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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
I am on a very high-fat version of carnivore where I prioritize USDA prime short ribs. If there really is something to the high-fiber forms of vitamin A detox practiced by Grant, Dr Smith, Frank Tufano, and many others here and on Dr Smith's site, I would love to know about it. But maybe we just lack evidence comparing the two approaches.
@nina I think you've been eating too much protein and too little fat for too long and this caused your body to make certain adjustments that would not have been necessary on a higher fat diet. If you want to reduce iron/ferritin quickly add some carbs. Honey may be best but it can create cravings. Normally it shouldn't be necessary when eating the right fat to protein ratio for your body so you might want to stop after iron levels have normalized.
As regards Epsom salt - it's a chemical. Any brand will do. Enemas are explained on plenty of pages on the web. Just do a google search and choose the way that you like them best. I prefer plain warm tap water with a pinch of salt. Don't use tea or coffee. If you have digestive issues use your own urine.
I would want to see a thorough description of any case where ditching carnivore and adding in beans or rice "helped" before I drew any firm conclusions. Distinguishing between "felt better" and "corrected underlying disorder" can be quite difficult...feeling better might just mean you've stopped working on the problem. This is why I default to carnivore as the baseline optimal diet (based on the available evidence...I am not dogmatic and would change my opinion the moment I saw good refuting evidence) and work backwards from there: you really need a foundation from which to judge improvement, and if you can't feel good on carnivore then you haven't fixed the problem IMO (with some very rare exceptions). I spent 15 years eating super high processed carb precisely because that seemed to be what mitigated my IBS symptoms the most, but what I realized in the end was those carbs were at the core of my IBS problems. If fiber was the answer, why did I get even worse on a Specific Carbohydrate Diet that was super high in a variety of fibers?
It's pretty clear that Vitamin A is going to come out eventually regardless what you eat, as long as you stop eating Vitamin A. It's also clear that fiber binds to all kinds of stuff. The first question is, do you need fiber to bind to stuff (NO!), and the next question is, if you don't need fiber, what are the tradeoffs of consuming it versus not consuming it. To me, it is basically all detrimental...you are preventing nutrient absorption, slowing intestinal transit (show me a study that shows fiber speeds transit over a carnivore diet...doesn't exist), taxing the intestines and colon, and possibly compromising your ability to digest meat. You are also feeding a shitload of bacteria, which we are told is good for you, but only when comparing with a Standard American or similar diet, not a carnivore diet, and these studies all lack control over any considerable length of time. Stefansson's year in the hospital eating only meat is probably more highly controlled than most any other dietary study ever conducted, the only problem is it lacks replication.
I allow that it's possible the inclusion of fiber in an otherwise carnivore diet speeds up the elimination of some toxins, but I don't see convincing evidence of it.
Frank Tufano is a dumbass flip-flopper just like dipSmith. Everything he says is right until it's not. He's also highly emotional and talks disparagingly about anybody who's not in his boat at the moment. I think eating a carb-based diet is more taxing on the liver than eating a fat-based diet because the liver has to work harder to manage glucose levels in the blood (gluconeogenesis seems to be a lot easier on the body than mitigating damage from excess dietary glucose). Dietary fat gets transported to cells for energy without action by the liver and produces energy more "cleanly" than carbs. The brain prefers ketones over glucose. All long-term energy storage is in the form of fat. Even herbivores absorb most of their energy as fat after bacterial fermentation of plants. Large-bodied mammals run on fat for a reason...it's not possible to support such a large body on carbohydrates (at least, not until humans came along and myopically converted the world to wheatfields and rice plantations).
My closing argument is always the same: the fact that people not only survive but thrive on carnivore diets after being vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore is proof that fiber is not necessary and is primarily a drag to the body.
@carnivore
How is it that carbs will reduce iron? Do you also think that too much protein caused elevated liver enzymes? Will those come down over time or can I do something about that?
Ok. Maybe I'll start with the liver flush. Enemas might me one step too far out of my comfort zone...
Again, I have to take liquid fat right, not solid tallow by the spoon?
My digestion was horrible on a ton of fiber from veggies. I've never tried rice and beans though. You're right, the evidence up to now on the carnivore diet is very clear. I sometimes let people like that influence my thinking. Especially when problems arise.
But one thing: Isn't dietary fat transported to the liver for processing too? Maybe I got that wrong...
The thing that concerns me the most is my light green floating poop that hasn't gone away for almost two months. I don't want to end up with a liver construction so I am looking for answers...
I'm not super well versed on the subject, but it seems like the liver primarily deals with medium chain triglycerides (MCT's) like those from coconut and palm oil and triglycerides produced from carbohydrates. I don't think animal fats (aside from dairy...but it's not evolutionarily consistent to be eating dairy) burden the liver much at all. I think the liver produces the lipoproteins (LDL, HDL) that are used to transport fatty acids to the cells, but I don't think the fatty acids actually go to the liver for processing very often.
Like I said before, if you're not eating vegetables, green poop should really only result from bile acids/salts in the stool, which means that your liver and gallbladder are doing a fine job of getting bile into the intestines. The floating aspect suggests fat in the stool, which is probably from the bile acids (considering that your poop is green from a bunch of bile) rather than from fat malabsorption.
BTW my opinion on those liver flushes is that, at least for someone on a carnivore diet, it is probably just a waste of your time and dietary fat, not to mention begging for GI discomfort. I've never tried one myself. But it does seem like a high-fat carnivore diet accomplishes the same thing much more naturally. My understanding of a liver flush is that a huge slug of fat causes a bunch of bile to be released into the intestines, and then epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) is used to intentionally flush a lot of that bile through the colon as quickly as possible by causing diarrhea. The main scenario in which I could see this being useful is if you are trying to create isolated pulses of detoxification and want to just "get it all out" in one go rather than doing it gradually. For example, if the detox process causes discomfort, maybe you could eat in such a way as to minimize detox and symptoms for a couple weeks (e.g. lean meat and white rice) and then every now and then do a liver flush to isolate all your detox misery to a single weekend.
My feeling is that people that actually benefit from liver flushes are probably those that have a history of, or are currently on, a diet low in animal fats. It's probably the same camp of people that benefit from eating bitters and other spices like ginger that promote bile release...you wouldn't need to prompt your system to release bile using plant compounds if you were eating an optimal diet that included a bunch of animal fat on a regular basis.
Wavygravy there's a lady on the Facebook group The power of ozone and liver detox. She admins the group and she's been on meat and beans and its changed her world. Me being carnivore for 7 years I've never had movement any more then once every 1-3 days and they were always pale brown in color. Since I started having 1.5teaspoons of black beans 6 times a day for the last two days I've dropped big dumps both mornings and nights with no change in my meat quantities other then dropping my fats lower. And all these movements have been dark greenish brown and slightly oily/waxy- a good sign of bile excretion.
Our discussion now in that forum is separating your fats from beans by 90min so as the bile fats can bind with the beans instead of the food fats. I'll be experimenting with that tomorrow. And for those who can't handle the beans at first going super tiny at first really helped with me like 3 or 4 beans wait an hour n repeat. I'm up to 1.5 teaspoons now and doing okay. I only want to take the minimum amount of soluble fiber as to get 2 dark green movements a day. The problems I'm seeing in those communities is that they're treating the beans like a buffet when they're really more of a plant medicine to be taken in small amounts.
Well, I hope that is helping you, but think about what exactly is happening... Most food sits in your stomach for hours as it gets digested, so I really don't think 90 minutes is enough to separate beans from whatever else you eat during the day. The beans are probably binding to both bile acids and dietary fats...the green in the stool is probably from the bile acids, and the oily/waxy appearance could come from either bile acids or dietary fats. Is binding bile acids and dietary fats good? Not that I know of. As I've said about a million times already, I haven't seen any evidence that toxins are attached to bile acids, so you're probably just draining yourself of nutrients that make bile salts like cholesterol, taurine, and glycine.
Whatever the case, I hope you get real benefits from it, keep us posted on any progress.
I'm guessing the person you're talking about is Paola Dziwetzki? I'm not on Facebook but I watched a Judy Cho video where Paola Dziwetzki talked about Vitamin A toxicity from eating liver. It looked like Paola veered off from carnivore towards Karen Hurd's bean protocol from what I saw in the comments section. Considering her strong belief in ozone therapy, which I find dubious, I personally am not so sure about her reasoning on anything.
Paola is still carnivore she is just playing with beans looking for improvements now.
Interesting. Many in the VA-Detox space (Paola Dziwetzki as well) talk about how toxic bile is and what kinda damage it can do when it gets shoved up the liver and somehow gets into the blood stream. Is there any truth to that? Why should the body produce something so toxic that could kill its own tissues? I don't think there is any truth to that theory.
I thought about the liver flushes the same way. Not sure if I am going to do one.
Yes it's Paola Dziwetzki. I uploaded 2 pictures of one of her latest posts. She said that pale, green stool is a sign of liver damage/ostruction/insufficient bile flow. What does actually turn stool brown and why does the body stop that process? Can I do something about it? Honestly, it still freaks me out...
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