2909 Bryant Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55408, United States
CARNIVORE BRAIN RX
Living Your Best Life
THE BRAIN IS THE BOSS
The goal of this site is to provide beginners of the carnivore lifestyle with all the information, resources and support needed to get started. Let's talk first about what a carnivore diet is all about.
Also called a zero-carb diet or animal-sourced foods (ASF) diet, the carnivore diet typically consists of 100% animal foods — meat, fish, eggs, high-fat dairy products, and animal fats. Some adherents eat only meat, salt, and water. Although others allow for exceptions like coffee, tea, or small amounts of spices used in cooking if tolerated. The exact composition of the diet may differ widely
between individuals due to preference or other considerations. This dietary approach has been the most successful in my clinical practice.
A carb free diet is most in alignment with how our body has functioned historically. Those were the days when all the modern disease labels didn't exist. So you have to ask yourself? Why the big change in health status? Why are we the richest and sickest country in the world with epidemic rates of chronic disease.
Let's take a brief look at carbohydrates and insulin. We store carbohydrates as glycogen in our liver (~120 grams) and muscles (~400 grams).You can think of the liver and muscles as limited, short-term gas (energy) tanks. When the gas tank is full, excess fuel (carbohydrates) gets stored as fat, which is our long-term energy storage.
With every carb-loaded meal we create a metabolic emergency, stress signaling the pancreas to unload insulin to re-establish homeostatic blood sugar. The insulin immediately halts fat burning, drops blood sugar, signals hormones to tell the brain to eat more, causing a strong craving for sugar. When blood sugar drops so does our energy, we get tired, our brain gets foggy, and we get “hangry” for more sugar. The result is binging, cravings, and addiction. This is the vicious sugar cycle, we are always hungry and always storing more fat, hormonal signaling is disrupted and we lose the ability to tap the abundant energy stored in our fat cells. Does chronic fatigue, low energy and brain fog sound familiar?
In addition to chronic hunger and fat gain, this massively unnatural carbohydrate load and blood sugar rollercoaster wreaks havoc on human health. How? Metabolic hormones become dysregulated, high blood sugar levels disrupt cellular water balance, impair the immune system, damage vision, kidneys, and nerves. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, autoimmune disorders, dementia and many more common and uncommon health conditions increase with the consumption of carbohydrates.
You may be surprised to know that the human body has about 1 tsp of glucose (sugar) in all the blood. Only a few cells in the body require any glucose at all, all of which can be made from protein. There is no essential carbohydrate. No need to eat any sugar or carbohydrates at all. And yet we are eating it by the pounds, daily!
A major problem with carbs is that they are ADDICTING.
Ask someone to give them up for a month. You’ll see all the signs of an addict. First denial, then if they accept your challenge they’ll get uncontrollable cravings, have withdrawal symptoms, and exhibit signs of physical dependence. Then they will most likely engage in isolating behavior to sneak a dopamine hit (carbohydrates). Once relapsed, they will go back to denying that it’s a problem and so the lifetime cycle of addiction continues.
Sugar stimulates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which drives the reward center in the brain. Dopamine also down-regulates its own receptor (which is what generates the reward signal). This means you’re going to need more sugar to generate more dopamine, that generates less reward, until eventually you’re consuming a whole lot of sugar, and getting almost no pleasurable return. This is called tolerance and as one’s tolerance increases, so does the addiction.
Sugar’s effect on the brain is staggering. Sugar causes neurochemical changes in the brain similar to other addictive drugs. It activates the same regions of pleasure as cocaine. As with any chemical addiction we develop tolerance. The same is true with the sugar-reward cycle and we need more and more to continue to derive pleasure.
Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can cause harm. Eating sugar over a longer period of time results in chronic toxicity and results in heart disease, cancers, stroke, diabetes, autoimmune and dementia. All carbohydrates ultimately get broken down in to sugar. There is no such thing as good and bad sugar. The virtues of sugar is talked about in terms of how fast or slow it enters your blood stream. What if we measured the dangers of cigarettes by how fast or slow you smoked them? Ridiculous isn't it?
Chronically elevated insulin makes fat cells preferentially store energy. When hoarding energy, fat cells don’t leave enough energy for the rest of the body. Consuming high carbohydrate foods with low absorbable nutrient density and the body is starving for nutrition, with an excess of energy being stored as fat.
What is being described is metabolic syndrome. Insulin that's too high and results in inflammation. Evidence suggests that conditions like – Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, depression, as well as cancer, arthritis, asthma, gout, diabetes and many others – are fueled by insidious, long-term inflammation.
In effect, the immune system’s inflammatory response slowly kills us.
In effect, the immune system’s inflammatory response slowly kills us. Inflammation is a response, the question is “what is the stimulus?” What is causing the inflammatory response day-in-and-day-out?
Could it be something that most people do 3+ times a day? Could eating, or rather what we are eating, be slowly killing us? We know spikes in blood sugar promote oxidation and inflammation. Cells get flooded with sugar and the chemical pathways to process glucose get overloaded. Overwhelming this metabolic pathway causes free radical byproducts which damage cells from the inside out. This damage signals inflammation by calling cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-alpha to the scene as first responders.
Meal after meal, day after day, year after year, chronic inflammation damages tissues and organs. Disease manifests in the brain and body. Whatever your physical or mental health condition, know that metabolic syndrome is at the foundation.
What's the solution? Drumroll please! Carbohydrate moderation or restriction.
BOOK A CONSULT TODAY.