Carnivore Diet for the Win vs. IBD

More and more evidence is coming out about the health benefits of very-low carbohydrate diets such as the ketogenic and carnivore diets.

Today I wanted to talk about a study that just came out (Sept 1, 2024) showing some incredible results.

The study was limited to just 10 participants so it’s not a huge population. Considering that Phase 1 trials of any new drug use only about 20 to 80 people, the sample size isn’t too far off.

What really caught my attention is that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the participants achieved significant health benefits. Normal studies show small improvements in a certain population. Often they call it ‘statistically significant’ results.  They don’t see 100% of the sample size improvement.

The author of the study is Nick Norwitz. He is a Harvard researcher who does a lot of research into low-carb diets. If you’re on ‘X’ (Twitter) I highly recommend you follow him.

Nick recruited his sample size from social media. Each participant had to provide documentary evidence of being diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn’s Disease. In many cases that included colonoscopy results.

There were six cases of ulcerative colitis and 4 cases of Crohn’s disease.

Many of the participants had already been on a very low-carb diet to start their journey back to health. In addition the study required the participants to keep a detailed food log for 48 hours. The food log included:

• Quantity of food

• Fat percentages

• Specific food brands

• Photographic documentation for author review

This log is very different than most epidemiological studies I have seen. Many other studies with huge sample sizes just ask the participants questions like “how many cups of blueberries have you consumed in the last month?” Most people have to guess for an answer.

Nick’s experiment required the participants to document the food as they ate it.

All patients filled out a questionnaire to evaluate their health before and during a carnivore diet.

The results showed between 72 and 165 points improvement on the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire.

What’s more impressive is that all the participants reported that the diet was pleasurable and sustainable. Which is a far cry from many other diets.

Nick speculates in the article that:

The therapeutic potential of KD (ketogenic diet) may derive from a combination of three features of the diet:

“(1) Carbohydrate reduction can facilitate weight loss and improve glycemic control in those with obesity, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, or diabetes.

(2) The restrictive nature of the diet often facilitates the elimination of “problem” foods, including those that may act as immune triggers.

(3) Ketone bodies generated by the liver are potent regulatory and signaling molecules, akin to hormones as much as they are fuel substrates. They regulate the immune system and metabolism through cell surface receptors, inflammasome inhibition, histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibition, epigenetic regulation, and by acting as post-translational modifiers through the process of lysine β-hydroxybutyrylation on >1,000 different proteins.”

I’m not going to pretend I understand the processes Nick describes in the third point. However, I think we all understand what he means in the first two points.

As you can see from my previous emails, I’m a big believer in low-carb diets. I see the results every day in my assisted living homes. I hope studies like these will help increase the number of people who use food to heal their health conditions.

Nick asked people to spread the results of this study as much as possible. I am trying to do that. Here is a link to the study. Can you help spread the word?