Joe Rogan – Jordan Peterson’s Type 1 carnivore diet Cured His Depression

Right so I get you know I want to get.

Into because this is a I think this is a fascinating thing with you personally that your diet you’re on this carnivore dog yeah no okay so I want to preface that with something I am NOT a dietary expert so I’m not speaking as an uninformed citizen yes well this is anecdotal evidence from a human being yet is dealt with autoimmune issues yes the whole life yes you have done this for how long now I’ve been on a pure 1 Diabetes carnivore diet for about two months and a pretty very low carb greens only modified Blood Pressure carnivore diet for about a year so in the year and-and-and-and a low-carb diet for two years so from the time that I’ve known you I’ve known you for what two and a half years now sometime yeah when I first met you had much more weight on your body yeah you look different yeah and you were back then you were eating like standard diet right like normal people yes pasta bread yes chicken whatever yes right you shift it over to only meat and greens I saw you and I’m like you look fantastic I’m like what are you doing you’re like I changed my diet I only meat and green so I was like wow that’s.

Fascinating well I felt like okay what you’re doing is cutting out Diet High refined sugars and all these different that are problematic preservatives all the processed foods and you’re having this extreme health benefit I was like wow that’s really excellent you’ve shown great discipline then you decided to take it to another place and cut out the greens you know what was the motivation for cutting out the greens well all of the motivation for this has been my experience with my daughter because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease I just talked to her this what is it called well R it’s arthritis but it there’s way more to it than that but the arthritis was the major set of symptoms she had 40 affected joints and she had to have her hip replaced and her ankle replaced when she was 15 16 and so she basically hobbled around on two broken legs for two years in extreme agony and that was just a tiny fraction of the whole set of problems I just talked to her this morning she’s in Chicago looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced so that’s next on the horizon but apart from.

That she is doing so well now it is absolutely beyond comprehension so she’s very trim she had a baby but she’s very trim she’s down to about 118 pounds she’s about five foot six she’s just glowing with health all of her autoimmune system symptoms are gone all of them and she was also seriously depressed like severely depressed way worse than you think she couldn’t stay awake for more than about six hours without taking Ritalin and she was dying and had a cousin my Dad’s First cousin’s daughter she died when she was thirty from an associated autoimmune condition so there’s a fair bit of this in our family it was bloody bleak I’ll tell you and my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related you know and why well we did notice that when Michaela was young if she ate oranges or strawberries that she’d get a rash like were there and then when she developed arthritis if she ate oranges in particular that would definitely cause a flare it was the only thing we could see the problem is that in order to identify a dietary component the response has to be pretty quick after.

You eat the thing like if it’s two days later how the hell are you gonna figure that out a lot of these responses appear to be delayed for four days and lasts a month so good luck figuring that out anyways Michaela noticed about three years ago no more than that now five years ago she was at Concordia University and struggling with her illness and all the association associated problems she noticed that around exam time she was starting to develop real Home Remedies skin problems and my cousin’s daughter who I mentioned had really bad Dog Food skin problems and wounds that wouldn’t heal and that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her and she thought oh it must be stress and then she thought wait a second I really changed my diet when I’m studying all I do is eat bagels all I do is eat bread sandwiches she thought maybe it’s the bread so she cut out gluten first and it had a remarkable effect like really a remarkable effect and then she went on a radical elimination diet all the way down to nothing but chicken broccoli and then her symptoms started to drop off by one like and like one of the that happened is she.

Started to wake up in the morning she started to be able to stay awake all day when you’re only staying awake for six hours with riddlin stay away all day that’s like having a life and so a whole bunch of improved then her depression went away and I’ve had depression since I was 13 probably and very severe and I’ve treated it a variety of ways some of them quite successfully but it’s been a constant battle and my father had it and his father had it and it’s all just rife in my family and my wife has autoimmune problems and her niece a depression define it Oh would you define it because that’s a word that’s a blanket term yeah well imagine that you wake up and that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday you would feel that even though the times wrong yes just-just-just worse than that because well one of the Makayla told me was she thought well what’s it like to be depressed imagine you have a dog and you really loved the dog and then the dog dies and then about three years ago our dog died and that was Mikayla’s dog and she.

Really liked that dog and she said that was bad but it’s nowhere near bad as being depressed and I asked her – at one point when she was about 15 or 16 I said look you’ve got a choice kid here’s the you can either have depression or arthritis which one I’ll take the after she’d lost two joints so it was no joke it’s no joke man it there isn’t any no I wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t say there’s nothing because worse is a very deep hole right but it’s bad yeah people who prove you wrong right oh yes definitely worse is a deep hole anyways her depression went away all these symptoms went away and like radically so what changed her from chicken and broccoli to carnivore well she kept experimenting and she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that too so this is why I wouldn’t recommend that anybody does this casually because we don’t understand much about it but the upshot was that well she kept experimenting and she started to add back and take them away and.

Sometimes when she added the results were devastating she was like done for a month she eats the wrong thing done for a month all the symptoms came back the depression came back she thought that her whole dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long it was so extreme and it’s like I took her two years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef greens and then she figured out that she could only so greens themselves well look so what happened okay so two years ago she said dad you have tried this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me now I didn’t have arthritis but I had a lot of the other symptoms and I thought okay Mikayla I can try anything for a month she said try it for a month I thought okay whatever I can hang by my fingernails from the windowsill for a month like it’s just not that big a deal and so eliminated I went on really low carb diet okay so this is what happened I had gastric reflux disorder and I was snoring quite a lot I stopped snoring the first week I thought what the hell that’s supposed to be.

Associated with weight loss because I had gained some weight I weighed about 212 pounds and I’m about 6 1 and a half so that was my maximum weight I stopped snoring which was a great relief to tear me so that just quit and that’s a big deal right because if snore you have sleep apnea and then you don’t sleep right it’s like not a good thing ok next I started waking up in the mornings I’d never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life I always had stumble to the shower and then maybe I could wake up it took me an hour and I felt terrible and so all the sudden I Kopp it was like whoa look at that I’m awake in the morning and I’m clear-headed and aren’t gloomy and horrible it’s like well he’s not weird then I lost seven pounds the first month I thought seven pounds that’s a lot in a month and I’d already gone for a whole year on a sugar-free diet I didn’t lose any weight and I’d be the exercise a sugar free but did you cut out bread and no it was just desserts sugar no and I thought that might do it didn’t make any difference at all seven pounds well then I lost seven pounds the next month then I.

Lost seven pounds the next month I lost seven pounds every month for seven months like I’d throw away all my clothes I went back to the same weight that I was when I was 26 and my psoriasis disappeared and I had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up and then the last thing that went away from me I was still having of a time with mood regulation and that sucked because when I changed my diet I didn’t respond to antidepressants properly anymore they weren’t working and so although I was getting better physically on a variety of ways like radical ways I was really having of a time regulating my mood and I was having sporadic really negative reactions to food when I ate something I shouldn’t so that took about a year and half to clear up and I was still really anxious in the morning up to three months ago like horribly and then it would get better all day people said well you’re under a lot of stress and I thought yeah I’ve been under a lot of stress for like 10 years like it’s a lot but it wasn’t any more stressful than helping my daughter deal with her illness that’s.

That no this is something different and she said to me quit eating greens and I thought oh really Jesus Mikayla I’m eating cucumbers lettuce broccoli chicken and beef it’s like I have to cut out the goddamn greens it’s like try it for a month okay within a week I was 25 less anxious in the morning within two weeks seventy-five percent and I’ve been better every single day I’m better now probably than I’ve ever been in my life and I haven’t been taking antidepressants for a whole year so I don’t know what and I weigh 162 pounds like I have no I’m and I’ve actually gained musculature I’ve been doing some working out but not a lot and so I can six hours a night no problem I wake up the morning I’m awake if I take a 15-minute nap that used to take me an hour to recover from that’s gone here’s the coolest thing I’ve had gum disease since I was 25 that’s been serious enough to have I’ve had to have minor surgical interventions scraping and that sort of thing to keep it at bay it’s gone I checked with my dentist before this last tour no inflammation.

And that’s associated with heart disease by the way gum inflammation and gingivitis it’s a good risk factor heart disease it means the systemic inflammation is gone and it’s not supposed to happen you’re not supposed to recover from gingivitis and my gums are in perfect shape it’s like what the hell so here’s what happened I lost fifty pounds it’s like that’s a lot right I’m nowhere near hungry as I used to be my appetizer probably formed by 70 I don’t get blood sugar dysregulation problems I need way less sleep I get up in the morning and fine I’m not anxious I’m not depressed I don’t have psoriasis my legs were numb on the sides that’s gone I’m certainly intellectually at my best at the moment which is a great relief especially doing this tour depression is gone I’m stronger I can swim better and my gum disease is gone it’s like what the hell and you’ve done no Drink Water blood work so you don’t know what your lipid profile is or no I’ll get that done again when they go back take any vitamins no I eat beef salt and water that’s it and I never cheat ever not even a little bit not.

Soda no wine I drink club soda well that’s not still water well you know when you’re down to that level no it’s not Joe there’s club soda Joe’s really bubbly there’s Perrier which is sort of bubbly there’s flat water and there’s hot water so that’s crazy well we ate last night and I ate what you ate just we both had that giant tomahawk yeah I had wine though yeah I’m curious about this I’m very curious and I think you might try it but I eat a lot of vegetables yeah but I don’t have any problems like health problem hey man like I’m not disclaimer number two I am not recommending this to anyone however I have had however I have had many people come up to me on the tour and say look I’ve been following your daughter’s blog and I’ve lost like a hundred pounds I think what you lost a hundred pounds see I lost 200 pounds in six months I talked to a woman yesterday she lost 15 pounds in one month she was 70 it’s like this is all right here’s a question why is everyone fat and stupid that’s a question man because it’s new is there something s it is it’s new and it’s not a sedentary lifestyle that that.

Hypothesis seem to hold water there’s something wrong with the way we’re eating and the what’s wrong is that we’re eating way too many carbohydrates I think but never mind a no x8 shift the elimination of most carbohydrates has made a big shift in my life and I do cheat occasionally with bread and occasionally with pasta I will go off with ice cream and along those lines but most of the time I’m just Lose Weight eating meat and vegetables most of the time and then I have a cheat day like you know once a week yeah especially if I go to dinner I’ll have a little pasta and it seem to mess too bad but I do feel after I do it it’s like for simple mouth pleasure I’m allowing myself to feel tired after we’re tired yeah that’s a big one man yeah but like I oh yeah like well really I can’t ya know and it’s so interesting to like I can’t believe I can wake up in the morning okay that’s never happened to me in my whole life and when I was a kid 13 12 I had of a time waking up in the morning it was just brutal I just thought that’s how it was this is what I mean again I’m not a nutritionist.

Either but what’s fascinating to me is I haven’t heard any negative stories about people doing this well I have a negative story okay one of the that both Mikayla and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren’t supposed to the reaction to eating what we weren’t supposed to was absolutely catastrophic what did show what did you switch to what did you eat rather um well the worst response I think we’re allergic to or lerczak whatever the hell this is having an inflammatory response to something called sulfites and we had some apple cider that had sulfites in it and that was really not good like I was done for a month that was the first time I talked to Sam Harris you were done for oh yeah it took me out for a month it was awful real yeah so I would sell oh and what so this is right before this whole truth conversation with sam Harris at the Guthrie in the mud during he was I think the day I talked to Sam was like the worst day of my life not because of talking to Sam but it was just physical Jesus I was so dead but I didn’t want to not do it.

Cider like but what was his whole fight sin and what was it doing there oh it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom and I seriously been overwhelming like there’s no way I could have lived like if that would have lasted for see Mikayla knew by point that it would probably only last a month and I was like a month yeah my cider well I didn’t sleep that month I didn’t sleep for 25 days I didn’t sleep at all I didn’t sleep at all for 25 days how is it possible that I’ll tell you how it’s possible you lay in bed frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours and then you get up oh my god oh yeah not in some that’s what we thought yeah I mean look again I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about okay this is all a mystery the fact that my daughter was so sick see the one thing that I did know because I scoured the literature on arthritis when she was a kid the Review Paper scientific literature and because we were interested in the dietary connection and the only thing I could find that reliable was that if.

People with arthritis fasted their symptoms reliably went away and that’s actually a well-documented finding but then if they started to eat again then there were symptoms came back and I thought well what the hell does it not matter what eat they can’t be reactive to everything it’s like no but they can be reactive to almost everything and the difference between everything and almost everything that’s a big difference and so Mikayla seems to be maybe me too and hammies on the same diet because she has autoimmune problems on her side of the family so Mikayla seemed to inherit all of them your skin looks better oh Jesus Joe I’m waiting whatever here yeah you look like more vibrant it’s very strange thank you welcome but they see my point is I you’re saying that there’s a there is problems with this diet but that seem to be a problem with the diets use a problem with deviating from the diet your body becomes accustomed with well one of the hypothesis that we’ve been pursuing and there’s some justification for this in the Review Example scientific literature is that the reason that you lay on layers.

Of fat is because the fat acts as a buffer between you and the toxic that you’re eating because fat is actually an organ it has functions other than merely the storage of calories and maybe when you strip out that protective layer then you’re more sensitive to what you shouldn’t be eating this is all speculative hypothesis right or maybe you sensitize yourself by removing it from your constant diet I don’t bloody know well I would think it would be much more likely that because you think about people who are alcoholics they develop a tolerance to alcohol know you get off of that and then you have a drink and your tolerances are shot and then you immediately have a diverse reaction to the alcohol yeah same thing with marijuana yeah when people do it all the time you your body becomes tolerant well I think that the layering of fat on might be part of the tolerance mechanism mmm so it’s not merely a matter of caloric intake it’s a matter of Toxic calorie intake buffered by whatever it is that fat is doing as a neuro endocrine organ but again like I said.

I’m out of my depth here but you know the whole everyone’s out of their depth the goddamn food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture not the Department of Health it wasn’t predicated on any scientific studies whatsoever we should have we shouldn’t be eating massive quantities of corn syrup we way too many carbohydrates what Michaela posted a paper the other day a doctor has successfully treated type 1 diabetes with a Shawn Baker carnivore diet type 1 not type 2 so that’s bloody impressive yeah it’s very curious to me because you’re talking about the one adverse reaction which is when you deviate from the diet yeah what I’m talking about is when I read people’s accounts of trying this diet it’s almost universally positive yeah I know but again that’s probably and it’s the same with all these stories that I’m collecting as I’m doing and you know people lots of people have come up to me and said look I lost 45 pounds in the last three months I think yeah I think what it’s shocking to me I think well what do you make of that say well I can’t believe it well who can oh I couldn’t believe it fifty pounds it’s.

Like first of all I didn’t know I had 50 pounds to lose you know I thought it was maybe 20 pounds heavier than I should have been should have been 185 something like that I guess that’s 25 to 30 pounds that was the maximum thought no lost I meant 162 and I was at 212 so what’s that fifty 50 pounds it’s a lot of weight Jesus I threw had to throw all my clothes away I can’t believe it when I saw you last night I was like you’re so slim like your stomach is completely flat it’s and this is not a lean mean fighting yeah man and you’re not a an exercise fanatic it’s not like you’re starving yourself it’s not like you’re going I’m not that’s another thing I should say to people if you want to try a diet like this you eat enough meat and fat so you were not hungry okay you can’t get hungry you’re not eating enough if you’re hungry and if hungry you’re gonna cheat and it’s gonna drive you stark raving mad the other thing that was really cool is like I really liked sweets like I’ve kind of lived on peanut butter sandwiches in chocolate milk no not really but that was my go-to food you.

Know both of which were terrible for me um but after I stopped eating carbohydrates for a month the carbohydrate cravings went away you know last night when we were out for dinner somebody ordered White Chocolate bread pudding and I bloody love Rum Sauce bread pudding with caramel and ice cream so it was sitting there and I could smell it like you know thought I could go all fantastic mr. Fox on that Paula Deen bread pudding and just tear it down in about 15 seconds but it wasn’t intense as a craving for a cigarette if your next ex-smoker it was like God be really nice to eat that but like my appetite declined by about 75 that’s been permanent that’s been so there’s a perverse thing for you I eat way less and now I’m not as hungry okay how does that make sense well you’re not eating way less you’re eating way less thing yes you have 30 ounce steak lust yes best not to be hungry although it didn’t look like it was 30 no there’s a small 30 on the steak well I think it starts out 30 ounces before they cook it right loses a considerable right very fatty right but that’s the other thing too you must have to get.

A lot of fat yeah well I eat fatty cuts of steak and yeah Michaela is buying fat directly from the butcher store and we cooked that up cut it into small pieces and fry it up till it’s crispy Wow it’s actually quite delicious it’s not New Orleans bread pudding with ice cream but it’s not you mean I know it’s so ridiculous well I want to I want your blood profile I want to find out what’s going on with you because one of the big misconceptions when it comes to cholesterol and saturated fat and food is that if you eat dietary cholesterol that it affects blood cholesterol levels not it’s a super common misconception well those so the thing about clinical studies with diet are virtually impossible to conduct because you just you can’t conduct a proper randomly distributed controlled experiment it’s too hard so a lot of what we’re trying to do is pull out information from correlations right you can’t do it which is one of the real problems with correlating meat with cancer diabetes and all these different diseases is because people are eating a bunch of with that oh yeah.

And they have different lifestyle profiles or like there’s just endless numbers of confounding variables and you only need one confounding variable that’s relevant to screw up the study right you can’t get that information with correlational studies we tried because it’s impossible to do the studies but how many people are incredulous when they’re honey people wouldn’t when they’re hearing about this oh everybody well you or not but you know you’re interested in this sort of thing but they should be incredulous like when people make absurd claims it’s like oh well I had 50 health problems and I stopped eating everything but meat and they went away it’s like oh sure it’s like yeah well wasn’t you so yeah and I see the results and I know it’s an anecdote I bloody well understand that and I’m highly skeptical about all of this but I’m telling you so that’s why I’m telling you what happened to me and what happened to my daughter and also what happened to my wife because she’s tammy was always in good shape and she’s exercised a lot and she reduced to the pure carnivore.

Died about a month ago she lost like 12 pounds she was already slim she’s back to the same weight she was when she was 21 she’s like 58 you know and she look 58 I can tell you that so it’s really fascinating it’s really fast in because just I as a person who studied diet for many years I would assume that you need phytonutrients I would assume do you need vitamins supplements like vitamin C for example it turns out if you don’t eat carbohydrates you don’t need vitamin C huh who woulda guessed how does that work I don’t remember Makayla outlined a paper for me vitamin C is necessary for carbohydrate metabolism but if you don’t if again remember everyone listening I am NOT an expert in this field right so but I want you to get your blood tested because I think if be pretty funny if it was in good shape yeah it would be I mean I’d like to find out what your nutrient levels are and where they’re coming yeah I mean what I’m getting a little cramping in my toes from to time so I’m not sure about potassium possibility that’s a supplement it’s very easy which is why.

I’m concerned but like and also minerals you know in certain minerals you’re getting from vegetables that you’re probably not getting yeah well this is all like look it seems hard to supplement that stuff though colloidal minerals you know there’s some mineral pills you could take plenty of well there plants are people who basically lived on meat you know the any what did the mess I basically did yeah there’s some supplementation but not a lot yeah and apparently if you do a Meal Plan carnivore diet you’re supposed to eat more organ meat and I do some of that but not a lot but I can tell you like I’m I mean well look I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t producing positive results yeah it’s not like it’s fun remain for a while well it makes you a social pariah like let’s invite the Petersons over oh yeah they don’t eat anything oh we have other friends that’s like well that’s how it works it’s not malevolence right it’s just if you’re a pain no one invites you out so I’m a social pain and an ideological pain and now I’m a nutritional pain because like no friends how difficult is it when you’re trying to get breakfast like what.

Do you do when you oh well lots of times when we were traveling we cook so we usually stay in places where you can cook oh okay but most places you can get a steak mm-hmm and so that’s mostly what we do I’ve been traveling in a Motorhome and so we’ve been cooking in the Motorhome and so not carry Jack Link’s beef jerky with me which we make well so yeah it’s crazy you make your own Food Dehydrator beef jerky well it’s easy we have a dehydrator and you just basically put salt on and throw in the dehydrator so that works pretty well you anticipate continuing this well forever cod forevers a long time I’d like to be able to eat more but I’m gonna experiment with that very cautiously I’m gonna add mushrooms next because maybe I could eat them well this is why I’m asking there Party Rule positive benefits that a lot of people achieve and experience when they switch to a Lose Weight vegan diet yeah one of the it is you get off of the Yellow Card standard Leading Source american diet with lots of Health Problems refined sugars and a lot of preservatives a little and then you find Solar Energy positive benefits Chris Kresser has gone into depth about this but then over time the nutritional deficiencies in.

That start to wear on your health yep and I’m wondering well it’s certainly possible well certainly eventually this diet will kill me no life will well you’re right biology will yes unless so it science intervenes might be that for some people of vagin dieters or Low Fat vegan diet is preferable to a Eskimo Dog standard Aarp New american diet well for sure to a Bridge Bidding standard Added Sugar american diet but also there’s so much biological variability yeah you know the that bothers some people don’t bother other people at all and that’s something that we got to take into consideration yeah well that’s why I don’t want to universalize from my experience no but this is what’s happened to me and this is what’s happened to my wife and my daughter so and all of its being well with Michaela it’s miraculous I cannot believe it the last time I saw it made me cry I’ve never seen her look like that she looks she’s so healthy and all her other joints are not experiencing any problem and she’s taking no immunomodulators at all no medication none and she was on him for oh Jesus yes more medication.

Than you can shake a stick at methotrexate which is basically they use it to treat cancer it’s a hit so what’s the cancer treating drugs called whatever I don’t remember at the moment Enbrel which really helped but later opened to bacterial infections so she always had pneumonia in the fall but envel really helped and then heavy doses of antidepressants Ritalin Jesus and how long has she been on this Acid Reflux carnivore diet oh god she’s only been Side Effects eating meat it’s got to be least six to eight months now Wow and does she get Black Coffee blood work done uh yep and her Breast Cancer blood work I won’t comment on that I don’t know the details of her Ovarian Cancer blood work so I don’t know to answer that fascinating curious I’m considering trying it for a while the problem is I ate so much game meat I don’t there’s a lot of fat get some fat yeah that’s the trick there try it for a month see what happens you what the hell a month you know just a month ya know a months not hard yeah interesting