I have been on the Carnivore Diet for 3 months or so, as part of my quest to ameliorate as much of my Young Onset Parkinsons Disease symptoms as possible. I'll sum it up a bit for you.
1. The diet consists of animal products and ideally no plant products. I ate mostly beef, eggs and butter, but also some pork, seafood, poultry and cheese. Water and unflavored seltzer only. At first I eliminated coffee, but eventually worked a small amount back in, with heavy cream. I also worked in a pint of Rebel full fat ice cream per week, which is sweetened with Stevia. So to be honest, I wasnt 100% perfectly compliant. The only seasoning allowed is salt. I went with Himalayan Pink salt when Celtic Sea salt was no longer available to me. I initially stopped all supplements, including Thiamine HCl, Lithium Orotate and Magnesium (I soon added Mg back in). I did take a daily eye vitamin because I have problems driving at night.
2. I completely cheated on Christmas Day, New Years Day and Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). Not too bad.
3. The main trouble I ran into was getting the proper electrolyte balance. I used salt, Magnesium supplements and cream of tartar for potassium. Earlier in the experiment I had severe body aches, which is what led me to seek electroytic support, and this resolved the problem. But further down the line, whereas my tremor symptoms were initially highly improved, ultimately, the tremors came back worse than when I started. I had a really bad week of tremors and finally decided to eat some fruit, bone broth, honey and coconut water and my tremor situation improved immediately and to a high degree. I want to add that I lost almost 10% of my body weight in fat and water. Other benefits were less fatigue, less sleep required, better mental alertness, reduced bleeding of the gums after brushing, clear complexion, no gas or bloating and easy recovery from workouts.
4. As my research has been ongoing, I found that 2 of my gurus, YouTuber nutritionist Lillie Kane and Dr Paul Saladino, have both been adding fruit to their carnivore diet routine, and on a daily basis. This conflicts with people like carnivore diet advocate Mahaila Peterson, who solved 100% of her horrible autoimmune diseases, and there were many, by eating the most extreme version of carnivore, the Lion Diet. This is only Beef, butter and salt, no exceptions.
So to sum it up, I cannot recommend this way of eating for management of Parkinsons disease symptoms, mainly because it is to difficult to get the electrolyte balance to be stable and it is very impractical to stick to. That being said, I will continue to do it myself, focusing on beef, butter, eggs and salt and adding a small amount of fruit daily. Perhaps a strawberry, a grape or a small banana, a tsp of unfiltered honey or a sip of coconut water. I plan on keeping the carbohydrates under 18 grams per day. For the most part, I do enjoy Carnivore and I dont mind the challenges of inconvenience and temptation. Its just the dang electrolyte imbalance problems that get me. There are electrolyte supplements available on the market, but they contain artificial sweeteners and flavorings that I prefer to avoid. It may be a trade off that I have to consider, I guess.
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