Carnivore diet and autoimmune diseas.

[Jman86]

I have been reading about carnivore diet for a few months now, with mostly good reviews... I want to give it a try for 30 days and see what happens. Has anyone tried it? Is anyone still on it? What are your experience?

[radd]

Jman86,

I wouldn't try this. Whilst we need protein to enable our thyroid meds to work effectively, too much can be counter productive. The carnivore diet is also heavy on the liver and risks missing essential nutrients and fibre.

If you are trying to lose weight and control blood glucose levels there are far better ways that will cater better for autoimmunity and hypothyroidism.

[Regenallotment]

For balance I suggest watching this Netflix documentary.

The Game Changers g.co/kgs/rFrdaH

Fascinating studies with fire department workers and an NFL team. I’m not following this either but we have increased our plant intake.

Read up on bear grylls, he’s been carnivores and vegan and come out the other side of both.

I also found Izabella Wentz AI protocol a useful starting point and was able to adapt to our budget.

I guess the big question is why do you want to try it, what is the underlying reason you think it might help?

🌱

[Jman86 in reply to Regenallotment]

What makes me want to try it is that thru my research I found that plants have some toxins that may impact thyroid function. These toxins are the way plants protect themselves against predators and that can also be harmful to humans, or at least prevent some nutrients on being absorbed. Animal products have a variety of nutrients that plant dont have and if you consume grass fed meat it will have no toxins in it all all.

[Regenallotment in reply to Jman86]

Ah yes I see, we had a phase of grass fed meat buying from a farm in Wales it was delicious. I am with you there. But eventually we couldn’t keep it up budget wise. Remember all UK lamb and venison is grass fed no one farms sheep in sheds here unless it’s a blizzard outside. Many have supplemented diets as upland grass can be overgrazed and poor nutritionally.

On a Zoe podcast recently podcasts.apple.com/gb/podca...

they talked about plants making polyphenols (is that what you are referring to?) plants make more in response to stress from pests etc. this is why they think eating organic is better for us as the plants have to build up more when pesticides aren’t used. What I took from this is that polyphenols are really good for us, we don’t get nearly enough with modern store bought commercially grown veg.

We have to take care with exclusionary diet thinking, making life difficult, expensive and limited . I’m often checked by members here as I lean towards orthorexic tendencies. I was picked up recently for suggesting the AI diet helped with reflux. Others think not. Oats is another one for example, herbicides are used in the harvesting process (also from Zoe).

Remember to look after yourself and fact check from a range of sources.and stop if things don’t suit you 🤗🌱

[Jman86 in reply to Regenallotment]

Talking about budget... I love in New Zealand, the meat here even if it's not labeled "grass fed" the quality is really good, food here is very expensive but guess what? A kilo of mince is $16 , a kilo of tomatoes is $12, a small head of couliflower $7, one single bell pepper $2,49... And they are not even organic. So considering my previous post about toxins and now you mentioned budget, Meat does get way cheaper considering all the iron, b12, creatine etc we wouldn't get from plants.

[Regenallotment in reply to Jman86]

Cripes that is expensive veg, definitely an argument for growing your own.

[olgadimitri in reply to Regenallotment]

Thank you for such an accurate information. Some doctors on the Internet advised to practice this diet not longer then for months. After improvements to start on balanced food just with lower sugar, processed foods and carbohydrates

[radd in reply to Jman86]

Jman86,

Interesting,

I have recently been tested with high mould markers. Building forensics have eliminated the cause from previous house water damage so the only other source is through food!

I've been amazed to learn the levels in certain foods, have practically eliminated nuts from my diet and am vigorously washing all fruit and veg. High levels of mould can also be found in meat so I guess the best source would be organic eaten as fresh as possible.

[Regenallotment in reply to radd]

Keep finding mildew on (adult) kids sports bottles and my work drinks bottle, found some on the water filter recently. Gah… it’s a full time job keeping nasties out 😳

[radd in reply to Regenallotment]

One word Regenallotment,

Milton 😉

[Regenallotment in reply to radd]

Marvellous idea as ever radd I shall get some tomorrow 🙏

[TiggerMe]

I was reading up on blood type diets over the weekend as I found out that the foods I struggle with are all the things my blood group dislikes!!

I was going to try and increase meat again though my body really doesn't like it only to find vegetarian is more beneficial to my type 🤷‍♀️

I'm not altogether struck on the purity of grass fed meat as they are still taking in the pollutants in the atmosphere... for instance the Welsh hills suffered high contamination from Chernobyl.... humans are just filthy beasts 😟

[Regenallotment in reply to TiggerMe]

Amazing isn’t it, I have a friend who is AB and can’t tolerate anything with vinegars. Apparently that is a blood type thing.

[radd in reply to Regenallotment]

Ah, I couldn't tolerate anything with vinegar either, until I rectified a lack of stomach acid. Now I love pickled onions nom,nom.

[TiggerMe in reply to Regenallotment]

Ah, we were looking up AB as the kids are in this group and they should avoid chicken as it contains antigens that are less than beneficial.... they still stayed and had the roast chicken dinner with pigs in blankets I had made!... next time turkey or lamb 😕

There has to be something in it as there childhood dislikes are bang on 🤷‍♀️

[Hidden]

Jmam86,

I did the carnivore diet for 18 months out of desperation and I fully attribute my adrenal insufficiency to the diet. I would never ever suggest anyone do it, especially if you are hypo.

Carnivore reduces systemic inflammation, that’s its panacea and the reason for its popularity. But it does this at quite an expense of the rest of the body long term. I’ve laid out some mechanisms of action to explain why I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Firstly, lowered blood glucose levels down regulates the conversion of T4 to T3, because glucose is required for conversion we end up making more rt3 and less T3. Ketosis is essentially a hypometabolic state, because our primary and preferred fuel source is glucose when we deprive it of that it will respond by increasing conversion of T4 to rT3 instead of T3 to slow our metabolism down, which is not what we want. Ketosis is like a back up generator that the body uses in times of scarcity so metabolism is down regulated in accordance with that, it’s starvation mode (for want of a better term.)

Secondly, in the absence of dietary glucose the adrenals will have to work extra hard to maintain both blood and cellular glucose levels (which is one of its most important jobs). Without optimal cortisol levels we are not going to be able to make sufficient ATP because glucose is essential in the creation of ATP, this is further compounded by the lowering of T3 because T3 is also essential in the creation of ATP. So there is a double whammy there is lowered energy production coming from both of our most important metabolic partners. Gluconeogensis (making sugar out of protein for specialized tissues that can only run on glucose like brain cells, eye cells, muscle cells for instance) is a very taxing process for both the liver and the adrenals because when we don’t have available dietary glucose this process has to be up regulated. Because adrenal and thyroid function are in such tight partnership, we often see over time that adrenal function can suffer if in a state of prolonged ketosis as it tries to rescue what it now recognizes as a hypoglycemic state (because we aren’t putting any dietary glucose into the system) and the dropping of T3, this can then skew HPA axis signaling and I’m sure I don’t need to explain why that can lead to worrying downstream effects!

Thirdly, electrolyte imbalance is inherent in ketosis. When we use glucose for fuel we store much more fluid (that’s why ketosis results in so much weight loss at the start of the diet, the weight loss is largely fluid and with that fluid we lose lots of minerals, this is the cause of “keto flu”). Aldosterone created in the adrenal cortex can often be negatively impacted, tending to rise as it tries to keep potassium and sodium well balanced but often can’t because the body is no longer storing minerals as effectively when we are in ketosis - you may notice there are hundreds of keto electrolyte products around trying to combat just this problem. When potassium and sodium in particular are out of balance fluid balance gets knocked out of homeostasis which affects multiple systems - anything from heart rate to cognition to peristalsis.

Fourthly, ketogenic diets (unless you’re stuffing yourself with synthetic supplements which has its own problems) is often devoid of certain nutrients, which we can barely afford to skimp on as hypothyroidism often results in nutritional deficiencies from the get go.

There is a perception that ketosis improves inflammation, in reality what is happening is we are spiking cortisol (due to its urgency to maintain blood and cellular glucose levels) which then dampens our immune response and can give us this anti-inflammatory response. After a time tho in most people the adrenals will not be able to maintain this position for reasons cited above, inflammation begins to creep back in because cortisol levels will inevitably drop as our HPA and HPT axis flail.

In short, ketosis can make someone who is hypothyroid even more hypothyroid. All of this is heavily compounded by the fact that thyroid disease is often not treated properly to begin with. That is to say that most people being treated for thyroid disease are on T4 only treatment so their cellular T3 levels are likely too low to begin with which has knock deleterious effects on cortisol, which will make them more vulnerable to these ramifications before they even start. It’s worth mentioning that ketosis seems to be more detrimental in women, I would need to look into that and think it over more to work out why that is. Nutritional science has never been very good at appreciating biological differences between men and women, often regarding women as nothing more than “small men,” when in reality the complexity of the female endocrine system is stratospheric! So research can be hard to find on it.

It’s also commonly argued that ketosis improves insulin resistance. But this again is quite a misconception. Ketosis doesn’t improve insulin resistance, it simply removes the burden on insulin because it takes carbohydrates away, insulin is bound to reduce if glucose reduces. Lowering of insulin does not equate to improving of insulin sensitivity. In fact, ketosis actually worsens insulin resistance in the short term. Once carbohydrates are reintroduced into the diet insulin levels will go back up again, because that is insulin’s job - to ferry glucose into the cell. Removing the trigger (sugar) doesn’t mean that the mechanism is fixed, it just means that we aren’t challenging the mechanism anymore.

I got caught up in the keto-carnivore movement, and of all the friends I made (8) every single one ran into thyroid or adrenal issues eventually, some of them didn’t even have thyroid issues to begin with. I don’t have an issue with intermittent ketosis - metabolic flexibility is a good thing and we are all lightly ketogenic at night for instance, but a prolonged, forced, sustained hypometabolic state does not do the HPT or HPA axis any favors in my experience and understanding.