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Zinc - is it delivering more Vitamin A to peripheral tissues and harming them?
Copper is needed for collagen synthesis, intaking too much zinc will make you copper deficient.
What exactly were you eating on your carnivore diet? Were you strictly avoiding plants and plant derivatives? Were you regularly eating liver or any other organs? What about dairy or eggs?
As much as I have come to believe some version of the carnivore diet to be an ideal diet, I have experimented with a wide variety of things in between strict stints of being on a low Vitamin A version of carnivore in the past 3 years. Fiber, charcoal, clay, minerals, vitamins, other supplements. I tried minimizing fat and eating just meat and white rice a few times. Nothing has relieved my symptoms except the passage of time, and a number of these things made me feel dramatically worse. So...no, as a scientist who has tried a variety of dietary approaches, I steadfastly deny "they were right" about much of anything. Don't get me started on dipSmith again, I've already spent too much time ranting about his ineptitudes.
If beans, fiber, or whatever plant shite makes somebody else feel better, lucky for them, but they had better be very cautious interpreting why they feel better eating a bunch of plant material. It's not the case for me, it's apparently not the case for a majority of people that switch to carnivore, and it's clearly not an ideal eating strategy once you've spent any time comparing human anatomy and physiology to other animals and their evolved dietary strategies.
I had my serum zinc and copper levels checked after supplementing zinc for a while and those results did indicate my zinc levels were at the upper threshold of the reference range and copper was slightly below the reference range. However, I also had a Spectracell Micronutrient Test at the same time which indicated I was extremely deficient in zinc and was sufficient in copper. I never knew what to make of that. I was primarily supplementing zinc picolinate, which appears to behave differently than a couple other forms like citrate and gluconate. I got the impression after reading a few papers that the picolinate form had the highest rate of absorption through the intestines but may not be all that bioavailable once it reaches the bloodstream. Regardless, it was probably a bad idea to supplement any form of zinc with as much meat as I've been eating, but in searching for answers I decided to try it temporarily.
@wavygravygadzooks Could be pyroluria which causes a functional deficiency of zinc and b6. Could be copper deficiency or copper toxicity. Could be adrenal issues (you need good adrenal activity) to send signals to the liver to make ceruloplasmin
For me I had zinc at highest range in blood and copper at lowest range and it ended up being copper toxicity. I was copper toxic in the liver and that gave me functional copper deficiency at the same time. As if you have excess cu2 in the liver that doesn’t oxidise into cu1 then that will cause issues with the Ferroxidase enzymes like ceruloplasmin.
Zinc Picolinate I’m not a fan of, zinc methionine was most effective for me.
I've been eating just muscle meat for two years. My doctor suggested it to me after doing a capsule endoscopy that showed sores in my small intestine. In the beginning I felt better but overtime my diarrhea worsened. I was also developing arthrosis in my left knee and scoliosis. Also eczema in the palms of my hand (dyshidrotic) and atopic in my chest. My eyes with repetitive uveitis (unilateral, alternating, very painful). Migraines. During carnivore improved but two years later I was again badly sick. Two years, just meat. And sick again.
I'm aware of a steady change for better when I reduced the amount of beef from 3 to 1 pound a day (I only eat beef) and started eating beans and bread (I make it myself in a pan from organic whole wheat, spelt, rye and oats. It is almost sourdough starter). I also eat apples and bananas from the Canary Islands. It's been 2 years since I started and I'm at last fine. Last month I began running again!
I hope my testimony can help you (and others).
Apologies if you've had to answer these questions many times before and are tired of it, but...how much fat were you eating? Was it just what came on the meat, or were you adding more as additional cuts of pure fat and/or tallow? Are there any other factors that you think might be involved, like exposure to mold in buildings?
I'm starting to think that, for some individuals, there might be a suboptimal amount of copper in a diet comprised entirely of muscle meat. Clearly some people can excel on just muscle meat, like Shawn Baker and Anthony Chaffee. But maybe copper is in higher demand in some states of poor health. There's that group of people following Jason Hommel who claim that supplementing copper has fixed a variety of health issues for them. Morley Robbins seems to have pointed out a legitimate connection between copper and Vitamin A metabolism. I personally really like eating heart, which has more copper than other muscles.
It also seems like fat metabolism and/or gluconeogenesis has been severely compromised in some people (not that this explains your particular problems). Sally Norton has talked about her personal need and the need of some of her clients who tried carnivore to include at least a small amount of carbohydrates in their diet to sleep normally, among other issues. Paul Saladino adopted his current sugar-loaded diet after struggling with a strict carnivore diet. It's pretty clear that humans have minimal requirements for exogenous carbohydrates, so it would seem there is something broken in people who can't adapt to a ketogenic diet.
I was eating just muscle meat. I always removed all visible fat and cooked in a carbon steel pan. I thought of adding olive oil but in the end I didn't do it ever.
My home was built 22 years ago. It's a 2nd floor flat 8 Km away from the Mediterranean sea coast. I don't think it's moldy yet, this is a very dry zone (it rains very few days, about 250/350 mm/year).
I don't know if copper could be the cause that brought back my autoimmune illness.
About carbohydrates, I slept always fine without eating a single gram of them (I'm very strict). Those years I got very lean and wondered how could baker and others be so strong because I was unable of doing any exercise at all.
Wait...you mean you were deliberately not eating fat or carbs? Do you understand that the human body cannot survive on lean meat like some other carnivores? We do not have the ability to create sufficient amounts of energy from pure protein, we require either fat or carbohydrates as an energy substrate. If you're not already aware of it, please read about s0-called "rabbit starvation". It's a term used to indicate starvation on a diet that is high in protein but too low in fat or carbohydrates, as in a diet comprised entirely of wild rabbit which is typically very lean with insufficient amounts of fat to sustain a human long-term.
That would easily explain the problems you ran into. If that's the case, don't give up on the carnivore diet yet! Try a muscle meat diet with plenty of fat.
Another thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that it is possible you could run into micronutrient deficiencies (e.g. molybdenum) if you are eating the same kind of animal raised on the same farm site. I'm not sure where you were buying your meat and whether it came from more than one farm, but I've been buying most of mine from the same local ranchers and realized it would be a better strategy to also buy some that came from somewhere else just in case the local soils are lacking trace minerals. Would probably also be a good idea to include at least a little bit of meat from other animals like lamb and pork (I wouldn't eat too much pork fat though, depending on their diet they could wind up with suboptimal amounts of PUFAs).
Those 2 years I was eating about 3 pounds of lean beef a day. I guess that means a considerable amount of fat. But I didn't have any carbs at all. I didn't feel bad (mostly very well with frequent malaise, puking very dark bile and sometimes it looked like gelatin). I was too slim but still ok until I became ill again, the same as before when I ate almost every kind of meat, vegetable, fruit, root, spice, juice, grain, you name it: I was a nutrition obsessed guy (and even today I could not be collected knowing I'm doing a deficient diet). So, carnivore saved me for about 2 years with periodic malaise and then let me at the starting point.