Solo Episode: 8 years Carnivore

Do you guys know [music] what that means? It means this girl can't call herself a carnivore anymore. Now, this has always been my [music] theory. Heal the gut, add foods back in, easy peasy. However, it was not easy peasy. It is the first time in over 8 [music] years that I've been able to eat anything other than ruminant meat without triggering an autoimmune or psych disorder. Not only does the [music] diet work to put the vast majority of people into remission, but it means actual healing is possible. and I certainly needed more help than [music] just eating meat and avoiding dietary triggers.

In this video, I'm going to cover what I've done in the last [music] 10 years, what's worked, what's reduced my sensitivities, what didn't work, what reintroduction [music] has been like, and tips for people looking to try this. So, let's get into it. Hey everyone, it has now officially been eight years of the carnivore diet, specifically the lion diet, which is the most extreme elimination version of a carnivore diet made up of only ruminant animal meat like beef or lamb and salt and water. I [snorts] started it in a desperate attempt to treat severe psychiatric issues, including bipolar type 2 with major depression and juvenile idiopathic arthritis that I'd had since I was two. that caused a hip and ankle replacement at 17 despite imunosuppressive treatment. So that's why I went on the diet in the first place and now it's been 8 years of it which is crazy. However, I have even bigger news than 8 years on the lion diet. Right before it was 8 years to the day on this diet, I started slowly reintroducing foods without major reactions.

That's the big part. So, I can't really say it's been eight years on this diet. It's eight years minus a few months, but close enough really. So, to reiterate, I've managed to reintroduce some foods without arthritic flare-ups or mood issues. It is the first time in over 8 years that I've been able to eat anything other than ruminant meat without triggering an autoimmune or psych disorder. Do you guys know what that means? One, it means this girl can't call herself carnivore anymore.

But importantly, more importantly, it means that not only does the diet work to put the vast majority of people into remission while they're on it, but it means actual healing is possible. Now, this has always been my theory, which is all over my website, lioniet.com. Heal the gut, add foods back in, easy peasy. The Lion diet is supposed to be used as an elimination diet to give you symptom relief while you pursue the root cause. However, it was not easy peasy. It took me 8 years to be able to eat anything without getting arthritis or psych symptoms. So, for a while there, the healing part felt like a pipe dream or I thought I was going to be on a meat diet forever to stay in remission, which I would have been fine with.

I would have been fine with, but it just felt like that wasn't addressing something that was still a problem. So, in theory, the leaky gut, heal the gut, introduce foods sounded good. But in reality, getting there was harder than just heal your gut. It was not easily done, and I certainly needed more help than just eating meat, which is already a big enough deal, and avoiding dietary triggers. So, here we are. We did it. In this video, I'm going to cover what I've done in the last 10 years, what's worked, what's reduced my sensitivities, what didn't work, what reintroduction has been like, and tips for people looking to try this. [snorts] And before we get into details, you may know this.

I've launched the world's largest keto and carnivore study on the line diet and keto diet and its impact on rheumatoid arthritis and IBD. The study is run by a medical team separate from me, but I'm trying to collect funding. I've linked the GoFundMe below. Donations are taxdeductible. All the money will be used to fund the study. We are at $160,000 for funding. Thank you so much to everyone who donated.

We're looking for about $300,000 more, which is incredibly inexpensive actually for a study this size. As you guys know, studies like this are not easy to organize and impossible to fund because they don't rely on pharmaceuticals. So, they don't get funding. If anything, they go against pharmaceutical companies. So, it's up to people like me and you guys to get them done and doctors and researchers that are actually interested in helping people, not just making money. So, that's kind of pathetic, but here we are. And we have the study and we have the team and we have a bunch of funding.

We're just looking for a bit more. So, if you would like to support the study, it would be greatly appreciated. I think it could change the medical landscape. And now we know, at least for me as a case study, I I'm eating things without getting arthritis. That is crazy. That's crazy. That hasn't happened to me, like I said, in 8 years, and I've had arthritis since I was two.

Now, the meat diet did put it in remission, but I couldn't eat anything other than meat until now. So, we need some research because this is crazy. Uh, whatever isn't supported by your guys's donations, I'm going to cover with business money thanks to Peterson Academy. So, this is getting done either way, but I would like some more help if possible. Or if you're in America, haven't tried the keto or carnivore diet, are diagnosed formally by a doctor with rheumatoid arthritis or IBD, and you're interested in taking part of the study, please consider applying. We're still looking for more people to take part in it. We want a bunch of people.

So, this is really taken seriously. You'll get coaching. You'll get a hoard of tests done that you'll get results to. And maybe suffering with a disease might be able to stop other people suffering in the future, depending on the results of the study. Of course, there's more info about the study linked on the GoFundMe page below and in my last YouTube video and the link to apply to take part in the study and support it are in the description. Please share it. Uh, I think it could change how autoimmunity is treated eventually.

And the current medical system doesn't treat autoimmunity. They have no idea what they're doing in that regard. None. So, let's get into it. Let's start at the beginning. I think this would be good of my diet journey if you guys don't know. Uh I didn't start my diet journey by only eating beef.

First, I cut out gluten. And then when that mildly improved symptoms out of curiosity, not because I actually thought it would do anything. I stopped eating processed foods. All processed foods, dairy, eggs, and most fruit. and was eating a very limited paleo diet to rule out diet as a factor in my illnesses. That was from mid 2015 to mid 2016. And from mid 2016 to mid to December 2017, I was only eating meat and greens. So that was like meat, lettuce, collarded greens, arugula, spinach, I don't know, greens.

So I didn't go from the standard American diet to just beef. I went from basically the autoimmune paleo or GAPS diet but stricter to meat and greens to just beef over a period of two years. Those diets didn't work 100% for my autoimmune issues or I wouldn't have done just beef. Now what those initial paleo and ketolike diets did is they did reduce my symptoms massively and got me off of anti-depressants, painkillers, and immune suppressants among other medications. They definitely started my road to health with a bang. were extremely effective, just not 100% effective. And I cannot recommend paleo diets or dairyfree keto diets enough for general health for the average person. However, and I know there are a lot of people pushing the animal-based diet to treat disease, and I'm sure they help some people, but for people with severe disease, that type of dietary intervention or just cutting processed foods doesn't necessarily work.

And sometimes you need to get way stricter. So, in [snorts] 2017, after my first pregnancy with Scarlet and moving into a moldy house, I wasn't aware of that at the time, but I know know looking back, it had a leak in the basement and was definitely moldy. Those paleo and keto diets stopped helping really at all for my symptoms. Uh, I'm telling you guys the background here because the Lion diet doesn't just work by cutting out processed foods. It's something more. And hopefully, we're going to get into it with some research. A common comment I get from skeptics is, "Well, if you just cut processed foods, you'd get the same result."

And that isn't right. I obviously didn't want to just eat beef, so obviously I tried everything else I could before giving up foods I love. Contrary to popular belief, but evident if you think about it for half a second, giving up all foods and only eating beef is actually extremely difficult and it takes a lot of discipline. It's way harder than just giving up processed foods. So obviously I tried that first. It was also way harder to figure out I could actually survive only eating meat versus figure out trying to cut processed foods, which wasn't as obvious back in 2015, but it's pretty obvious now. So, this comment about cutting processed foods and that leading to remission of severe disease and the reaction from people that some other diet would work that was less restricted is partly why we're going to be studying the Lion diet versus the ketogenic diet versus the standard American diet for RA and IBD.

We'll finally have a comparison study to see if the therapeutic effect of these diets is from ketosis and cutting processed foods or something more with the lion diet, like extreme elimination of plant foods that the body mistakenly starts reacting to once it gets too sick and the gut is damaged, which is my theory. But hopefully we'll have some actual data about this, which would be amazing. So, and excuse me if my voice is a little grally. I have a cold because I have children and it's the winter so I have a cold. But it's not dietary, I promise. So, in December 2017, I started eating only beef, knowing that beef didn't give me any symptoms, thinking I'd be on the diet for 3 months, maybe less. All these experiments are still on my blog, by the way, if you want to check out old blog posts from confused Michaela.

So, December 2017 was after my arthritis came back during and after pregnancy after a period of near remission on a meat and greens diet. My depression had also come back with a vengeance, although I was in anti-depressant withdrawal at the time. So that makes the cause of the depression kind of complicated. It could have been anti-depressant withdrawal, but regardless, I was depressed. So that kind of came back in 2017. And as anyone with depression knows, it's it's horrible. And that was the main reason.

It was the arthritis, too, but that was the main reason I was like, I need to get this under control. I don't want to go back on medication. I felt better. Now I'm feeling worse again. I felt better on the paleo and keto diets and then I started feeling worse and so out of desperation I just went to just beef. My arthritic symptoms went away after 2 weeks of only eating beef. So really quickly but again I just went from beef and greens to just beef.

After 6 weeks I stopped crying in the mornings. Around then I tried organic olives. I tried to reintroduce olives and had a huge arthritic flare up, huge depressive flare up, and decided I'd stick with the beef diet for longer. 5 months into the lion diet and moving out of the house I'd been living in, which definitely had mold issues. Like I said, I felt better than I had ever felt before. That was months before I ended up going on Joe Rogan talking about the carnivore diet and how it completely changed my life. After that, I didn't introduce any new food or even take a pill for years. Anti-depressant withdrawal really spooked me for taking pills.

And I was reactive to everything. And I knew that. I was reactive to reactive to fillers and pills. I was reactive to chemicals. I was being careful. I stopped wearing perfume. I was reacting to shampoo.

I was reacting to everything. However, the first thing I did introduce was vodka. Now, I know that's not a health food in the least, and I feel like people discredit me because who is on a diet of meat and occasional vodka, but that's how you know I'm telling the truth about everything I'm saying here. I wouldn't add in the vodka part if it was a lie because it just doesn't line up with the biohacking health story. To be honest, I wasn't really biohacking at that point. I think I wrote about this in the blog. I had non-toxic products and I was unbelievably strict with my diet, but that was because I was reacting to everything, not because I was biohacking to biohack.

I was just avoiding things that were obviously making me sick. So, mainly I was trying to not be crazy and not have an autoimmune disorder. So, for vodka, I missed socializing quite a bit. Um, especially without being able to eat anywhere other than steakous, which I couldn't afford to do often at that point. Vodka didn't cause autoimmune flare-ups or m mood issues, just unbelievably wicked hangovers on a no carb diet. So then I was on a beef, salt, and occasional vodka diet for a number of years. In 2020, I tried to reintroduce some organic berries and salmon, which brought back arthritis eventually within a few weeks and and I could just tell it wasn't good.

Like I remember just going to the fridge in a stouper and being like, "Where are the berries?" which I used to do before I cut out carbs. just like end up with the fridge open being like how did I get here? What just happened? And like it felt like that started coming back when I reintroduced berries and then the arthritis started coming back and so I I stopped. Obviously in 2021 I started eating only lamb instead of beef and lamb. And I was on doing that for about two years. That was after moving to Nashville into a unit that flooded and then most definitely had a mold issue because it it flooded, you know, with this much water all over it and then they used a fan to dry it out, which does not stop mold problems. So, you guys might remember I moved from Nashville to Miami because I thought I was having tree allergies in Nashville and I was getting so foggy and I was having trouble podcasting and my face was really puffy and I was like, "Wo, these allergies are so bad."

Turned out that was mold. Then I moved to Miami where they have even worse mold problems and got even sicker. It's almost impossible to avoid moldy HVAC in Miami. So [snorts] in Miami, some of my old psych symptoms started again, not as severely as pre-diet, but worse than they'd been since I'd recovered from anti-depressant withdrawal and was on the beef diet. I also got heart palpitations and insomnia in that moldy house. And I got so sensitive to histamine, I started to only eat lamb, which was lower in histamine to avoid extreme digestive problems. Like beef was just wasn't vibing with my just my stomach.

Nothing was vibing living in mold. I also started the supplement, the enzyme supplement, DAO for histamine intolerance at that time, which helped a bit just to be able to tolerate lamb really. I got diagnosed with chronic inflammatory response syndrome, SERS, and started treatment for that. And I've got into details. There's a bunch of videos up about that. Started treatment for that and more importantly moved out of that house and strictly avoided mold. And I still strictly avoid mold.

Uh I believe the surge treatment and avoiding mold was the beginning of reducing my actual sensitivities rather than just avoiding triggering symptoms. I got pregnant almost immediately after moving out of mold. It was literally I moved out of mold in February. didn't find a clean place till the beginning of April. And at the end of April, I was pregnant. And that was after having a miscarriage in the mold exposed house in Miami, which really surprised me because I was like, I'm on this diet. Why Why am I deteriorating when I haven't changed anything? I have non-toxic products.

I have air purifiers. Like, what's going on? And then I ended up having a miscarriage and that was in that moldy house. Um, so I got pregnant as soon as I moved out of that basically. and started SERS treatment. I also started taking folinic acid which is a tolerable form of folate for me and I did that because I was pregnant. My folate was also low um which could easily be part of only eating meat. I wasn't even eating organs.

So, I'd keep an eye, anyone who's doing this, I would keep an eye on folate specifically, but I'd keep an eye on all your vitamins, especially because sick people's vitamins are always kind of wonky. So, I started taking folinic acid, which didn't make me hyper stimulated like methyl folate or folic acid, which both make me feel terrible. Uh, I also started to be able to eat beef again after about 4 months of SER treatment. Like I said, my vitamins took a hit while I lived in mold, even though my parents vitamins looked a lot better and they were on the same diet for the same amount of time basically. So, it was environmentally caused, which I hadn't even realized at the time could happen. I didn't realize your environment, purely your environment could impact your vitamins, but I mean it seems more obvious now. So, the [snorts] vitamins and most of them that were depleted were B vitamins.

Was it just B vitamins? Yeah. And and it flattened my hormones. My hormones were all messed up, too. But that recovered actually pretty quickly given I got pregnant right away. But the vitamins recovered after a period of stirrers treatment. Um although I still supplement folinic acid.

In the last few years, I've had two babies. I've under two, which is so hard on the body. It's so hard. And so, I've been continuing to monitor vitamins carefully uh to avoid deficiencies given how new this diet is and there's no research, etc., etc. The next big thing in 2024, I did a gut treatment with Dr. Gabrielle Lion's team, who I will have on the podcast right away. Uh I did that after I had an anaphylactic reaction to I don't know what that ended up with me in emergency and on prednazone for about a week.

The predinazone after the prennazone treatment uh I had h pylori. Now I think I had low levels of h pylori before and the prennazone dampened down my immune system and h pylori kind of took over and it was horrible and I was very desperate and I could tell I had some sort of stomach infection. So I reached out to Gabriel Lion and I got tested and I had H. pylori and I had a I can't remember exactly what the par it was a prozzoa parasite which I was horrified about and candida which I was really surprised about because I'd only been eating meat. So how on earth like how is it even surviving? Um so that was interesting. So I treated a bunch of things. I treated the H pylori.

So I bombarded myself with antibiotics which I had been avoiding for years and antiparasitics and that within weeks completely eliminated my remaining histamine intolerance and any lingering digestive issues and my digestion after bombarding myself with the appropriate antibiotics and antiparasitics my digestion and all my lingering digestive issues fixed themselves. So that I think was a huge factor in why I'm able to tolerate more foods now. So, SERS treatment, strict mold avoidance and parasite treatment, and I think that's why I can tolerate some more foods. I am now a different human than I was when I started only eating beef out of desperation in December 2017. So, now I guess we should get into what didn't work cuz I did try a number of things over the years. Obviously, I thought something would click eventually, but I tried a whole bunch of things. Probiotics have never worked for me.

Now, maybe now that I'm less reactive, maybe they would be beneficial now. And so, in the future, and I'll keep you guys updated, I'll probably try them again. But over the years, I have tried probiotics. Um, I tried them before the meat diet, on the paleo diet. I tried them before dieting at all. I've tried them recently. They do not make me feel good.

It doesn't matter if they're low histamine or sporbiotics. It doesn't matter. Uh, I think if you have a damaged gut, sometimes the wrong probiotic or even the right probiotic, if it's just leaking into your body, it doesn't matter if it's supposed to be healthy. You have to fix the gut barrier first. This is all in theory, but in theory, at least it's logical. Hyperaric oxygen, no noticeable difference at all. I definitely find it relaxing and I can nap.

I have excellent naps in there, so I'm sure it's helpful. I know it's good for healing. Like, there's definitely evidence that that's good for you, but it didn't make a noticeable difference to me to reduce sensitivities. It certainly doesn't hurt, but it just didn't move the needle. IV NAD felt like being hooked to a battery. I've done over 18 of those treatments. No noticeable difference, and it felt awful.

Uh, glutathione also can be helpful to people. I couldn't tolerate this until like two weeks ago when I got less reactive. It used to make me feel terrible, too. So, that never helped, even though my glutathione levels were low. Um, most vitamins I couldn't tolerate, so those didn't help. What else did I try? I did for for uh mold, which is a type of blood filtration.

Maybe it felt kind of good. I've done tons of ozone. Again, probably a little bit relaxing, but none of it really changed my reactivity. What did move the needle? So saunas I've always found beneficial in a noticeable way. Although I don't think that actually reduced sensitivities, but it was helpful going through anti-depressant withdrawal and living in mold. So not helpful for like long-term reduced sensitivities, but to mitigate symptoms at the time.

Noticeable KPV peptide. So I've gotten more interested in peptides. I tried BPC157 years and years ago. That made no difference. Like no noticeable difference. The peptides weren't the cure. But KPV, which is supposed to reduce inflammation, I at least noticed made me feel a little bit better.

When I was taking BPC57, I didn't I didn't notice anything. It didn't change anything. I was still reactive, but this was before mold. This was before parasite treatment. So maybe now it would be beneficial. Um, what else? Felinic acid, I think, has made me feel physiologically calmer, but is very minor.

So, I don't even know if I should really include that in something that moved the needle. However, felinic acid is something I would actually recommend to people doing the carnivore diet now, especially women who are having babies. Uh, DAO enzymes, like I talked about, useful for histamine intolerance. I don't use them anymore because I don't have histamine intolerance anymore, but they got me through severe histamine intolerance due to mold exposure. Parasite treatment, that was a game changer. Treating H. pylori was huge. Now, I had gone to doctors and done parasite testing before.

I did that before I got on the beef diet multiple times. I have so much testing done on my body, it's ridiculous. If Brian Johnson didn't exist and the recent biohacking people, I know a couple of them didn't exist, I wouldn't know anyone who had more testing done than I've had on myself. And nobody ever found anything. So, until recently, until I talked to Gabrielle Lion and she did different tests. So, here's what I would recommend for parasite testing. Do a GI map test.

It's a certain type of stool test. Um, that shows some things, but it's going to miss like most parasites, but it'll show dispiosis. So, if H pylori shows up there, treat it with quad therapy antibiotic treatment. I know there's a lot of like go to a naturopath, you can naturally treat H. pylori. Maybe that works for some people. That did not work for me. I needed to wall up that with antibiotic treatment and it would huge difference and my husband did too and I don't know who had it first.

It's very very common though like we had somebody who works with us who was throwing up after he ate for a number of days went to emergency couldn't they couldn't find anything in emergency and he kept having this happen and he told us some of his symptoms and I was like okay that sounds like H pylori is like burning I'll get into the symptoms in a sec he did quad therapy and hasn't had quad therapy antibiotic treatment and hasn't had any issues anymore so this is really common the breath test they do for it in offices is notoriously useless. Symptoms can be a gnawing feeling in your solar plexus. So like right here, this gnawing empty feeling, that's a that's a big sign. Bad breath in more severe cases, acid reflux or even vomiting. Um oh, plaque buildup. Um that can be caused by H. pylori. So can uh frequent cavities.

Like if your diet is good and you're getting frequent cavities, even though you're not eating sugar, you should look into H. pylori or at least dispiosis, but H. pylori. For me, when it got bad, I definitely had the gnawing feeling in my stomach. But before that, when I know I had it, cuz I have old stool tests, it was there in moderate levels, but everyone I talked to was like, "Don't worry, it's fine. It's normal." I I really do think that was contributing to my a lot of my um inability to tolerate foods and the symptoms weren't really noticeable. It just kind of showed up on the GI map in moderate amounts and I had extreme food sensitivities. So maybe that was the symptom.

I do think even treating the moderate levels would have helped me a lot. I also treated a prozzoa parasite which I think you can get from like lake water or something. It's a pretty common one. It was horrified me to learn I had a parasite. I was like, I live in a clean country. I can't get parasites. Turns out that entire thing is wrong.

So, that might have helped as well. But the H pylori treatment definitely helped. Um, I used to think parasite treatment was kind of woo woo. I feel like I got into an algorithm on TikTok that was like everybody has parasites and like this is what they look like. I don't know who else has been on that algorithm. And I was just like, okay, we're not going to go down that rabbit hole because that seems a little out there. like we live in a clean country. Uh and I avoided antibiotics like the plague because of all my gut issues and I didn't know if those stemmed from antibiotic use as a kid.

Anyway, it's not woo woo. And the antibiotics that I took were definitely worth it. I avoided taking metronazol or fuoricquinolone antibiotics, but I did everything else by the regular medical treatment book. Uh, so I cannot recommend this enough like really looking into this seriously for anyone with food sensitivities and gut issues or even fatigue and skin issues. The problem is the regular testing misses them. So if you go to the doctor and you do a parasite test, it's just going to be negative. Uh, in North America, this is what I learned over the last couple years.

In North America, they mainly do PCR testing. And I had to send a stool sample to Africa to get looked at under a microscope in the old-fashioned way to pick anything up. So, we've gotten so advanced we think we don't have parasites in America when in reality we just can't test for them anymore. Brilliant. Brilliant. So, this is this is most likely this and the mold exposure seem to be why I've been stuck only eating meat for eight years and going to regular doctors. They don't believe in mold and they can't test for parasites.

Brilliant. You can't hate the mainstream medical system enough. That being said, once I got a doctor that knew how to treat parasites, the mainstream medical treatment of parasites really did work. So, it's tricky. It's tricky. So, yeah, rule out H pylori using the GI map test. Everybody can get that treated if it's there.

I think um I got treatment through Gabrielle Lion, who I'll have on. Like I said, if you can afford her, that's great. But to be perfectly honest, it's not affordable for most people, which is unfortunate. And hopefully when more people start talking about this and she's spreading awareness too, it'll get cheaper. The testing will get cheaper. Um, I would do the GI map test though. That'll still run you about $300 to $400 depending on the naturopath doing it.

But it's worth it if you can't afford that and you have symptoms of parasites or extreme food sensitivities and gut issues and autoimmunity. I'm not gonna say just do the treatment without testing, but figure out how to do something and don't wait seven to eight years like me. H pylori treatment, the actual treatment, the antibiotics wasn't really a big deal for me. And I thought I was going to feel terrible on them. I didn't feel good on them, but I felt a lot better getting rid of H. pylori. And antiparasitic drugs are quite safe. They give them to pregnant people in some countries.

It's just ve it's really worth looking into. Uh, first world countries are stupid and naive thinking they're somehow cleaner than countries that commonly treat parasites. Now, we do have cleaner water. So, I guess there's that. But we have worse testing. I'm still fired up about this cuz it's like here we are thinking we're dealing with something really complicated with autoimmunity and these new diseases we have and now I can eat things because I'm not living in mold and I got rid of parasites, which we've been dealing with forever. Anyway, [snorts] um I kind of want to tackle the parasite testing thing after the study on the lion diet and keto diet is out.

Maybe after that, the next huge thing that reduced my sensitivities, surgeon mold treatment. I grew up in a basement in downtown Toronto in a 100-year-old house. There was black mold behind the drywall from a plumber who left a cap off when my parents renovated. It honestly smelled like a sewer down there. We should have known that there was mold. It is no wonder I was so mentally ill as a kid. But that was when you thought you could just blow a fan at mold and didn't know mold was toxic.

You could have a mold allergy, but you couldn't have a disease or mental illness caused by mold, which most people don't know now and can definitely happen. Uh the tricky thing with SERS and mold illness is it doesn't hit everyone in the house necessarily or equally. So people don't attribute illnesses in these houses that are making people sick to the environment. Anyway, after recovering on the lion diet and then 5 years into the diet, getting so sick from some similar symptoms to childhood, like I said, insomnia, waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning, panicking, heart palpitations, extreme volatility, like slamming doors, even if I didn't really have anything to be mad at, known as mold rage in the mold community. Massive amounts of fatigue, muscle pain everywhere, bruising that wasn't healing, leg weakness, like one side of my body felt like it was going to collapse. It was not pleasant. The first symptoms started in Nashville.

Oh, and my eyes got really bloodshot and crusty and I always had extra mucus. Like my nose was just running all the time. Anyway, the symptoms started in Nashville in the unit that flooded and worsened in Miami. Attributing all of that to CERS was huge. That was February 2023. Moving out of Miami was the biggest thing. I literally threw away all my stuff out of concern and just picked up and moved.

We moved to Arizona. And when I was say I was on the verge of living in a tent back then, I'm serious. I had an Instacart filled with tent equipment. And it was April in Arizona, so totally doable. And I wanted my brain back as fast as possible. I had no internal dialogue. I had to pause the podcast.

I had to pause working for my dad briefly because I literally couldn't figure out how to answer an email. I was having chemical sensitivities again. I had resolved those in 2018 after the line diet after about six months on the line diet and they were back. I even developed an intolerance to vodka. I was like, "No, my vodka's gone." Walking through buildings where the air wasn't perfectly clean would give me pain all over my body. It was crazy.

I felt like an a lunatic more than I already feel normally. Although I feel less like a lunatic now that I can tolerate other foods. But with mold exposure, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm turning into one of those people with a tin foil hat." But seriously, luckily Jordan husband found a hotel that was clean enough that we didn't react in there. And after a month out of that house, out of the Miami house, and on choleisty, which is the one of the binders used for surge that worked really well for me, I felt probably 70% better. A lot of the neuropathic pain went away. My brain came back.

So since then, my sensitivities to mold have reduced. It's it's basically been 3 years. So it's taken a while, but and I'm still hyper careful. I eat I honestly I eat outdoors most of the time on patios. We're in Arizona, so it doesn't matter. Or I'll go to new buildings. I can travel now and stay in hotels without being completely obliterated.

Um, we have an ERV. This is a really big deal, too. Sorry this is going on. I'll just turn this into a podcast episode, but there's a lot to catch up on on what's worked. What was really good for mold illness and reducing sensitivities was adding an ERV to our HVAC. And we have a super V filter on top of that. So, an ERV actually brings in fresh air to the house compared to HVAC.

That's been a game changer, just bringing fresh air in. And this was we moved to Arizona, we bought a new house, we upgraded the HVAC, and I still didn't feel 100%. And 24 hours after adding an ERV to the HVAC, it smelled like a mountain inside. I was like, "Oh, okay. This this is a game changer." So, an ERV was really helpful. The SuperV filter is helpful.

I'll get into that in a minute. But to summarize, if you have an autoimmune disorder, you should try this diet as an elimination diet. If you have a psych disorder, you should get on this diet. You should at least do a ketogenic diet. But you might be sensitive. You might be as sensitive as I was. It helps so much is hard to believe, which is why people don't believe it.

And why we don't have very many studies. We're starting to get carnivore studies. There are quite a few ketogenic diet studies now, but it's hard to believe. So, people don't believe it. So, we don't have evidence for it. So, people continue to not believe it. But soon, we will have a study.

I find and people find they can get relief after 6 weeks to 6 months, generally speaking, depending on the meds you might be on, that you can think enough to start delving into your problems without suffering as much. Psych meds obviously complicated my recovery. I went through two years of withdrawal after suddenly stopping which you should not do uh from 2015 to 2017 that was on the paleo and keto diet that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. That withdrawal is horrible. I'd been on Cyprilex, also known as Lexapro, on a high dose of 20 milligrams for 10 years and through developmental years. So, from 12 to 22 and oof, you know, I can see how people sometimes can't get off of them because it it hurt. And the diet really helped me get through that.

So, try the diet and then when you have the energy, install an ERV in your HVAC to get fresh air in your house. They're a couple of thousand dollar, but this really needs to happen. There's a housing crisis. There's an air crisis in North America. And it's the easiest, cheapest way to get fresh air in. It's a lot easier than remediating your house. It This took me about a a year, 6 months to figure out after we remediated.

We kept remediating where we were living and then installing an ERV to the HVAC just fixed the air. So, I wish more mold people would talk about ERVs specifically. Now, there are there are countries where these ERVs are mandated for building and health safety and they're not mandated in America. So, they're mandated um in old buildings in in certain countries in Europe, they're mandated because the buildings are so old, they need fresh air. And in people that are re in countries that are really energy efficient, they can be mandated. So, I think they're mandated in Switzerland. And that's just to save on energy costs.

It's just by chance helps with mold. The only places you can't use it really are in places that have extremely high humidity like Florida. So there you could just installed install a filter. So I would recommending install an ERV and something like a superv filter to your HVAC. Then you have a contraption that sucks outdoor air, a filter that filters it and filters everything that recirculates and then you can have clean air in your home. And that is so important to your health. So many biohacking people like myself really focused on diet and sleep and even and air purifiers and things for years, but getting fresh outdoor air inside made a massive difference to my health.

So do that. IQ air filters are great, too, for sure. ERVs are better. Um, but if you're in a place like Florida where it's too humid to get an ERV, IQ Air, get SuperV filters on your HVAC. So, yeah, get tested for parasites or do parasite treatment. Get on the diet. Then you're on a ketogenic diet and you're you're giving your body an alternative source of fuel, plus eliminating variables your immune system might be reacting to.

Plus eliminating variables your immune system might be reacting to due to a damaged gut. You're tackling gut treatment on top of that. and you're improving your air, which bad air leads to gut permeability issues. I also gave myself time. A big big factor big factor here in my lessened reactions to food could just be avoiding foods that caused inflammatory reactions for so long my body forgot to keep responding to them with mass cell disorders, which I most certainly have. I haven't really I haven't focused on that because well, now I don't need to. I would have gotten to that eventually. But you can retrain your mass cells by taking antihistamines and mass cell stabilizers, sometimes for an extended period of time.

Some mass cells train future mass cells to continue to respond to the same triggers. It's possible in theory that I avoided triggers for so long my mass cells literally just forgot to keep training the future mass cells on those triggers. That's a theory though. No idea. But I do know parasite and mold treatment helped. So yeah, I think that's my recent update. So autoimmunity and genetic psychiatric issues are at least for me completely curable.

Ha, pretty satisfying after 8 years. Pretty satisfying. So now more of the fun stuff, eating plants and other foods after 8 years. In the last two months, I have tried arugula, avocado, seaweed, broccoli, broccolini, coconut, mango, vinegar, ginger, Swiss chard, pork choy, berries, cucumber, sweet potato, caviar, salmon, and chicken. It was about 6 months ago when I first tried some mango and coconut. And that was because my husband kept tempting me with ice cream. What's the ice cream company?

Fronin has good mango ice cream. [snorts] Anyway, he's been on the meat diet with me, but sometimes eats some other healthy foods now since he's done the same treatments as me, and they've worked for him, too. That's a big deal. So JF, the husband, was also exposed to mold badly as a kid. got sick with me in Nashville in Miami along with Scarlet. Did the mold and parasite treatment and has been able to vary his diet more. Now, his symptoms weren't as severe as mine previously, but he was pretty ill prior to dietary interventions. It's been long enough of me reintroducing foods that I can fairly comfortably say the ones I've tried don't cause major problems. Sometimes an arthritic flare up would take a number of days to trigger, sometimes weeks, although usually days, but it's been months now.

No arthritis. So, out of the foods I mentioned, I'm not really eating cucumber. I don't like how that makes me feel. I think I'm allergic to avocados, so I'm not doing that. And I'm sticking to a ketogenic diet because I still seem to feel my best staying in ketosis. So, that limits the mango, coconut, and sweet potato. Chicken makes me groggy, but fish seems fine.

Cooked arugula seems totally fine. I am eating so much arugula. It's so good. Nothing I've tried so far has been catastrophic like my food tests have been in the past. I'm using pure encapsulation digestive enzymes before I eat because I haven't eaten plants in so long. I figure my body could use a bit of help with enzymes. But honestly, it adapted pretty quickly.

It wasn't this huge adaptation that I was kind of worried about. Uh I got bloated the first couple times. Not surprising. I started the enzyme. After the first few weeks, the bloating went away and I'm I'm good. And that was really it. That was really it.

So, I'm not doing cucumbers and avocado, which were the two raw vegetables I was eating. Well, avocado is technically a fruit, but only [snorts] annoying people tell you that. So, yeah, cooked vegetables is what I'm doing. Cooked greens basically and meat now. So now I can say my diet consists really of 95% beef, some ginger. I've always loved ginger and pan fried arugula and tallow. I'm back to meat and greens, which is amazing.

Forgive my French. This seems super restricted, but compared to just beef, it's crazy. It's like the whole world has opened up. Uh I haven't been out to order anything other than steak at restaurants unless they can do something like grilled broccolini. So I'm not risking I'm being careful. I'm not being stupid naive because I don't want to trigger anything. But so far so good, guys.

Okay, I know that was a lot to catch up on. So that's it. No longer carnivore crazy. I will do a Q&A soon. Talk to you guys later. [music]