They Said I'd Live With It Forever...

[00:00:00]S, how did you find carnivore?

[00:00:05]>> Well, first thing I I I think for me, Dave, is to thank you for having me on your um on your channel so I can um you know, get my message out there and um and explain my journey basically. But it it goes back a number of years. Um, it goes back into the mid to late ' 90s when I became aware that I had I had some problems with my bell. Um, I was actually up in China working and and had to find a bathroom in a bit of a hurry.

[00:00:42]But anyway, um uh and then I I wanted to get fit those days after China and I started riding a bike and doing the Tapo bike challenge which is 160ks around Lake Talpo. So I did that the first year and then went went back and done a whole lot of training for the second year over 10,000 km training and when I got off my bike I literally could not get back on it. Then the next day I'd going to go for a bike ride and I I I just couldn't get on the bike and I had something really wrong with my back, something burning me. So I went off to the doctor and he wasn't sure what was wrong with me and weeks and and and actually a month or two went past and I was in absolute agony. Every time I bent down I felt that all the muscles in my back were going to tear. But anyway, um he rang me up one afternoon and said, "Look, I've figured out what is wrong with you. I want you to come and do a blood test and um and we'll just confirm it." So, I went in and got the blood test done. And he said, "You've got polymyalgatica." Well, I didn't even know what the hell that was. And um and that was just the start of this journey.

[00:02:00]And I also had um uh they established that I had arthritis in the thoracic part of my back. So he gave me Prednazone, the the sledgehammer for everything. And um I went away and started taking this stuff and I thought, "No, I really don't like it." Um because it when you've taken a dose of Prennazone, you felt that there was um it was gone, but it wasn't. It was just masking the pain. And I done some reading on Prennazone and I thought, "No, I've got to find a better way than this."

[00:02:35]So the weeks and months went past and I limited myself to 10 milligrams of predinazone a day. I wouldn't take anymore. And then I come across an article about fasting and I thought this is a bit of me. I'll have a crack at this. So I did. I fasted for 14 days and I got up got out of bed on the 14th day basically and I said to my wife, "My polymyalgia romatic is gone. I'm going down to see the doctor." So I went down and saw my doctor and I said, "How quickly can I get off prednazone?" He said, "Oh, you can't. You've got to wean yourself off this stuff." Oh yeah. So he said, "Why?" And I said, "Cuz my polymyramatic is gone." And he said, "Well, it doesn't go away like that."

[00:03:19]And I said, "Well, mine has." I said, "It's gone." But I said, "Look, just do a blood test and confirm it." So he did.

[00:03:27]And um the next day he rings me up and said, "Well, it looks like it's gone.

[00:03:31]What did you do to yourself?" And I told him cuz he said, "I could see that you've lost a bit of weight." And I told him what had happened. And he said, "Oh, you got lucky." So I thought, "Oh yeah, okay. I got lucky." So anyway, that um and I made I made some notes here. And then I got rid of my polymyalgia romatica and it was gone. And I had no more pain from my arthritis in the thoracic part of my back. It was that was gone also. But then I my body started kicking out kidney stones and I had four kidney stones over as many years and two of them had to be surgically removed um because they were so big. Um the biggest was 17 mm by 12 and I thought well I was never going to pass that. But anyway, meteorologist who I was under at the time never really explained as to why I was getting kidney stones. And I and I thought there's got to be a reason because it was only one kidney that was kicking them out. And um he just said green leafy vegetables. That was about it. That's about all I got told. So then I ended up getting an anal fistula of all things. And I thought, what the hell now? So I thought I had an abscess. And I went down to the doctor and he said, "Oh, hell." He said, "Um, you need to go and see a surgeon. I'm going to ring and make that appointment for you today."

[00:04:56]So, it was a Friday and I went I went to the surgeon and he said, "Oh," he said, "You need to you need to have surgery.

[00:05:04]This thing is this thing is going to get nasty and you're going to get septasemia and it could kill you." I said, "Oh, really?" I said, 'You better draw me a diagram on the on the board so I can have a look at what's going on. Which he did.

[00:05:18]And I said, "So, how are you going to fix this thing if you're going to give me surgery?" He said, "Well, we poke a wire through it." And he said, "Then we cut it down to the wire and open it all up." And I said, "Uh, oh yeah." And he said, "Then we have a a nurse come and we'll dress the wound so it heals from the inside out um for about 6 weeks." And I said, "Well, hang on a minute. you're going to go through my rectum to do this. And he said, "Yeah." And I said, "So, I'm going to end up probably incontinent." And he said, "Good chance." And I said, "You're going to have to let me have a think about this." Cuz he wanted to book me in for the Monday to have surgery. And I said, "No, no, no." I said, "I'll have a think about it and I'll get back to you." And the last thing he said to me when I walked out the door, "These things never heal. You won't get rid of it." So, I left there and I went up to um a place that sold plastic bottles with long ends on them, like um sauce bottles, and I stopped eating straight away. And then um over a couple of days when I'd stopped going to the bathroom, I would get in the shower and fill the bottle up with water and put that inside me and wash myself out. And I do that twice a day for a week and it healed up.

[00:06:35]It had gone away. So I thought, "Right, I don't need surgery. I'll fix this thing." So off to me, doctor, I went again and I said, "Hey, um, I didn't need that surgery." He said, "Really?"

[00:06:49]He said, "Those things never heal." I said, "Well, I'm going to show you one that has." And, um, so I jumped up on the bed and he had a look and he said, "You got a nice pink little scar there."

[00:06:58]And I said, "Yeah." I said, "Um, it's healed. It's gone. 7 days it was finished." He, um, he said to me, "What did you do again?" And I said, "Well," I explained to him what I did. And he said, you know, he said, "You just got lucky." And I thought, "That's bloody twice this guy said this to me." So anyway, we moved on from that. And he said to me that I was obese and I need to do something about me weight, which was right. And then next thing on the list was um they said that they thought I had leukemia.

[00:07:37]And so I had to go off to a specialist and have a a bone marrow sample taken out, which was not something I'd recommend to anybody if you can avoid it. And I said to the blood specialist, I said, "Look, I don't have leukemia."

[00:07:52]And she said, "Well, we think you have by the look of your blood cells." So anyway, 2 weeks later, she rings me up and says, "Good news. We don't have leukemia." And I said, "Well, I told you that 2 weeks ago." And I said, "Anyway, thanks for it." I said, "Um, I can just carry on with my life." And then, um, a little while later, I got out of bed one morning and go to the bathroom as normal, and I dropped about a liter of blood down the toilet. And I thought, "Wow, what's happening here?"

[00:08:23]So, I got in the shower to um clean myself up and I dropped a huge blood cloth on the floor of the shower and it was I yelled out to my wife to go and get a a bottle and um a jar so I could pick this thing up and put in the bottle, which she did, and it was as big as the palm of my hand. And I got a a pretty big hand. And I said, "You better call me an ambulance." So anyway, I ended up in the hospital. Long story short, three units of blood and eight days in hospital. They said that I probably had hemorrhoids and they had a look for that. And I said, "Well, I don't have hemorrhoids." I said, "I can tell you that." But anyway, they bugged around and bugged around and then they said, "Oh, we think you might have diabeticulitis." And I said, "Look, why don't you do a a CT scan and give me a colonoscopy?"

[00:09:16]"No, no, we don't want to do that. we'll put you on a waiting list for that. And I said, "Yeah, okay." So they let me out of hospital after 8 days. They said, "You probably had a mild case of diverticulitis." And I said, "Well, I'd hate to have had a bad one." And I left.

[00:09:31]So I went straight to me doctor and I said, "You need to get me into a specialist so I can get a colonoscopy done and a CT scan," which I I did. He he he did that. I think he might have done an MRI as well. But anyway, I went and funded that myself.

[00:09:48]And then he come back and he said, "You've got Cronis's disease." And I said, "What the hell is that?" And he said, "H, this is what it is. This is what you've got, and you've got five sections in your small intestine that are blocked up." He said, "I I couldn't get the the scope through." And I said, "Yeah, no. I was I was awake and I was watching you on the screen."

[00:10:11]And he said, um, I it it was just blocked, you know, I couldn't I just couldn't get me endoscopy scope up there. And I said, yeah, okay. So then I left there and I went off to a um gastroenterenterologist.

[00:10:28]And she talked to me for about half an hour, 3/4 of an hour one day, and she said basically, look, you can't cure this thing. You've got it for the rest of your life. and it's um it's going to be something you're going to have to try and manage, live with, or I can give you drugs for it, but the drugs quite frankly are as bad as the disease. And I said, "Yeah, okay." So anyway, I used to joke with people after I'd been to her and we started traveling into Europe a little bit and I used to say to people, you know, if you ever go to Rome and you want to know where the public toilets are, I said, ask me because I've seen them all and I've seen public toilets all around the all around the bloody world because that was every day of our holiday just trying to find a bathroom.

[00:11:21]But anyway, um we got past that and then one morning my wife and I were shopping and I said, "I just need to go to the toilet." So I shot off to a toilet and um I dropped in another half liter of blood. So I rang up a surgeon and I said, "Look, I've um I've just had another big bleed." And he said, "Well, you have got Crohn's." He said, "And you're going to you're going to get this probably." And I said, "Yeah, I don't like it." I said, "Not not not my way of having fun, that's for sure." So anyway, on the 19th of July, 2021, now we get to 2021.

[00:12:05]I had um I had heart failure.

[00:12:08]I um my heart had gone into aphib and I've been having pulpitations since I was about 16. And I had them on a regular basis. you know, I'd have them two or three times a week, and I I learned how to manage them so I could stop them and get me heart back into rhythm again. But I got APhib and I I I didn't know it was Aphib at the time, and I I just couldn't get it back into rhythm. And I entertained I I started looking on the um on the net to see what this might have been. And Aphib come up here as one of the topics. And I thought, okay, maybe I should go down to a friend's place and hang on to his electric fence and it might shock me heart back into rhythm again. But anyway, I ended up going into private hospital and having uh my heart bashed into rhythm again and I was I felt good and come out of there and um next morning I couldn't breathe. My legs had swollen up. I was really gasping for breath. So I went off to the doctor and he said, "You've got heart failure." I said, "Oh, so what does that mean? I'm going to have a heart attack." And he said, "No, it means you're going to drop dead." I said, "You're kidding me." And he said, "No." He said, "I'm I'm not joking." I said, "Well, you better get me a specialist." He said, "You won't get into white hospital." He said, "You just won't get in there." Cuz this was right at the end of CO and you still had to have still had to be vaccinated and all sorts of other things. and we hadn't really been vaccinated.

[00:13:37]So I um I said, "Well, you better get me a specialist." He said, "You'll die before you get into hospital." I said, "Well, hang on. Just get me a specialist." And he said, "He got insurance." And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, it'll cost you 100,000 to get this sorted out." And I said, "Well, you better get me a specialist because I said the alternative is just to die."

[00:13:58]Anyway, um, six weeks later, I was on the table one morning and I said to the cardiothoracic surgeon and all his team, "Well, good luck, fellas." I said, "Um, if it all goes bad, no hard feelings." I said, "Cuz I'm not going to remember it anyway." And that's about all I could say. But half past 4 in the afternoon, I woke up and I thought, "Oh, I'm still here." But I felt like I've been run over. I was I was not well. But anyway, few weeks recuperation and I I got over that and then my Crohn's was still giving me grief.

[00:14:38]And um so I'd go back to the gastroenterenterologist and see if I could see if there was any better treatment or whatever. And no.

[00:14:48]And in the meantime, my gallbladder had to be removed because that had become inflamed and it was painful. And then um I had to have my uh appendix removed, more surgery.

[00:15:04]And anyway, um I decided that there's got to be a cure for this. And one morning I was looking on um Twitter. I used to go on Twitter quite a bit those days, which is X now.

[00:15:19]And I saw an article. I saw a picture actually of a a young lady in Wongay, which is a city up in the north of New Zealand, and she was laying in a hospital bed, and her father had written this this um note and said, um, this is my youngest daughter. She's in for her ninth resection in 10 years. is and I thought, "Holy hell, is this what I'm facing with Crohn's?" He said, "She had Crohn's disease."

[00:15:49]And I saw I read down the comments and there was a comment there a guy had made. He said, "You can cure this."

[00:15:56]And the guy, the father of the girl, he wrote a message back and said, "What are you a bloody specialist or something? You you think you you can cure this is an incurable disease. When you've got this, you you've got it for the rest of your life." And I thought, "Yeah, right." So I sent a message to this other character privately and I said to him, "Hey, um, this is my phone number. Can I have yours? I need to give you a call." So he sent it straight back. And he was a guy that lived in Tarka, which is down the top of the South Island. And he introduced himself as John, and I introduced myself, and I said, "Hey, John." I said, "You obviously know something about Crohn's disease that I don't know." And he said, "Carnivore, mate." He said, "Carnnival?" I said, "What the hell is that?"

[00:16:44]And he said, "Go and go and watch YouTube and and and watch Dr. Kenbury."

[00:16:50]I said, "Really?"

[00:16:52]I said, "Can you cure this thing?" Oh.

[00:16:54]He said, "It'll go away within a few weeks." And I said, "You're joking." He said, "No, no." He said, "Go and read up." And he said, "And go and have a crack at it." So anyway, got off the phone. I said to my wife, "Well, you reckon you can cure this thing? I'm in for it. I'm going to give this a go."

[00:17:11]So, I watched a little bit of Kenberry and I thought, "No, I'm going down to buy some meat. I'm going down to buy some some beef." So, I shot down to the supermarket, local supermarket, and I bought some 18% fat beef mints and I come home and cooked it up and I sat there and ate it. I struggled to eat it. I and you know I can fast I can fast for 2 weeks without any trouble. I can I've fasted for longer in my life but this one had me this one had me on the rope. So and she said to me, "Well, look, give it a go for a week. Surely you can tough it out for a week." And I said, "Yeah, okay.

[00:17:54]I'll give it a go." So at the end of that week, I thought, you know, this is not that bad. I think I'll have to look for some variety because the message was if it crawls, walks, swims, or flies, you can eat it. You can eat butter, you can eat avocado oil, you can have um extra virgin olive oil and ghee. Those are about where it was. And I thought, yeah, I'm going to give this another go for another week. And in the meantime, I'll go and buy some prawns and I'll buy chicken and I'll buy turkey and I'll buy pork and I'll buy all sorts of stuff just to mix it up a bit. And then I noticed into the second week that my teeth were staying slippery when I clean my teeth in the morning. I thought my teeth aren't all furry at the end of the day like they usually are.

[00:18:49]So I thought that's interesting. What's happening? And I looked at me tongue and the tongue is pink now instead of all the shag pile carpet on it. And I thought, "Oh, wow. That's interesting."

[00:19:02]On the I started I started carnivore on the 17th of January 2025.

[00:19:09]On the 28th of January, I had I'd had dissentry nonstop every day, all day, every day since August 2024. couldn't get rid of it. And on the 28th of January, my my dissentry stopped and I thought, now this is bloody interesting. This is this really got my attention. And I thought, if this is what carnivore does, there's no way I'm going back eating anything. So, I stuck with it. I went for another two weeks. I thought, right, I'll I'll give it another couple of weeks and see how I feel.

[00:19:50]So at the end of the towards the end of that next twoe period, I thought I'm going to go and see I'm going to go and see me doctor and get some bloods done because I said, you know, I said to my wife, I want to know what's going on with my bloods. Anyway, my bloods come back and they were a mess. There was all these red H's and L's and they're all over the place and I thought, "Oh, hell." The doctor said, "What do you want to what do you want the bloods done for?" And I said, "I just I'm just going to be doing something and I want to I want to see what happens." I said, "I want to see if I can get rid of my Crohn's." And he said, "No." He said, "You'll never get rid of it." He said, "You've got it for the rest of your life." And I said, "Yeah, okay." I said, "We'll see." So, I came home and got stuck into carnival. I just There was no giving up now. I was absolutely committed. I was hellbent on um seeing this thing through for as long as it took. If it took for the rest of my life, I was going to see it through.

[00:20:53]So, the next thing I noticed is my manhood come back.

[00:21:00]I I I wake up one morning and and I think, [ __ ] I haven't seen I haven't felt this thing for for years. And it's like I'm 20 again. And I thought, amazing. what's going on? And it was just one of the things that happened and I thought, oh, must be must be something the wires must be crossed somewhere and it's it's um it's playing tricks on me.

[00:21:27]But anyway, it came back and it stayed back. Then um my resting heart rate went down 10 beats a minute cuz I I monitor me daily health because of my heart problem with an I and I watch and I read that data every day religiously to see what's going on. So your heart rate resting heart rate went down when I was sleeping. My respiratory rate went down.

[00:21:54]I was only breathing 8 and 1 half and nine breaths a minute.

[00:21:58]And on top of all of these other things, I had I also had sleep apnea.

[00:22:04]And I was having 25 and 30 bouts every hour of holding my breath. And I was absolutely reliant on my CPAT machine to keep me breathing at nights. Otherwise, I'd used to wake up in the morning exhausted. And when I look back at it, I thought, you know, anybody that needs has got sleep apnnea, anybody that snores, got sleep apnnea or uh needs a CPAT machine, they are going to end up with heart problems regardless was the was the conclusion I came to because your body's dumping um adrenaline into you and shocking you back to breathing again. And when we were flying long hall going to Dubai um Oakland Dubai 17 hours I was I was afraid to go to sleep in the earlier days because I thought I was going to suffocate on the plane and this was this was my sleep apnnea giving me a giving me grief. These days I have I still wear the seat machine and when we're away for 2 and 1/2 months just recently I took it with me but I didn't bother wearing it. I thought I don't probably don't need this thing anymore. But then I realized yeah I probably still need a little bit of therapy with this but my vents are somewhere between zero and 4.5 now.

[00:23:28]They've they've way dropped. They've hit the floor. So, I rang the lady up that I had been dealing with with my CPAT machine in Oakuckland. And I said, "Hey, what do you reckon's going on here? I've gone from all of these cuz she's got the history there." And I said, "Now," I said, "It's it's down sometimes it's down to zero." And she said, "Well, that just tells you that the um the therapy's working." And I thought, "Oh, here we go. we got another another one of these doctor type people, you know, it's it I said, "You don't think diet would have anything to do with it, would you by any chance?" And she said, "No." She said, "Diet won't affect your your sleep apnnea." And I thought, "Yeah, right."

[00:24:09]Anyway, while I'm on this um this carnivore journey, my weight started out at about 108 109 and I'd been to my cardiologist just slightly prior to that and he said, "You know," he said, "Your heart's working really good, but he poked me in the stomach with his finger." And he said, "But you really need to get rid of that stomach of yours." And I said, "Yeah." I said, "Yeah, I've been trying to motivate myself to do it, but I said, "I'll get around to it." Anyway, I hadn't gone back to see him. And I started losing weight on carnival cuz I was I all I wanted was one meal a day. And I have that at about 11:00 most days. And cook it cook everything in butter. And I have one tiny little pudding plate that it holds 300 gram of meat and or mints or um um ground beef as the Americans would call it and about well a couple hundred grams or 300 g of butter melted into it as well. So that's where all my carnival came back to. I tried I tried eating all sorts of different meats and it came it always came back to steak and eggs or mints and butter and sometimes some eggs thrown in on top and uh so anyway I was right into this and I was watching my weight come down. It come down to 85 kilos and I thought [ __ ] we've come down a long way.

[00:25:51]And then um it it still kept going down and I I watched it come under 80 kilos and I thought, "Wow, when's this going to finish?" And my blood pressure had dropped. My blood pressure had gone uh down to about 110 over 55 and some days it was even lower than that. And then I went back to the doctor and had another blood test done.

[00:26:17]me first blood test back in December, I had a PSA of 19.

[00:26:24]Well, that came back at 6.87.

[00:26:30]From 19 to 6.87. And I thought, wow, my urologist is going to be happy about this because I'd had um over the years I had um two biopsies and two MRI scans. I used to go down there every 6 months and he used to say to me if you if cuz I've got an enlarged prostate and he said if your PSA is over 10 we're going to do another biopsy or another another MRI scan. And I'd learned um through fasting that if I went home and fasted and then had a blood test for my PSA, it would drop my PSA two or three points. So every time I'd go to him and I my PSA would be high. I'd say, "Oh, let me go home and I'll do my thing for a couple of weeks."

[00:27:16]And he'd roll his eyes into his head, but I'd go home and fast for three or four days, get a blood test done, go back, and I'd say, "How's me how's me PSA now?" And um and he'd say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." He said, "You're under 10." I said, "Oh, that's good.

[00:27:30]That's all I want. See you later. I'm out of here."

[00:27:33]So this this went on and there was a whole lot of things that happened while I was on carnival. When my when my bloods came back the second or third time I went to me doctor.

[00:27:51]Everything was perfect. Everything was in order. All my bloods were there was no red blood anywhere. There was there was no H's or L's. It was everything was I thought this is incredible. This is amazing. My C reactive protein at the highest I'd ever seen it was 63 when I had polymyalgia and when I went to the doctor for the first blood test it was 14. So I obviously had some inflammation going on and then um it came down to three. My my C reactive protein was three and I thought wow I just just not going to believe this stuff. And I had a dermatitis on the side of my leg. And when I get into bed at night, I'd give it a scratch and that would set it going. It would just it would drive me nuts. And I'd imported ointment from all around the world to try and soothe this thing. Then I noticed one day and I was drying my leg when I get out of the shower, that bloody rash is gone. So I thought, "Oh no, and not something else." And I started making a list of all the things that were happening. my reflux went my my left ventricle fraction of my heart, it went from 55 to 65%.

[00:29:11]So somebody that's in really good shape is only going to be 72 to 74 unless you're an athlete. And when I went back to my doctor, he said to me, me cardiologist, he said to me, "Where's the other half of you?" And I said, "Well, you did tell me to lose some weight, so I said, "I've done it." Well, at this stage, my weight was down to 72 kilos.

[00:29:33]>> Oh, and how tall are you?

[00:29:36]>> I'm about 5'8.

[00:29:39]So, anyway, I um he said to me, "You wouldn't want to lose any more weight, eh?" And I said, "I'm trying not to." So at that stage I introduced some potato into my diet because my potato was the only vegetable that I would eat outside carnivore and um and that stopped the weight falling off the bottom. that just stopped me continuing to lose weight because I was OMAD and the one meal a day and I just didn't feel like eating anymore because one of the good things about me, I suppose, I don't get hungry. I can go for days without food and as long as I'm drinking, I'm I'm as good as gold, right? And um and that's just the way it is. If I if I skip a day, it's if it's no drama.

[00:30:35]So, I was having the the little pudding bowl of meat each day. And then I started having half a dozen eggs to try and boost it up a bit.

[00:30:46]And and I've played with all those things. And um potato, I'd have potato three days a week. And I'd mix it in with my with my mints and my butter. And when I mashed the potato, I'd throw heaps of butter on there. So, it was half butter, half potato. But this was getting me by.

[00:31:09]And when we when we went to Europe this last time, we went to um we were going through um Switzerland and I said, cuz we'd come from Paris into Switzerland. And I said, "You know, I really got to try and keep my carnivore up." So, we went and had lunch one day.

[00:31:31]I had steak and eggs and a little bit of potato. And my wife had steak and spinach and a glass of wine. So, we walked out of there about 350 or 360 New Zealand dollars poorer. And I said, "Shit, if if if that's what it's going to cost me to maintain carnival while I'm away, Barrett, I'm going off it."

[00:31:50]So, I started eating all sorts of other food.

[00:31:54]and um meet where I could, going into Chinese restaurants and having Chinese, keeping away from the rice and all the vegetable stuff, but trying to just eat their meat dishes and and I slowly my Crohn's started to slowly drift back.

[00:32:13]Um, in the early days, if I wanted to go to the toilet, if I want to go to the bathroom, I had minutes at best warning it. It it it was I was going to go, whether it was on a footpath or wherever. And I remember we were in Barcelona one day and we were in a shop and I said to my wife, I need to go and find a bathroom. And I said, so I saw a cafe down the street and around the corner. So I said, I'll go back there. you come back there after you've bought what we're going to buy in the shop.

[00:32:48]So, I walked in the cafe and I said to the guy, "Can I use your bathroom, please?" And he said, "Yeah, sure. It's over there." So, and I had a a policy.

[00:32:57]If ever I used if they let me use their bathroom, I'd always give them some money or buy something out of their shop or cafe.

[00:33:05]And anyway, on the way out of there, I got my wallet out and the smallest amount of money I had was a 20 note. So, I walked over to this character and I held it out and I said, "Thanks for letting me use your your your bathroom."

[00:33:19]And he looked at me as if I was an idiot. And I said, "Don't worry, mate."

[00:33:22]I said, "The alternative wasn't flash for me." I said, "But I'm I'm not going to go into that." So, I I was saved. And and I've got hundreds of stories like that where people said, "No, we're not open yet." And I said, "Well, if I can't use your bathroom, it's going to happen on the street." And one lady said, "Oh, okay. You can use the bathroom." And when I came out of there that day, all I had was a $10 euro note.

[00:33:53]So I gave it to her and she said to me, her attitude changed straight away. Oh, if you ever need to come back during the day, you're welcome. The toilet's there.

[00:34:02][laughter] So, I thought, oh, it's a money thing, you know. But when I came home, I got I couldn't wait to get home to get meat again. I I just I was gagging to to have some meat. I just I just couldn't wait. And since all that year that I was on carnival from January until um the February when we went away, I would go to bed I go to bed about 4:00 past 4 in the afternoons and I watch fellas like you all your all your podcasts and and Sean Baker and Kenberry and um Thomas Seaff freed and I watch them all and and I'm still I still watch them. I go to bed and I I'm just trying to get all of this benefits. And I remember last year just before Christmas, I was up at one of my customers and I I said to a guy there, he was a great big fitter and I said to him, "You're a bloody heart attack waiting to happen, mate." And he said, "Yeah, I know." He said, "I've tried everything to get rid of this gut." And he said, "I just can't get rid of it."

[00:35:25]And I said, "You want to go carnival?"

[00:35:27]And I spent 5 minutes talking to him.

[00:35:29]Well, I saw him a month later.

[00:35:32]He said, "I've lost 14 kilos." He said, "My overalls can zip up now." And I said, "Good on you." And he said, "This is fantastic." He said, "I'm going to carry on with this." And it's I make it it's like a Billy Graham religious crusade with me. I talk to people if if they say, "You've lost a lot of weight."

[00:35:53]I say, "Carnivore, mate." And and most of them say, "Yeah, I've heard a bit about that." Or, "What the hell is that?" And I've just got to stand there and and fill their brains up with with how good this is. You know, friends that have got type 2 diabetes.

[00:36:10]One lady said to me, "Sell, I just don't think I've got the the willpower that you've got." Right? cuz I said, "Hey, just go on carnival." And another couple of people I know that were having cancer treatment, I said, "Look," and they was they were spending thousands of dollars on um autoimmune therapy or immune therapy, I think they call it. And I said to them, "Look, you know, if you change your diet, if you just went carnivore," I said, "I'm not asking you to change your medication. Just change your diet." And I said, "All of this will help you." Cuz I said, "Look what's happened to me." I said, "I don't go to the doctor now. I haven't been to a doctor since can't remember the last time." And I've been thinking just recently, maybe I should go back and get another blood test done and just see how my bloods are. But I thought, "Nah, I haven't been to my urologist for 17 months. I I thought, why go to him?" you know, these guys never connected the dots. The bleed, the bleed and and um and my fistula were related to Crohn's disease, but nobody ever said, "Oh, we think you might have you might have Crohn's disease." Nobody ever said that, which really me off cuz I thought, "What the hell do I go to a doctor for?"

[00:37:39]So these days um I'd been into hospital a few years ago and they gave me a whole lot of things and amongst them was statins and I thought what the hell am I taking statins for? So they went down the toilet and I take warin each day. I take 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3. I get all my K2 out of butter because I eat butter every day. And that's about my lot. My macular degeneration that I had gone to see a specialist four or five six years ago um who charged me exorbitant of amount amounts of money and done nothing.

[00:38:30]I went back to my um uh optician to get my glasses sorted and I said, "Just check my macular degeneration and they said, "Oh, you've only got very mild macular degeneration." I said, "Really?" I said, "You go back and look at my records here." I said, "You guys sent me off to a specialist."

[00:38:52]So, I thought, "Well, maybe my macular degeneration has slowed down or it's improved. I don't know." But I know my heart health. I had my aotic valve had a moderate leak.

[00:39:08]After 6 months on carnivore, that leak is now only mild. And I I said to my cardiologist, so why is my heart all of a sudden got really good, gone from 55 to 65%.

[00:39:25]He said, I don't know, but he said, whatever you're doing, he said, keep doing it. And I said, "Well, I've actually gone carnivore." I said, "I'm only eating meat." He said, "Oh, well, you and I won't get on." He said, "Because I'm a vegetarian." [laughter] So, I said, "Well, you can keep your your vegetables and I'll stick with my meat because I ain't going off it." So, that's that's about the guts of it.

[00:39:47]>> Oh, Dave. And [clears throat] so like you've never except for that moment in Europe where you kind of went back to eating a little more norm normally um you've had no recurrence of the Crohn's like it's all it's all gone again.

[00:40:05]>> I don't I well I in fact my doctor when I got my bloods that were all clear he rang me up and he said it looks like your Crohn's is gone. And I said, "Yeah, maybe." Cuz I had Crohn's and colitis.

[00:40:22]And anyway, I said, "Yeah, I'm I'm thinking about it." But I rang up my surgeon that took my appendix out and I said, "Hey, tell me what my Crohn's looked like from the inside." And he and he explained it all to me. He told me what the structures were like and everything else. And I said to myself, he said, "Why are you asking?" I said, "Oh, well, I've I've lost a lot of weight." I said, "I've lost about 35 36 kilos." And he said, "Wow." Cuz when he when I went in for my um uh appendix to be removed, he had trouble finding it cuz it was stuck to the back of back of something else in there because I was just a fat fellow, obese fat fellow. But anyway, he explained it to me and I got off the phone and I thought, "No, my Crohn's hasn't literally gone away. My Crohn's is in remission and as long as I carry on with carnivore, it stays in remission. If I start eating other food, it creeps back. It It I start I I don't have the seconds and minutes that I had to get to a toilet anymore. I have hours, but as the time goes on, it it speeds up. But I'm certainly now in far far better shape than I've ever been.

[00:41:50]For years, I've been overweight. You know, I'm 70 76 kilos this morning cuz I put a little bit more weight back on. Um cuz when we're overseas, I didn't have my carnivore to to eat. Not every day anyway. And um so I was eating their crap food, I call it. Um and for me, you just you cannot beat Carnivore for all the health issues I had. Like I said, I don't go to doctors. I only go to my cardio cardiologist once a year for a checkup to see what my heart health is. He told me with the the valve that I had put in, it's a mitro a m it's an Edward's mitro resilia valve. It's a bovine constructed valve. And he said it'll give you 10 to 15 years. And I used to think, uh, if I get 5 years, I'll be doing well. The last time I saw him, I said, "Oh, you know, when I said to you that I thought I might only get 5 years, I said, well, you can forget that. I'm gonna get the full 15 years now. So, be prepared to have me around when I'm 90. So, it's great. It's It's the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me.

[00:43:12]>> Nice.

[00:43:12]>> And I didn't I didn't do it to lose weight. I did it because I had a need to get rid of my Crohn's. And that's what that was the big driver. Yeah.

[00:43:25]>> Yeah. And so has your how's your wife reacted to this? Is she she's happy you're doing well. She hasn't adopted this way of eating.

[00:43:37]No, my wife and I um I say she's one of those people that is lucky. She never gets sick. She she's apart from having u some woman problems a few years ago and having a hyerectomy, she never gets sick. She can eat anything. She's she's almost the garbage bin. you know, we go away and she really enjoys the food uh overseas and she supports me 100% on carnivore cuz she eats a little bit more meat than she used to, but she enjoys excellent health. Um, like I say, doesn't get sick. And another thing that's worth mentioning, if I I being an engineer, I used to work away from home a lot and I'd always be on airplanes going into the South Island. If somebody sneezed in the front of the airplane and I'm sitting in the back, I'd get the flu. I'd always come out of there with the flu. Since I've been on Carnivore, I haven't even had a cold. And we've been long hall once.

[00:44:51]We've been to Australia once. I just don't get sick. I don't get sick anymore. I don't get a cold anymore. And my heart health is one of the things that I'm really looking after with in conjunction with carnivore.

[00:45:10]My Crohn's and colitis has really taken a back seat now because carnivore for me is a way of life. It's the end of it.

[00:45:21]And if somebody I go and watch some podcasts some nights and I see some people start talking about fiber and all of that and I think, "Oh, this is a load of crap." And I flick it off and go and look at something else because it's just if they only knew just how good carnivore is. And I've sent messages to the guy in Wongay telling her, "Hey, you can really cure this. tell your daughter you really can, but no, you you may as well go and talk to the fence. The guy in the South Island, he says, "Good on you. Keep it up. You'll do well." And like I say, I'm 80 next year and I don't have a lot of summers left, but I can tell you what, they'll be good summers.

[00:46:10]>> Yeah.

[00:46:10]>> Nice. So, so if you had a friend come to you and say, "Okay, I've got some weight to lose." um got health issues. I want to give carnivore a try. How do I get started? Would you advise them to just rip the band-aid off and jump in or would you say maybe go in slowly, gradually cut things out?

[00:46:36]Well, I um I went in boots and all first day cuz I'm an all or nothing person.

[00:46:43]And but if if somebody said to me, "How am I going to do this?

[00:46:47]I'd say, "Okay, every day just reduce your carbohydrates. Just reduce your vegetables and your fruit. Just just start unloading them and loading up more on meat." And I said, "And after a week or two, you'll be on more meat than anything else. And then just drop the rest if you if you feel like it at that point, but make a commitment that you're going to go swing full carnivore. And after you've been on carnivore, give it a couple of weeks.

[00:47:16]Um, after you've been on it for a couple of weeks, then see how you feel about it. See if you still want three or four meals a day with snacks in between, or you want one meal a day or two at the most. Um, and see where you go from there. And that's what I would encourage them to do because not everybody can just bang and grab it by the horns and and wrestle with it, you know, cuz it's it wasn't easy. I've got to say that.

[00:47:48]And I'm pretty strong willed and determined sort of a guy, but it wasn't easy to start with, but here I am.

[00:47:57]>> Yeah.

[00:47:57]>> Nice. Um, so S, if people want to reach out to you, um, can they find you anywhere online?

[00:48:07]>> I'm on Facebook. I I I post on there a lot. In fact, I probably post on there too much. And I put a lot of personal data on there and put pictures of what I'm eating and my bloods. And I don't mind sharing everything with people. And I tell people, "Hey, I even got rid of ED, mate." And their eyes light up and say, "Really?" And sometimes people say, "Too much information." I'll say, "Well, I'm not telling you anymore." Right? But but there's an opportunity for you. I said, "Because fellas like you would be suffering with it." And it's but they can they can get contact me through um Facebook and I make comments quite often on um Kenber's site and there's some others there that have carnivore. You know, people say, "Oh, I've gone carnivore and I'm having this, this, this, and this." And I said, "Well, that's not carnivore." carnivore is um bacon, eggs, butter, and and water basically. And I and I said, "If you want to really go carnivore, you you need to get it right because I said everything else is just wasting your time." Yeah.

[00:49:28]>> Nice. Um so I'll link to your Facebook in the show notes. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. I really appreciate your time.

[00:49:39]>> Thank you, Dave. I've really enjoyed talking with you.