Unbeknownst to me, the next thing to rule out was multiple sclerosis, and that turned out to be what was wrong. However, that was basically the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it. As I was told, it will progress for the rest of your life, it will only ever get worse, and you have to be on this medication for the rest of your life. But I also believe that you can't address your health if you don't address your diet. I think it's so fundamental, but nothing had as big an impact as the carnivore diet. As soon as I went carnivore, everything just seemed to snap back into place. And within a week, the bloating had gone down, and then within a month, my cognitive function was back, and my tiredness was gone, and my core strength was back. I don't know what the science is. All I know is it's work. All right, today we have Rebecca with us. She is, I currently in Spain, and so I'd like to maybe interested about why she's there, perhaps. But anyway, Rebecca's going to share success story with us. So Rebecca, first of all, why are you in Spain? What's going on in Spain? I don't think you're Spanish. That's right. I'm not Spanish. We're jumping in at the end of the story, though, to explain why I'm in Spain. I'm in Spain. I started the beginning. Let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your background. Okay, sure. I'm 44 years old. I'm originally from the UK, and I'm currently living in a very isolated remote area on the farm, but my life was very different 10 years ago, and it changed very suddenly. So I was in my mid-30s, and I was nearly at the end of my PhD studies. I was a city girl, and I was about to launch into a high-level career in academia. And all of a sudden I had a few days of dizziness and nausea, and then I settled down into double vision. And my father, who is a retired GP, was quite concerned about this, so he didn't tell me what was potentially wrong, but he was encouraging me, "Please go and get this checked out." And so I went to an eye hospital, which is directly opposite campus, where I was teaching and studying. And to my great surprise, they admitted me into hospital that night and gave me a CT scan to check for a brain tumor, which came back clear, so that was great. But then they kept me in for five further days so that I could have an MRI scan, because unbeknownst to me, the next thing to rule out was multiple sclerosis. So the MRI scan was to check the soft tissue in my brain for demyelination, which is when the immune system attacks the fatty nerve fibers, casing around the nerve fibers in the brain, leading to nerve failure. And that turned out to be what was wrong. So the nerve in my eye had failed because there was demyelination in my brain. And that was when the first time that the term "multiple sclerosis" came up in relation to me. And what happened then was the diagnostic process, which took about eight months. It sometimes takes a long time to diagnose. They want to diagnose quickly so they can put your medication, but because that medication is extremely expensive, they want to make sure, first of all, that they're giving it to somebody who needs it, or supposedly needs it. And so then I had a further MRI scan, and eight months later I was officially diagnosed. They had to wait and see if the nerve would repair itself to determine what type of MS it was. If it did start to show signs of repair, then it was relapsing, remitting. If it didn't, it was primary progressive. So that was a bit of a nerve-wracking time waiting to find out if I had primary progressive, which would have obviously been devastating. I was happy to discover that it was relapsing, remitting. However, that was basically the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it. I'd just about managed to handle my PhD. Hardest thing I've ever had to do to finish that when these symptoms of fatigue and brain fog were setting in. But somehow I managed it, and then I completely crashed after that. Once I'd submitted my PhD, I completely crashed, and the symptoms overtook. I'd been in complete denial about the fact that it could end my career. I just thought I could just soldier on, but I just completely underestimated what fatigue was and what the brain fog would mean for me. The sort of structural collapse that happens often happens with MS was more than I could manage. I couldn't then go on into a job. I basically became unemployed, and I was living alone. So I spent a lot of time alone, and I was isolated and basically stuck looking at the same four walls every day. Not too long before then, I'd been looking at doing conferences in China and teaching and networking. It was a completely different set of circumstances. The symptoms were just unbelievable. I was on every day, a daily injectables as well. They put me on Capaxone, which is an entry-level drug for multiple sclerosis. It doesn't help your symptoms. What it's supposed to do is slow down the progression of the disease in the future by 15% or 30% like a small amount. It was probably one of the most traumatizing elements of what was happening was these daily injectables because they were extremely painful because I was following a particular diet, or MS, which eliminated all saturated fat, which meant I had no fat on my body to inject the medication into. It burned every time for an hour or so afterwards. I only had four injection sites as opposed to the normal eight because I had no fat on my body. I stuck with that for a year. I was also on antidepressants. I was also smoking marijuana, medicinally. I was on a cocktail of medication, and I was using mobility aids. I actually ended up using the wheelchair. I basically felt like an 85-year-old. Yeah, that's how it went. Let me just get a couple of details on the background if you don't mind. PhD in what were you working on your PhD on? Just take care of me. Translation on intercultural studies. Translation, intercultural studies. Did you have to do with China or something because you might want to go to China? No. It's just that translation studies is having a bit of a boom in China. That's where all the jobs are. There's just a lot of activity there in that field, that's all. It was very international. The whole of translation studies by its very nature is extremely international. Let me ask you about the... You distinguish between the two major forms of MS, the primary progressive, the relapsing, the remitting version. How did they determine you had the latter, even though it sounds like you became more and more symptomatic? What was the criteria that it drove you towards you had this relapsing, remitting version of it? Yeah, because the nerve in my eyes started to correct itself. We're just doing lots of eyesight tests on me to make sure how the double vision was going and whether it was returning to normal vision. At the first sight that there was a return to normal, there was great relief because that meant that relapsing, limiting. As far as I understand it, when the remyelination happens, it's not necessarily always perfectly done, and you can be left with residual disability, but it's still a better scenario than primary progressive, when there's no repair happens, it's just a cumulative of disability. But since your initial diagnosis, you said it sounds like you continued to decline, though. It sounds like you had more and more symptoms, you became weaker, you mentioned brain fog and then not being able to walk because you ended up in a wheelchair. So obviously, it was still progressing. Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't mean that it doesn't progress. As I was told, it will progress for the rest of your life. It will only ever get worse, and you have to be on this medication for the rest of your life for that reason. I do feel like I was descending into a second relapse because they distinguish between daily symptoms and relapses. As far as I understand it, relapses are episodes of nerve failure. Daily symptoms are just the daily symptoms that you have when you have, which are ever present, but also they can vary between different individuals and over the course of a few days, you might have varying symptoms. So let me delve into this. You said you went on a MS diet, which included no saturated fat. So gosh, that would be tough to do. Where did that come from and what did it consist of? It was the OMS diet. So of course, as soon as they told me I was looking at having multiple sclerosis, I googled it. And the first thing you come across is walls protocol, which struck me as quite complicated. And I really didn't have the brain capacity to think about that. So OMS diet, on comparison, seemed more straightforward. So I chose to follow that. So it did include fish. So it was good fats or what's understood as good fats. I now have a completely different opinion on that. So it included fish and it excluded all saturated fats. And so that meant that although it was comparable to veganism, except for the fish, it didn't include, you couldn't have anything with sunflower oil in it. So no processed vegan food, for example. So it was more restrictive than veganism, except that it included fish. And I didn't, I enjoyed the diet itself. I enjoyed, it gave me a sense of control. I think that's what it mainly did for me. It gave me a sense of control over what was happening, even if that's only like an imaginary sense of control. Because it was so frightening, I just didn't know what my future held and I didn't, I felt helpless to do anything about it. So the diet helped me in that respect. And it was probably better for me than the diet I'd been following. I wasn't following any diet. I never paid attention to my diet. I never had a weight issue because I was so high energy. And I just was one of those people who would just zing around the place, not really be aware of any consequences for my diet. So I never really paid attention to my diet. And so doing the OMS diet was interesting. I learned quite a lot about nutrition. And it gave me nuts into control. But it didn't help me feel better. No, I certainly understand the need for some level of independence and some level of empowerment, because yeah, you feel like you're completely helpless. You have this diagnosis, you hit you out of the blue, and then you're like here to take all these drugs rest your life. And you're going to progress and eventually end up in a wheelchair and die. And that's what many people at OMS go through, unfortunately. So you're on this very pescatarianish, veganish diet, no improvement in symptoms, no, the symptoms continue to progress for enough. How long did you do that for? I was on that diet for, let's say, two years, I would say, I stopped following it when I moved to Spain. So the reason I moved to Spain to go back to your original question was I realized that my situation was so hopeless as it was living in Birmingham, in a big city, where I thought that I would have a community around me. But as often happens with people with chronic illnesses, especially when they're invisible, the world just carries on and you can't keep up and it leaves you behind. So I was in my hometown, but I was so isolated. And I figured it's what difference does it make if I'm on a mountain, or if I'm in the second biggest city in the UK, it makes no difference. And what I had come to understand is that my symptoms were being worsened by my environment. So this is part of my health journey, which goes beyond diet. So I do believe that there's more to it than diet, but I also believe that you can't address your health. If you don't address your diet, I think it's so fundamental. However, there were environmental factors causing, I believe, oxidative stress and inflammation, as well as sugaring my system in gluten and whoever knows what else because of my diet. But what I discovered, this is quite controversial, but what I discovered, and many people won't believe me, but I discovered that Wi-Fi and mobile phones, cell phones were making my essentials worse off brain fog and nausea. So whether or not you get, yeah, go on. Yeah, I think your larger point that yes, nutrition is incredibly important. And yes, if you don't fix your nutrition, you're going to limit your progress. But yes, there's definitely multiple other things that contribute to disease. I think that's clear. Nutrition probably be one of the bigger ones. And if we don't stop, quote unquote, "poising ourselves" doesn't matter what else you do in a way. So what was a year of the diagnosis? How long had this been going on in total before you start, I assume there's a happy in this, but tell us when it started again? Sorry, yeah, to recap. The onset of the symptoms was, the nerve failure in my eye was April 2016. The diagnosis was January 2017, and that's when after that's when I came to feel my worst. So the hardest years of my life, two or three years, where I was basically housebound. But as I say, that improved when I reduced my exposure and realized I need to be on many different levels, not to do just do with Wi-Fi, but stress levels, just being in the city was the wrong environment for me now. So I realized that I needed to move off grid and move to the country. But in the UK, that's not easy to do because of the weather. And also, I'm a translator. So my Spanish by this point was absolutely dismal. The situation was really bad. My bread and butter, I'd lost my academic career. But any hope I had really was to get translation work, but my translation skills were in decline because you have to keep up your languages. And so everything was pointing towards move to Spain, but also at this time Brexit was happening. So I had to do it immediately, or it would never be possible again. So just a crazy year where I realized I have to get out, I have to move off grid up a mountain. And I have to do this on my own with multiple sclerosis right now. So that's basically what happened. I moved heaven and earth and moved to a mountain cabin in Spain. And it was there that I discovered the carnival diet. So I let the OMS diet slip during that move, as it just became too complicated, get to the supermarket, because I was living up a mountain and everything was just that little bit more physically demanding and the learning curve of living off grid, which did me a lot of goods. This did help me to some degree. I would always say that it wasn't there was a degree of rehabilitation before I started the carnival diet. But nothing had as big an impact as the carnival diet as soon as I went carnival, everything just seemed to snap back into place. Let me before we get into that, because I don't know. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that for you. So you moved to Spain. And so what you're like 20, 20, I sure was a year you moved to Spain. Yeah, it's February 2020. So right right when the COVID craziness kicked off. And so I remember being on the ferry and the news reports being on the ferry. The of the first year support of the event. It was literally yeah, and so weird time ensues with that regard. But so were you what was your state of overall function when you had to move from the UK to Spain? Were you still limited mobility wheelchair? Where were you at at that point? I was not using the wheelchair anymore. I was okay with that wheelchair. I was still using a walking stick at times. So I never used the walking stick because I couldn't walk. I would use it to reduce the impacts of the fatigue, the post-exerginal glaze later on. So it would just reduce the impact on my body. But I was still using that when I moved to Spain occasionally. When I had a heavy day walking, I would use the stick. And do you let me ask did you have serial MRIs looking at? Because obviously the first initial diagnosis saying, hey, we've got this maybe some evidence of demyelination going on. Was that something that you had several of those over the years and it showed progression or where was that at? Yeah. So I moved from Manchester to Birmingham, which meant that I had what's really frustrating is that the different primary care trusts in the UK, you've got the system called primary care trust. They don't share information. So my first few MRIscans that I had in Manchester were not sent to Birmingham where I had a couple more MRIscans. And then they were not sent to Spain, where I eventually, I didn't actually register with a doctor at all for the first year. In the pandemic, I just kidnapped the mountain and I didn't, I wasn't registered. I just needed a break from all things, pharmaceutical, all things medical. But I eventually went to a doctor because I had a what felt like a relapse of fatigue. After I got snowed in for a week, it just hit me very hard. And I went to the doctor because it scared me and they referred me to a neurologist. And then in Spain, I've had a couple of MRIscans as well. So I've had maybe let's say six, seven, eight MRIscans, but I don't have all of them together to be able to look at the depression of the disease, which is the whole point of them. So that's a bit frustrating. So okay, so you move up to the mountains of Spain, get out of the craziness of the world because you just you just too slow and handle it anyway, because you physically limited mentally limited in a way. So you mentioned carnivore diet, what drove you down that path? That's obviously even today in 2024, it's still considered a weird friends. We're all weird knows because we meet now. Where did that? How did you get driven in that direction? It was, I don't even I can't I don't even know it just came about. I'm a big YouTube fan. And it was Kelly Hogan. I remember specifically that it was Kelly Hogan. And I just remember clicking on it out of vague interest and being quite taken by her story and phoning a friend and commenting, Oh my goodness, I just heard this crazy thing. This lady is incredibly healthy. She looks incredible. She feels incredible. Like she's saying that she only eats meat. Obviously, I'd heard of the Atkins diet and meat heavy, but I'd never heard of purely meat. And so it really made an impression on me. But not I had no understanding that it could possibly help an auto immune condition. I didn't, I wasn't addressing my diet at all. I just completely let that slip. But what happens was what happened was how's YouTube does? It suggests things related to videos that you've already watched. So I just had a drip feed of a video suggested. And that's every now and again, I would click on one of them. And I don't know what made me just decide to take the plunger. I think I'd noticed that I was starting to get bloated because I'm in my 40s. That happens. And I think I'd and I'd always been fairly slim. So I was starting to fill out in my clothes. This was nothing to do with my health. This was pure vanity. I was starting to fill out a little bit. And I think maybe that's what pushed me to do it. I don't know. I don't know. But I just decided one day to take the plunge. And I had no idea what impact it was going to have or how quickly I wasn't deeply invested in it. I hadn't, I wasn't one of those people who was desperately looking for a cure other than moving up the mountain. You know, I changed my entire life so I could try and get healthy. But I wasn't one of those people who was desperately trying every diet. It was I something just made me do it. Call it divine intervention. I don't know. But I just gave it a well one day. And within a week, the bloating had gone down. And then within a month, my cognitive function was back and my tiredness was gone and my core strength was back. I'm never looking faster. That's pretty cool. Do you know about the year that you did that or approximately when it was that you first? It was a year ago. So it was just, it was, I think June 2023. Okay. So about a year ago, so a little over a year ago, we're in August now. But so what was your like the day before you decided to do this on a whim or on a commit yourself? What were you? What was your physical and mental state like day before? I would say that my mental state was probably what I was struggling with most. I had a one, you go through something like a chronic illness is very hard not to have trauma. And I definitely had quite severe PTSD after leaving England. I've not been back to England since I left because it was, I support there's so many dimensions to chronic illness. It's it impacts your life in so many ways. And I was still picking up the pieces and trying to start over. And the tiredness I would feel it was less than when I was living in the city. It was less than when I was at my worst. But it was still impacting my life. I was still unable to socialize. I was still unable to pursue a career that was beyond me. And it was, I'd lost my confidence. I'd lost a lot of my memory was awful. My memory was absolutely awful. And that really did affect my social life and my work life. I was in a happier situation because I I was in a relationship. I'd met somebody, my now ex. And so I think maybe that also pushed me to do the diet because I wanted, I was very conscious, I was very insecure about the fact that I'm not the same person that I used to be. And it's my first relationship in 10 years because of the illness. By then I'd been ill for about seven years, I think. And so I think I just also just wanted to be the best person I could be. And I really didn't feel like I was. I was very conscious. And of the fact that I wasn't the person I used to be and I didn't look after my hygiene. I just spent a lot of the day indoors. Still, if I went out, I would be very tired the next day. And that was very restrictive. And I just never felt like I should get my life together. And I was still smoking marijuana quite heavily, which wasn't, I needed it medicinally when I was at my worst 100%. But I think by that point, it was becoming more of a habit and a hindrance than than something it was medicinal. But I was still very much trapped in that addiction. So that didn't help my either. Yeah, before. Okay, so you decide you're going to do this diet, you're in a mountain in Spain. I don't know this, I know Spain has some wonderful hams and they're famous for that type of stuff, some of their charcuterie and type of stuff. But what did you start eating? How did you start this diet? Oh, I was at the time I was in Asturias, which is a farming region. I couldn't have been in a better place. The beef, that is fantastic. It's the best quality there is. So that's what I went for. I actually love lamb and it's been a long time since I've been able to get a hold of some lamb and it is really expensive when I do find it. But it's beef. Beef was mainly beef. Yeah, I do eat also bacon, but I tend to stay away from pork and I do eat chicken as well. But it was, I just started buying rib eyes and ground beef. And that's really an egg. So I eat eggs very heavily for four to six eggs a day. The, because a lot of the critics will say that it's just because you stopped eating garbage food and you got a little process, but you had already done that. I assume your diet was, it wasn't the Pescatarian vegan diet, but I assume you're still eating mostly whole unprocessed foods. Is that fair to say before you switched to carnivore or what was it like immediately before? You were absolutely right that I had already experimented with a whole foods diet and it didn't help my health, but I had actually let that slip to the extent that I was now living on frozen pizzas. My diet was absolutely appalling before I started carnivore. So I went from a relatively healthy diet that didn't really help my symptoms, but was still healthy, comparative to processed foods. Then I let that slip and just carbohydrate heavy, really carbohydrate heavy and processed. And then I switched to carnivore. So I do think that that it's a large amount to do with eliminating sugar and eliminating gluten. I do, but there's no question. I've done that previously, not gluten actually. Gluten was part of the OMS was okay in the OMS diet. So I don't know what the science is. All I know is it's worked. I'm just a case study. And I just all I know is what my the truth of what my body is experiencing. Yeah, it doesn't really matter to you the mechanism. It just matters that it works at the end of the day. That's what's important. Okay, so you do this within a couple of days, bloating's down on a month. You're mentally better. So this has been a year now. So where are you at today relative to where you started? Are you back to normal, basically? Are you still have some deficits or yet? I'm back to normal. I would describe myself as back to normal. I do not think about multiple sclerosis. I don't live in fear of another relapse. I don't find that I have any restrictions other than maybe a lack of confidence in some areas. So that's something that I can I have now got the ability to work through because there's no reason why I can't. I really, truly feel 100% better. If anything, I would say I'm better than I was maybe before I got sick because I'm more conscious of my diet and my environment and my stress levels. And are you still doing a fairly strict carnivore diet or what do you do today at this point of year out or year and two months out? Yeah, so I'm still strict. I actually had more trouble sticking to the diet when I was still smoking marijuana, but I was able to give up marijuana because I got my health back. I started to find that it was conflicting now with all the energy I had and all the things I wanted to do. And now it was just a depressant and it was not helping me. A habit that had become so ingrained after so many years of smoking it medicinally and truly needing it, I was able to kick. And then that meant that I no longer had the the munchies. That was sometimes hard to manage on the carnivore diet, but eliminating both those things, eliminating sugar, then eliminating marijuana. I'm able to stick to the diet much better. And I usually eat bacon and eggs in the morning. And then in the afternoon, I eat a quantity of beef. Usually that's my go to. And I observed the 16 eighth fasting regimes. I realized about three months in that I hadn't been sticking to the fasting and that that was making me plateau a little bit. And then as soon as I corrected that, it all just went straight back to an upward trend. And again, because I've never been to Spain, although I will be soon, but how difficult is it financially to do this diet there? Is it cost prohibitive for a lot of people? Because it sounds like you had an academic career, and then couldn't work for a period of time. I'm not I'm just wondering how this is doable for you. Yeah, I know it is finances have been an ongoing struggle they have. But I am blessed to own property. So I've been able to work with that and monetize that anyway. But yeah, it's it is I find it hard. However, it's true that I overall buy less food because I'm not snacking. And when I was still with my partner, I was buying meat for me. He was he did eat meat, but he wasn't carnivore. And then it was two loads of shopping, which just a whole load of process junk for him and all the meat for me. And it was really expensive. So since we've broken up, it's got a bit more straightforward. But mainly the main thing that I've done is I've actually now moved off the mountain, because I found that now that I have my health back is too isolating is the I like being isolated, but I don't like being in in an inaccessible location. That was the thing about the mountain. So I moved off the mountain and I now live in some acres of farmland in Galicia. And the idea being to raise my own animals to keep costs down and to know what's going into the animals and how they're being treated. So I've changed my entire life to fit around the carnivore diet and to keep the cost more sustainable. What what you said, you'd had multiple MRI scans, someone you got to Spain. Have you had any subsequent to being on the carnivore diet? No, I'm still waiting for my first MRI since I started the diet. And that's because I moved from one area of Spain to the other. And it's a different, I have to re register because I don't have private health insurance. I'm registered in the social security system instead because private health insurance was too expensive with a diagnosis of MS. It was cheaper to pay into the social security system. So that means I have to wait for them to reallocate me a neurologist. And my last MRI scan, which was just before I started the diet, I have 14 lesions. I'm still waiting to see what the result is. But that should be quite soon. I should be having it. I've been appointed a neurologist. And my first meeting with that neurologist is in a couple of weeks. And then I presume she's going to request an MRI scan at that point. I'm really interested to know. Oh, it goes. Yeah, obviously. And that for the 14 lesions that you'd had just prior to going carnivore was at the most you'd had up to that point. I believe so. Yeah, I do believe so, which was strange to me because I moved up a mountain and reduced the inflammation in my brain as I understood it. I was disappointed to learn that this hadn't fixed what was wrong because I was convinced this was the one reason it just really hadn't considered diet being impacting on that at all. Because you Googled yourself and went on this OMS diet initially. You didn't want to do the walls protocol and then you decided to do this one. Were there any neurologists that were involved in your care at any point saying, hey, maybe you should consider some sort of dietary shift was that ever discussed at all or no? Not once. No, not even with my MS nurse. In fact, I never saw my MS nurse. The standard of care in the UK was quite bad. The NHS is under a lot of pressure. And so that was the reason standard of parents stay in her found to be much, much better. But still, no one has said anything about diet. And in fact, my neurologist is very dismissive of it. My previous neurologist, the one in Asturias, my most recent neurologist, he was he's really heavily pushing drugs on me. He doesn't like the fact that I'm infusing them. And he's almost wanting me to have symptoms to prove so that he can be proved right. And he doesn't like the fact that I'm still feeling fine. And he's very dismissive of the carnibal diet. Yeah. Okay. So you did discuss what you were doing with an neurologist. And he said, no, this isn't going to help. And, you know, I filmed him. I put it on my YouTube channel. I filmed an interview with him. So I have it doesn't Spanish. I assume he's a spoke Spanish. I put subtitles. That would be fun. That would be interesting to watch. And we didn't press record in time. So that was a shame. But we managed to capture some of the discussion. And yeah, he's not interested at all. Yeah, it's a to again, that's not surprising. It's sad to me that the positions that aren't really curious about this stuff. So when's the last time you took medication for this disease? 2018. Yeah. And then you stopped, we were able to stop the medicinal marijuana sometime after starting carnivore a couple months in. It was April the 1st of this year. Okay. And you feel fine without it? Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe even better without it, perhaps. Yeah, it's not. But when I was using it medicinally, it basically would help me to feel normal again. That's how ill I felt. But when you're in a healthy body, it's a completely different substance. And I started to realize I had to be honest with myself. This is now starting to hinder my ability to come back out into the world again, which is what I most need to do after all those years of being ill and isolated. The last thing I need now is to it's not only the fact that it's it keeps you at home. That's what marijuana does. But also it carries so many judgments, and I just felt like I just need a break from this stuff and being what enabled me to do that. No problem. So now that you're a year, you've been feeling like, hey, I'm back to normal, maybe even better than I was before. You got a PhD in translational studies. What are your thoughts now? What am I going to do now? Are you still interested in pursuing that again? Or how do you proceed at this point? Yeah, I'm translating a novel right now. I've made a connection with somebody who had a novel to translate and said, look, I'll do it. So I'm doing it for free just to get things back and rolling again and have recent examples of my work. But that's a really big deal for me that I've taken on a client, basically. And it's a novel, which is my passion. I'm actually an author myself. So to translate literary documents is a dream. So I am starting to piece together my career again. But in a gentle way, I don't need to rise to greater heights. I just want a peaceful life and a healthy life. And as long as I can get income, now I feel confident that I can get income because I have my health. So yeah, it's baby steps though, I would say, because it was a long time out of the world of work. And I have no CV anymore. Even though I have a PhD, my CV is worthless. But I know I'm a bit by bit re-establishing a career, yeah. That's interesting. My book is still not been translated into Spanish, which I think is crazy because it's been in Polish and Hungarian and German and Japanese. And it's still not still having to attempt to transmit because there's way more Spanish speakers than there are. Hungarian and Polish speakers, my gosh. But anyway, maybe one day. Let me ask you about, what was I going to, I had something I want to ask you about. Oh, I've, believe it or not, talked to a number of people who have put MS into remission with this diet. You're not the first. So what would you know, I've seen this pattern over and over, hopefully we can get a study going or a case series or something and report that in the medical literature like we did with, we're doing one with inflammatory bowel disease, which is hopefully going to be published very soon. But let me ask you, one of the things that I have seen, and maybe you'll be the exception in this case, but most of the people that I've seen successfully help the room or not the room to their multiple sclerosis have done so with a relatively high fat percentage into their diet, is that something you focused on at all? Did you intuitively go one way or the other? Because I know you mentioned things like chicken, which traditionally aren't very high fat, but how would you rate your fat consumption if you even track that? Yeah, I'm becoming more and more conscious of the need for fat. I did make the connection at some point that myelin is made of fat, saturated fat. You need to have it in your brain for your brain to function. So I'm aware that fat is the key. However, I'm not, I wouldn't say that I'm somebody who's very meticulous about measuring my macros or this and my that because I don't know anything about nutrition, I'm starting to learn and I'm very keen to learn. And I actually want to improve my carnival practice by informing myself better about these things. But I would say that it's definitely high fat. I have started licking the plate. I've started like just pouring as much fat as possible from the pan on whatever I'm eating. And I tend to eat ground beef. So I believe that's got a higher fat content usually because they just round up all the bits. Yeah, it certainly can be. Yeah, it can be. Your meat comes from, you said you live in a farming community as local abattoirs, butchers. What is this situation? I assume that's what you have in Spain. I can go there, I won't know for sure. But yeah, Galicia is also, now I'm living in Galicia. Galicia is also a farming region. And I do usually go to the supermarket, but I've got, there's an eco tien de an eco shop where they actually slaughter their own and they raise their own animals. And the reason I don't go to that every time is because it's expensive, but it matters to me that I know where the meat comes from. I do try and go there as much as I can. And the yeah, I'm spoiled for choice. And to be honest, I have farmers and my nearest neighbors are farmers who keep, I've got cows in my land right now, actually, and just to keep the grass down. But I'm going to speak to one of the farmers and ask if I can buy half a cow off them and try and, because that's more economical, obviously, a higher cost overall, a higher cost in one go, but it's more economical overall. So that's, that would be my idea. But as I say, all the meat here, even in the supermarkets is all local Galicia meat. So that's nice. Yeah, for sure. And you obviously, not that you've basically put your MS in remission, which is great. And I guess some of the people say we had this relapsing, remitting form. And therefore, that's that's to be expected in a certain percentage of the population. But there was a very clear, exact thing you did that led to this. It wasn't like, oh, it just randomly happened. It was like intentionally I wanted this diet. And within days, I felt better. And in fact, within a month I'd regain my, my cognitive ability back to normal. So it's obviously not just by chance. And this is a frustrating thing, I think, because there are a certain number of people in which a disease will go into remission. And rather than studying those people say, what are you doing? Maybe we can expand us on to a larger audience. People just say, let's just, okay, whatever, keep doing what you're doing, and we ignore it type of thing. And I would say also that there's one thing putting your disease in remission. As far as I understand it, that would be not having relapses for a long time of nerve failure. But my symptoms vanish. My daily symptoms vanish. They're not expected to, they're not expected to go away. They went away. Because of the decisions I made to not at that location, to move to Spain. And then to start the diet, you know, as an incremental and consistent upward trend based on the decisions that I took independently, not following the doctor's advice. If I'd stay following the doctor's advice, I'd dreamt to think what situation I'd be in right now. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's, it's got to be a little bit frustrating to think that this is almost a decade of your life that you lost in a way and had someone said it had someone said back in 2017, hey, maybe you should try this diet for three to six months. Your life would have probably taken a very different way. Maybe you'd have never moved to Spain. Maybe it's the silver lining. Maybe you're happier in Spain than you were in. I do think about the fact often this is where PTSD comes in as well to just lose 10 years of your life. My fertile years, like I don't have children. I'm 44. I would have been having children. I might have been in a situation where I was really unhappy. I might have been living in China because that's where the jobs were. I might have been in China for the pandemic. It's crazy to think that line in the sand and how things changed. And then to just for it to be fixed. So in such a straightforward manner, it's confusing. So if I'd done, like you say, if I'd done this back in 2017, but then would I want to not be living where I live now? I know I'm glad I live where I do. So you just have to accept it. It's just the flow of life. And I got the information. I got my health back. That's the main thing. And it does feel like, although I'm 44, I feel quite youthful. And I think a lot of people on carnivore feel that they feel that the aging process has been slowed to some degree or I'm perimenopausal now. But as far as I know, the carnivore diet helps with menopause. There's so many benefits to it. So I do feel like I lost 10 years of my life, but I also feel like the carnivore has given me some of those years back again. Yeah, good for you. Like I said, I'm almost 58 years old and I feel pretty damn good. I don't have anything to compare it to this. I'm only my own self, but I not feel better than I did in my 40s. So that's good. What other things outside of obviously these MS symptoms, did you have you noticed? I said you said less bloating, maybe better appetite control. Have you noticed any other gee whiz? This is weird or interesting or improvements in your overall health with this? Yeah. I've got no eczema problems. I've always had eczema. I don't have eczema anymore to my knowledge. You come back, can't you? But I have not had an eczema outbreak for a long time. I was starting to go grey on my temples or my forehead here. And that seems to have gone away. Well, I don't know if that's possible, but it seems to me that the grey hairs I was starting to get have stopped. They've gone away. They've gone back to having colour again or they've just stopped coming. Anxiety, I've always had a very anxious disposition before I had MS. And I would say that my anxiety is reduced. My weight, not that I've ever had a weight problem, but it's really great to be 44 and to be still fitting in my clothes from my early 20s. And to know that this is going to continue this way. What else? Yeah, skin issues. Apart from eczema, I also had some recurring spots on my chin from mask wearing, even forced mask wearing during the pandemic or infected or something. And they cleared up immediately on going on the diet. Let me so you said you have a YouTube channel now. And I guess the rational behind doing that was maybe just to share your story. Is that why you did that? Or was there some other YouTube interest that you had? Yeah, it was. But it was before I knew that the story was going to go this way. It existed. The YouTube channel existed before I started the diet, but I had 11 subscribers. It was tiny and all the people, I knew them all in real life. It was just a way to record my off-grid life, really, because I was living in such a spectacular and unusual location that I wanted to make videos about that. It was a way to interact with my environment in a creative way, while I was isolated on the mountain. So I had started the YouTube channel before, but I just decided, oh, I'll just, I'll just do vlogs about this in a really very casual manner. And without any pre-planning, it was all very spontaneous. No, starting the diet and doing a video about the diet. But what's happened is the channel has grown as my story has unfolded. And it's just incredible, because the community has just blown me away to be part of the carnival community, where it's not just people, it's partly people who are brave enough to make independent decisions against the dictates of their physicians and take their health into their own hand. But it's also people who have been often being through chronic illness and have gained a lot of wisdom and empathy. And it's really hard for healthy people to understand the experience of a chronic eel person. And it was one of the hardest things. It was, I would say, the hardest thing about being chronic eel was the gulf between you and the rest of the world, as they carry on with their lives and forget about you. That's exactly what happened to me. And I took all of these decisions to move off grid and basically on my own. So to have the validation of people and to be able to just spread the word, of course, there's so many elements to being on the carnival diet, it's a way of life, it's a way of eating, but it's also a community. And it's a community that I was missing. I was missing that support and that validation and that just connecting with people who you can relate to. I have found that's been a really positive thing about starting the diet. Do you get interaction or have you had any sort of other folks with MS that have said, Hey, this is of interest to me. And have you seen much of that? Only online only through the channel, lots of people on the channel. Some people reach out to me with email or make comments. I don't know that many people in real life who have MS, to be honest. I do know carnivores in real life. In the wild, does somebody hit it in one in the comments of it? And how do you, are there any people in your meat? Because obviously you said you can isolate yourself in a mountain because you just didn't feel like being around the hustle and bustle and couldn't keep up. Now that you're back to full speed, I assume interacting in real life with people, anybody around you like say, what the hell are you eating or has that ever come up? Oh my gosh. People are absolutely shocked at the difference. Absolutely shocked. So most of the people I know now never knew me before I got ill because I'd moved to Spain on my own and didn't know anybody when I moved here. So they never, I was always very conscious. You never knew me before I got ill, you don't know that this isn't me. And I can't prove that it isn't me. And it's my disease. It's my illness that's making me act this way and not be able to. But I was really insecure about that. And then to have the carnivore diet basically prove that I am high energy, I am with it, I'm on the ball, I can be anyway. And just to have my body and brain back was a shock to me, but it was also really validating to see people's reactions and be like, wow, you're just a different person, completely different person. You speak Spanish now, I assume. I don't know. I moved it because I'm a translator and I wanted to not lose my Spanish. So got it, got it. Okay. So, yeah, because it's I'm struggling to learn. I was trying to learn Spanish a little bit in France and I most second muster is about the level of a three or four year old kid at this point. So you can't really appreciate the depth of someone's maybe cognitive abilities if they can't speak to language fluently. And so it's hard to assess, but since you can do that, people know that, hey, this person is now more happy. You can see happiness. You look like you're you look like you're quite happy now, which is good. I think so. One of my friends said, you look, you seem whole again. He's not again. She's never seen me. She said, you seem you Tevez and Terra, you look whole, a whole person. Yeah, that's a good testament. Okay, we've only got a few minutes left, but a lot of people say, Hey, you shouldn't eat an all meat diet because all the saturated fast can give you heart disease and it's bad for you. And that type of stuff. And whether or not that's true or not. And I certainly am skeptical about that. What are your thoughts? Let's just say that you have increased your risk for cardiovascular disease by 50%. Would you go back to another diet at this point, given what you've gone through? No, not a chance. No way. I don't believe I am also skeptical. And I'm skeptical of everything. The who says, I'm skeptical of everything that we think to be true about a lot of assumptions that are made in medicine. And I think a lot of its profit based. I am you might you might put me in the category of conspiracy theorists. I would reject that label, but I don't anymore believe what I'm told. Like that. So what I would go on is how I feel. And maybe I'm completely wrong. I don't know. I don't know what the future is, but all I know is what I can do now and my future, there was no future. And now I'm able to live my life. And I would take that risk, to be honest, even if I did end up with heart disease, I just to have these years back. Now is what counts. That's a whole thing about informed consent. He said, Hey, look, maybe, and we don't know it's all speculative. But in the here and now, it's pretty clear to you that you are clearly better than you were a year and a half ago, or whatever dark five years ago, whatever. So it's hard to it's hard to convince. We like, they see a lot of gaslighting going on where oh, you're not really healthy. It's all just in your mind, or you could have got that way if you just ate any diet, which you'd already, like you said, I already tried a whole food diet with plants and fish and it didn't make me healthy. It didn't improve my symptoms basically at all. And you go carnivore, higher fat, still removing all the garbage. And now you've got this, you've got this incredibly impressive return of function and stuff like that. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you very much for doing this and sharing the message. Hopefully, somebody will hear this and get inspired. And like I said, I'm determined to get some of this science out here because I think your story and I can rapidly find several other people that have put their MS in remission. Probably the numbers are into the maybe even hunters by this point. And that's something that needs to be studied and deserves to be studied. And so thank you. Thank you for sharing this. What is your YouTube channel? Where can people go to find more about this if they wanted to get other social media? Where do you at? Kabanya Chronicles is my YouTube channel. Okay, Kabanya. So I would say I would say Cabana as a gringo, I would say Cabana Chronicles. Okay. So anyway, thank you for this and continue. And if you get your MRI back, I mentioned when they get that scheduled, it would be interesting to see what it's just maybe you can share it. I certainly love to hear about that because I've seen a number of people that have yes, had serial MRIs and they show improvements, reductions in the number of MS plaques and so on and so forth. So I wouldn't be surprised if the MRI scan is better. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Take care. Cheers!
