Yeah, but I have to eat it with fat. I'd have to figure out a way to get fat into it. You can order tallow here. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Just order tallow. It's on, like, I haven't, I've talked to people like programmers in Silicon Valley who've Skyped me. And they're healthy and they just want to be more productive. And the cognitive benefits, it takes like six weeks and it's worth just seeing what it's like. But they get that just from the ketogenic diet. No, I've had people switch off of the ketogenic. There's, there's something here. There's really something here and it's worth seeing. No, I think people would see benefits if they tried it. Even healthy people. What do you think those benefits are coming from?

I don't know. I don't know if microbiome switch or if there's less, you're just ingesting less plant toxin or if this is. Plant toxin? What do you mean by that? Well, plants have like naturally occurring toxins depending on the plant to get bugs and things to stop eating them. That's just their defense mechanism. So like oxalates, that's a big one.

Lectins, like all those types of things are inflammatory. And it's just seemed like we've just found the plants that we can tolerate. Like as humans, we found the plants we can tolerate the easiest and don't kill us. And we eat those and we've bred them so that they're easier to eat. But so maybe removing those from the diet seems to help people. But it seems like giving it a six weekweek try i don't see a downside like and i've only i haven't seen anybody switch back really and i've been talking to a lot of people on skype over like periods of months and i haven't seen anyone switch back including the healthy people all right well i'm curious

this conversation is evolving, that's for sure. And, you know, it's evolving with many, many people all across the country. And, you know, when you take out the ideological or the moral high ground argument that vegetarians have, it's interesting to me, at the very least, it's interesting. Yeah, something going on. It's interesting to me. At the very least, it's interesting. Yeah. Something going on.

So if people want to check out your blog, what would that be? What is it? That's MichaelaPeterson.com. Spell that. M-I-K-H-A-I-L-A. All right. Peterson. Dot com.

Dot com. And isn't there another name for it? Don't Eat That. Don't Eat That. If you go to Don'tEatthat.com, is that it? No, I don't have that. Somebody's bought it and they're trying to sell it back to me for a lot. Fuckers.

I know. These fuckers. Listen, thank you. Thank you, Mikhail. Thanks for having me. It was fun talking to you. Yeah, it was good. Bye, everybody.