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Im a 22 year old male reaching out to see if anyone has insight into my situation. Earlier this year, the no-starch carnivore diet worked like a miracle for me, but upon trying it for the past 4.5 months, it hasn’t been effective, and I can’t figure out why. Here’s a bit of background to provide some context:
I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) in June 2023 after a relatively quick diagnostic process. My pain started in my lower back, glutes, and chest, and I initially thought I’d overworked myself at my new hospitality job. However, the pain kept escalating until I was bedridden.
Fortunately, my primary care doctor acted quickly, referring me to a rheumatologist within a few months. Based on my symptoms, positive HLA-B27 test results, active SI joint inflammation on MRI, and elevated inflammatory markers, my AS diagnosis was confirmed.
At the time, I had flights for my overseas experience around Europe in late August, so I pushed hard for a relief. Very fortunatly a combination of 2g sulfasalazine, 400mg celebrex, and 10 mg prednisone made me feel like new! I was able to travel almost pain free for 3 months, begin able to endure 30k steps daily at times.
When I returned, I began researching long-term solutions, as I’d heard about the risks of chronic prednisone use were brutal. That’s when I discovered Mikhaila Peterson and decided to try the carnivore diet. To my amazement, my joint pain completely disappeared within four days, a miracle.
However, the diet caused issues with my lungs to feel fuzzy and make breathing feel a bit awkward. Eventually I tried to reintroduce others foods, I tried a few different foods that I thought were pretty safe. This included apples, kiwis and lettuce salad which initially didn’t seem to cause harm and actually helped my breathing feel normal again. Overtime my pain seemed to increase after introducing many foods. I experimented for a while with just fruits, vege and meat but my body didn’t like it.
I gave carnivore another shot a few months later, and again, it worked like magic—pain gone in four days. This time, I stuck with it a bit longer but again found the food introductions caused me pain. I think I may have added a few starches in such as potatoes which I now understand may have been a large factor.
Frustrated that I couldn’t find a solution whilst I was eating only healthy foods. I returned to eating much more variety and eating home cooked meals with my family again with many containing a lot of starches like rice or potato.
This year has essentially been a research project and I’m grateful how much I’ve learned and grateful I found this website where the success stories are very motivating for me to keep going. I feel like this time I am a lot more informed on what foods are safe to reintroduce after reading Dr. Ebringer work. This leads me to the current day being 4.5 months no starch carnivore, but this time, it hasn’t really helped at all. My pain persists, and my joints flare up even with light activity like walking. I am perplexed and can’t seem to figure out why I’m not getting results. I’ve had to give up many all the things I love, such arts, football, running, and the gym which has been very fruatrating.
The no starch carnivore diet gave me complete remission twice earlier this year and within 4 days each, yet now it’s doing nothing. I can’t think of anything I’ve changed. I’m on the same medication and eating exactly the same food. The only reason I’ve stuck with it for this long is that I know it worked for me before.
I do not want to go on biologics and I’m determined to do anything to feel better and reclaim my life and routine. If that means restricting my diet for the rest of my life, I’m prepared to do it.
Does anyone have any ideas why the diet worked so well before but not now? Am I missing something? Has anyone experienced something similar or come across research that might explain this? Any advice or theories would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the long post but thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
I'm also new to AS healing but have been researching this disease and health in general like crazy, I literally have hundreds of hours into research now.
Remember I'm new, but I will give you my opinion on this (based on trends I keep seeing with the community and my dad).
1. Eat Organic. Even if your not feeding the klebs, there is so much toxic stuff in foods these days. I know this from firsthand experience because I went full organic 4 years ago, for about 6 months. After staying on this healthy diet, eating meats and produce that wasn't organic gave me a big stomach ache. (For the record, my dad has AS and I don't have any autoimmune diseases, so Organic defiantly is better for everyone)
2. You need to eat a diet that allows you to get off meds. My dad got to the point where it was time to start thinking about the biologic. After doing some research, I saw that many people really got messed up after 5 years of biologic use. Also, the NSAID you are taking is terrible for gut health - it causes leaky gut and also kills off the good bacteria in your small intestine. My Dad had been using NSAID on and off for the last 4 years, and after doing a bunch of research and seeing him get worse overtime, I really regret not looking for the diet earlier.
3. These diseases can be cured with diet. After spending hundreds of hours reading and cross checking everything - all the people I've seen get better do it with diet.
5. You need to eat a mixed diet because eating the same thing over and over again will not allow the good bacteria to grow which will fight against the klebs. I've read so much about people who stay on a strict diet and develop sensitivites to foods and now get flared up easily when they try to eat something else. Many people stay on a strict diet because it works well and they don't want to risk getting in a flare. I believe in starving the klebs, but I also believe in eating a diverse enough diet to create a healthy gut microbome.
Please spend 4 hours to look at the information provided below. I think aside from finding the Professor Ebringer, Dragonslayer and Carol Sinclair Information, it is the most important things I've looked at and will give you a better understanding.
1. Watch this whole thing, I've watched it 3 times so far and pick up on something new every time as I learn more and more.
2. Guy goes into remission from eating organic plant-based diet. (restore gut balance)
BTW, whenever my dad ate meat of low quality, it flared him up completely. Must be the toxins going into his bloodstream from leaky gut caused by NSAID and klebs...
We can talk if you want, I have so much more to say but talking is faster than typing...
Thankyou for the information and taking time to read my story! I'm always trying to stay open minded and change my current approach so thankyou for sharing what you have learned through your many hours of research. The top video seems to make a lot of sense to me and I want to try eating some fermented stuff eventually.
For awhile I was of the opinion that I need to get rid of klebsiella by starving (carnivore diet) which worked originally but I'm starting to think you are right and I need to focus on a bit more diversity to compete with klebsiella whilst also trying not to feed the klebsiella itself.
Im going to add a bunch of organic fruit this week whilst avoiding the starchy ones and see how it goes.
If you have any more information or videos you found interesting id love to hear it and I think its really honorable that you are trying to help your dad out. Let me know if you find anything that helps him that I may be able to try too, cheers!
Hi to both of you, it's great to have a couple of newbies here and nice to see how much research and effort you're putting in. I'd like to add a couple of suggestions to those already made:
Firstly, although cutting starch from our diets is going to help all of us with AS, it's not necessarily going to provide the full answer for us all. We're all so different, and our microbiomes are different. Also out guts change over time, so what worked last year might not fully work this year. If you've been taking anti-inflammatories your gut might not be looking great right now. And proton pump inhibitors can also cause problems (though I don't think you mentioned those).
Many of us, because of gut inflammation, will have developed food intolerances, and eliminating those can be key. Unfortunately with less variety in your diet you become more inclined to develop intolerances. Then many of us have SIBO, in which case our pain can be triggered by certain sugars; in this case the FODMAPS diet might be necessary. For a few people an overgrowth of yeast might be complicating the picture, in which case steps would need to be taken to counter that. I also wondered whether caramelisation might be an issue - some people are sensitive to browned meats or veg. Has your carnivore diet been completely carnivore? Have you for example been frying up mince with onion and garlic? These could be a problem if you have SIBO, and onion could be a problem if it's caramelised. It all depends on how sensitive you are right now.
My second point relates to the first: in addition to the books you mentioned above, I highly recommend you read Rebecca Fett's book The Keystone Approach. She gives a very comprehensive explanation of why cutting starch alone might not be the full answer for everyone.
I also need to mention that while many on this diet eat white sugar without problem, it can be highly inflammatory. I made the difficult choice to cut it from my diet in 2016 and I've stuck to that.
I urge you to persevere, to keep reading, to keep enquiring and analysing. Finding the right diet will be life changing. And when I've occasionally been unable to get to the bottom of things and have felt desperate, I've found fasting to be a quick solution.
Sorry for taking a week to get back to you, been a bit busy around the Christmas season!
I did around 4 months of a carnivore diet which included beef, lamb, a little bit of chicken and some bacon.
I then did around a month of a ‘lion diet’ eating only fatty red meat but didn’t really see a difference from the previous 4 months. During these periods I ate strictly animal products using beef fat and no garlic or onions or anything.
I actually tried introducing some fruits the last few weeks and it made my eczema flare really bad and gave me a lot of digestive issues.
I really think there is some kind of overgrowth going on in my gut but it’s hard to know what that is and what to do about it. I see some people using binders such as active charcoal & bentonite clay so may give this a go. I also see a few people having great success with antibiotics but I think it would be impossible to convince a doctor to prescribe.
I Have recently done a mold test on my home as well and a hair mineral test for heavy metals to see if I can get any clues but waiting for results.
Thanks for your kind words and your book recommendation. I appreciate you taking the time to write and encourage a new member like myself because it’s been an incredibly tough year for myself and I know many others but good to know we all in this together!
I've read about many people like yourself (age and severity), probably best if you enlist the advice of Dragonslayer, and you might want to look into antibiotics.
Dude, if you have Sibo (hard to tell, but you probably do) and the fruits are causing this bad of a reaction. I would stay clear of all things that contain sugar...
Probably best if you try to introduce some fermented foods, like sauerkraut and other vegetables that are part of a low FODMAP diet.
Stay clear of fruits for now, probably best if you try a Keto diet, since that is a bit more unrestricted than carnivore and avoids sugars, though I recommend you keep away from the dairy for now...
BTW digestive issues and flares are a clear sign of an overgrowth like SIBO. I believe many people do good with Keto because they are avoiding carbs (starches) and sugars...
You could try using natural antimicrobials. I have used many over the years, including oregano oil, citricidal, olive leaf extract etc etc. It can be difficult to tell the difference between a yeast overgrowth and a bacterial overgrowth, so you might need to Google all your symptoms to find out which it is. Fortunately many of the antimicrobials will treat both.
Then it can be a case of learning what your particular triggers are. It took me a long time to work out that I'm less prone to SIBO if I completely stop eating between meals. I think a reason for this might be that constant eating is more likely to keep the ileo-caecal valve open, allowing free passage of bacteria into the small intestine. My overall health has improved since I took this approach.
There is so much to learn. It's a good idea to take notes as you go along, and to find somewhere to save important articles so that you can reread them later. Don't be despondent if your progress seems slow - it's a journey for all of us.
Wishing you a super Christmas, and I hope 2025 brings you the answers you need. Don't give up!
Kind regards Jane
Spondyloarthropathy with symptoms of AS, Sjögrens and fibro. Previously took Celebrex, Methotrexate, Trepiline, Prednisone which seemed to trigger a flare and my illness became much worse. Symptoms now kept mostly under control with NSD, as well as cutting sugar, dairy and yeast and food intolerances. Mostly pain free now and all symptoms massively improved.
