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Reproductive health – women

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Gina manages IBS, anemia, joint pain, migraines, anxiety, and mood on the carnivore diet

March 24, 2023 No Comments

I’m Gina. I’m a 52 year old wife, mom and dental hygienist. I had my two oldest when I was in my early 20s and became very physically active when they were little to stay in shape. I lifted weights and even worked at a gym as a trainer. In my 30s I was involved in karate, and in my 40s and 50s I was running. In the 90s, the “fat makes you fat” idea was in full swing. You could eat all the Snack Well cookies you wanted, just stay away from butter. I followed that but eventually transitioned into more of a mainstream diet most of my life. I also figured I had wiggle room due to being active so I never turned down chips, cookies, cake, etc.

In 2019 I was 49 and had been running several years doing everything from 5ks all the way to ultramarathons. I was looking ahead to 2020 when I would be turning 50 and decided to celebrate by signing up for a 50 mile race. It was a good training year until end of summer, early fall. I started to experience trouble running. I would get very winded and unable to continue. I’d go for a 6 mile run and quit in the first mile or two. My legs felt like they were stuck in wet cement. Severe fatigue, numbness and tingling followed. MS was suspected so I had MRIs, tests and a spinal tap. All came back fine, and I had no diagnosis for the illness.

I quit running for six months, but was desperate to feel better. I began to think about my diet. My best friend and running partner is vegan. Everywhere you turn, vegan is promoted as the healthiest diet. I decided to give it a try. I watched all the documentaries. I liked Game Changers because it was about athletes. I was whole food, plant based for 18 months. At first things went well. I began running again, and it felt good to have such a “healthy” diet. I even got my certification in plant based nutrition. I was gearing up for possibly health coaching.

As time went by, my health began to decline. But I had no idea it was diet related. I had gallbladder pain and an ultrasound revealed a polyp. I had my gallbladder removed. I had IBS for about 10 years, it was mostly manageable but suddenly was becoming really bad. It was interfering with my work. It got so bad at one point it I almost had to quit my job. My cycle became extremely heavy and painful. I had a hysterectomy. Then one night I woke with my heart pounding and I was panting. A trip to the ER revealed severe anemia. They wanted to give me a transfusion, but I managed to hold them off and got 4 weekly iron infusions. My bones and joints began to ache really badly. I was Googling bone cancer. Brain fog and some cognitive issues began to arise. I was sure I was dying from something.

I quit veganism in early 2022, not because I thought the diet was the problem, but because I figured, what’s the point in eating well if I’m just going to feel like garbage anyway. I spent about 6 months alternating between a terrible diet and trying to get back to veganism, but I just was over it. I gained 20 pounds. I felt like my health was in freefall.

Then I read a blog post by The Peasant’s Daughter called “Why I Am No Longer Vegan”. It was the first time the idea that the diet may have been behind my health troubles. Down the rabbit hole I went, consuming everything I could and eventually landed on the countless stories of carnivores.

I transitioned slowly because I wasn’t completely sure it was a good idea. I took things out of my diet like vegetables, kept things like oatmeal, and increased meat. For 2 months I worked toward carnivore, which I think helped me transition because I never got the keto flu. Mid December I was pretty much full carnivore.

I lost the 20 pounds I gained. My joint and bone pain disappeared. My migraines were about 90% gone. Brain fog gone. Energy soared. But the biggest, most wonderful thing has been that my IBS is gone. To live life like a normal person and not have a brain completely consumed with going to the bathroom or holding in gas. Just a feeling of nothing going on in my gut. It is unreal.

I want to learn and devour everything I can about this way of life. I no longer think about food all day. I know that this way of eating could stave off Alzheimer’s which I am at great risk of developing. I’m lifting again and feel better, stronger, more energetic than I have in years. I’m even beginning to talk with my dental patients about this diet. Everyday I see patients trapped in bad metabolic health. My hope is more people can heal like I did.

Allison cleared alpha-gal symptoms on a carnivore diet

February 6, 2023 No Comments

Allison lives near the Appalachian Mountains in western Maryland. She had heard of the meat-based elimination diet about six months before trying it but was “super resistant to it. I was like, ‘there’s no way, I can’t eat this way, boring’ but when I hit rock bottom, what I felt like, I said ‘I’ve tried everything else; I’m gonna do it.”

Let’s take a look at how she got to this point first: Allison was always used to being “on the go, on the move” despite having been “sickly” since an early age. She says that “in high school, it really flared up; I never made it through a single year without getting a medical waiver because I’d missed more than the allotted days.”

Allison went through college “with a box of tissues all the time” as she was always feeling congested. “No one could ever tell me why I was always sick like this.” After she started getting her menstrual cycle, Allison also developed golf-ball to baseball-sized chronic cysts on her ovaries. She later learned that refined sugars would trigger the cysts. Medicines for the cysts caused her anxiety, leading to more medications.

Allison had cystic acne her whole life and assumed that this spectrum of problems was normal for women. Then, as a teenager, Allison gave in to peer pressure and became a vegetarian for about seven years. After becoming a paramedic, she was exposed to different peer pressure: “luckily in my first year there, the guys kind of shamed me into eating some steak and bacon, and I thank them to this day for that.”

She also had weight issues, saying, “I gained weight as a woman. I’m entering my 20’s and I’m starting to gain weight…low-fat everything—skim milk, whole wheat pasta, ground chicken instead of ground beef, and I got nowhere. I couldn’t understand; I was eating low-fat everything and working out really hard.”

Despite cooking her own food and using fermented foods, sprouted grains, and freshly baked bread, Allison continued to have trouble maintaining her weight and avoiding symptoms. She began developing rashes and low-grade fevers, and her acne got worse as well as her gut function. Her doctors tried eight different antibiotics, plus steroids, over just one year.

In 2021, she was also diagnosed with Alpha-Gal, which causes a red meat allergy. After a chocolate binge and weeks of suffering in 2022, Allison decided to commit to following a carnivore diet, though she initially ate only chicken and turkey because of the Alpha-Gal. After three months, she no longer tested positive for the allergy and began adding red meat.

“I have a healthy three-day cycle with no pain, no bloating, and no acne. No doctor ever told me that my cycle wasn’t supposed to be hell week once a month.” She sleeps better and has better energy, and her weight has stabilized.

“I’m addicted to feeling good now. I don’t eat for social or emotional or addiction reasons anymore. I eat just to nourish my body, and that’s it!”

Irina overcame candida infection, vitamin D deficiency, and vasculitis on a carnivore diet

January 19, 2023 No Comments

Irina struggled with many different ailments before she found the carnivore diet. She had Candida, IBS, a vitamin D deficiency since birth, bleeding gums, vasculitis that manifested when she was a teenager, PCOS, chronic inflammation, and exercise induced asthma. Her doctors told her, “This is just how it is, some people are just affected with these things.” Irina was in her mid-20’s and didn’t want to accept this, so she tried to approach her problems with nutrition.

Before starting her carnivore diet, Irina tried a vegetarian, pescatarian, veggie and meat combination diet, and keto. The keto diet caused her to gain weight and have digestive problems. She thinks now that it was because she ate too many nuts and nut products and veggies with fiber. All that fiber gave her painful bloating. Also, she never felt satisfied and had to eat constantly throughout the day.

None of these diets helped her various ailments. She continued to have IBS, joint pain from inflammation (swollen ankles or knees), asthma with lots of coughing when she exercised, a cyst on her ovary, Candida flares, chronically low vitamin D, gums that bled when she flossed, and vasculitis. Dealing with her candida flares, the PCOS, and her other conditions came to a head when Irina was 31. She became “fed up with doctors just trying to give me medication.”

She believes that the body is designed to be healthy, and she was doing something that prevented it from working properly. “I just wanted to find what it was.” At this point she decided to try the carnivore diet because she “was already kind of a hot mess.”

About two months before she did, Irina’s husband started the diet. She saw his eczema clear up, and this made an impression. In May of 2020, her husband showed her Dr. Baker’s podcast with Joe Rogan and she thought, “I have to try this. I have nothing to lose.”

Irina says she gets full and eats less than before. She enjoys eggs and bacon or natural sausage for lunch and various meats for dinner—pork, cheaper cuts of beef for slow-cooking, lamb, liver once a week, and sometimes chicken thighs. She enjoys the simplicity of the carnivore diet because there are few ingredients and meals are easy to prepare.

Irina now exercises about four days per week, doing weight training and high intensity workouts without asthma, joint pain, or swelling, and with faster recovery.

An ultrasound at the end of 2020 revealed that the cyst on her ovary was gone. There are no signs of inflamed capillaries from vasculitis, she doesn’t have IBS, no Candida flares, her dentist told her she has healthy gums—they never bleed anymore—and a blood test showed normal vitamin D levels, without any supplementation.

Since going on her carnivore diet, she “hasn’t had a single recurrence of any of this stuff. It’s like a magic cure.”

 

Tracy improved SIBO/IBS, menopausal symptoms, A1C, brain fog, and energy on carnivore diet

January 19, 2023 No Comments

Tracy is a fitness and nutrition coach who lives in Frisco, Texas. She is a cancer survivor who has overcome several health problems with the help of a meat-based elimination diet.

She grew up eating the standard American diet and contracted mononucleosis at age 17. This resulted in a number of chronic immune issues. Tracy ate a “whole food plant-based diet” for 15 years, which resulted in gut problems that her doctor said were irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Tracy says this diagnosis wasn’t helpful, because it “was a code word for ‘we have no idea what the hell is wrong with you!”

She became a fitness trainer and nutrition coach and “did cleanses,” but she still experienced lots of bloating, constipation, and fatigue. Tracy’s symptoms were so severe that she went to ER several times, “looking eight months pregnant and they would say, ‘oh you know, drink some Metamucil, eat more fiber, eat low fat.” She would later realize that fiber was causing her to bloat and damaging her intestines.

“10 years after I had some of those digestive problems, I had my appendix out, and then 10 years later I ended up being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and I was the poster child of health and fitness.” Tracy felt let down by the medical system and mainstream health advice, because “I did all the ‘right’ things and I still got cancer”

She endured 28 chemo and radiation sessions and had to wait to heal because she was irradiated so badly. “I ended up having to have a permanent colostomy bag, so that was devastating.”

Tracy still experienced symptoms and discomfort after her cancer treatment. She did get some improvement from fasting, but found her gut health never really improved completely. “So I was diagnosed then with SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, of which they say about 80% of ‘IBS’ sufferers have SIBO, right?”

Tracy found a protocol that included the first two weeks of being on a carnivore diet. She found that she didn’t know how to cook a steak but started following the protocol. The results happened quickly: “I’ll tell you what, I felt amazing… I have never felt so clear-minded. I think it was so many years that I didn’t even know I was suffering with brain fog, but all of a sudden it was like the veil came down and I felt like I could see things so much clearer. A lot of my inflammation was gone, I felt leaner, my stomach felt better, and that was 2019.”

Since her body is now burning ketones for fuel, she has found that her energy is much more stable. Tracy practices intermittent fasting and eats eggs, avocado, raw cheese, steak, or burgers at night. “I really love a ribeye!”

Tracy has found the diet that her body needs, saying, “I just feel better when I stick to an animal-based diet…my energy is better and…when I’m eating that way I’m able to function at a higher level.”

 

Christina Manages Hypoglycemia And Is Headed To The World Masters Athletics Championships

November 7, 2022 No Comments

An avid athlete, Christina grew up on red meat and casseroles. When she got to college, however, she swapped out the red meat for a “healthier” diet of grilled chicken, salad, protein shakes and Special K cereal—the low-fat / high-carb diet recommended to athletes the world over.

Initially a soccer player, she got recruited to run track her sophomore year of college, when the track coach attended a game and noticed her speed. Happy to avoid future injury on the soccer field, Christina agreed to try out—the coach suggesting she run the 400 meter dash. “The first time I ran it collegiately—I didn’t even know how to come out of blocks—I ran 58 seconds. So, he was like, ‘Oh, we’re keeping you in track!’”

Christina would go on to become a two-time All-American, but behind the scenes of her athletic success, she was struggling to manage severe hypoglycemia. Even though she would make sure to load up on carbs before every race, it still wasn’t enough to help her avoid a crash—sometimes leading to her passing out. As she neared graduation, she started to experience painful gut issues as well, and although she had Olympic dreams—with her health problems persisting—she decided to hang up her cleats.

After college, Christina became a teacher and track coach in rural Nebraska. She also went on to get married and start a family, and was blessed with two beautiful daughters. On her 30th birthday, she came down with a terrible case of the flu. While miserable and sick in bed, she discovered Dr. Ken Berry’s book, Lies My Doctor Told Me. After reading it, she decided to incorporate red meat back into her diet, and within a month—she felt drastically different.

Christina’s bloating and stomach distress completely disappeared. Her hypoglycemia went away, and since going on the carnivore diet, she hasn’t had a single hypoglycemic episode in four and a half years! Her passion for running was also reignited, and she began training with a coach again, who encouraged her to compete at the Masters level. She also has a six-pack and more muscle now in her mid-thirties than she had in her twenties.

Christina’s athletic goals took a slight detour after she became pregnant with her son. She continued to eat a carnivore diet throughout all 9 months of her pregnancy, joking, “I built this child on steak and eggs!” She observed that she experienced much less fatigued with her third pregnancy than her previous two—and her body bounced back so quickly—she was able to return to training only seven weeks giving the birth!

A little over a decade after she kissed her athletic aspirations goodbye, Christina is now an 800 meter specialist running world class times. Over the last two years, she has won 4 National Titles in the 800m and the 1500m, and is currently training for her first World Team event in Toruń, Poland in March of 2023. She beams with joy as she says, “I’m super excited—it’ll be my first Team USA uniform.”

Alicea gains muscle and manages mental health on the carnivore diet

November 3, 2022 No Comments

Alicea lives in northern California. She’s 52 and struggled with eating disorders since she was 15 years old. While she was never obese, she still struggled with bulimia, bingeing, and purging. At one point, she got down to 107 pounds, which isn’t much for her 5’ 7” frame. Alicea often thought, “If someone could just tell me what foods I should eat, I could figure this out!”

She grew up believing fats were bad and would binge on chocolate-covered nuts and vegetables, admitting that she was a carbohydrate addict. Alicea also became addicted to exercise as a way to burn off all the extra calories. Her situation is a good example of the saying that “you can’t exercise away a bad diet.”

Alicea did try a plant-based diet but gained weight on it and did not stay with it. She experienced joint pain, anxiety, and depression over the years, and was “on a lot of diet pills, also, in my 30s. I think going off those caused depression too because I was on Phentermine forever.”

In 2014, Alicea weighed 150 pounds and wanted to stop thinking about food while losing some weight. She was “keto for a while… It was helping to some degree.” However, she found that “I was using food and sugar; I was addicted to it, so any emotion that came up, I was still eating it.”

Alicea was “in the keto space” in September 2020 and listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with Dr. Shawn Baker. She “figured I would try it, and I actually hid it from my husband for at least a week, because I thought he, or anybody, would think ‘uh oh there she goes on a crazy, you know, her eating disorders are back and this is nuts’ because I didn’t know anybody in my real life that was doing it.”

She noticed that the more she got rid of sweets, the more “the urges for all the sugar stuff goes away.” In a week or two, she thought, “Wow, there is something here!”

Alicea notes that her “recovery is so quick, it’s like ridiculous.” Her current diet is about 70% fat and 30% protein, and she maintains her weight at 145 pounds, with 18% body fat and good muscle mass. She eats two meals a day, including eggs, pork rinds, eggs, and red meat. She prefers flank steak and tri-tip over ribeye and avoids liver.

Alicea doesn’t have any more cravings and attributes that to “my insulin is really low and I don’t have the carbs coming in for my cycle and hormones to go nutty, and being in 12-step programs, talking my stuff out and not running to food for my emotional release.” She also has had “a lot of counseling in my past, and working on myself” and acknowledges that it did help.

Being carnivore is now part of Alicea’s identity, and she says she “doesn’t see other things as food anymore…the obsession and compulsion is completely gone; it’s amazing!”

 

KasumiKriss recovers from veganism on the carnivore diet

November 3, 2022 No Comments

Kasumi was a top-tier soccer player in the Netherlands when she became vegan in 2014. Within months, aching joints and declining energy levels sidelined her soccer career.

She “got convinced by YouTube videos to try a vegan diet” to help with a skin condition when she was 23 years old. “In the first two weeks I did see some improvement, but I actually think back now that was because I eliminated all processed foods.” This may be the reason why many people initially benefit from vegan diets, though they lose health later.

Kasumi stayed on the vegan diet, “whole-food plant-based” for four years, and “it was really in the end of the second year that I really started seeing my health deteriorate. I couldn’t do soccer anymore, my joints were aching, everything I wanted to do I couldn’t do anymore when it came to physical activity. I did train a lot in the gym, but my muscles wouldn’t grow anymore.” She tried a raw vegan diet also but lost her period for four months as a result.

“After a year or so, I started to see my health decline. I couldn’t run as fast anymore…everytime I wanted to do something, or kick a ball in a certain way, it just wouldn’t go the same like I used to. At some point I really started to feel my joints aching. I never had issues with that, even though all the types of sports that I always used to do in my life…Injuries started to come, and I would be so extremely exhausted after matches as well, and I just couldn’t keep up. I went from really the best player on my team to someone who couldn’t even keep up with the other girls.”

Kasumi began to notice that she was even afraid to walk up stairs because she felt weak and thought she might “break something.” Her body shape suffered as well: “When I went vegan, all my feminine curves just went away, my boobs shrank, my hips disappeared, and I started to look more boyish.”

Kasumi listened to some Michaela Peterson videos, and “I decided in 2018 to try some eggs again; try a little bit of butter again, and I instantly noticed a difference. So I also ate some chicken again and then added back beef into my diet, and it was just in a couple of days I felt so much better mentally, so much more stable right away, and I really thought ‘the vegan diet is probably not the way to go’ so I completely dropped it.”

Kasumi started eating more meat after learning about the keto and carnivore diets. She continued to see improvements.

“I’ve been on this diet now for four years, and I’ve only seen improvements. It’s never went downhill from that anymore…physically, mentally, everything just keeps on getting better…hitting new PRs with weight lifting is so much more easy now.” Kasumi is “stunned and amazed, still today, and so grateful for the way I feel right now.”

Heidi Manages Type 1 Diabetes on Carnivore Diet

August 28, 2022 No Comments

In 2009, Heidi thought her blood sugar problems were over as she welcomed the birth of her son. While still recovering in the hospital, she was assured by the staff that her first meal of Lorna Doone cookies was perfectly fine—the gestational diabetes she had while she was pregnant was now a thing of the past. Three years later, Heidi was diagnosed with mature adult onset type 1 diabetes. From 2012 to 2018, she desperately tried to get a handle on her blood sugar, while managing the highs and lows that go along with the condition. Then, in 2018, a well-meaning friend recommended a vegan, low fat diet advertised to “master your diabetes.” Unfortunately, after trying it, not only did her diabetes problems continue, but she ended up struggling with exhaustion, inflammation, brain fog—and newfound joint issues.

“To make matters worse, I started to have joint issues which I didn’t expect—you know, people from the vegan community never tell you that you’re going to have joint problems—but I started having trouble going upstairs and I’m like, ‘I’m not that old! I may be in my 50’s but I have a long life to live and I can’t hobble down the stairs for 50 years!’ So out of desperation I first went into keto, but then I started to see videos about carnivore.”

Keto is a common pitstop on the way to the carnivore diet, and Heidi was no different. “I saw a couple carnivore videos and at the time—I’m sure we can all relate to this— it was a little bit of cognitive dissonance. I was like ‘How do people really just only eat meat?‘“

After launching into carnivore at the beginning of 2022, she noticed after two weeks that the joint pain she had been experiencing was completely gone, her focus was returning, and as of today, she is currently down 35 lbs. Not bad considering the year isn’t even close to being over yet! On top of all that, her blood sugar has become more stable, she’s been able to halve the amount of medication she uses to manage her diabetes, has better skin, better sleep, and is just generally more vivacious. “My whole world’s different,” she says happily, “And I actually love my food now!”

Heidi says she prescribes to the beef/bacon/butter/eggs approach to carnivore. An added bonus? Her 16 year old daughter has also joined her on her carnivore journey! Heidi says the carnivore diet also gives her the freedom to not eat first thing in the morning—a time when sugar is usually highest for diabetics—and opts to start eating around 3:30 or 4pm in the afternoon when her blood sugar is naturally lower. “Not only do i feel subjectively better, but I do have objective numbers to say my blood sugar’s in so much better control now—and I have the presence of mind to actually enjoy life…I’ve never felt better. I’ve not felt better in literally probably decades.”

Article by Jennifer McDowell

Kassandra reverses a lifetime of obesity

August 2, 2022 1 Comment
kassandra1-min
Before: a good acne day…
kassandra2-min
Before: forced photo at my largest

My name is Kassandra and I’m 35 years old. My mother and I nearly died during my birth because she had untreated gestational diabetes. She passed out and I was pulled out with forceps unresponsive. I survived in nicu because the nurses taped together two incubators since I was a very large baby. 

I stayed large through most of my life, starting my first diet when I started public school. 

By my mid 20’s I was 270+lbs, and I had PCOS, lipedema, keratosis pilaris, bad acne, and extreme  joint pain. 

Lost 100 lbs in my late twenties biggest loser style. My legs didn’t shrink much but I felt better because I was thinner. 

Then I watched “Sugar: a bitter at truth” by Dr. Lustig and gave up sugar for 3 months. 

10 months the later, I welcomed my first happy accident son into the world. 

I eased up my sugar restrictions but still restricted calories and over exercised. Couldn’t lose weight. Blamed it on the birth control so I stopped it and got another happy accident. 

My second pregnancy had complications because of extreme weight gain and failed glucose test.  Then I tried keto at the permission of my OB and stopped gaining weight. Had a healthy baby.

 

Listened to a bunch of YouTube lectures from keto conventions and heard about carnivore.  I still wasn’t gaining but couldn’t stop binging so I looked up what little I could on carnivore and tried 90 days.  That was over 2.5 years ago. I’m leaner than Ive ever been in my life. No more PCOS, acne, or joint pain. My lipedema is shrinking and reduced a lot. Keratosis has reduced 95%. 

 

I can’t weigh myself because I still struggle with scale anxiety but I’m a S/M (dress size 6/8) and I spent most of my life in XL/XXL so I feel like I have a new body with more energy in my thirties than I had in my teens. 

Nicole D Is Her Best Self On The Carnivore Diet

June 18, 2022 No Comments

I am an aspiring Revero Health Coach. I began the Carnivore Diet July 1, 2019 after giving Keto a try to rid myself of recurring infections such as mastitis and UTI’s. Little did I know, my left kidney was holding on to a larg calcium oxalate kidney stone.

 

3 months in to Carnivore the stone tried to exit and got stuck in my ureter. It caused a back up in my kidney which began leaking. I became septic and had fluid on my left lung. Of course all the doctors and some of my family urged me to stop eating so much meat because they all believed a meat heavy diet would further damage my already failing kidneys. I had a decision to make and all I could do was listen to my body. My instincts told me to tune them out and keeping going.

 

It took me almost 3 months to recover from my kidney situation, but recover I did and even though my left kidney has permanent damage from the stone, I was upgraded from 6 month Nephrology appointments to 12 months. In addition to overcoming kidney stones, Carnivore has also helped me lose weight, put my Hashimotos Autoimmune symptoms into remission, and has received me of my arthritis pain.

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