Healing On Carnivore: an eight year journey to reclaiming my health

There were so many nuggets and clues my body was dropping along the road. IT was really an eight year journey to healing. It began with a gut dysbiosis. I was on antibiotics for food poisoning while on a mission trip overseas on a couple occasions during college, shortly before my marriage in the first year of marriage, I had 6 UTIs, supposedly fixed with antibiotics.

But not too long after the antibiotic events, I began to experience panic attacks, anxiety, heart palpitations, all followed by adrenalin rushes and heavy limbs, and uncontrolled shaking. On so many nights, I woke my husband up to hold me so my body could do its thing, and I just wanted him to be my safety net.

At this time, my husband commuted to work, and I carefully planned my mornings to avoid stress and blocked any thought of having anxiety attacks, or I had a game plan to visit my mother-in-law to keep myself distracted and out of my head. On one episode, she did take me to urgent care, where I got an EKG, everything was fine, and the UC doc educated me on anxiety management. I began to believe that this is something I have to deal with, I did not want to be on medication, so this is the mechanism I had to adopt to make it work. And I implemented coping mechanisms to deal with the panic. I learned that there are many people who have these unexplained panic attacks and they had mechinasms too. I thought I was just one of many and we just learn to deal with anxiety.

In the meantime, my son was about 10 months old, I was noticing a unique fatigue. I was counting down to nap time, and just showing up for the rest of the day, counting down to bed time. I was just not “there” I was foggy. Every bit of energy I had was focused on this interesting fatigue I was experiencing…It is like having your hands tied and unable to scratch an itch. Your whole being is fixated on this heaviness. Doing housework was like walking through water.

Every day became a chore and a waiting game until bed time. There are coffee jokes out there to cope with fatigue and there are jokes to drink wine after a long day with the kiddos. Every joke had an underlying truth.

Bloodwork indicated hypothyroidism and the clinic staff naturally recommended I start medications….I did not take on the recommendation. The provider wrote the prescription anyway saying that in case I change my mind, I can lean into this prescription.. I honestly felt better about this situation. Firstly, she was so kind and compassionate, and secondly I felt a bit more empowered to not succumb to what supposedly would be a lifetime medication.

I agreed to do another blood panel in three months to see if things leveled out. In that time frame I got pregnant and I was sifted over to the OB care, where I learned that thyroid can level itself out during pregnancy. It was discouraging that I was shifted over to another care provider and I was no longer a concern of the initial care provider.

Shortly after my second son’s birth, we had the lockdowns. I naturally thought I was having anxiety over not being able to go to church, and not being able to see my family members. We had a death in the family about three months into the lockdown. I was relating my anxiety to the environmental stress, and I was coping just fine. When my second baby was 10-11 months old, anxiety and panic set in again followed by fatigue. It was such a familiar experience at this point, I about did not need to confirm with a blood test.

The same pattern was evident around 12 months or so after my third son’s birth. In that timeframe, the blood work panel indicate a tertiary pattern, which gave me more clarity that the disfunction is a symptom of something bigger.

I was not scared or coerced into taking medication; I was just being monitored and my hormone levels were only a sliver off the sweet spot, or the golden standard level. So, no one would recommend medication unless the panel showed I was “off” that mark. I think I was just decimals away from the “normal” range. This gave me a false boost of relief- even though I was not feeling right, I chose to believe my lying eyes.

My husband was working from home by this point, like so many did during the pandemic. He was very generous to watch the kiddos while I napped here and there.

He did not sign up for any of this. He did not deserve a type of wife I was. My problem became a sort of an identity (I would refer to it as “My Hypothyroidism”) and he was there to hold me and make my already easy life even easier. I threw myself pity parties and felt bad for myself on several occasions in these years too, but overall, I had a sense that I should not take the medications and the tertiary patterns were my clue, I just had to figure what stabilized the hormone levels. I don’t believe I was stubborn. Deep down, I just had a sense, this is a symptom. ( I have some physiology concepts and had it drilled in my head to treat the cause and not the symptom…The only thing I question at this point is “why haven’t I advocated for myself when I should have?" )

I saw a family doctor in that same facility. To my surprise, he suggested I download an app to help me calm down, and practice meditation. I truly believed that he believed this was something different. He was genuine in his demeanor and he was compassionate and advocated for this meditation app. Perhaps there was a shared understanding that medication will only veil the true condition, and I will not find my answer in conventional medicine.

After this appointment, I had to admit to myself that I will not be better under conventional care. Medicine is a business and I must to be a repeat customer. I will be forever dependent on pharmaceuticals if I go the medicine route.

I have a “Help Me Help Myself” philosophy, and it was not lining up with the medical establishment at this point. On my way out the door that day I told myself. I had to leave conventional medicine in order to heal.

Things began looking in my favor.

By the time I was pregnant with my daughter, my fourth, the whole household got one of the virus strains (I think that was the Corona virus). We were sick the entire month of December. I call it the “month of hell”.

That December (I was on one end of the couch, my husband on the other end, children lying on folded comforters on the floor), I vowed to never be this sick again. I promised myself to do anything possible to find reach optimum health.

On January first, I started playing around with kefir and fermented cabbage, and ate a really simple diet of eggs, avocadoes, meat, salads.

I leaned on my researching skills took a deep dive into hypothyroidism and went down that autoimmune rabbit hole. Autoimmune conditions, at best, were mentioned in college but we never took as deep of a study as I have that year…so all my free time was zoned in on furthering my knowledge on Hypothyroidism and autoimune. I stumbled upon all sorts of blogs, by people who reveresed hypothyroid symptoms with zinc, selenium, and other supplements. That rerouted me to focusing in on liver health, and I stummbled upon Dr. Berg (He is a gateway doctor to carnivore). I learned so many health-bits from his short informational videos. I am so disappointed but not surprised, that he is being censored.

With more knowledge under my belt, I had a conviction that there is no way that a woman gave birth only to fall apart in your twenties. Fatigue this heavy is not a rite of passage. I did no longer believed that this was all from disrupted sleep and too many children. I was not willing to accept that it is normal to have these symptoms after every child.

My husband and I desire to have a large family. I wanted to be present for my children, and take delight in them. I wanted my children to have a childhood with a mom mentally and emotionally available, not just someone who shows up.

I had established my “why” for the radical change.

So in March, I joined a DPC clinic which has a functional medicine aspect. I had a food sensitivities test that indicated which foods are inflammatory to the leaky gut.

This was night and day. I had energy through the rest of the pregnancy, had my daughter in June and absolutely loved my recovery months, for the first time.

I love being pregnant, but I dreaded recoveries because I knew these awful symptoms will come back. And I absolutely crushed my recovery. It was so good and positive. What also helped was that there was no unsettling pediatric care with a stench of vaccine pushing all of us mothers have to face. This was my fourth child, but definetely felt like a brand new season of motherhood.

I have not taken unusual naps, had no panics, no anxieties. It was as if the women in this clinic took a heavy load off my back, “hey let me carry that for you” .

Things were going well! The bloodwork was showing signs of improvements just from the elimination diet alone.. Then, the following February, I got a giant cavity and took a deep dive into oral health. I was confused because I did everything to a tee. I ate healthy, I had good oral health. And now I am here with this cavity.

I learned that as we go through pregnancy, the mouth environment is more acidic, and as we breastfeed, we tend to lose more calcium (which was indicated in my bloodwork). The body will pull calcium out of your teeth to feed the baby. And on top of the nutritional demands of the baby, acidic environment was favorable for bacteria while the teeth are weaker and more prone to cavities.

At this point I was using food as medicine. I thought I could look into what food is the best for optimum oral health. That is when I stumbled upon Dr. Chaffee’s interview with Dr. Kevin stock regarding oral health. I did not realize the depth of the rabbit I was about to jump in.

I was blown away about the impacts of plants and how they are loaded with toxins as a survival tachtics. Of course, plants cannot run, and they have a defensive side effect. Listening to Dr. Chaffee’s guests was hook, line, and sinker. This diet was my answer to optimum health. When I had told my provider what I am doing 16 days in, she said exactly that. I must admit, I was skiddish about telling her about makin gthis switch, but to my surprise she had an optimistic tone saying “your new goal is to reach optimum health”. I felt like after 8 years, I opened the right door.

And I went all in. I began the carnivore diet on March 10th of 2024. It was a delicate balance in the first two months. There were two weeks of oxalate dumping. I learned about histamine reactions and leaned on unaged lamb and grass fed bison for some time.. Everyone has their own sufferings. I had kidney stones and gall stones and at one point, I even thought that perhaps this is not a diet for me. I took a week off to introduce fresh berries into the plan but ended up bloated with low back pain. I got right back on the diet. It was evidence enough that something is working, and I needed to trust the process.

I went into this lifestyle cold turkey and I still would not change it, some people may benefit from easing their way into carnivore. I have an “all or nothing” approach once i formulated my conviction.

There were a few cheat days, which taught me that I truly am in a healing phase and this is working. After a cheat day, I chose to give my body the ultimate environment to heal.

But I am now in a good spot with an acceptional fat to protein ratio. I drink well water and I have a love-hate relationship with coffee (luckily, I am on a dairy free interval for further healing, and I just don’t tolerate coffee without cream at the moment"). I just hopped on the lion diet to address the bumps on the back on my arms.

Eating is easy, overeating is impossible. I am nourished. I have steady energy from 5 in the morning to 9 at night. My children’s world is so tiny and my husband and I are in the center of it. They need my undevided attention, and I can provide that. I can ve present and watch them with full attention and just marvel in their delight for life. I can also marvel with them.

My love language is feeding others. and if I prepare a baked good or a dinner for them, I am not tempted by these foods anymore. I do not taste test. The bloating, the joint paints, and fatigue is just not worth it. It is a setback and I am not the mom I enjoy being when I cheat. So I just don’t at this point.

For others, I do bake from scratch, and I control what ingredients I place into baked goods. Everyone is on their own health and food journey, and I can control what ingredients I can put into my baked goods at the least. Once in a while, I will opt out for gifting flowers or bone broth, and that is also a great way to love on others. I have yet to undo the many years of Christmas traditions and other celebrations centered around food. That is something I can ease into.

I have ways to go yet, but I do have steady energy, attentiveness to my children, no anxieties, exceptional night’s sleep with the baby’s feeding in the mix. I am up from morning to night without fatigue. I can distinguish the sleep disruption fatigue from hypothyroid related fatigue. My thyroid panel has come back exceptional, and I just need to address the antibodies at this point.

I have bloodwork coming up in a week or so and I am not in my head thinking about “what if this or that” but I am looking forward to seeing how far I have come, where I am and what paths I will take on as I reclaim my ancestral right to a healthy body.