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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
@wavygravygadzooks I am seeing people advocating for high does Thiamine (B1) and this helping with a lot of digestion issues, I see you tried supplementing B1 for a while but had some issues (dry skin etc)? I am interested to know what conclusions you came to and how B1 relates to Vitamin A toxicity symptoms?
Cheers
I'm still not entirely clear what impacts the B1 had on me...there are so many variables at play at any given time.
My current feeling is that most of the supplements I've tried have just sped up the Vitamin A detox process and led to worsening symptoms. I've been eating primarily leanish meat ever since I went on a low Vitamin A diet in July of 2020, with the occasional attempt to eat berries, honey, white rice, and supplemental fiber. I believe the all-meat diet has been supplying more than enough nutrients to detox, as I have had chronic diarrhea ever since I started the low Vitamin A diet, and the diarrhea is often watery, yellow/orange, and burns. I had IBS-D for about 15 years before I started this diet, and I never had the kind of crazy diarrhea and GI distress I've had on low Vitamin A. I remain convinced that the diarrhea is part and parcel of rapid detox, and that fiber is not at all necessary. Fiber firms up the stool but slows down GI transit time, which I think works against the detox process, and it just seemed to introduce a different kind of discomfort for me rather than resolve my diarrhea.
You can argue about "the numbers" all day long, in terms of quantities of nutrients listed for this and that food and what that means for your body, but in the end it boils down to what actually happens when you eat a particular way, and I'm still sold on the idea that a diet of meat and fat meets the body's needs while simultaneously removing all the barriers represented by xenobiotic plant compounds and fiber. On paper, there may be very little B1 in meat, but it seems to be sufficient for me if I'm interpreting my symptom pattern correctly (BIG if...I could very well be wrong, but I've been at this for well over a year now).
@wavygravygadzooks no fiber diet will fix your symptoms short term, but I think long term you will develop even more serious issues.. I don't see any 80-90yo people eating just animal foods. But I see plenty of plant based older people.. You simply need healthy microbiome and diet of just animal food doesn't produce favorable population of microbiome in your colon.. I also see it like plants are mainly detoxing and animal foods are anabolic. They build tissues and hormones.. So I think we need good amount of animal foods like egg, dairy, meats etc. lets say first 20 years of our life, but after that we no longer need to grow and we need to detox excess of hormones etc.. So more plant based high fiber diet. Every time I see people doing the opposite it doesn't work.. Young vegans are malnourished and older people eating a lot of dairy, eggs, fatty meats etc.. are fat, have issues with excess of estrogen etc.. so they have aggressive cancers like breast, prostate etc.. wonder why my country Czech Republic with Slovakia next to us have the highest number of colon cancer cases.. I think it's because we eat low fiber diet full of alcohol, flour, low quality fatty meat products and the worst kind of fats like trans fats and vegetable oils.. I am not eating any of that so hopefully I will not end up like a lot of people here heh..
I don't think anyone in modern society has had the luxury of being able to just eat high quality meat for every single meal until very recently. There are no datapoints for longevity on a 100% high quality meat diet.
If people in the carnivore community are being honest about their dietary intake and their health, it would appear that many of their microbiomes are just fine. If you can go for an entire year on a particular diet and still have a solid microbiome, I don't see why the microbiome would get worse beyond that point, unless you run into nutritional deficiencies that create a cascade of health problems that crash your microbiome.
You don't need fiber to eliminate waste and toxins...if you did, people on a carnivore diet would be dying left and right in less than a year, and fasting would never help anyone. On the other hand, every single plant food (including fruit) contains something that our bodies have to "detox" if it gets absorbed through the intestinal wall...plants are full of toxins. It makes zero sense to promote the consumption of toxins in order to eliminate toxins from the body. I'm not saying that fiber can't be used to draw things out of the digestive system, but it represents a tradeoff, just like everything else in medicine, and if you're consuming fiber along with toxins contained in the plants the fiber is found in, how beneficial can that really be compared with not consuming plant toxins in the first place? The evidence that plant foods are at the root of all kinds of disease states and disorders is growing every day.
Thanks for the update, like you I think we would normally get plenty of B1 on a carnivore diet (especially if you are eating pork), I suppose its whether you might need a supraphysiological dose to address maybe a long term deficiency or something.
Regarding fibre, i think the need for it has been thoroughly debunked. There is plenty of info here (https://justmeat.co/wiki/fiber/) if anyone is interested.
Quote from Shaun on December 13, 2021, 8:38 amThanks for the update, like you I think we would normally get plenty of B1 on a carnivore diet (especially if you are eating pork), I suppose its whether you might need a supraphysiological dose to address maybe a long term deficiency or something.
Regarding fibre, i think the need for it has been thoroughly debunked. There is plenty of info here (https://justmeat.co/wiki/fiber/) if anyone is interested.
I wouldn't be so sure.. Especially when the info is coming mainly from carnivore sheeps. It has the same value like all kinds of vegan web sites. They are also 100% sure in their agenda.. I thing that all extremes are bad. So eating 150g of fiber a day or no fiber at all is probably bad idea. Without any fiber how exactly you think you will detox properly without reabsorbing toxins from the bile to the bloodstream? That's only one of the concerns. To me no fiber diet is natural exactly like 100% vegan diet. In real world it basically doesn't exist.. That shows me that ideal will be probably somewhere in the middle..
I think it's more because of the abundance of carbohydrates in the diet of centenarians, not because of fiber. Ray Peat cites enough research to show that much fiber is harmful imho.
It is important to distinguish the soluble fibre (in beans, psyllium ) that prevents the bile reabsorption and insoluble fiber that bulks the stools. Having been a vegetarian 😔 and a carnivore 😞 I must admit that neither diet was particularly satisfying, although I sustained worse damage from the carnivore (with lots of fat and liver). Vegetarian diet made me swollen, always hungry and moody.
There is a balance that each of us has to discover.
I've said it before, I'll say it again...whether 100% meat and 0% fiber is a naturally occurring diet for humans, the fact that modern people can survive on carnivore diets with no fiber for well over a year is clear indication that the body does not need fiber to eliminate waste and toxins. We generate all kinds of toxic metabolic byproducts on a daily basis in addition to whatever comes in the food we eat, and if people on a carnivore diet weren't able to effectively eliminate those, they would become deathly ill in short order.
Seeing as nobody has conducted controlled studies of human health on a carnivore diet (aside from Stefansson), there is absolutely no indication that toxins in the intestines get reabsorbed by those on a carnivore diet. What if the absence of fiber and carbs in the diet leads to a gut biome that discourages destructive beta-glucuronidase activity?
Trying to detoxify with plants is like fighting fire with fire. The fiber might bind up some toxins, but it's also binding things that the body wants to recycle (bile acids, cholesterol), and it comes alongside plant toxins and mineral chelators that in and of themselves harm your body .
The more I read about fiber, the more I realize that the soluble/insoluble categorization is a useless dichotomy. There are fibers in both categories that function like those from the other category, and there are so many different types of fiber out there that the lines become blurry very quickly. Both soluble and insoluble fiber have been shown to bind bile and all kinds of other things in the intestines. Both soluble and insoluble fiber have been shown to feed different bacteria.
What you need for gut health is nourishment of the intestinal lining and the ability to feed certain groups of bacteria. Those bacteria can feed on mucus and other products of the intestinal tract, they don't need fiber. Again, how do you think people survive after fasting for long periods of time?! The bacteria in their guts are being fed by their bodies. Metabolic waste products are being excreted in the feces and urine despite the absence of fiber. The human body is not dependent on fiber, but it has evolved ways to cope with fiber intake and to make some use out of it (e.g. SCFA production via bacteria).