What are the detox symptoms on carnivore?
If you have been on a Standard American Diet for the last 10 or 20 years, you likely have some degree of gut permeability thus prone to storing all kind of toxins in your tissues. You now go Carnivore, and a couple of weeks into it, feel awful. Carnivore diet is the ultimate elimination diet that also mimics fasting (ketosis). The combo of these two means a big transition for the body, and detox is one of many complex processes that happen when you go carnivore.
DETOX MECHANISMS
Our bodies, in their innate wisdom, find ways to absorb nutrients and dispose of toxins. If all goes well, this process starts and ends with our digestive systems. However, given modern diets, most people have leaky guts, and many toxins, fragments of bacteria end up in the bloodstream traveling places. To keep our vital organs toxins free, our bodies will move toxins to less important parts of the body such joints, connective tissue and even brain. It is now well understood that heavy metal contamination of the brain tissue is implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Let’s start with the digestive system, it is the first line of defense when it comes to detox. Depending on what we eat, it will produce adequate enzymes and develop gut flora to deal both with nutrients and toxins. If your gut is healthy, this is where our encounter with toxins should end, but in the modern world, it is a lot more complicated. We have been ingesting a lot of food laced with compounds that are not found in nature such artificial additives and seed oils, to name a few. Over time, even some of the strongest digestive systems take the beating, leading to the leaky gut condition. Leaky gut means that things that shouldn’t end up in the blood stream do and contaminate tissues.
I made number of videos about gut permeability, check them out here:
CONTAMINATION OF TISSUES
If your gut lining is breached, artificial and nature made toxins get to our bloodstream and cause trouble. For example, heavy metals lodged in the brain tissue are implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson.
If the toxins find affinity for your joint tissue, you will experience join swelling, pain and eventually be diagnosed with RA. If toxins go to your connective tissue, then we are talking about Lupus. We currently have about 200 different autoimmune conditions.
BODY ALWAYS WANTS TO PROTECT VITAL ORGANS
You might be thinking about all these diseases as failure of your body, but in fact, this is your body that is trying to deal with toxins that breached the natural barriers. Whenever possible, the body will bind toxins in fat tissue. It will change its gut flora to deal with onslaught of toxins, hoping to eat through them all. It will push them to joints to other connective tissues to protect your heart and lungs.
Watch a video version of this post here:
YOU WENT CARNIVRE AND NOW GOING THROUGH MASSIVE DETOX
One way to think of carnivore diet is an ultimate elimination diet. You only eat foods that build your body and nothing else. The years of toxic food stops and so the body will start dumping years of accumulated toxicity.
Just about every tissue in your body will release what doesn’t belong to it if you give it the opportunity, aka go carnivore. As you progress with carnivore diet you will go through a massive detox.
GUT MICROBIOME WILL CHANGE
When you stop eating carbs and stop toxic compounds, the microbiome will start changing just within 24 hours. There will be gut microbes die off. It will manifest with moodiness and mental fog because those microbes used to produce serotonin. There is a biochemical reason why we call macaroni and cheese a comfort food, it does induce a chemical bliss in our brains. At least temporarily.
You will feel groggy, have trouble concentrating, and experience lack of motivation. It is temporary so hang in there. Your body will adjust to the changing microbiome.
Often with changes to gut flora comes diarrhea or constipation. Do continue with your commitment to the diet because it is all only temporary, and by now very well documented by just everybody who successfully went carnivore.
FAT LOSS
Even the slowest metabolisms end up with fat loss. Losing fat mean releasing of all the bound-up in it toxins. This is also why often with weight loss come fatigue and grogginess, because of the detox that the body performs.
IMMUNE SYSTEM REACTS TOO
Detox symptoms are so profound that a doctor made them into a set of symptoms which we call Herx or Herxheimer Reaction. Herxheimer or Herx Reactions are a short-term (from days to a few weeks) detoxification reaction in the body. As the body detoxifies, it is common to experience flu-like symptoms including headache, joint and muscle pain, body aches, sore throat, general malaise,
sweating, chills, nausea, or other symptoms such as rashes on the skin. Dr. Herxheimer didn’t treat this in any other way but prepared his patients mentally for this reaction.
During detox there is a release of toxins, proteins, and oxidizing agents that results in an increase in inflammatory cytokines. Hence you can even have fever and runny nose. People in the keto community call it a keto flu, well recognized phenomena.
HOW TO DEAL WITH DETOX SYMPTOMS ON CARNIVORE DIET
First, don’t stop and don’t give up, your body is reacting the way it is supposed. Let’s plug in some NLP technique here, reframe it this way: You are having detox symptoms, you are doing it right and your body is undergoing much needed clean up. Keep going!
There are number of things you can do to help the process and mitigate some of the symptoms.
- Epsom Salt Baths
- Water with electrolytes
- Liposomal C
- Liposomal Glutathione
- Sunbathing
- Walking barefoot
FINAL THOUGHTS
Radical change into your eating such as carnivore diet is guaranteed to shake up your body and lead to many dramatic changes in every of your cells. Even though it can be hard and unpleasant experience stick with the program, the positive changes in your health are around the corner and understanding how our body detox themselves makes this journey a lot easier.
Big City Mom