Catherine Shanahan

LA Lakers' Science Consultant, author, Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. Flavor=Nutrition. Working at: Eradicating Diabetes #VegOilSucks

The carnivore diet may work magic on healthy folks, but what if you're not so healthy?

I’ve met a number patients who had lost weight from exercise combined with protein-powder based crash diets that were low in both fat and carb, only to discover that they had developed diabetes in spite of having lost weight.

Chris Newguard PhD (speaking in the NIH video linked below) has been studying the origins of insulin resistance for over a decade and consistently finding a correlation between high protein intake and insulin resistance, independent of body weight.

It might be protein powder causing the problem (and whole food based protein may not have this effect). It might be the lack of healthy fat. It might be the combination of intensive exercise with all of the above.

Until we know more, in my opinion, if you’re following a #carnivorediet it is super important to make sure you get enough NATURAL (whole food) fats. Once you get your 60-90 grams of protein, the rest should be mostly fat. Consumption beyond what your body can easily use may be particularly damaging to those with #insulinresistance #prediabetes and #type2diabetes

Why? Compared to healthy folks, those with insulin resistance, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes have a higher baseline (fasting) blood sugar requirement and therefore their livers (and possibly kidneys) are forced to convert amino acids from protein into sugar at a faster rate than those who are healthy. This alters nitrogen metabolism in the liver (and kidney) and could help to explain why so many overweight folks suffer from gout. Perhaps most importantly, it also blocks fat burn (the burning of body fat as opposed to dietary fat), and when you block fat burn you worsen your glucose dependence and travel farther down the road to diabetes.

If you're doing well on a carnivore diet, that's fantastic! And if you are adventurous in your carnivore eating style you can still enjoy all 4 pillars of a Human Diet including Fresh Foods, Fermented and Sprouted Foods (well, maybe not sprouted), Meat on the Bone and Organ Meats.