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Eating a carnivore diet led to full resolution of my autoimmune condition, eczema, itchy rashes,

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and asthma that I'd had for my whole life. But after a year and a half, I quit the carnivore

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diet. In this video, I'm going to tell you why and talk about the pros and cons of eating carnivore.

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So from the outset, I want to say that a carnivore diet, eating only animal foods, meat, fish,

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chicken, eggs, animal fat, organs, salt plus minus. Some people eat coffee on this type of diet

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is an incredibly powerful way of eating. It's an elimination diet. And it's helped so many people,

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including myself, reverse autoimmune diseases, get to the bottom of which foods are triggering their

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gut issues. It's helped a lot of people lose weight and feel massively better overall. I mean,

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I am such a fan of the carnivore diet that I wrote a book about it in 2019, which is still something

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that I am proud of. And I still agree with many of the ideas talked about in that book. But if you

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are eating a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet and you are thriving, this video is not meant to

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change your mind. If anything, this video is meant to be a high five, keep doing what you're doing,

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keep thriving. And I'm glad that you found a way of eating that works for you. But I know that like

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myself, there are a lot of people who eat carnivore or ketogenic diets and they run into issues. The

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point of this video is to offer those of you that might be doing carnivore or keto and struggling,

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maybe with some of the same things that I struggled with, another way or other ways of thinking about

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diet to help you get back on track for health. Again, this video is not to knock carnivore. It's

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not to knock keto. It's not to tell you to stop eating that way. If you're thriving, keep doing

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it. This is what I keep saying in my social media content over and over. If you're thriving, don't

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change anything about your diet. But if you're not, whether you're having sleep issues or muscle cramps or

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low libido or weight loss plateau or any of these things, it's time to question your nutritional

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assumptions. And there are other ways of thinking about diet. So what happened with me? After about

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a year to a year and a half of a carnivore diet, I began to notice issues, probably in my case,

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arising due to electrolyte insufficiency connected with consistently very low insulin because I wasn't

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really eating any carbohydrates. And the protein I was eating probably wasn't as insulinogenic as it

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needed to be. This led to muscle cramps. I had problems with sleep. I had heart palpitations,

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fluttering of my heart. I had something called hypnagogic jerks where I would fall asleep but

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jerk myself awake like I was falling multiple times. That was very stressful and very traumatic.

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It led to very poor sleep for a little while. That eventually was possibly remedied by magnesium IVs. But

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the reason I got low in magnesium in the first place was probably due to a ketogenic diet in my case.

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I had declining lab values that were important to me, specifically lower total testosterone,

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higher sex hormone binding globulin, which leads to a lower free testosterone, a lower free

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testosterone index. And I had the sense that I was cold or a little bit cold all the time. And when I

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looked at my labs, my thyroid levels, specifically my total T3 and free T3 were not ideal. In my case,

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after a year to a year and a half on a ketogenic carnivore diet of only meat organs and fat and salt,

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I began to have some issues and I started to think about what I could do to remedy those issues. I'll talk

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about what I think all of these were connected with in this video, but ultimately the solution for me

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was adding back carbohydrates. If any of you have followed my story in the past, you know where this

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goes. I've since transitioned to something that I think of as an animal-based diet where I still eat

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meat and organs, animal fat and salt, but I get carbohydrates from things like fruit, honey and raw

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dairy. And I'll talk about my decisions or why I choose those as my carbohydrate sources later in this

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video. Now, interestingly, as you can imagine, when I added fruit to my diet and honey to my diet,

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the carnivore community was a little bit shaken by this, a little bit traumatized. And there were

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many in the carnivore community and continue to be those in the carnivore community suggesting that I did

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the carnivore diet wrong. Does this sound familiar? This is a lot of times what happens in vegan circles

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when people leave veganism and then the vegans that are still doing a vegan diet accuse them of doing a

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vegan diet wrong. People said that I ate too many organs and that was the reason that I didn't do

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well on a carnivore diet. Well, I eat the same amount of organs now with carbohydrates and I feel

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much better. So I don't think that was the problem. I suppose people have proposed all sorts of other

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convoluted reasons why a carnivore diet didn't work for me. And as I said in the beginning of the video,

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I know a carnivore diet works for a lot of people, but I think there are a lot of us out there also

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that strictly eating meat or eating meat and organs doesn't really cut it long term because I think

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that for most people, carbohydrates are a valuable part of human physiology. And I'll talk about why.

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As I mentioned earlier, I think one of the main things that went wrong with me was not having

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enough carbohydrates. And though insulin, a peptide hormone gets demonized, I think insulin is actually

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our friend. And I'll talk about why. Since going through all of this on a carnivore diet and beginning

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to wonder why things went kind of off track for me, especially in terms of my electrolytes, I've

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since learned that insulin has a crucial role in signaling at the kidney to hold on to electrolytes,

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specifically sodium, but connected with sodium. Insulin is going to affect the resorption, the way your

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body reabsorbs and holds on to all sorts of electrolytes, all sorts of minerals, sodium, potassium,

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chloride, magnesium, and others. And this is essential for optimal human health. This is why I think so

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many people on ketogenic diets end up having to increase their salt to massive levels because

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they're not having enough insulin signaling at the level of the kidney. All of this is fixable with

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carbohydrates in the diet. As you can see from this study, insulin's impact on renal sodium transport

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and blood pressure at the level of the kidneys that help our body hold on to these minerals. And I want

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to make it clear that I do not believe that insulin-induced insulin resistance is the reason that some of you

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may have obesity or diabetes. Insulin-induced insulin resistance, this idea that eating too many

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carbohydrates leads to insulin resistance in humans, this has really never been shown in real

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human clinical data. There are other mechanisms at play at the level of mitochondria. If you don't

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believe me that carbohydrates are benign for humans, things like glucose or fructose or galactose,

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consider the fact that the human body makes glucose. And if you don't eat it, your body will make it.

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That is how essential it is to your physiology. If you fear fructose, I will share a short amount

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of information in this video to corroborate the assertion that fructose is not harmful for humans,

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specifically when it is consumed in natural form, quote-unquote, in things like fruit and honey,

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where it always occurs with glucose and it is in a food matrix. Fructose consumed in that way

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looks very different in human physiology than free fructose, isolated fructose, or processed fructose,

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that is high fructose corn syrup. I believe that the majority, the vast majority of fructose hate,

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fructose fearing, is based around animal studies in rats and mice, which we know have different

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physiology. Rats and mice do much more de novo lipogenesis with fructose than humans do,

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significantly more, meaning they make fructose into triglycerides and fat to a significantly

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greater extent than humans do. So that physiology in rats and mice is very different than our physiology

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and is not translated to humans, or those assertions around fructose are based on high fructose corn

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syrup, processed sugars, or they are looking at animal models where fructose is overfed in isolation

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without glucose to animals, leading to fructose malabsorption, and that leads to lipopolysaccharide,

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and therein lies the problem in animal models very clearly. But I want to clearly state that eating

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carbohydrates, especially in the form of fruit and honey, is not what caused your diabetes, and it is

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possible to eat moderate amounts of those while you have diabetes and obesity and become healthier.

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I'll talk about that at the end of this video as well. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about

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why I don't think ketogenic diets are ideal for humans. High level, there is evidence in humans

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that ketogenic diets, that is limitation of carbohydrates, leads to increased stress hormones,

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that is cortisol, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucagon. Now, the cortisol and

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epinephrine may attenuate long term, but glucagon is always going to be elevated when you are low carb

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or limiting your carbohydrates, and glucagon is clearly a stress hormone in humans. There are

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multiple studies showing that adding carbohydrates to athletes or to humans that are not doing intense

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exercise improves all sorts of metrics, improves cortisol metrics, improves recovery from exercise,

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or improves thyroid hormones, this sort of essential thermostat that your body has that tells your body

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where the metabolic rate should be. And guess what? If you want to stay lean, if you want to be healthy

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and have energy and feel good and have libido, or if you want to lose weight, you want your body's

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metabolism to work well. You want your thyroid to be moving your body's thermostat to the highest level

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possible at all times. So consider some of these downsides of ketogenic diets. Here's a paper,

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a short-term ketogenic diet impairs markers of bone health, markers of bone remodeling,

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who are impaired after short-term low carb, high fat diet, changes in the thyroid hormonal status in

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patients receiving ketogenic diet due to intractable epilepsy. Here's another study showing that the

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thyroid hormones are negatively affected by ketogenic diets. This is done in children. This is

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done in patients receiving a ketogenic diet due to epilepsy. The conclusions the ketogenic diet caused

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thyroid malfunction and L-thyroxin may be required. This is the first report documenting the effect of a

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ketogenic diet on thyroid function. Thyroid function should be monitored regularly in epileptic

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patients treated with a ketogenic diet. I would go so far as to say that anyone doing a ketogenic diet,

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even if that diet is working for you, should have regular checks of TSH, T4, T3, free T3, free T4,

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and reverse T3. I have very rarely seen optimal levels, especially of total T3 and free T3 in people

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doing long-term ketogenic diets, which I think is a real clear signal that our bodies thrive with

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carbohydrates and see carbohydrates as a signal of abundance. You want your thyroid to work well.

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We know that when your thyroid is not working optimally, there are increased rates of all sorts

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of things, especially cardiovascular disease. What about cortisol? Cortisol is very clearly a stress

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hormone that is absolutely induced when you limit carbohydrates in humans. There are studies like this

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one, dietary macronutrient content, alters cortisol metabolism independently of body weight changes in

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obese men. As you can see in the conclusions, a low-carbohydrate diet alters cortisol metabolism

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independently of weight loss. In obese men, this enhances cortisol regeneration by 11-beta-hydroxysteroid

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dehydrogenase 1 and reduces cortisol inactivation by A-ring reductases in liver. The authors of this study

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found that in obese men who are doing low-carbohydrate diets, that is 4% carbohydrates,

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for 4 weeks, levels of cortisol were increased due to reduced inactivation and increased regeneration

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by an enzyme specifically known as 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1. The name of that enzyme

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isn't important. What is important is the idea that on low-carbohydrate diets, more cortisol

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remains in your body, at least for 4-week trials like this one, because of increased regeneration

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and decreased deactivation of cortisol. That is not a good thing for humans long-term. Excess cortisol

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leads to all sorts of issues in humans. You do not want your cortisol levels to be higher. Obviously,

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there are some physiologic utilities to cortisol, specifically a cortisol awakening response first

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thing in the morning that helps wake you up, but consistently elevated cortisol levels due to

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stresses induced in the body by limitation of carbohydrates is probably not a good thing for

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many humans. Returning to the idea of thyroid, specifically, here's another study showing that

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in six healthy males with 11 days of three diets, all having the same amount of calories and differing

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amounts of carbohydrates, specifically 85, 44, and 2% carbohydrates. So in this study, there were

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healthy males who had 11 days of three different diets based on their carbohydrate levels, 85% as

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carbohydrates, 44% as carbohydrates, and 2% as carbohydrates. And what they found was that

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all of these diets were isocaloric, but in the lowest level of carbohydrates, what they found was in the

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men who had levels of carbohydrates at 2% in their diet, there was increased protein catabolism, that is

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increased breakdown of protein, and lowering of the hormone T3. So very clear in this study that

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low-carbohydrate diets increased protein catabolism and lowered thyroid hormones like T3. It's also been

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noted repeatedly in exercise studies in men that giving carbohydrates improves free testosterone and

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decreases cortisol after intensive exercise training. Here's a study showing an example of that.

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And in those who are exercising or doing intense exercise of any kind, carbohydrate clearly improves

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the attenuation of the immune system after those exercises. As you can see here in this study,

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very clearly. The authors say consuming carbohydrate, but not glutamine or other amino acids during

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exercise attenuates the rise in stress hormones, meaning that the stress hormones went up less,

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such as cortisol, and appears to limit the degree of exercise-induced immunosuppression,

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at least for non-fatiguing bouts of exercise. So I think it's pretty clear that when it comes to

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ketogenic diets and exercise performance, there is a benefit to having carbohydrates. When it comes to

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ketogenic diets and thyroid hormone status, there's a benefit to having carbohydrates. When it comes to

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ketogenic diets and electrolyte levels, there's a benefit to having carbohydrates in your diet.

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And when it comes to ketogenic diets and sex hormones like testosterone or free testosterone index,

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there is a benefit to having carbohydrates in your diet. In my experiment, fruit and honey seem to

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have been the best carbohydrates for me, along with lactose in raw milk. I've done previous videos

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on why I don't think fruit is harmful for humans. I've done previous videos on honey, and I've done

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previous videos on raw dairy, but I will summarize all of my thoughts there. Briefly, I want to mention

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that I've also done videos on why I'm not a fan of grains, specifically things like oatmeal or quinoa,

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which contain saponins, which contain phytic acid, which are not degraded to any significant extent

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with cooking. Specifically in oatmeal, many people's favorite source of carbohydrates, you would need to

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soak that oatmeal for three to four days at room temperature or higher than room temperature, then

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soak it for another 24 hours in a pH solution of four to five, and then boil it or pressure cook it to

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have the majority of the phytic acid reduced. There are rigorous protocols that must be followed to

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reduce any significant amount of the phytic acid in oatmeal. Again, I've done whole videos on oatmeal if

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you're interested in phytic acid in oatmeal. But I think that in general, grains are not a great source of

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carbohydrates for humans. As always, if you eat grains, and you seem to do well with them, maybe

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not a big deal. But if you are not thriving, if you are having issues for a lot of people, cutting

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grains out, whether it's wheat, oatmeal, quinoa, or for some people, even rice, especially brown rice

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can be a problem. Now, for the sake of scientific experimentation, I've put white rice into my diet

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sometimes. And I'll tell you guys that I just don't feel as good with white rice the majority of the

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time when I eat it. So generally, I don't eat white rice. And my carbohydrates come from fruit and honey

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and raw milk. Again, do what works for you. But know that the grains that is oats, wheat, quinoa, rice,

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these do have more defense chemicals and will need more rigorous processes to be detoxified. If you're

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having gut issues, if you're having headaches or fatigue, or unresolved autoimmune issues, a lot of

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times getting rid of those is a good idea. The same goes for beans. I've done many videos on beans,

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why I'm not a huge fan of beans at all. Beans contain significant amounts of phytic acid, digestive

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enzyme inhibitors, and I think they are a very poor source of nutrition for humans. Again, like the

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grains, you must go through a rigorous process to detoxify beans. This isn't to say that some people,

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if they want to soak their beans for four or five days at 45 degrees centigrade, and then put them in

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an acid solution to sprout them for a day and then pressure cook them, you might be able to eat some

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beans that are reasonably non-toxic for humans. But that is a lot of work. And clearly, those beans do not

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want to get eaten by humans. So it's not that you can't eat sources of carbohydrates like grains or

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beans. It's just that they require much, much more intensive preparation to actually be less toxic for

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humans than things like fruit and honey, and I'll get to those in a moment. For some people, root

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vegetables are better tolerated than grains or beans, and I think this is reasonable. If you can do white

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potatoes and you pressure cook them and you're fine with them, great. When I've tried to eat white

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potatoes, it seems to re-trigger my eczema. So I think that for me, at least, this nightshade type

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of root is not agreeing with my body and my immune system. Again, some people do fine with it. So see

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what works for you in terms of carbohydrates, but I do think having some sources of carbohydrates in

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your diet will improve your overall health. The reasons that I've selected fruit and honey

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is because, to me, it just makes sense intuitively that these are the foods that plants kind of want

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us to eat. Fruit is the colorful, seasonal part of fruits. Remember that humans evolved at the equator

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for most of our existence, so I think that all of us have the mechanisms to eat fruit in significant

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amounts. If you don't want to eat fruit that's out of season where you are, that's great, but

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I don't think many of us need to go to that level of stringency with regard to our fruit

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consumption. Some people don't tolerate all fruit as well as other fruits, but see what works for

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you. Honey is something that, again, is available all year round at the equator. When I was in Africa

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with the haza, they loved honey. They ate it without any remorse, and I got to share honeycomb with actual

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larva in it, and we also got honey from stingless bees, and that honey was some of the best I've ever had

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in the world. When it comes to fruit, people get kind of triggered, especially in ketogenic and

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carnivore circles, but the fact remains that there are no well-conducted studies in humans showing that

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fruit or fruit juice induce any degree of metabolic dysfunction. Now, even in the fructose-fearing

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world, many of the pundits will say that fruit is okay because it contains fiber, which is not

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something I'm going to address in this podcast necessarily. I'm not a huge fan of fiber, but if you

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want to get some fiber in your fruit, that's great, but fruit juice is almost unanimously

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vilified. I don't really understand why, because when you look at the literature, there are studies

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upon studies showing that fruit juice is helpful for humans in so many different ways. There are

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studies showing that watermelon juice improves heart rate variability during an oral glucose challenge

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and actually attenuates many of the problems that happen when you give somebody pure glucose in a

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glucose challenge. There are multiple studies with orange juice showing that it improves total

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antioxidant status and decreases lipid peroxidation in humans. There are studies with cherry juice

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showing decreased levels of lipid peroxidation as well. There are studies showing that 100% fresh

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orange juice improved blood glucose and improved insulin levels in healthy subjects, and there are

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other studies showing that orange juice ingestion decreased lipid peroxidation in healthy adult women.

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This is just the tip of the iceberg, guys. There are probably 30 to 40 studies with fruit juice alone

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showing that fruit juice improves everything from lipid peroxidation, glucose indices, insulin

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sensitivity, endothelial function. Fruit juice, especially when raw and fresh and not contaminated

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with processed sugars or high fructose corn syrup, looks to be healthy for humans. Then people will say,

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well, what about honey? Honey can't possibly be healthy for humans. Honey is known to raise testosterone

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levels in men, which is probably a good thing. Honey has even been studied in human randomized controlled

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trials in diabetics and found to lower fasting blood glucose. Yes, I said lower fasting blood

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glucose. In an eight-week trial, patients were given up to 125 to 150 grams of honey per day at the end of

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the trial, and they ended up with lower fasting glucose at the end of the trial. Now, notably in

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this trial, the hemoglobin A1c, an average reflection of the blood sugar was slightly higher, about 7 to 10

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milligrams per deciliter higher blood glucose equivalents in patients getting the honey, which is not

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surprising when you give a diabetic more carbohydrates, their blood sugar would be slightly higher, but

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their fasting blood glucose was lower, suggesting improved insulin sensitivity. And I suspect that

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even in diabetics, moderate amounts of honey could be used long-term without any detrimental effects,

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potentially positive effects. And in fact, there are entire reviews written, like this one,

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a review of the protective effects of honey against metabolic syndrome. So it's very clear that there's a

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significant amount of evidence that both fruit and honey can improve all sorts of metrics in line

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with improved metabolic health in humans. One caveat, adjust your carbohydrate intake to you,

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to your lifestyle, to how active you are. I think some people have criticized my lifestyle or my

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recommendation for people to consider adding carbohydrates in the form of fruit and honey or raw

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milk back to their diets by saying that I'm active or that I live in a place near the equator and I'm

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getting lots of sun. And I think that those criticisms are well taken, but generally inaccurate. No matter

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where you live, no matter how active you are, including some carbohydrates in your diet is a

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reasonable thing. Do you need as many carbohydrates as me? No, you don't. But getting some in your diet,

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I believe will help if you are struggling with any of the issues or any of these problems that I

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mentioned or something like these on a carnivore or ketogenic diet. That's again why I'm doing this whole

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video. When I talk about fruit and honey, some people mentioned concerns about deuterium. I'll just say

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briefly about deuterium that I think that the best way to lower your body's levels of deuterium

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are to have your mitochondrial electron transport chain work very well to make the metabolic water

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at the end of the electron transport chain, which will be deuterium depleted. And in order to do that,

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I believe there is strong biochemical and physiologic evidence in humans that you should be eating

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carbohydrates. I think that if you want to spend tons of money shipping deuterium depleted water across

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the world, you can. But I don't believe that fruit and honey will have any significant effect on the

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deuterium levels in most people's bodies, especially in the context of your overall metabolic health

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and the degree to which your mitochondria work. Some people have also looked at fruit and honey

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and had fears that they would increase glycation. I don't think there's any solid evidence that it

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happens at all. There's actually evidence that fructose decreases hemoglobin A1c in humans. And

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on the flip side, something that I don't think is talked about enough is the idea that ketogenic diets

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increase advanced glycation end products, specifically things like methylglyoxal, which are

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not great for humans. As we can see from studies like this, ketogenic diets lead to increased

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methylglyoxal in the human body. So if you're worried about advanced glycation end products,

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I would worry a lot less about fruit and honey and a lot more about being in ketosis.

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Methylglyoxal, as you can see in this study, not a good thing in terms of aging and oxidative stress.

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You do not want more methylglyoxal being produced in your body.

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And as you saw in the first study, ketogenic diets clearly increase the amount of methylglyoxal

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in your cells and in your organism. So at the end of all of this, let me return to the first

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thing I said. Carnivore diet significantly improved my eczema. I believe that ketogenic diets,

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carnivore diets have helped so many people. But if you are struggling on these diets,

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understand that they don't work for everyone. Yes, there is bio-individuality, and perhaps there are

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some people for which these diets work better than others. Maybe my genes were not adapted to a

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carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet as well as yours. For those of you who are doing carnivore diets and

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ketogenic diets and thriving, like I said in the beginning, awesome. Keep going. This video is for

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those in the space who may be thinking about those diets, who may be doing those diets, and not finding

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the results that they want. They may be having low thyroid symptoms, low sex hormone symptoms,

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low libido, sleep disturbances, weight loss plateaus. And for the reasons I outlined in this video,

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increased cortisol, decreased thyroid hormone production, increased SHBG, decreased testosterone

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production, possibly increased advanced glycation end products, coupled with the fact that I don't

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think you need to fear fruit and honey and natural sources of sugar, lead me to suggest that if you're

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struggling on either one of those diets, that you consider something like an animal-based diet.

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Organs, meat, fruit, honey, raw dairy. There are different sources of carbohydrates that you can

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include. Ultimately, this is about experimenting, figuring out what works for you. But I think it's

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important to put ideas into this space to offer people levers to pull to try and understand what

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may be best for you. So with that, that's what I humbly offer is my story of why I quit the carnivore

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diet. I believe it's a very valuable, powerful way of eating for a lot of people, but I think there's

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more to the story and there are better ways to adjust our diets for most humans. See you guys in the next video.