Update! Patreon Ideas and Carnivore Diet Thoughts (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I hope y’all have been doing well. The heat wave in Japan has been rough- I’m tempted to stand in front of Shibuya station handing out pamphlets on salt, potassium and why sports drinks are crap. Luckily the recent Typhoon has cooled things down a bit.

Lately I’ve been thinking about ways to improve the Patreon page - the support I get from is super helpful and adds a reassuring stability, so even if there’s some sort of youtube-pocalypse I know I’ll be able to reach you guys with my content. I’m brainstorming some ways to revamp my Patreon approach to show more appreciation for your support.

Here’s what I’m thinking- I can’t do everything, but comments/suggestions are welcome!  :

-A consistent monthly update (something similar to this post updating you on what topics I’m digging into)
-Releasing the transcript & Audio early (My process is Transcript > Audio > Video, so you could have access to the Transcript about 48 hours early, the Audio about 24 hours early)
-Monthly Q&A (Would set up some sort of front of the line access depending on the bracket for scalability reasons)
-Make answers to questions I’ve been asked available in the feed (with the askers permission & with personal details cut out of course)

-Other suggestions? Let me know!


Other than that here’s a quick update on what I’ve been looking into:

◆Topic I’ve been interested in recently: The Carnivore Diet
Let me say at the start that this post isn’t to promote or even make the case for a carnivore diet, it’s simply sharing the thought process that got me to even consider how this could be healthy in some way.

A while back when I was reading about Keto and Paleo, I was thinking that we probably used to eat mostly animal parts for food. But at the same time it seemed unrealistic that hunter gatherers would be able to consistently kill enough animals to be able to subsist only on animalsAccording to evolutionary biologists like Daniel Lieberman, we were of course eating plant matter - getting about 100 grams of fiber a day. (Hence the phrase being “hunter gatherers,” not “hunter hunters”) 

Learning more about the microbiome and the importance of fiber for keeping up a healthy gut microbiome had me dismiss the possibility that a meat-based diet could be good, so I was very skeptical when I came across this guy Shawn Baker on twitter - a 50 year old MD who only eats meat and is quite athletic. He recently set a world record on the Concept 2 Indoor Rowing machine. He’s a non practicing physician (or, more negatively put: “ex-MD” I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and trusting his story that this doesn’t have to do with competence but a malicious bureaucratic fuss) 

I remember not quite understanding that by carnivore he meant literally 100% meat - I tweeted him asking something like “You don’t eat any plants, not even avocados?” He didn’t get back to me, but one of his followers did with the equivalent of “Hell no. That’s what carnivore means.” 

Later I saw him on the Joe Rogan podcast - an interesting discussion and, while he’s very athletic for his age, I still had plenty of doubts about the long term effects of the diet, especially since it couldn’t be beneficial for the gut biome. (Also, he doesn’t eat many organ meats at all apparently. I hope he at least eats some skin/cartilage/connective tissue, which contains glycine - something that has a decent amount of health benefits[1,2,3,4], and it’s supposed to be healthy to have methionine in balance with glycine[R])

Then, more recently I learned of Jordan Peterson and Mikhaila Peterson’s diet. I talked about Mikhaila in my second most recent video. As I mentioned in the video, she:

“Had severe rheumatoid arthritis since at least age 7, began taking antidepressants for severe anxiety and depression from around age 11, had many joints replaced by age 17 thanks to the arthritis, and had severe skin problems from age 19. At one point she was sleeping 17 hours a day and relied on Adderall just to keep herself awake, not to mention taking 2 antidepressants and 6 other medications for her other health problems.

Then, thanks to a very strict elimination diet which allowed basically only meat and select greens, virtually all her problems cleared up: Her arthritis and skin conditions cleared up in 3 weeks, her depression disappeared in 3 months. A month after that, the extreme fatigue went away. 

Grains, dairy, sugar and soy are what she’s particularly wary of, but things as seemingly harmless as almonds, rice, white cabbage, bananas, citrus, onions and zucchini have all given her major issues when she’s tried to reintroduce them into her diet. For the past six months she’s now been on a diet that is just meat, salt and water - this was the last step in diet improvement for her. She says on her blog that on the all meat diet, she just feels better and better, her brain is the fastest it’s ever been and she’s happy and energized all day. And, she takes zero medications.”

Her more famous father, Jordan, also had excellent results with an elimination diet: He lost fifty pounds, his acid reflux went away as did autoimmune issues like psoriasis and alopecia, his severe depression and insomnia drastically improved. What did remain for him was anxiety - a powerful feeling of “doom” in the morning. In early April 2018, he then cut out the greens so his diet became only meat, salt and water and according to Mikhaila’s blog, he started to feel better in two days. On the Joe Rogan podcast, Jordan said his anxiety felt 75% better in just two weeks after switching to meat only.

The Petersons’ two anecdotes were very interesting for me. If they had gone straight to the carnivore diet then started talking about all these benefits, I would have just chalked it up to it being on a low carb diet and benefitting from the removal of sugar, gluten, dairy etc. But, they were essentially doing a strict no processed food, no sugar, whole foods diet then got even better by cutting out vegetables. To be honest when I first saw Shawn Baker’s story I wasn’t too impressed, but this had me very curious.

Another case was that of a semi-popular vegan youtuber “Vegetable Police,” who recently switched to an all meat diet to alleviate GI issues (ulcerative colitis) that he’s apparently had for quite some time. If I’m remembering correctly he said he felt significantly better in 3 days, as mentioned in his video:

・10 Year Vegan Eats Nothing But Beef For 30 Days: Amazing Carnivore Diet Before And After Story ("Digestive health increasing without the fiber? Twilight zone... But it just works. So for those who are new here, and I'm sorry - I know I built up quite a large vegan audience, and it was a very hard decision to make to even try this. And my goal, my plan was just to try it behind the scenes for 30 days, hope that it failed, and then just go back to veganism. ... when you have the digestive disorders and you're reacting to so many different things and plants- it was just confusing me because I kept reacting to everything and no matter what I tried, it just wasn't going away, so that's what we're doing...")

These are just anecdotes of course, but intriguing nonetheless. Intriguing and certainly puzzling depending on what health paradigm you’ve invested time in. There’s plenty more anecdotes at http://meatheals.com/ if you’re interested

A while before learning about this carnivore trend, I had read Dr. Stephen Gundry’s “Plant Paradox” where he talks about the detrimental properties of certain plant foods. At the time I felt like I should probably go back and look at what studies he based this information of off, but I did have the thought “maybe that’s why I feel crappy after eating a lot of cashews…” (Cashews were one of the “bad” plant foods Gundry talks about.) 

Then again, Gundry recommends drinking almost a liter of olive oil per week, and he’s certainly not carnivore. But the book did remind me that you should expect certain plants to have toxic properties, because that’s the only way for a plant to defend itself whereas an animal can fight or run away. (Unless you’re talking about a poisonous frog)

Then again, these “toxic” properties of plants can be sometimes stressing enough to the body to activate a beneficial hormetic response, but not stressing enough to be actually detrimental.

But what’s the threshold?

For example, is it a good idea to build up a ton of oxalate in my system by loading up on spinach? Maybe a little bit would have a beneficial hormetic effect, but depending on the dosage, too much can cause membrane damage and production of reactive oxygen species, and calcium oxalate crystals can build up in certain areas like the thyroid, disrupting function. 

Most kidney stones are made up of calcium oxalate. (Actually that presentation I linked to has me wondering whether someone would get the same benefits they get on a carnivore diet if they went on a low oxalate keto diet.)

George Diggs also did a presentation on plant food toxins

I don’t have a conclusion on the carnivore diet, but I’m keeping an open mind on it and reading about it has been very interesting. It’s intriguing to consider why many people are having significant improvements in health-  Is it because of what they cut out? Is it from the meat itself? Can the meat present it’s “healing” properties only when not in the context of other foods? Could you go back on (and feel good on) vegetables after a certain amount of time? What if you ate meat for 3 days then had a vegan diet for two days and so on, could you get the proposed benefits of both worlds? And so on and so forth.

I’m timidly experimenting with it at the moment (Yesterday all I had was beef, sardines and egg yolks) and I’ve done it in chunks here and there - the most I did was 3 days straight and I felt quite good. But it’s hard to discern whether it’s better than being on a strict keto diet. I feel full of energy, satiated and focused, similar to keto.

You can probably expect a video on this at some point, maybe even this month.
Would love to hear any comments, stories or questions y’all have regarding the topic!

◆If you’re interested in an even bigger can of worms, look into “raw meat diet” or “raw paleo diet.” This guy Derek Nance has been eating primarily raw meat for the past 9 years. Apparently he had been suffering from a wretched case of chronic fatigue syndrome and he started eating raw meat as a last ditch effort, and turned out to be the key he was looking for. (Minor graphic warning for the video - not too bad, but not for everyone. A goat’s head (blood is drained out already) does appear for a couple seconds)

“A divorced electrician from Lexington, Kentucky, Nance claims that he suffered for years from digestive issues—“My body doesn’t produce enough enzymes,” he says—and chronic fatigue syndrome. When his doctors couldn’t help, he experimented with veganism, vegetarianism, and the Mediterranean diet, but nothing worked.

During the winter of 2008, he read about “Native American tribes that lived off of guts and grease,” he says. He had a few goats in his back yard, which he raised for milk. On a whim, Nance decided to slaughter the goats and eat them both raw. He instantly felt better, he says, and hasn’t consumed any animal product that’s touched a stove since.”

⬆︎A snippet from Eric SpitzNagel’s short piece on Nance. (Link to full text)

This raw meat diet sounds like it’s going way too far at first, but there’s plenty of raw animal product dishes in various cuisines:

Japan: Sushi, Tamagokakegohan (raw egg atop rice w/ soy sauce), Basashi (raw horse meat - eaten like Sashimi)


Korea: Yukke (Seasoned raw beef w/ raw egg on top)


Europe/France: Steak Tartare

Germany: Mett (Raw Pork)
Mexico: Carne Apache (Ground beef ceviche)
And more examples here

Personally, I don’t think I could do raw pork or raw chicken,and for beef I’d be really wary about where the meat came from. Although, I have eaten my fair share of raw eggs here and there since I’ve come to Japan.

◆That’s about it for now, looking forward to hearing any comments. Really glad to have you guys supporting me, thanks for keeping me going! 

-Joseph