Hey folks, it's Dr. Sean Baker here. Let me tell you about crowd health. Crowd health is a better alternative to health insurance for people sick of paying high premiums and subsidizing the standard American diet. And now crowd health members can join the all new carnivore crowd, which is an exclusive crowd for verified metabolically healthy individuals, eating animal-based diets and funding each other's large healthcare expenses. To join the carnivore crowd, visit joincrowdhealth.com/carnivore and use the code BAKER at signup for your first three months at only $99 per month. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and I couldn't walk without an assistive device, and I just kept eating steak. My last MRI showed no MS activity. So you don't get over bipolar disorder and an MS, but eating fatty animal meat totally changed my life. I was insatiable. Like when I would make cookies, I would make two batches of chocolate chip cookies so that I could eat the dough of one batch, and then I could cook the cookies and then eat the cookies from the other batch. If somebody is so chock full of inflammation and they're not even able to have complete thought processes, then you're basically just like talking to a wall. I'm excited to have Emily with us to share her success story. I've known Emily for a number of years, and I got to meet her in person back in Tennessee a few months ago at the Meat Stock 24 in front of bed. I guess we'll just get started. Tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll get into your story and what happened and how you're doing and all that stuff. - Yeah, I started my story with carnivore with you. My brother actually, you got on his radar because you were so loud. You were saying, "Just eat a damn steak." And it got his attention. And he started carnivore and we were all talking about him behind his back. What's wrong with him? He's lost his mind. And we quickly found out that he was resolving his irritable bowel syndrome and it totally changed his life. And I had no idea that it was gonna change my life. I had debilitating mental illness. I had bipolar disorder that had turned into rapid cycling. And that did not bode well for my career because I have my masters in clinical counseling and I was a therapist. So I was doing well whenever I had three days out of the week that I could function, but then when it turned into rapid cycling, I could no longer practice. And my brother reached out to me, told me about you. And I started the carnivore diet, February of 2019. And I went straight from standard American diet, donuts, pizzas, soda, ramen noodles to ribeyes, burgers. And I just kept going. And my last depressive or manic episode was April of 2019. My psychiatrist slowly tapered me off of all my meds. I stayed under his care. And I went back to work full-time in June of 2019, started coaching with MeetRx, was certified through MeetRx to be a carnivore coach and quickly realized that I didn't have as much of a place in the mental health field because licensing board and the insurance panels don't want you talking about food. So I quickly said, "Forget about the letters behind my name." And I said, "Call me a coach." And I just moved my entire practice online. And now I help people all over the world with borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, all this stuff. And then the other part of my story is that through all of this, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And I couldn't walk without an assistive device. And I had delayed and slurred speech. Multiple MRIs, lumbar puncture. And I had this knowing and all of this information from you and many doctors. And I just kept eating steak. And my last MS episode or symptom was May of 2019. My last MRI showed no MS activity. So you don't get over bipolar disorder and MS, but eating fatty animal meat totally changed my life. - Yeah, any one of those alone is remarkable, but the combination of those things. And particularly, like I said, the EMS, because there's a certain percentage of people with MS which will have spontaneous remissions. And the medical profession has no interest in that. Why might that be? Why don't we look into what those go on with those people? Maybe they're doing something they're not and they don't even know about it. So it's interesting like that. But to see, so obviously psychiatrists, I assume with the MS you had a neurologist involved I'm assuming, right? - Yes. - Success with that. Probably at no point did either of them suggest diet was either causal or curative or even beneficial for any of those. Is that fair to say? - Yes. And actually the neurologist, as soon as I told him what I was doing and what I was eating, he referred me to a nutritionist 'cause he said I had an imbalance. What did he say? Imbalanced diet, yeah. And he referred me to a nutritionist. I never followed up, never went to the appointment, but he wanted to, he didn't want to know anything about what I was eating or what I was doing. He was just concerned about me getting on the medication. - Okay. - And out of steroids, anti-varys drugs, I know there's different to savory and some of these other drugs that put people on these biologics and whatnot. So did you ever go on any MS drugs? - No, thankfully I had already met you. I had already found out about the carnivore diet in February and I was diagnosed in March. And so a logical person would say, oh, I started this all meat diet and now I'm hospitalized and now I have MS. It wasn't that the carnivore diet caused the MS. It was that it pulled back the curtain and revealed. And I recognized that I already had this low inflammation diet and so I just needed to stay on track and keep doing what I was doing. And it was a gamble, but it was the best gamble 'cause now I can walk and now I can do crossfit. - Yeah, it's certainly going from barely able to walk to exploring the obviously articulate and even the function. I've met you in person, you're fucking like a normal human should, I suppose. Did you, so you had MRIs with showing MS plaques and subsequent MRIs that showed regression of that? Is that what I'm understanding? - Yeah, my very first MRI was in March and then the next MRI was a month later and the neurologist even said, there's a 50% reduction of your lesion. And then the next one, every subsequent MRI, it showed either a reduction or now it shows no MS activity. - And that's crazy. - That's no medication, that's just, as far as you're basically going to change it now. - But I don't play around, like I don't, I'm not like, oh, it's like my birthday or it's Christmas or it's blah, blah, or it's the same Patrick's Day. Like, I literally eat a steak, a burger every day. - So you're disappointed about it, you don't. You didn't get any sounds for you to do so hard and some of this wants to lose 20 pounds. I mean, it was when you've got a potentially life altering illness that could put CU in a wheelchair, even dead, yeah, the motivation is quite strong and then you just develop the habits and then obviously with the mental health thing, as you probably know now, and I've been talking about this for years and years, many years. Now we have people like Chris Paul, Major G.E. and some of these others that are, Chris, they're seeing this in this whole metabolic mental health therapy, they're, I guess they're talking about that they've been becoming more popular, but we've been talking and addressing this stuff for the guys quite a while now, so it's good to see that. So with the progression, with the regression and the complete lack of activity on the MRI scan, is your neurologist, what is he said, or she said, is it a secret? And curious at all about what's going on or is that just how it's interesting about the thing? - No, not at all. They've actually been like a bully. Very negative in saying that I will end up in a wheelchair and that it's reckless that I am not taking their medication. And I even, I reached out to Michaela Peterson after one of my appointments and I was in the parking lot just like crying because of what the neurologist said to me. And I sent her a message and I was like, Michaela, I know you can't give advice or anything, but am I being reckless with my health? And she said, Emily, you have no symptoms. No, you're not being reckless. Just follow your inner guidance, your inner knowing and keep going. And I just, I kept doing that regardless of the bleak outlook that the neurologist gave me, saying that I was gonna be in a wheelchair. And who knows, it's been five years, who knows? But I'm willing to gamble. - Yes, you're five years. Have you, when was the last time you had contact with this particular neurologist? - A few years. I stopped going to my appointments. - Okay. Last time it's still the same thing. Hey, you've been three years simple and free and yet you're gonna be in a wheelchair if you don't take. - Yep. - I don't know what they were recommending you take time. Some problems are up, some disease modifying. You know, there's some kind of biological, I'm sure. Yeah, interesting. And you, do you find the discipline you have, 'cause some people struggle with being able to stay fairly strict? Is it mostly because you're so conscious of the fact that maybe you could end up in a wheelchair potentially or is it just habit and it's not that hard to do or where do you find the strength to continue with your persistence? - Honestly, I just really enjoy feeling good and I enjoy the food freedom because before I was an addict with sugar and with processed food, I had to eat every two to four hours and I was constantly obsessing about my next meal and experiencing this food freedom where I just, it's just bliss and I feel so good in the mental clarity. I have more mental clarity now that I've had in 15, 20 years. I'm 45 years old and I have never been this clear mentally. So it's just not worth it for me to have a piece of cake. - Fair enough. Yeah, I agree. I think that's, like I said, it's, I've had my share of cake over the years. I know what it tastes like. - I know. - It doesn't do anything. I've experienced that. It's how many times you have to ride the fastest rollercoaster to say I've known it. Anyway, let me ask you about because I've seen a number of people with MS now. I think the mental, I don't want to diminish the mental health side and we should talk about that as well. But because MS is often so debilitated and puts people in wheelchairs and internalized prematurely and so on and so forth, and not the mental health might not, maybe some of those things as well, particularly the flight operations. But how do you practice that? Some people are very concerned about getting in a fat. Is that something that you have to be cognizant of? Or how do you do? 'Cause in my experience, you can tell me if it's different for you. A higher fat car or seems to work better for some of these things like MS in particular. - Yeah, absolutely. And if you just look at the nature of the disease is that you have a deteriorated myelin sheath and the myelin sheath is made out of fat. So it's just logical to eat more fat. And I noticed that I had this just incessant craving whenever I first started, is the fattier the meat, the better. I just, I needed that. I felt like I needed that. And so I just followed that intuition to eat more fat. And I noticed that whenever I would just not pay attention and I would eat some lean meat, I just didn't feel as good. And so then I always just more towards the fatty meat. And I didn't mean to, but I lost 120 pounds. And so that was also something that really shocked me was the amount of high fat that I ate. And I still lost 120 pounds. - Let me ask, 'cause I didn't realize that. 'Cause I think ever since I've known you've been, I've only met you once in person. It's hard to say when you see someone's head, but. - The way that we met was. - Yeah, what did you lose the weight? What was that, what did that happen? - Yeah, 'cause what happened was I did a before and after picture in, oh my gosh, sometime in 2019 and I sent it to you and I said, thank you for saving my life. And I had all of my symptoms before and after. And I had already lost the weight by then. It got more, I think I'd lost 50 pounds or 70 pounds at that point. So it got to be more. But yeah, I was two, I'm five, eight. I was 260 pounds. And now I got down to like one three. Now I'm very comfortable at 140. - Half of what you were? Yeah, nice and long. - Yeah, and before I didn't know, I just thought it was just old age that, you know, you have to hold your breath and then bend over and tie one shoe and then come up for air and then hold your breath and bend over and tie the other shoe. I had no idea that I was not functioning because of all of the added weight that I had. - That's right. Look, how long, like you said, November, sometime 2019 when you're talking about when you started resolving this. How long did it take you to notice that things were different for you? - For me, the mental relief was the biggest thing for me because I had been so severely mentally ill for 40 years. And so it was just all a different shade of dark. My whole first 40 years. And then I think it was, I wanna say about a month, two months in, I experienced a glimpse of hope and it was such a difference because everything else had been so dark and it only lasted for 10 minutes that first time, but it was such a relief to know that my brain was even capable of experiencing hope. And then the next day it was 15 minutes and then it just got to be more until now I can't have a bad day. I could have a flat tire. I could have a bake. I could have an argument with my spouse. I could have anything happen to me. And I just have this baseline of joy. And so that was absolutely everything to me. - You mentioned your spouse and I don't know your particular situation, but was your spouse here when you were sick as well or is this a new spouse or what was the story that I'm on? - Yeah, yeah, he see me through the gamut of emotions. He see me through that shit crazy. - So what was his response to you adopting this carnivore? But obviously at some point he has to realize his health, obviously, but I was there, was there some reluctance at the beginning or? - He just, he called it the meat diet and he was just like, just keep doing the meat diet. And I think that whenever you have a spouse, you have somebody that is so miserable and has tried at my most, I was on 900 milligrams of lithium, 80 milligrams of ProSAC, 80 milligrams of Adderall just to get out of bed every day and then ambient to sleep every night. So we had already thrown the kitchen sink at all of this. And so he was just like, yeah, do whatever you got. Take your best shot. - Let me ask you, 'cause I assume maybe I just prescribed all these things. Was there any concern of the polypharmacy because there's a lot of medication in the audience and some significant dosages? And so were they ever saying, "Hey, this is maybe too much," or is it just more and more again? - I felt like they were just trying anything and everything to give me any morsel of relief. And I just had none. I just couldn't survive. I was so miserable day in and day. I remember many sessions I had with my therapist where I wouldn't even talk the whole session. I would just sit there and sob. I couldn't even form words. I was just not able to function. And then that's whenever he started to see whenever everything cleared up, he was just like, oh my gosh, you're completing sentences and there's a light in your eye and you just smiled and you just had a positive thought and you just talked about the future. - This is a completely different person. Like I literally transformed in front of my therapist eyes and he'd been working with me for eight years at that point. So he knew my crazy and for him to see my wellness was a big deal. - Was he privy to the fact that you were eating this crazy all me and died as well? - Yes. - And his response was, keep doing what you're doing there. That's crazier. What was your thought? - And he saw the results. So he was just like, you're on this something. Keep it up 'cause he had already pulled out all of the stops for what he could do. And he did actually do a low carb for a little bit and he didn't stick with it. But I was just grateful that it even opened his eyes to even see the connection between mental health and diet. - Did you, so let me just ask you your diet when you first started with, has it always been just that he made or was there some transition? Did you experiment to see what worked best with you or has it just been the same thing coming to get? - I started cold turkey. Like I said, I was eating ramen noodles and donuts and pizza and all the things. And then February 24th of 2019, I ate only animal meat. So I allowed myself chicken wings, bacon, breakfast sausage, fatty pork butt, salmon, shrimp, crawfish, all the things. Anything that was animal meat. I don't know why, but I never included dairy or eggs. Just became this experiment for me. And I wanted as clean of an experiment as possible. And so I didn't want to have the extra variable of dairy or eggs. And so I just stayed with that. And I would say within five months, maybe six months, I realized that I didn't feel best on pork or chicken. And I just went all the way down to beef. And then I went down to fresh farm beef. - Yeah, it's funny how a lot of people do that and start out with quite a bit of variety, which I encourage to see what you can stick with. And then a lot of you just naturally gravitate to thread meat off and just eat some kind of meat. I don't know how to put it in half. Do you find you lost, you said 120 pounds, obviously your appetite would have been, tell me about that. Why do you think you were overweight in the first place? Obviously, why aren't you jumping through it? But not just what you're eating, but what do you think was going on psychologically or satiety wise? Or how did that impact those types of things? - I definitely think it was a perfect storm of the pharmaceuticals that I was on and then the foods that I was eating. And I was insatiable. Like when I would make cookies, I would make two batches of chocolate chip cookies so that I could eat the dough of one batch and then I could cook the cookies and then eat the cookies from the other batch. It was just insatiable. I would have peanut butter on my nightstand so that if I woke up in the middle of the night, I could have a couple of bites of peanut butter. I even had icing sometimes, just containers of icing. And so obviously something's wrong. If I am absolutely insatiable, just constantly needing to eat pastries and sweets and chips and soda and all the things. - Yeah, and I think those are weeks. Well, I've known for a long time. There's certainly more people are aware of this now. These foods are intensely designed for that effect. - Yes. - It's designed to make you crave them and eat them all and not be able to stop eating them, which is absolutely a good profit and not the perfect health at all. As far as you don't crossfit now, if you could look at your life today and then dial it, go back seven, eight years or whatever this we do at your worst, could you have an invasion warrior at today? Was that even a possibility to you? - No, not at all. I couldn't think past the day I was on. I was doing everything I could just to keep my head above water and survive that day. And then every night I would wish that I wouldn't wake up the next day. And so whenever I would wake up the next day, I'd be like, God darn it, I gotta do it again. And now I'm so excited about the next week, the next month, all of these beautiful things that are unfolding for me and then to get to help other people to come out of that darkness, to really crawl out of that pit of mental illness hell is the most rewarding life I could have even imagined. - Yeah, it meant that I get to see this every day, which is going to be new. In my own ways, I get to have been very blessed in the fact that I get to see people recover from the illness and it really is really a good idea. So could you say you had a master's in psychology, I think you said, and I'm counseling. And so you've been doing that for many years, probably prior to how has your described what you would do in the past versus what you do today and describe the difference in outcomes if you don't mind. - Yeah, absolutely. I before would work on techniques and talk therapy and let's go back into your childhood and let's go back to the root cause of these emotions and everything. And I realized that nothing was landing. They were, there was almost like this fog and they're elbow deep in a bag of Doritos sipping on a big gold. They can't hear me. We can't do the work whenever they are literally a zombie with inflammation just chocked full in their brain. And so now whenever I meet with somebody, I don't require that they do carnivore, but I require that we have a component first and foremost. That's our foundation is that we're going to do everything we can to reduce the sugar and the processed food. And what I love is watching the clarity organically come forward, not because we did this technique or they were disciplined on this exercise. It's just comes to the surface because we're removing the inflammation from their brain. - Yeah, like I said, I always mention this, you cannot, you're actively poisoning yourself. It doesn't matter how much antidote you take. You got to stop poisoning yourself at some point for any of these things to weigh whether it's cognitive behavioral therapy or all the other different psychology tech, psychological techniques that are going to use or anything for that matter. You're actively poisoning yourself, good luck with really any kind of outcome I'd say. Do you know, you said something interesting because you were working in this psychology that they frowned upon talking about nutrition. What does that mean? Is there an act of saying you're not a lot of talking about nutrition as a psychologist or it's just not accepted or is there some sort of sightings you'd have for doing that? - Every time we get a client, we have to put them on a treatment plan and that treatment plan includes a diagnosis and then it includes the modalities that we're gonna use and the modalities that I have available to me never included food for me to be able to talk about food and therefore it's just not supported and it's not something that I can build for to even talk about or ask that question, what food are you eating and let's address that? And I was in private practice, but I wasn't the supervisor. So I had to adapt to what they wanted me to do and I quickly just realized what I just call me a coach. I'm gonna go do everything online and I've been able to be more effective with this mode out, with this structure than I ever was as a therapist. - You've mentioned, not everybody goes in a car because Eververals is a company that I have now and we certainly will use car and we're gonna put, but again, we don't necessarily need everyone to go in a car and we'll die at some do just because the other thing we try to work but it's interesting, how do you approach it and what would sway you? Is there, can you look at, 'cause you mentioned things like borderline personality and bipolar and depression and anxiety and all that others, there's a lot of different things I'm sure you encounter. How do you, is it based on the person? Is it based on their normal abilities? Is it based on the actual disease you're doing with? How do you decide where I'm going to shift them with our diet and then we should also talk about a couple of other lifestyle interventions which are also important, but let's start with the diet. How do you tailor diet for somebody? - I really think it's important to meet people where they're at because we can only change at the level of where our central nervous system is and so if their central nervous system is sitting there saying, I'm gonna die if I eat this way, I'm gonna die if I eat this way, we don't have to start there, we don't have to jump in the deep end and so what I start everyone off is three food lists and one food list is all the foods that you're just like, you know what, I'm really good with these foods, these foods are not causing me a problem and then we have the safety net list in the middle so I do it like a traffic light, so the green list ironically is all of the foods that are good, that are a go and then the yellow is the safety net list and those are foods that like they're your go-to for convenience or when you're having a bad day and so it might be foods that aren't best for you but they're not going to derail you and then we have the red list of the foods that we know we're not gonna touch, that's the Doritos and the Ramanoodles and the things like that that we know that they're gonna derail you, we just do an experiment. - Okay, so just as an example of a couple foods from each segment, obviously you said the red sounds like the ultra processed standard American garbage which is pretty 90% of the supermarket, I would assume, is that what's on the red list, basically? The green would be maybe whole foods perhaps, I'm guessing. - Exactly, exactly, whole foods and then I have a lot of people that come to me already having this conversation and really doing this research and they're like, I think vegetables are inflammatory and I'm like, okay, I'm like, let's do an experiment. Let's do, see what it looks like to remove them and then if you want to, you can reintroduce one new food a week and then you have your own experiment, you have your own knowing of how your body reacts to broccoli or kale or whatever you're dying to have. - And the people you say are almost always mental and all this and is MS being, you seem to help people in MS as well or what is it that we've asked what you operate in? - Yeah, I definitely, I have, everybody that I have helped use this way of eating who has been diagnosed with any kind of autoimmune disease or MS, they have noticed a significant reduction in their symptoms. - And what percentage of that group do you say you end up moving towards carnivores? Is there any idea of an idea of like how often you have to really restrict it pretty highly? - I don't know if I could come up with a percentage. If I had to guess, I would say maybe 10% really have to be at that level and I found also that a lot of people, they go through a period of healing and then once they get through significant healing then they can reintroduce new foods but that's just been my experience and I'm just a tiny little portion of the world. - We're all in the theme of things so much but it's interesting to see what commonalities show up. Like I mentioned, when I talk to you about the MS and higher fat portion, that's what I see as a clinician. It's interesting because most physicians don't pay any attention to this stuff. First of all, I'd most of known and care about diet and then certainly no one talks about the nuances of diet so that's why it's been interesting to sort of look into these things and see what patterns and minds and minutes so you can better help people with that regard. Let's talk about, I guess it's fair to talk about this because people, has carnivore had any negatives from your health, your mental health, any negatives that you can think of. It may be none, obviously I know it's a couple of ups or any sort of problems that you've encountered. - No and I don't want people to think I'm just full of it but no, I really, I almost enjoy that it is different than society because it's strengthened me to make choices based on what's best for me. Whenever I go into a baby shower or I don't know, some kind of like a celebration or whatever, I am fine with just sitting there and not eating. It's really strengthened my social skills for me to just realize that I don't have to walk into a situation and do what everybody else is doing but that was the main thing that I've heard a lot of people complain about is what do I do socially? And I'm like, stand on your own two feet and just be you. You are not you because you eat a piece of cake and you have mac and cheese on your plate. You are you because you showed up and you have so much to bring to the occasion. - Yeah, so some is up there for your sweet potato casserole (laughing) for reasons. Your background is a clinical psychology be an appropriate term for what you were doing. Is that fair or no? - I have my master's in clinical counseling. - Clinical counseling. Do you feel that any of that has been used or can you still apply that? Once you get people on the right diet, do those things now become beneficial or was it all just like at least a time? I don't know. - Really good question. I think that there is so much that can be said for talk therapy and for the different modalities, the different techniques, but it's almost like putting the cart before the horse. If somebody is so chock full of inflammation and they're not even able to have complete thought processes, then you're basically just like talking to a wall. And then you're asking someone to do something that they're not capable of doing. And so once I get people to a place of stability and they are having complete thought processes and they're not sitting there having your rational thoughts like everybody's out to get me or everything bad is going to happen to me. Like they have that clarity of thought that we're able to really do next level work. Like it's so much fun. Like I had one client, I had multiple clients, but this one girl, she worked with me for two months. She had been literally on her kitchen floor debilitated with bipolar disorder. All she could do was get up and go to the kitchen and go back to her palate on the floor, get up and go to the bathroom, go back to her palate on the floor. Her boyfriend sent her a video of mine. I started working with her. She totally got her life back. And then after two months, she said, "Oh no, I want to go further. "This is awesome. "I'm glad I'm functioning, but there's more." So she did a year container with me. And this six months ago, she just got a six-figure income working at a corporation as their marketing leader. And she just bought her first house. So there's so much more once you get through just pulling yourself out of that pit of mental illness, how it just gets better and better. - Yeah, it's awesome here. Do you, oh, let's talk about some of the other things because obviously I see people that go carnivore and improve things. Many people completely. It's just like all they need to do and everything's great. But there are some people that still struggle. Some of them still struggle with eating disorder, eating still craving addiction. Is there something, 'cause there is a psychological component for some people. And even though the diet can be tremendously helpful and it certainly is, I don't wanna say that it doesn't work 'cause it certainly does, but there's some people that need more. What are some of the other things I talk about sleep and not being sedentary and exercise and getting some sunshine and lining yourself low with circadian, or circadian, suppose, but are there other things that you see you have to be addressed? - Yeah, the first step for me personally in whatever I work with people is, I just use my own story in March of 2020. So I started carnivore February of 2019. So this was a little over a year. I had a family tragedy happen and it took the air out of my lungs. If I didn't have carnivore, I can guarantee you I would have ended my life or I would have been back in the psych ward. It was devastating. And I called a friend. Actually, it was somebody in the carnivore community and I said, okay, I'm already carnivore. What do I do? What I can't eat any more carnivore? Like, what do I do? I have this absolute hole in my heart. What do I do? And she said to me, go outside, put your bare feet on the ground and your eyes in the morning sun in the sunrise. And I was like, are you listening to me? I have tragedy. What are you even talking about? I don't even understand. I'm asking for help. And she said, I'm telling you, Emily, go put your feet on the ground and get your eyes in the sunrise every morning. And I was not happy, but I did it. And I started with 10 minutes and then it went to 20 minutes and then it literally shifted everything for me. And I was able to see my tragedy with new eyes. And I recognized and realized that my tragedy was actually my gift and it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. And because I operated from that place of healing, it transformed the entire tragedy and everyone else involved. And now it has healed my family because I took that route instead of just hatred and anger. So I know it sounds ridiculous, but getting your feet on the ground and your eyes in the sun really makes a huge difference. Yeah, I don't doubt it. I mean, there's plenty of it. I suggest there's some benefit to that. It's not really downside to sure. You mentioned your husband called it the meat diets. Has he adopted a similar dietary strategy or mostly carnivore? Where's he at now? Yeah, I was actually writing the content of what I would do whenever people would work with me. And I had him review it. I'm like, "Hey, can you just edit this?" And he read it and he goes, "Why don't you want me to do the carnivore diet?" And I was like, "You're a grown-ass man." I was like, "I'm not going to tell you what to eat or what to do. You're free to do whatever you want." And he was like, "I want to do this. I want mental clarity." And I was like, "Okay." So May of 2021, he started eating all of this, reduced his, he had high blood pressure. And I didn't know, but he had pain in his knees and ankles that was his, he remembers his whole life and it was gone. Yeah, so I'm sure he's happy. (laughing) Yes, very happy. I mean, do you feel it that obviously, 'cause you mentioned you were in the psych ward in patient psychiatry facility and what I want to call it, how were you fed in that situation? I was not curious. I was curious if they even, I'm assuming it's just a stand possible through, but did they even get any consideration to diet in the inpatient facility? Yeah. We'll be there. Why were you inpatient, by the way? Just so I can feel my. I was inpatient in 2001 and it was because I had, I went into psychosis where I heard and saw things that were not there. I had a lot of like religious talk. And basically I was not experiencing reality. And I was in for five days and there was all sorts of donuts and chips and cookies and bread and mac and cheese and all the things. So, no, it was definitely not clean food. And it was just mystery meat. Was this, had you already had a psychiatric diagnosis at that time or was this the onset of some of something appreciated that bipolar and what? No, that was the onset, definitely. Okay. Okay. So they put you on with lithium at the time or so I don't know when you started your lithium though. No, I started that in cause I, the episode at the psych ward, like I said, was 2001. And then whenever I came out of that, they talked about bipolar disorder, but I was not willing to go on medication. And so I just went through and I just white knuckled it through the rest of my life. And then I think I was around 30, gosh, 33 to whenever I got to the point where I just couldn't function anymore. And I was just like, I need psych meds, I need help. And so I was on psych meds for about eight years. And how did you feel on those medications with their side effects? Tons, yeah. Especially with the eating, I look back and I did see that I was that insatiable. I really think that came from some of the psych meds that I was on where I just couldn't get, I couldn't hit the spot of whatever it was that I was looking for in food or drink. Obviously no longer suffer from mental health disorder, no longer have active MS, all those things are tremendous. What would you, if you could just maybe summarize the benefits you've seen in your oral health since going on a carnivore diet in 2008? What things have gotten better? Maybe just go through system to say what? Maybe things haven't changed, maybe something you got. I don't saw any of these gotten worse, but what things have gotten better for you? - Yeah, like you said, it was really awesome. I didn't realize that there is anything wrong. I wasn't trying to lose weight 'cause most of the women in my area, they just are overweight. And so I didn't think that there was anything wrong. I didn't want to lose weight. It wasn't like on my radar. But once I lost the weight, I didn't realize how much free or I could move that it wasn't difficult to walk up a set of stairs, that it wasn't difficult to bring the groceries in. There was so much freedom in my just range of motion and everything that I could do to just be a mom and be a wife and be a human, be a good neighbor. Like it was easier to take out the trash. I did not expect my teeth to feel so clean. That was really cool. And then to watch my guns heal, I didn't expect that. And then clear skin, no gas. I thought gas was just what you do. Like you're a human and you have gas, but not having gas has been just one of my favorite things. I love that so much. - You look around you, love it too. - Exactly, exactly. Body odor, I did not expect that at all, but whenever I realized that I was moving one day and I was sweating and everything. And I was just like, gosh, I'm sure I smell horrible. And I smell nothing. I had no body odor. It was just completely like neutral. And I was just like, this is crazy. But I think it took a while for me to get all the psych meds out of my body and all the toxins from the food. But now that I eat just straight from the farm, I just don't smell bad. What else? I've saved so much money. I could not believe how much money I saved, not having to buy all the snacks and all the sides and all the desserts. And then whatever I'm out and about, I'm not tempted by, oh, Arby's new special or this new drink or this new thing. It's just not, it's not food to me. I don't even see it. So I've saved a lot of money and then I save money on doctors appointments, save money on medication, save money on sick days. I can't tell you the last time I was. So it has, to say it's changed my life as an understatement. - The thing that you said interesting to me and you were at, you said what, 260 pounds or something like that. And yet you felt this is normal 'cause everyone around me is normal. That to me is sad because all the things that you experienced benefit while probably all those women were experiencing the same thing, the pain, the discomfort, the bloated, the gassingness, the mental fog, all the things that are there. And to get to a point where everybody around me is this way so this is just normal, which is what's happening in society in many ways, what certainly has is a sad statement on current state of things. Have you just in general has your outlook and perception of just life in general change as since you fixed your mental health illness and change your nutrition? Has it given you a different sort of outlook about a lot of things? - 100%, 100%. Yeah, before it was like I was seeing life through a different lens where somebody would say it's a nice day outside. And instead of hearing it's a nice day outside, I heard it's a nice day outside. Why aren't you outside? Why are you sitting on the couch? You should be out there doing lawn work or cleaning the car. I was just, everything had this negative to it, this negative connotation. And so now I see things and it, I actually just hear the words, it's a nice day outside and I take it for what it is. Instead of attributing other meaning to it. And then one other thing that I forgot is I used to take about 800 milligrams of ibuprofen every day. I hurt all throughout my body. Every joint, and I know now that was MS, but I would pop ibuprofen like it was candy and it was normal. It was just what other people around me did. It was just that's the solution to the problem is you have pain, you take ibuprofen and I went to the doctor. And I was like, something's wrong, like I'm having to take ibuprofen every day, just a function. And they said, oh, you're just getting old. That was like 36 whenever I went and asked the doctor that. There's so many things that have just completely changed my life. - Yeah, fair enough, it is interesting to see how people just complete world view changes once they're no longer. You almost go from, 'cause some people like take on sort of almost a victim, like victim mentality and you feel so deep hindrance and disempowered in many ways. Because when you go to the physician for a legitimate problem, I feel awful, my brain's not working right. I feel like I'm gonna die all the time or something like that. And all they get is here take more pills and it doesn't work very well. It just numbs you more or less. That to me is very disempowering and then all of a sudden, and become a victim. There's nothing I can do about it. This is who I am. And you realize that you can do something about it and you've done something about it. So that's gonna feel good. How long when someone comes to you with whatever issue it might be, bipolar disorder, depression, and you just start talking about changing or lifestyle, changing or not, how long does it take for most people to start noticing a difference? - Yeah, usually what I do is I set up what we do as an experiment for 45 days. And the reason I say experiment is because if we approach this like a scientist observes and documents, a scientist never judges and punishes. And so that's what everybody's doing whenever they're trying to do a diet is they eat a package of Oreos and then they starve themselves for 24 hours. You have to get to the point where you are just doing an experiment where you're observing and documenting. This is my favorite story. This guy about 30 days in, he calls me and he says, "You lied to me. You tricked me." And I was like, "Okay, what's going on? What's going on?" And he said, "You said at 45 days we would reevaluate what I'm eating." And then I could reassess and maybe reintroduce new foods. And I was like, "Okay." And he was like, "It's 30 days in and I feel so good. I never want to change anything. This is incredible. I have a whole new outlook on life." And he's like, "My body feels good." And I was like, "Okay, awesome. That's a good problem to have." But what I've noticed is around 30 to 45 days people notice such a significant difference that then they can make a decision instead of being in such confusion at the beginning. - Yeah, Emily, we're about out of time. Thank you so much for sharing the story. Do you guys ever share? Do you have a website or social media? People can go to find out more if they want to talk to you or something along those lines? - Yeah, just EmilyPenson.com. And I am doing every Tuesday night, I'm doing some free support group because I think a lot of times people just need somebody to talk to. - Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
