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I'm a celiac and I have a slightly different take on it. I've cut out gluten, sugar, caffeine, sodium nitrites, and MSG as triggers for sinus headaches (took years of trial and error to identify them all).

First, I love hearing carnivore diet stories because I relate to them a lot. Varying symptoms, cut out some foods, drastically improved health. I lived for 23 years with sinus headaches, I had to figure out how to work through them in college. Life is so nice now that I don't want to take a drill to my forehead.

That said, I think the carnivore diet is the shotgun blast approach. I bet there are specific triggers for their symptoms that they could identify by following a strict diet (e.g. chicken and rice) and slowly reintroducing stuff.

It's an area that is drastically understudied. All the celiac papers are on gastrointestinal issues (which I had, but the sinus headaches were 50 times worse). My understanding is eating gluten while celiac causes your body to attack your small intestine, which causes deterioration. This usually leads to problems with FODMAPs. My brother has issues with lactose, and for me it was fructose.

It's hard going to something that isn't evidence backed, but sometimes the best we can do is do the experiment on ourselves. I'm tracking what I eat everyday and when I get sinus headaches. I primarily eat protein. I get 3 beef patties and 2 small chicken breasts each day from the burger place at work. The french fries and corn chips at work are safe for me to eat, so those are the carbs I get regularly. I take a vitamin C supplement. On the weekends I cook steak, and some brazilian cheese breads. There is also a brand of gluten free bread with no sugar that I really like.

I'm extremely fortunate that I work somewhere that can accommodate my diet and that I can afford meat regularly outside of that. So yea, shout out to everyone else with weird food reactions, stay strong.

You'll love my story. I'll keep it short.

Basically, one day, I started getting pressure and pain and ringing in my ear. It was really bad about every other day. I went to an ENT and he diagnosed me with meniere's disease and told me that I had permanent hearing loss. I kept going to doctors. One of them diagnosed me with endolymphatic hydrops.

I spent a month or so obsessively reading research papers, and internet sites seemed to basically be support groups for people whose lives are ruined and can never think straight again.

I had good reason to suspect it was an autoimmune disease, because steroids cured my symptoms. I also had my personal suspicions that wheat was involved but I couldn't correlate anything.

So I started eliminating foods and keeping a food diary. Long story short, about a year later, I was very confident that wheat was my biggest trigger. If I eat a large amount of wheat, my symptoms come back 36 hours later, and last for at least 2 days.

I struggled with the fact that I have no doctor suggestions, or diagnosis, or study of what problem I have, what it is, or any way to prove to anyone else that wheat is causing my problem. Most people think that I'm just jumping on a gluten free fad bandwagon. Oh well. I've tested it about 8 times, including blind tests where I accidentally ate wheat. I've been almost symptom free for like 2 years now.

One of the supermarkets near me often sells bags or vacuum packets lamb or beef offcuts. There are usually fatty, boney, meaty that don't display well.

Usually for about AU$4.50 a kg, compared to $14+ / kg for "quality" cuts of lamb.

I slow cook them, often with curry powder and extra turmeric, or a tomato base.

If I eat bread or pasta or baked goods regularly, I get intense urges to scratch my skin, cervical lymph nodes become active, my sinuses start getting mucousy, my knuckles and wrists start to ache, and I feel like my ears are a little blocked and sensitive.

A few good meals of mostly slow cooked mammal results in rapid improvement, and if I stay away from the things I know cause general, non-localised inflammation, I generally feel well. More awake when I'm awake, and more asleep when I'm asleep.

Just bear in mind there are people reporting the same cures from an all-plant diet. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

There are also people who report things for almost everything. All of this anacdotal data is next to worthless.

Anecdotes are the first step to observing patterns that can lead to hypotheses that can be tested in controlled experiments.

Is there any other way that a chain of events leading to a scientific finding can begin?

Contrary to your beliefs there is lot's of data in favor of an all plant based diet (which i do not follow so I do not push any agenda here).

The data has been pretty clear since the early 90s and the large population studies that were made then.

Different diets foster different environments for bacteria. Different diets can work for many one works better than others

Its not my beliefs. I'm just pointing out that the simple act of strictly regulating your diet will almost always make you healthier because you have to watch what you eat and avoid crap like takeaway

I think a very small number of people have carb intolerance (e.g. Jordan Peterson and his daughter), but a much larger number of people would benefit from reading The Mind Body Prescription first. I was about to try keto when I found that book, which was literally a miracle cure for me.

Also meatheals.com is chock-full of anecdotes of people healing themselves using the carnivore diet.

Interesting. It's almost like religious faith-healing anecdotes.

Unfortunately most nutrition science is so bad, that I've come to the conclusion that "if it works for you, great!" If people change their diet and it makes them feel better, who am I to tell them they are wrong?

Do you have anything worthwhile to say, instead of sarcasm and cynicism, in response to people actually healing themselves by eating exclusively meat?

Or are you just here to denigrate your fellow human beings?

If a person is suffering from chronic or mild-acute allergies I usually suggest they try eating nothing but steamed or slow cooked fatty lamb or beef for at least a few days and a see if symptoms improve, then introduce vegetables one at a time.

As mammals, being allergic to mammal muscle meat and organs isn't compatible with life.

That's not necessarily true. For example, humans do not have Neu5Gc[1] unlike most mammals. Having Neu5Gc antibodies is perfectly compatible with human life, yet consumption of lamb, pork or beef can cause inflammation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Glycolylneuraminic_acid

AFAIK, none of these studies have been done on humans.

The popular article where I read about it referenced: [1] [2]. I guess it is a quite recent finding. But I am no biologist to judge.

[1] Okerblom J., Varki A.: Biochemical, Cellular, Physiological, and Pathological Consequences of Human Loss of N-Glycolylneuraminic Acid, ChemBioChem 18, 1155, 2017, DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201700077

[2] Peri S. et al.: Phylogenetic Distribution of CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase (CMAH), the Enzyme Synthetizing the Proinflammatory Human Xenoantigen Neu5Gc, Genome Biology and Evolution, 2018, DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evx251

Thanks for bringing this up, I wasn't aware of it.

>There's a modern movement of people adopting an all-carnivore diet [1][2], who report it to be effective at overcoming conditions like autoimmune illness, depression and other chronic illnesses that defied other forms of treatment.

Famously, Jordan Peterson:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peter...

This drives me crazy, this all stems from Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. We have no idea what JP or his daughter are actually eating. This is the smallest sample size of anecdotes. The fact that this diet has gotten this much attention is absurd.

No it doesn't, there are lots of people 5,10 or longer years on a zero carb diet, has nothing to do with JP. Lots of anecdotes as well ( amber ohearn, kelly hogan, shawn baker, zeroing in on health FB group etc)

A Facebook group? Really? Those are not the kinds of sources that increase credibility in my book

You cherry-picked one of several sources listed just so you could snarkily dismiss the whole point.

We're talking about groups of people experiencing similar health problems, engaging in ongoing discussion to experiment with possible remedial techniques and reporting back with their results.

If they are achieving positive results, which seems to be the case, they deserves better than this kind of sneer.

Peterson and Rogan are new kids in the block. Charlene Anderson for example has been on it for 20 years.

There is nothing absurd about this diet if it is enabling people to successfully manage their diseases (meatheals.com). You should respect and appreciate that fact instead of getting mad about it.

Diet is not religion. It is simply a tool and for some can be a lifestyle.

There are also people reporting that they have cured cancer with crystals. I mean, always consider the source.

This is such a low-quality comment.

You're talking about people who have suffered for years with painful illnesses that have seemed impossible to treat, connecting online and working together as they experiment to find possible treatments, testing the results and reporting back so others can benefit from the learnings.

It deserves better than this kind of grunting dismissal.

People say that about the crystals, too, though. And alleged non-coeliac gluten intolerance, and fluoride avoidance, and vaccine avoidance, and many, many other things.

People deserve to be judged on the outcomes they achieve and the evidence they provide.

Sure, much of the evidence around for this stuff is anecdotal or n=1 pathology results, but it's necessarily the case that anecdote and small-sample data is the first step in the chain of events that can lead to scientific findings.

If your point is simply that sometimes people believe things that are untrue, that is obvious to the point of banality.

If it’s that anyone experimenting with carnivore diets and reporting positive results should by-default be treated with distrust or contempt, your point seems to lack both compassion and scientific awareness.

Good thing these people on the carnivore diet did not have you cynically advising them when they were coming across it, eh? Otherwise they would still be suffering and this conversation may not be taking place.