Dr. Anthony Chaffee interviews a guest who conducted a comprehensive 90-day carnivore experiment after over a decade of clean eating. The guest tracked extensive biomarkers including full blood panels, continuous glucose monitoring, sleep metrics, and gut microbiome testing before and after the intervention. Despite eating an already clean omnivorous diet, the carnivore approach yielded unexpected improvements including 16 pounds of fat loss while maintaining muscle mass, enhanced sleep quality, and increased energy levels.
The most striking findings challenge conventional wisdom about gut health and fiber. Counter to standard recommendations to increase plant foods and fiber for microbiome diversity, the carnivore diet actually increased gut bacteria diversity, added five keystone bacteria species, and improved bacterial relationships. Dr. Anthony Chaffee discusses how these results align with emerging research questioning the necessity of fiber and probiotics, while exploring the mechanisms behind microbiome adaptation during dietary changes. The conversation reveals how even clean eaters can experience additional health benefits from eliminating plants entirely.
Key Takeaways
- 90 days of carnivore eating increased gut microbiome diversity and added 5 new keystone bacteria species, directly contradicting standard recommendations to eat more fiber and plants for gut health
- Clean eaters can still experience significant improvements on carnivore: 16 pounds fat loss with preserved muscle mass, better sleep metrics, and increased energy levels within 90 days
- Cholesterol numbers may dramatically increase on carnivore (total cholesterol jumping from 300 to 450) but particle size testing reveals predominantly large, fluffy LDL particles rather than small, sticky ones associated with heart disease
- Oral microbiome changes on carnivore may seed the gut with beneficial bacteria through food consumption, potentially explaining microbiome improvements without fiber supplementation
- 90-Day Carnivore Experiment: Sleep, Body Composition, and Energy Results
- Gut Microbiome Diversity Improves on Carnivore Diet Despite No Fiber
- Microbiome Research Limitations and Probiotics Failure Studies
- Oral Microbiome Changes and Bacterial Transfer Theory on Carnivore
- Cholesterol Levels Rise to 450 on Carnivore: Particle Size Analysis
- Medical Establishment Resistance to Low-Carb Diabetes Reversal
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
[Music] you're not dogmatic about these things. You you know, you go in and out of of keto, but you're always eating clean foods. You're always eating healthy. You're not you don't go eating in and out of eating junk food, you know, things like that. So, it's always clean food. It's always it's always whole foods. And um uh but you know, you did do an experiment where you you went full carnivore, didn't you? Can you tell us about that? Yeah. And you know over the last few years probably since 2018 I would do like 30 days of carnivore 45 60 and then last year I decided to do all right I'm going to do 90 days and 90 days straight I'm going to do I'm going to test as well and get some data and of course this is my own personal end of one experience but I want to get some data. So on day one, I did comprehensive lab work. Um, of course, I did my thyroid panel, full thyroid panel. I did my full lipid panel with the NMR, looking at particle sizes, inflammatory markers, hormones, CBC. I mean, full full blood work. And then I also did a stool test on day one to look at my gut microbiome and diversity and different bacteria relationships. I put on a continuous glucose monitor, although there was nothing really exciting there because my glucose levels were just stable the whole time. Yeah, exactly. There was nothing really exciting there. And then I of course looked at my uh Aura Ring stats looking at heart rate variability, deep sleep, um REM sleep, how many times I was getting up at night compared to when I was not doing carnivore. And I went full in 90 days. And it was interesting um there was a lot of interesting moving pieces here. The first thing that I I noticed uh personally without looking at the lab work was that I started to get better sleep. Uh my deep sleep and REM sleep was was increased. Uh, I was waking up less times throughout the night. Not that I was waking up a ton, but it cut that uh dramatically. So, I was getting more restful sleep. I had more energy. Uh, what was interesting, Anthony, I already thought I was pretty lean when I started doing this, but I lost 16 pounds in 90 days and 6% body fat, but the muscle mass stayed the same. I I I have the inbody skin, so the muscle mass didn't go down. It wasn't muscle. It was mostly body fat. So, my abs were just more visible during that time frame. I didn't realize I needed to do that, but my body, I guess, needed to do that. The most interesting part was the stool test because when I got my results back from day one, the results came in about 3 weeks into the carnivore experience experiment. And the report showed that my diversity was average. My gut microbiome diversity was average. It wasn't poor. It wasn't amazing. It was average. And the recommendations on that lab report was to eat less keto foods, less meat, more plants, more vegetables, more polyphenol rich foods, pretty much like a predominant predominantly like plant-based diet with a lot of fiber to increase the diversity. Well, I did the complete opposite cuz I'm doing carnivore. So, I went 90 days and then I retested that same stool test. And you would think, not you, Anthony, but most people would think that, man, your gut's going to look destroyed. He did the exact opposite of what most gut microbiome specialists would say to do, including this company. And actually, my diversity increased after 9 days, 90 days, excuse me. My keystone bacteria, I had five keystone bacteria show up on day 90 that did not show up on day one. I had seven core bacteria show up on day 90 that did not show up on day one. Acromancia increased. The bacteria relationships uh uh were improved as well. So everything in my gut microbiome improved after 90 days doing the complete opposite. So I want to get your thoughts on that and then I want to share a little bit about the blood work and what I saw with that. Yeah. Well, I I I think it's fantastic. um you having that that point of data and people well it's an n of one but well we have we have n of one times 10,000 at this point because a lot of people are doing this and finding very similar results and and the argument is well you're eating a bunch of processed food and garbage and now you change it. No, you were eating a very clean diet. You're eating very clean I mean for for over a decade you were eating a very clean uh omnivorous diet including meat but also including a lot of fibrous plants. And that's the whole point. They say, "Oh, you should eat a lot of high fiber plants because that fiber is so good for the microbiome." Um, compared to what? Because if if if you're comparing it to the standard American diet that most people are eating, uh, then, you know, changing that to a more whole food approach, getting some, you know, fruits and vegetables that that have fiber in it, you're not just adding those things that have fiber, you're also replacing the other garbage things that maybe aren't so good. And so you have an improved microbiome. It has has an and we we don't know all that much about the microbiome. I I work with um a guy in in Perth. He's an ICU specialist. He's you know intensivist and um but he's also a researcher. I mean that's that's his main gig is doing research on the microbiome. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications on the microbiome. And I was talking to him about this and what he knows. It was just basically it was just like, "Yeah, I think it's really big. I think once we figure out what the hell is going on and and and all this stuff, I think we're going to really understand a lot more about human disease." It was just like, "Wow, this is a guy with over 200 publications." He's saying, "We don't know, Jack." But but I think it's big. And once we figure it out, you know, then then I think it's going to be, you know, very very telling. But, you know, that I mean, that's from the horse's mouth. I mean, this guy is one of the world's experts in this and he's saying clearly, we just don't understand this well enough at the moment, but I think it's very important. And so, you know, the idea that we we just know perfectly how to manipulate this stuff and oh yeah, let's add more fruits and vegetables and fiber and all that sort of stuff. Probiotics and that'll solve everything. That's it. Yeah. Except that, you know, those those studies have come out now that probiotics are actually uh horrible and and don't do any good. I I spoke to a researcher. He's a gastronurologist down in Perth and he actually did um his his lab was hired by a probiotics company uh to to do a large scale study because were shorter like very small like six person something like that study you know not powered high enough. You can't get any real information off that showing that their product was good. So like oh yeah look studies have shown and but now they they they knew that that was So they wanted to get like a bigger study and so they hired um this guy to do that. I met him at a conference and um and he was saying that that so it was a large scale well-designed study and it showed that like no it doesn't help wasn't any good and um and so they were getting ready to publish it and uh they got letters from the lawyers saying that like if you publish that we're going to sue you like this is our property and we paid for it. We own it. You can't you can't use it. So he's like, "All right." So the the abstract is out there, but they they could publish actual full study, but subsequently there have been um publications showing the exact same thing. So this is reproducible. This is this doesn't really do much. Um you know, the other thing too is that is that you know, people forget that there are entire civilizations that that eat this way or eat like a you know, more natural animal-based sort of diet like the Inuit and the Messiah. Uh I don't know if they've studied the Messiah um guts but they get no fiber but you there have been some on the Inuit and they've actually shown very diverse and healthy microbiome you know so you know I imagine that you know if you're eating what you're supposed to eat you're going to have the microbes and microbiome that you're supposed to eat just like the oral biome and very different oral biome when you eat this way too you don't get cavities as such and other sorts of things animals in the wild they've got teeth they've got all these bacteria in and around them that are not causing harm right? Because they're they're appropriate to them and that species. They don't have dentists. They're not, you know, sterilizing their mouth every day, you know, every time after they eat. And uh and yet, you know, they're the only animals that don't have teeth right out. We're the only, you know, they're they all don't have their teeth right out. We all have our teeth right out except the ones living in the wild that don't have dentists and don't have people telling them, "Well, you have to eat this way or whatever." Right? Fine. Um something eat more sugar. That was an interesting one. looking at the Hodza who eat more honey and the men who are out there getting more honey, they actually have worse teeth than the women because women get less honey because they don't bring as much back if they eat it while they're out. And um and so that could be something there too. But you know, the thing is is that hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at Carnivore Bar. I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat. For those times that you're out hiking, road tripping, or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat, fat, and salt if you want it, the Carnivore Bar is a great option. So, I like this product not because it's just pure meat, but also because I want the carnivore market to thrive as well. And the more we support meat only products, the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream. So, if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right. Thanks, guys. It was interesting you say, well, the you got these new new species and strains. Yeah. And um you know, and and so why is that? You know, I think it's the oral biome. I think that the bacteria in your mouth do change. And you know, every bite that you're chewing up, bacteria from your mouth do get in that food and and go down in with that bololis of food. Now, if you're just drinking a probiotic or something like that or you just eat spoonfuls of yogurt, that's going to go in your stomach acid and that's all going to get destroyed by and large. But if if you're eating it with the food, it could work in this is theoretical, could work in, but how else how else is it doing it? um work into the food and sort of get get mixed into the middle of that bowl of some food and sort of like a Trojan horse be able to sort of get a few of those by the guards, you know. Interesting. And so that's what I would expect is happening because otherwise, you know, maybe they're just they're they are there, but they're just in such small supply they didn't show up on the microbiome test. That's possible, too. But it's it's comes down to one of those two, you know, unless you got like a feal transplant you're not telling us about. Yeah. I didn't do that. Although I'm not opposed to it, but I didn't do that. Um, yeah, that's interesting. Right. The oral microbiome. That makes sense. I also think maybe the this the stress like it's it was a dramatic well, not a dramatic change for me cuz I was eating mostly clean as you mentioned, but I did switch to no carbohydrates, no plants, and I was having that before. So, there was an adaptation period. So maybe the stress could have forced this back the bacteria to to multiply or increase the diver diversity because I know there's studies that show fasting does it that fasting increases diversity because of the stress. I think maybe that I shifted into 90 straight days the stress the positive stress of course might have contributed to the diversity as well. That was one of my thoughts. Yeah. Well, you know, in fasting too, what's interesting about that is that it it does it does the same sort of thing in principle as as eating, you know, like a more, you know, just just clean call it an elima elimination diet, but but a straightforward diet like a carnivore diet where you're you're breaking down and absorbing 98 plus% of the meat that you're eating. So, very little is getting through there and and it's only getting through what is, you know, what I feel is biologically designed for us. And so, you know, the the microbes eat, you know, what we eat. And um but the thing is too is that, you know, if you're eating a bunch of fiber, a bunch of plants, a bunch of those things you can't digest, you can't break down, those will get into the colon. And then that will that will propagate and support uh other bacteria that wouldn't be able to uh you sort of uh uh you know come to dominance you know in that environment otherwise because they didn't have they wouldn't have like the the rich food supply and resources. Um, and so fasting is going to, you know, so, you know, doing an elimination diet, if you want to call it that, like carnivore, you're getting rid of a lot of things. And so that's going to select for certain bacteria. But also fasting, you're also eliminating a lot of these sorts of things. And so all of those same bacteria that will be selected out because they don't have enough resources, they're all going to go away. And these other ones that can survive in that environment will come up, too. So that's that's interesting as well. And um I just really like that um you found these improvements after over a decade of really healthy eating by you know by anybody's standard besides a vegan and um you know that you were eating clean whole foods being very very careful about you know you know what you ate and how you ate you know doing you know fasting you know periodically very slim very healthy all these different you know biomarkers you know showing that and and then you went a carnivore and you and you found other improvements as well. On top of that, it exactly what I I've never eaten processed junk food. U we would occasionally get get something like that. I mean, I think I' I could probably count on one hand how many times I've had KFC in my life. Wow. You know, now if you say about Popeye's chicken, it's going to be more than that. Probably two hands. But, you know, but still, it's not all that much. But um but either way, you know, I when I when I went and I was already, you know, I just noticed that eating carbs when I ate anything with carbs, my back hurt and it was just like I didn't like my back hurting. I was just like in pain. I was like, "All right, that's weird. I'm just going to avoid that stuff." And um so I was just eating just vegetables and and lean meat. You're supposed to eat lean meat and not that much. I was trying to slim up. And um a lot of vegetables, not a lot of meat. So, I was plant-based, right? But, um, it was, uh, I didn't feel good. It wasn't great. It like I was fully inflamed, couldn't lose weight, tons of water weights, tired all the time, stomach hurt all the time, was always hungry. I just didn't feel good. And then, you know, when I flipped and just dropped all the plants, all the vegetables and went from eating a little bit of lean meat to a buttload of fatty meat that it just changed everything. And so, you know, the argument is is that the only benefits that carnivores get is just that contrast from going from processed food to um you know, dropping processed food. And it's just it's completely made up, you know, but that has to be true for their ideology to work. And so they just say that, they state that without any evidence being asked for or provided. And uh and then people believe that just because oh well this this guru that I that I know and love, they they say that so it must be true and it needs to be true or else I'm living a lie. So it's very easy to believe those lies. Uh but it's not true. And it's just like I never did that. You weren't doing that. And we saw these these improvements in those sorts of ways. So yeah, I I really like that that um you know that people are showing that again and again that it's not just not just about the processed food. The processed food is horrible, but it's not just about that. That actually there there are benefits even on top of that. Hey everyone, really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia, Stockman Steaks, who are delivering high quality grass-fed and finished pasture-raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed to your door. something that I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as highfat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef art as well. So, use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstakess.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. Exactly. Yeah. And me and you are perfect examples of that. we were already eating healthy and we got more benefits going to a animal-based approach. I know I sure did. And ever since I did that 90-day experiment, I've been doing more mostly carnivore. My my current routine has been actually Monday through Saturday I am full-on carnivore and Sunday I get out with more of a low carb approach that that works for me personally. Um so that I've been doing that ever since and I I feel incredible. Like I said, four years old and I feel the healthiest I've ever felt in my life. What was interesting too though, Anthony, was the the lab work. Now, of course, when I did my labs, I was pretty healthy on day one. Nothing like my my C reactive protein was under 0.5 on day one and also on day 90. Homoyine was single digits. My fasting insulin was 3.2 and then 3.1. So, it was already insulin sensitive. But the most so my labs were great. The most interesting thing though on the labs was the lipid profile. And um for those who are interested, by the way, I I made a whole um YouTube video where I show all my lab work. I show the gut test. I even had Dr. Philip Avatia review the lab work and others and we kind of interpret. It's like an hour video. So you could just go to YouTube and type in Benazati carnivore. It's usually the first video that pops up. But with the lipids, my total cholesterol was already high. uh according to normal standards uh on day one it was around um if I remember correctly it was around it was over 300 on day one my total cholesterol because I was doing keto on day 90 it went to 450 total cholesterol 300ish to 450 my LDL was around I believe 150 on day one or 200 somewhere around there but on day 90 it went to 350 350 my HDL was optimal both times over 60 both times. Triglycerides were under 70 both times. Nothing to um look at there. But with the LDL, right, 350, right? So, I got the particle sizes done because it's not just as you talk about total LDL. It's about all right, what percentage of that LDL is pattern B, the small sticky uh variety. That's not good. And what percentage is pattern A, large, fluffy, that's absolutely really important. And the majority of my LDL particles were of course the large fluffy healthy variety. I had a very small percentage optimal percentage of the small sticky, right? But if I didn't get all those panels done and I simply just looked at my total LDL, total cholesterol, and my doctor, if I if I didn't understand this and my doctor would interpret it, they would think I would have I'm going to have a heart attack. I got to get you on a statin right away. Wouldn't you agree, Anthony? Oh, a lot. Yeah, most of them. Yeah. Yeah, it's um it it is funny. It it is starting to change and some of it some of it's changing just from in in the opposite direction then then uh it really should be but sometimes it has to go that way because a lot of a lot of people like yourself, you know, coming in and and they're having they're extremely healthy, they're doing really well and then all of a sudden they get these cholesterol numbers and doctor goes, you're going to die. I mean you're you're going to get a heart attack this week if you don't do any if you don't do something about this. And they truly believe that because that is how they were trained and and and they they they are advocating for you. They do believe that this is this is the best thing for you is is to correct this. Um I I don't agree with them but that is what they believe and so you know they are coming from a most of them are coming from a genuine place. There are others that I I have my doubts about but you know from like people's dayto-day doctor by and large will be coming from a from a good place. Um, and a lot of those, especially the ones that that, you know, are honest with themselves, when they see a patient like yourself come in and be like, "This is crazy, but they're saying like you're crazy healthy otherwise, and everything's really good. Inflammation is low, insulin is A1C's I didn't mention was 5.1." Yeah. Everything looked great. Yeah. and um and uh and then looking at and they say okay well look we need to get like some imaging you know because cholesterol is not a disease atherosclerosis is a disease and so they say okay well this this is going to be this is going to be building up plaque so we should be able to see this growing you know and so um you get a scan all of a suen zero you have zero CAC you have zero plaque on a on a coronary angio uh you know corateed ultrasound looking at the you know the interimal thickness and it is zero 00 and they're like, I I don't know what this is. I I don't know how to explain that. The ones that are that are inquisitive, they want to know why. And they want to go, okay, that's interesting. And you're telling me that you come across this. Okay, this is saying that, okay, yeah, I'd like to see that. I'd like to see that research that you're referring to. My mom's doctor was like that. And she was just like, I'd be really interested to see, you know, the research that that your son has been doing, you know, because like she reversed her diabetes in two months. She's like, this doesn't happen. This has never happened in my whole career. And my mom's doctor was a very bright lady. She was an MD/PhD from Harvard. Had a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard and MD there as well. And so, you know, she's no slouch. And so she but and she had that inquisitive nature of saying like, "What the hell did you do? What the hell happened? This doesn't happen. How the how the hell was it?" And then she, you know, had a talk with my mom and she was very interested like I' I'd really like to see this research. And so I went and talked to her, sent her a bunch of stuff and, you know, she, you know, the rest is history. But um you know there are there are some people that are that are come around to this you know I mean even people in this space like Dr. Dr. David Unwin uh in the UK, really nice guy. He's he's put out a lot of papers on this because he has a lot of patients and he's publishing his patient data. And at first he was getting attacked, roundly attacked, but he saw this work with his patients. And one of his patients came in and he was doing the classic thing all his colleagues were doing to him, which was, oh, that's, you know, you have to be on diabetes medication, you have to do this, you have to do this. His patient basically hadn't filled her metformin prescription in like 10 months. and uh and he was just like, "Oh, okay. Well, that's not good. I'm going to have to call her in and have a talking to her and say, "Hey, you need to be better about your diabetes medication." She came in, she'd lost a ton of weight, she was super healthy and and she was pissed. She had a bone to pick with him. And she said, she said, "The reason I haven't been taking my metformin is cuz I don't need to anymore. I don't have diabetes anymore. My blood sugar is completely normal because I found this low carbohydrate approach." And you never told me that eating carbohydrates would turn into sugar and that would raise my blood sugar. You never told me that. I don't think that you're an are you how how how are you an actual doctor? You don't even know that carboh that eating carbohydrates raise your blood sugar and that's a horrible idea in a diabetic who's trying to control their blood sugar. And so they through their own, you know, inquisitive nature. they just stopped eating carb carb carbs and their blood sugar just came down down down and they reversed their own diabetes and he said that you know when you have a patient tell you that it's like are you even a doctor he's just like you need to pay attention and you need to sit up and listen to me like okay I' I've I've made I've I may have missed something big here I need to find out what it is and so then he started looking into it and and there there are just thousands of studies on ketogenic diets largecale randomized control trials in humans and animals showing the massive benefits of ketogenic diets to to human health um and animal health even in um for with discrete endpoints and uh for for specific medical issues and you know it's the most robustly studied diet that is in the world and it has the most data behind it but it doesn't have a product behind it. There's no there's no multi-t trillion dollar company behind it that stands to profit from this like you do from the food and drug companies. And so there there's no multi-million multi-billion dollar marketing team behind this, pushing this out to everyone, getting it in the medical schools, getting it in the residency programs, teaching it to endocrinologists who are who are treating diabetes and um you know going to these big conferences and things like that, sponsoring them and um and and getting you know educational sort of things out on the news and you know being able to pay for spots on you know CNN or or um 60 Minutes, you know, like that lady that came out, you know, saying that no, no, obesity is is 100% genetic. You know, there's nothing you can do about it. All that sort of nonsense. And it turns out that person's on the payroll for OMPIC. And this is just what these companies do. A buddy of mine, my my roommate from medical school, you know, he ended up doing his residency in um radiology at Yale. So Yale trained interventional radiologist. And you know, now he does, you know, uh slightly different work. and um he was on a he was on like a morning talk show sort of thing um sort of in his area and he's talking about like the work he was doing for for that that company which is owned by something larger and he was talking about the benefits of this procedure that they do and I was like that was really cool you know that's awesome that they brought you on there like how how how'd that end up going like oh the company just set it up yeah they just pay them you know to to come on it's advertising so they they pay them to bring me on to talk about what we So people find out about it so that they you know can come and get business. That's how that's done. And so all the time you see like a doctor, oh doctor coming in talking about this new procedure and this new thing that and the other they are paying to do that. And so you know there's no there's no benefit behind that. There's no there's no money-making operation. On the other end of that people aren't going to spend their their own private money to say hey we need to get this information out there. you know, it has to actually garner actual real life interest and and that's starting to happen. You're starting to see that sort of thing, but it's uh it's a lot harder, you know, because you can you can pay to get propaganda out there real quick. And um you know, it's it's much much more difficult um you know, doing it the other way around. Um, you know, there are there are some people that are that are come around to this, you know, mean even people in this space like Dr. David Unwin uh in the UK, really nice guy. He's he's put out a lot of papers on this because he has a lot of patients and he's publishing his patient data. And at first he was getting attacked, roundly attacked. But he saw this work with his patients.