Treating Autism with a Carnivore diet, with Allie Morgan

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically welcome Ali Morgan known as Ali carnival on Instagram um Ali we've been kind of messaging back and forth and like you often repost our stuff which is fantastic and now I believe you're starting to post some of your own journey and your own experience with carnivore and when we were messaging you mentioned that your son has autism and that it has really improved on a carnivore or carnivore-ish Diet so I thought we'd get you on the Pod with Anthony and I and we can talk about carnivore in general but also in the context of autism so welcome Ali thank you it's great to talk to you guys finally yeah well it's great to have you on um you you obviously you know we've interacted online uh quite a bit and then uh it was uh great to see you in in ketocon so Ali and I actually got to meet and hang out um over at ketocon and that's um you know that's when she sort of mentioned this stuff which was really great uh well it's really exciting you know she just mentioned to me that um you know that her it wasn't something that she spoke about much but that when you know normally eating like a normal standard diet our son was a non-verbal autistic but then just getting rid of carbohydrates or even just going keto you know that that really changed can you tell us a bit about that yeah so um the um interesting thing is is that um you know I had done carnivore years ago and then I had fallen off and I got really sick I I fell off when I was taking care of my grandmother she had dementia and then the last year of her life she had cancer I ended up getting really sick and having to go back to carnivore to heal myself which was a very interesting uh process in itself Ali Ali what got you into carnivore initially because we're talking sort of like three or four years ago now right um yes um well what got me in the carnivore um initially um growing up I had a variety um of health problems but I was always I was always lean and Fit I played Sports and I loved that After High School of course I wasn't playing sports and I was working um doing a few other things and I started uh putting on some weight I was working in a food service area and I ended up having an allergic reaction there they had to take me over to the clinic um where I had had a physical because you required a physical to work back in the food service and they happened to mention that I was hypoglycemic because they had my chart and that kind of freaked me out because I have a family history of heart disease diabetes all these things um I actually have a congenital heart defect myself and so it just kind of panicked me plus I don't like needles and I was not interested in becoming a diabetic in any way shape or form um so how I got started um I knew my uncle had been on his own Journey kind of thing so I was like I know this can be fixed I know this can be reversed because what I knew about him was he had had a quadruple bypass and he had severe diabetes but he was eating some sort of a diet where he had come off his insulin mhm and so I had to get in touch with him and so he basically kind of stated that he was doing Atkins so I was kind of looking around and I eventually found the Atkins book I had read through that um he suggested that um I get a copy of Dr Bernstein's Diabetes Solution my dad ordered me a copy of that I I read through that and my problem was is that growing up um at 18 months old I had developed viral gastroenteritis and from there on out I had irritable bowel syndrome so all the things on the Atkins diet that kept you under 20 grams of carbohydrates were things that I had a lot of trouble digesting that irritated my digestive tract I ended up contacting my uncle and I said you know is there something that I'm missing here that I could eat that would keep me under the 20 grams of carbohydrates and that's actually when he confided in me that if he went over 10 grams of carbohydrates he had to use insulin wow yeah so I was really shocked by that so I was kind of what are you eating exactly so he kind of ran through his day and I was like okay he's pretty much just eating meat and now an interesting concept um I had actually learned about the Inuits in elementary school so I knew there were groups of people that just ate me and um I had read something I believe it was in the National Geographic and I had discussed it with my father and I knew about the Messiah so I knew about some of these cultures that were that were carnivores so I was not afraid to just eat the meat by itself the only thing that was in the back of my mind was a little bit was these people had done it for generations and they had done it since birth was there going to be a little bit different reaction and me because I hadn't done it since birth basically but then that kind of all just went away when I started feeling all the positive benefits of it which was incredible so um some of the things that I had um I was by the time I was eight years old um I had had uh chronic sinus and ear infections when I was four years old I had to have a full tonsils adenoids tubes in the ears all that kind of fun stuff um but by the time I was eight years old I was having chronic migraines I had a form of epilepsy and I was diagnosed with bipolar type 1 dual swinging Rapid Cycling so I was heavily medicated oh thank goodness I could still play sports because that was kind of my outlet so I loved it um I ended up actually an interesting thing so I know I'm a little something more about myself now because of the research that I've done of course and what you what you hear now as well when I was 14 I had an emergency appendectomy and during the emergency appendectomy the surgeon noticed something and the next day when he came in to see me he told me I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and so I know that I was insulin resistant and I think uh obviously part of that uh we were following the guidelines my dad was scared to death of heart disease and things like that so we were using margarine instead of butter and all that fun stuff it was low fat all that kind of thing and the particular diet to treat the irritable bowel syndrome had quite a bit of carbohydrates in it so what we were using at the time was the row rotational diet it was the Elimination Diet that Dr Albert Rowe invented I think he published it somewhere around 1940. and uh basically what you did is you would eat the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner and you'd do that for four days in a row and it was always basically a protein and a non-fibrous carbohydrate so you would eat lamb and rice and you would eat that all day long you wouldn't eat anything else and you would do that for a minimum of four days you could do it longer and if you were okay and you didn't have symptoms you could switch over to something like chicken and boiled potatoes that didn't have skin on them so that's what it was it would have been great to have Dr salisbury's work this just hey just to eat the meat would have been quick that would have been because they probably would have never been diagnosed with anything else because I'm asymptomatic with everything else on Carnival and I would have been Carnival okay yeah they were um obviously Roe was too afraid to prescribe no vegetables so he's trying to give the kind of like you know what he thought was the least sort of yeah carbohydrates right yeah and I I think probably also he was probably looking for something that was a little less wow okay yeah take everything out and they have something yeah yeah I I do appreciate that it was there because it was effective it did help it did make you feel better but you know we ate a lot of carbohydrates because of it because the simple carbohydrates because they were just easy to digest and they didn't interfere I mean it sounds like you're very sensitive to carbohydrates like like more so than perhaps the average person because you know you had PCOS and hypoglycemia um Anthony what do you think about that yeah well yeah definitely you know and like um uh the you know the fact is that there are some people that are very sensitive to carbohydrates you're you know you know Ali clearly is and you know you know but then there's like there's tons of studies as well uh that show like in autistic kids I mean there's there's a paper that came out you know several years ago that talked about you know using a ketogenic diet as a treatment modality for autistic kids so you know that's not that's not unheard of you know so I mean those that particular cohort is going to be very sensitive to carbohydrates because it you know changes the energy Dynamics in your brain um and every cell in your body you know including your brain and so you know it it's um in the susceptible people that can make a dramatic difference I mean you know people talk about you know they get they lose the brain fog and they can think much more clearly and that that's people that don't you know aren't affected in in such severe ways it's so everyone gets a benefit from it and some people get a massive benefit from it um and um yeah but I but also you're just cutting down to like your meat and rice you know like it is going to be an improvement on a lot of other things you know because you're cutting out a lot of processed foods you're cutting out a lot of sugar you're cutting out a lot of plant poisons you know so you're you're still eliminating a ton of toxic material because unfortunately you know they they still left those you know poisonous grains and and potatoes in there because you know those those ones I think are probably the first things they really need to go you know I mean obviously I think fiber is pretty bad for you as well so at least it's easier to digest but um you know I learned that um my second time around which is actually how I ended up going carnivore again because after my grandmother passed um I had found a medical problem um it was originally diagnosed as a pilonidal cyst yeah okay now I had the first procedure ruptured open about six weeks later and then I went to see a different surgeon who who my aunt knew um she's a nurse and he repeated the procedure and it ruptured open again now he was much different and much more efficient than the other one because after a while he started asking me some very specific questions and I finally told him I said look I have an irritable bowel syndrome the past few years I have had the worst flare I've ever had in my life so he said okay this is kind of interesting I want to send you down the hallway to a colleague of mine that's a gastroenterologist so I went down there they did the endoscopy and the colonoscopy and it found out that I actually had Crohn's disease so what they realized where it was what they originally thought was a pilonidal cyst was actually an exterior Crohn's fish oh wow and that's why it wasn't healing I literally was on bed rest with for 18 months at this point by the time this was started to actually heal up I was on bed rest for 18 months this wound was open draining it was horrible and then at this point everything pumped little steroids so I ended up getting bigger than I have ever been because I couldn't take care of myself other people were bringing me food I was sick as a dog sometimes I didn't even want to eat because my stomach was so bad I just didn't want to put anything in it but then other times I did so I actually ended up at 265 pounds wow people can't see you but you I'm you're not exactly you know like a a tall person no like um no I I that's um that's that would be a very difficult amount of weight to tell them but I uh are you talking are you something like five two or something like that five three around there no I'm I'm actually about five four and a half just under five y yeah okay so okay so it's still a lot of weight to be carrying on oh yeah it was framed I lost more than I weigh now I think I think my my biggest weight uh at six three was like 270 273 you know so you could yeah all right so that's that's uh that's impressive yeah yeah good morning I remember I remember my dad he he still um he was still pretty uh bulky he was a he was a baseball pitcher but he was at 6'4 he was about um 236 and so he's pretty good size my uncle was like the biggest guy I've ever seen in my life because he was split mine in over 300 pounds and I was just nobody ever looked big to me yeah yeah no kidding yeah he's a monster he was he was huge yeah well and how was your your Crohn's like a you know responded to all this because that kid there's a ton of studies you know that um you know I've spoken about like you know with like Elemental diet just like cutting out everything except like the core you know core nutrients uh is is one of the more effective uh treatment tools better than steroids um you know just even like a uh like a fasting mimicking diet where you're not using any fibrous plants or anything like that you know it on average keeps people out of uh out of flare-up for on an average of 51 weeks and uh and they and they trial this against you know this was a controlled trial and people that you know were eating you know carbs and fibrous uh carbohydrates uh and they stayed in remission for an average of zero weeks so it was a big big um uh contrast there and I I and you know in my practice and people I've spoken to I've yet to see you know know Crohn's or also in colitis just not disappear fully on biopsy within three months so how did it how did that help you I had reached about the 18 month Mark with this wound still open I'm being pumped full of steroids now where I was like okay when I weighed less than this I was already hypoglycemic for all I know I'm diabetic at this point and I was just frustrated I'm like something is going to kill me I have an open wound that's been open for 18 months and yeah you're talking possible infection here and I'm like the diabetes concept and I'm like okay steroids Crohn's disease this is miserable so I was like I have to find a solution so I went online and I actually um ran across the IBS diet and was uh written by Heather van buros and I started reading through it and she started talking about basically if you have a digestive disorder fibers the enemy of the gut yeah and she had this this diet and I kind of downloaded the cheat sheet and I ended up getting a copy of the book and I started following the diet a little bit and I felt a little bit better and then I kind of sat there one day when I was getting ready to try and get somebody to go to the grocery store for me and I was looking at it and it was kind of very similar to Dr Rose diet and it was just kind of like it's all like sugars and carbohydrates and I'm like okay this this is great for relaxing the digestive tract but no offense to her this is kind of a recipe for diabetes here okay I can't do this I'm like okay so no offense so what what doesn't have fiber in it that I can eat and I'm thinking okay the meat so back to what I was doing yeah and then um the interesting thing was too once I started doing that the wound started closing I started healing the wound started healing um I was beating off the steroids and everything um about six months later I went in for another colonoscopy and they didn't say a whole lot and then they said I want to do another follow-up just in case and I was like okay so I went back for another one and so I finally come into the office for for the other one and he sits down and he looks at me and he says you don't have Crohn's disease anymore look on his face and I was like well that's great and he goes yeah it really is I've never said that one before yeah I was like oh okay yeah well that's the thing is just because people just haven't come to the conclusion yet that it's not a disease you know it's your body reacting to specific stimuli and you remove that stimuli and it goes away you know that's why it's saying it's like did your toxicities and toxins and poisonings and then your body's responding to that poison in that manifestation of that poison you know and it's and it's and so if you approach it in that with that mindset that you remove the stimulus and and the stimulation will go away medicine becomes a lot easier and uh yeah that's what you know I talk to people and you know I I do consults and I talk about different things and it's just like you know everyone's sick everyone has diabetes everyone's got an autoimmune issue everyone's got this that and the other and I'm talking about Neurosurgical issues and I just I can't keep my mouth shut I'm like you know that all goes away if you just stop eating plants right and they're like wait wait really she's just like yeah seriously like it just goes away and and you know we'll get into a conversation about and and you know people talk about oh you people just eat anything they have no will about it no they they aren't actually listening to you know people that really mean well but have really incorrect information and and so you're talking about it and I was literally just talking to a guy yesterday and I was I was a bit you know sort of nift because uh you know the like the acute medical unit was like insisting that I see this patient that clearly did not have any any Neurosurgical issues and like they were telling me it's like oh well they got on the scan they've got this like l45 disc and like and their legs just won't move at all well it's clearly not that then because that only controls their ankles so why the hell are you talking to me you know and like and like it's just I could just tell that this was like a referral and if I could just any way you slice it but they were just calling me every single day like can you you know you have to come see this person I'm like fine I will come see him and but but I know this is going to be you know a waste of my time I go in there they're saying the guy couldn't move his legs got a huge like parallel he can't move his legs right I go in there like he's sitting around pushing himself on the bed like sitting around I'm like dude the guy concl he's clearly moving his legs you know and like I just remember right in front of me and I've tested him like he had no no neurological deficit he was just in a lot of pain he had a lot of back pain which is not something that that surgery uh really can help and accept that very very few circumstances and but he was diabetic and he had um other conditions uh they had you know he was heavy and I just sort of just talked to him and you know everything I give you in the hospital is just sugary carbs and so I was just like yo so all this stuff goes away if you just don't eat this crap right it just goes away you know and he's just like Jesus like are you serious like I would I would love to stop taking this medication I would love to stop doing this and you know people think he's like oh it's really hard to get people to change their diet like I don't think you have actually tried ever you know because you know you know these people take so many medications they're they suffer with the conditions that they have on the medications that they have and they're they're looking for any solution to stop taking medication they think that these chronic pain people oh they're just they're just drug seeking I was talking to this guy he's like I would do anything to get off these painkillers you know I was just like you know getting rid of this inflammation and all the this crap that you eat you know that will significantly help your pain and it will get rid of your diabetes or at least significantly improve it and um and you're just like I've got to check this out you know please you know tell me more where can I read about this where can I go about this uh go to look about this you know so I it it was so easy it's just like just a mention of it it was instantly like perked up like are you wait are you serious like I can stop taking these damn drugs like I would I would do anything for and um you know so it's it makes a huge difference um and it's and it's actually really easy and so I I just see these people all the time because everyone's sick now everyone's over overweight or a lot of people are overweight and and a lot of people have these comorbidities that that can be just com they just go away you know uh if you just remove these stimulus um I was going to say you know they said uh that lady you know I can't recall her name but she said that you know if you have a digestive issue then fiber is your enemy I I would just I would just expand that to like you know it's it's everyone's enemy you know and just some people what's worse than others and um you know this is why you know in in general surgery you know it's like a low residue diet which is exactly what this this person recommends just basically a low fiber diet but obviously you have to still eat carbs and whatever um that that helps rest the gut you know when you have surgery or have an infection or you do something you just you're trying to have less residue come through the large intestine because you're trying to let it just calm down and heal uh that that's that's what they use and then as soon as you're done they're like oh yeah make sure you get a whole bunch of fiber in you and then you just start the whole process over again just screw yourself um and I just I've always thought that was just so strange like even even when I was just in medical school I was just like that doesn't make sense you know like why why are we telling people that fire how can fiber be good for us if if we're telling people not to eat it you know when they're actually when they actually have an issue you know is that is that really helping them you know because it's causing stress in this circumstance is it just is it does it do the opposite on other other circumstances I don't know why I would you know but that's what they say and um you know like like you're saying you're on these steroids and all these you know people don't building or some people suggest that you know Crohn's and ulcer colitis which have dramatically increased in number of people suffering from these things since the 1980s you know they say that um well they probably were we'll probably have a whole bunch of other people probably didn't actually increase it all it's just that you know now we've just we're just noticing it more and we're just you know documenting it more it's like you clearly never seen a patient with crohn's rules of class they require massive heavy you know damaging drugs to uh to just just deal with you know and so like that that that's not something you just miss you know if you're having bloody diarrhea 20 times a day I think you're going to notice you know and so and horrible horrible excruciating pain and like you say you know fistula and um and other other you know consequences of this inflammatory pattern so it's just really doesn't make any sense um I was actually going to just jump back to you you said you were dealing with some mental health issues as well there was um yeah there was a paper that just came out recently by by Georgia e who showed that it was like 31 patients who were refractory to medication and psychiatric patients who were refractory to medication um so so they have they were on all the meds and it still didn't work so schizoaffective disorder uh bipolar uh major depression and you know I think a few others and so these people weren't helped with the medication the maximum medications and they still had this severe problem they said okay why don't we try a diet and just put them on a keto diet not even a full carnivore diet they all improved yeah you know and some of them were like just completely resolved their issues you know I mean that that just speaks to like the power of uh you know not poisoning your brain with just carbohydrates you know it's just like that's that's a dramatic dramatic difference you know when we look at these things it's just like energy sources but they do so much more in our body these are complex biochemicals that have an effect on our body and our brain and you know even just that energy Dynamic is clearly enough to change how our brain functions at a primary level what were your experiences with that how did that you know affect your your psych you know your your conditions yeah I I was fascinated I I was feeling a lot better when I first started basically Atkins but there was a dramatic shift when I went carnivore that's when everything just kind of like fell into place I got the uh the zero carbs in thing and I'm just neutral at that point um I had been on a sleep aid a stabilizer and antidepressant and stuff like that and really one of the first things that I noticed is I was sleeping better through the night but then I was tired during the day so I approached the doctor and I'm like okay let me tell you I changed my diet and you can see that I had lost weight and I explained that problem to him and he said well you know you're eating better maybe you're sleeping better let's try yanking the sleep aid out so I did and and I was fine with that and then slowly we just started producing things and when I fell off the diet I had to go back on my medication that was a fun thing new and so I kind of really just kind of started researching you know why this would work how this would work and I ended up finding all kinds of info um you know different pieces of information that even um a nutritional deficiencies can mimic disorders um things like that and it was just wild what I was Finding and I was like okay well you know carnivore provides you with all the nutrition I didn't know what to call it then I was just like I'm doing some kind of weird version of Atkins that's what I mean um I actually didn't know it was called carnivore um I was following all these keto doctors and thankfully I was following Dr Ken Berry and then the video when he said I'm gonna try a carnivore challenge I'm gonna try carnivore what what is he doing and he starts describing him like wait a minute there's other people actually doing this besides you know that are actually in civilized places and that's why we found my first carnivore group because I started scrolling through the comments and who's now my friend Marcy Lilly had posted hey come join our you know our friendly carnivore group zero carb living the good life and I clicked over and there was almost 600 people already in there and I kind of had this Epiphany it's like oh my gosh I found my people I think that was very I think there's like 10 10 000 miles yeah definitely Atkins or zero carb is a less triggering way of describing only eating meat for some people you know I think as soon as I hear carnivore they're like no yes now I kind of just say it's kind of like a extreme keto because people understand that yeah people get keto don't they yeah yeah and it's a natural progression you know I mean that's that was the thing it was my first time at ketocon but you know obviously the concept is there that there are some things that we eat that should be eliminated and you should I mean everyone everyone's already sort of fought that as well you know like with you know don't eat don't eat cholesterol don't eat fat donate uh meat um they just got it wrong you know but you know so the concept is it was already there and then with keto they just soak up carbohydrates that cause problems and they do but then it's sort of a you know a natural progression when you start recognizing that there are other toxic things in Plants uh which you know um I learned about obviously yeah 20 20 plus years ago and then you know in seventh grade and things like that but you know hadn't really been spoken about I remember I I you know um sort of mentioned my experience with that and that's why I stopped eating any plants at all you know you know back in college uh because you know I learned about how toxic that was but you know that wasn't something that people really knew about I remember when I when I spoke with Dr Baker about it on his first podcast one of his early early ones on the human performance outliers podcast it was like Episode 34 with him him and uh Zach bitter who also met again in person in ketocom which was great to actually see him in person he's a cool guy um you know I sort of was talking about my experiences with that and I remember uh being on some of these carnivore groups like zero zeroing in on health and um and zero carb health and um and like Dana uh Dana shoot said uh you know sort of posted my interviews he's like wow I didn't I didn't realize this that like like plants actually are harmful and they have toxins in them and like this makes sense you know because you know we all feel better when we don't eat them um and so when that started you know disseminating around with the keto groups this concept that you know there's more than you know more than one bad thing in plans you know besides carbohydrates it's it's a natural progression to start you know getting those things off too and weaning off more and more plants until you finally get to you know people call it the ultimate Elimination Diet I just call it not eating poison you know of carnivore and um and then you can you just describe it like that as well you know when I talk to people about it now I'd just be like well you know I just eat meat you know like oh really just eat meat I was like yeah well I mean you know humans are carnivores you know like that's the kind of animal we are every single one just goes yeah yeah no no that's true like this is not a like a a mystery like this is what I was taught as a kid that humans were apex predators top of the food chain you know that means carnivore you know that means super carnivore you know because you're eating other carnivores you know as well as herbivores and so you know it um when you when you frame it in in a certain way it makes sense you sort of bypass all the the Dogma indoctrination and people just go oh yeah that makes sense you know and um so I think that that hopefully we can keep sort of pushing out through like the keto Community as well and uh and have that you know sort of sort of grow and then other people sort of take on from there to show um hey Ali can we talk about your son sure um so uh Anthony sort of mentioned in in a bit of intro um that he was a non-verbal uh Autistic or he had autism and he was non-verbal how's he how's he going now he's he's great um he's very verbal he's very vocal um he goes to public school um I do have him in uh physical therapy because he's a toe Walker so we're working on um fixing that and he's got a little bit of Occupational Therapy but he's not in any kind of uh special education I originally started out homeschooling and kind of enrolled them in like the third quarter of this past year just to get him some social interaction and everybody was going back so it's like he wouldn't be just completely brand new everybody else was just kind of getting back to things after the lockdown and um he had a good time he fit right in it was great you know he made friends and he had a good time yeah and then and then what happens when he eats carbohydrates um I'm not uh restrictive I was a niche it actually happened was because of the way I was eating I didn't have any seed oils or anything in the house so I was kind of cooking basically the way I would describe the way that we were eating in the house would have been the standard American diet from over 100 years ago I love that okay yeah it's very different to do that yeah yes I I I've always been a scratch cook I got that for my grandmother so I I didn't buy Bisquick or frozen biscuits I made biscuits from scratch and they had real butter in them with whole milk that kind of thing lactose free of course because we have a little problem with lactose no surprise um that's what they were eating in my house and and he was kind of basically like a high functioning autistic you could see that where the problems were and it was a little concerning and I was like okay there's obviously some things that we could work through he's probably gonna need some sort of types of therapy and probably special education and stuff like this what actually happened was I got into that carnivore group and they decided to have a meet-up and I drove out of state because where the Meetup was was an hour and a half from where my grandmother grew up and all my cousins were there and um so I was able to go down and visit my cousins literally I have tons of them my grandmother was one of 18 children okay I don't even know how many cousins I have down there they like populated yeah half the state yeah so it was a long time to go down there and actually um she knew Kelly Hogan Kelly came to the Meetup so that was a lot of fun to chat with her because we had been basically the exact same weight at one point kind of how we got started and that that was kind of fun um but what happened was I left him and my daughter she's 16 months older than him at my parents house I had to take the youngest with me because he was only 20 months old and he was still nursing so he had to go with me and of course my parents weren't eating the things I was because my father was still in that uh okay you know saturated fat is bad I'm Terror he was terrified my grandfather died of a massive heart attack at 59 I never met him because he died a year before I was born kind of thing and then he was concerned about the diabetes so it was always like low fat you know and he had like this fiber obsession oh boy but um I was I was telling Simon just a little bit ago he he I jokingly call him the waffle cake that was something he always loved to do he loved to make pancakes and waffles and he got the Belgian waffle maker and he would like literally make that for my kids every morning that they were there so so what they were eating at my parents house for these like 10 days or so that they were there was today's standard American diet now my mom was trying not to bother me while I was on this trip so I get back and he's like melting down in the living room he's he's whining incoherently I have to kind of sit him down and put his shoes on I couldn't figure out what in the world was going on I'm thinking maybe he's just upset because he's now got to leave Grandpa and Grandma you know he's crazy about my parents luckily I'm just down the road from my parents so it wasn't a long trip so I get him in the house and he kind of falls back over into the floor and I'm taking his shoes off and stuff and then it got kind of excited because everybody's home at the house and then he starts kind of rocking like this and he's putting his hand over his head and he's still grunting so he's covering his ears and I'm looking at him and I kind of rolled him over and his eyes are literally like this I'm talking to him I'm calling his name and he's not responding I get him to sit up and he just starts going like this he had completely shut down terrible and then he started doing this with his head again and rocking he smacked his head on the floor and that's when I was like okay everybody's got to get out of the room I knew he was over stimulated it was too loud I had to get him to settle down so at this point I'm realizing it's like okay it's kind of like what you had talked about before I'm like okay I need like a 20 minute meltdown but I'm realizing even though what I was feeding him wasn't perfect he was verbal I could talk to him yes he had problems but eating the natural facts eating the animal protein even with some you know white flour and some sugar in his diet he could talk to me eating the standard American diet of today he can't function at all there's no functioning with him and that was kind of a big hit it's like okay I was doing something right at least so I knew I had to get a hold of the doctor and I was my first thought was you know I've got to just strip everything out I've just got to take in carnivore to get him back I've got to bring him back it took about almost three days before we started seeing any Improvement in him and then it took a little longer and then he just took off great and it was crazy things that we were told would be delayed started happening it's like 27 days on the diet he decided to potty train himself they were telling us he you know six would be an appropriate age he had just turned four hmm just did it himself and then he taught himself how to read wow it was crazy yeah he's still um he's still very gifted like I said I was homeschooling initially and uh in order to homeschool you have to submit the standardized testing basically to prove that but you're actually educating your children so you have to submit that to the county so I did the test at the end um I actually had him in the same grade as my daughter so he was in first grade last year in second grade this year but when I enrolled him in public school I went ahead and put him in first grade so he would be with appears his age I didn't want to push him too far initially because they said there was no Pro there's no problem if you know if he gets bored we can move him up not a big deal but when I we did the testing because he had to be tested he was testing into the sixth grade level on a number of things wow common with autistic children if you can bring them out there a lot of them are very very intelligent children um and stuff he's very gifted um part of that is also why I've allowed things back in the diet because I could see that he was noticing that he was different yeah and the last thing that I wanted to do was be this like over restrictive mom that okay he's gonna walk the chalk line follow the directions until he's 18 then he's going to graduate from high school or whatever move out or go off to college and he's going to go okay let me have some stuff and then he shuts back down yeah because when he does get a hold of too much you can start seeing the regression and so to me if he were to do that the only way that I would know is if he was living with somebody and they called me or I end up getting a call from either an emergency room or a psychiatric hospital depending on where somebody hauled him off to yeah and I didn't want him to go through that so I wanted him to learn why he's eating the way he is and he is because he does get to the point where he'll start to progress um and then we'll sit down and we'll talk about what he eats and uh he's I don't ever want to eat that again that food's bad yeah but I think he's gonna need just to be just a little bit older because trust me I'd love them all to be full carnivore yeah that would be great and I know you know he was like me I knew what I felt like when I was at my Peak when I was younger and then when I'd go down I'd hate it because I knew what I was capable of before and it just pissed me off that I was not able to do what I know I can do and so what I figured I'd probably end up doing is when he's a little bit older I don't know maybe around 10 11 or whatever I probably want to wait till the summer do like a carnivore challenge with him and just do it for for 30 days and then if he goes off and he kind of has the crash which I figured he would I just don't want it to happen while he's in school and then have him melting down at school and I I'm not what I was hmm and feeling that effect but I I that's no the more he the more carnivore he is the better he is that must be a really tricky balance though you know like as as you say you don't want to kind of force it and you don't want to wrap and bubble wrap and have him never experience not being on Carnivore and never experience the carbohydrates because it's kind of like every time he chooses to take that little bit of poison or a bit of toxicity it's it's that reminder of or teaching him that it's not good for him so yeah yeah if if they didn't have if none of my children had this problem I'd just go like hardcore and it's like okay you can choose what you want to do when you move out but the fact that he could literally collapse and and not function anymore if he did that no yeah and and then so how does that work with like school lunches and uh and things like that he's back sort of doing you know in school and interacting with other kids is that is that an issue do you send him to school with with their own lunches like how do how do you navigate that well actually apparently you have to have snacks and all kinds of stuff because they don't do that at home you know they eat breakfast sometimes you remember to eat lunch and then we eat dinner they're not hungry because these large quantities of food and then they eat large quantities of food here because they're not hungry but it's cool it's like they have to have a snack and then they have to have lunch so usually what I do is I pack the snack it's kind of pretty much a carnivore snack and then he doesn't really want much of the lunch right now because of things that are happening the elementary school is actually providing the lunches for free and then he doesn't really eat the lunch because he's filled up on the snack that was really healthy so he doesn't really get much yeah and then when it comes home we just eat and sometimes I have a little extra something for him within or sometimes it's like here's the roast have a nice day and they just eat it you know kind of thing or one of his favorites is chicken but now he's really starting to like beef a lot more oh nice yeah so it's really funny because sometimes I I I add a little bit of seasoning to theirs to make like a broth if I cook a roast or something like that and I don't like to over salt it so I just cook it plain because I don't use a whole lot of salt I don't even put salt on it and we were all literally standing there in the kitchen just eating it with no salt yes then nothing on it it was hysterical yeah is do you have do you have video I didn't ask you that but like is it um you were just sort of describing sorry is it not on no it's not on yeah yeah well that's what I was saying you were saying that he was you're sort of going through some motions that he was doing and it was just like I was like I can't yeah yeah am I in the ceiling where am I no you're someone in the middle yeah you're a little bit higher can you not see yourself I'm trying this is like thank goodness it was Brett I I did the Instagram line with Brett he was walking me through the whole thing I was like I have no idea what I'm doing this is just crazy and the sound the sound is pretty good too fantastic but that's right hello nice to see you yeah hey because I thought I saw myself on the screen with with Simon and then I was like what happened okay I don't know whatever and yeah well that's good so how so what how old is he now he's seven now okay all right and uh and then yeah and then reading or or doing certain things at a sixth grade level like that's um you know for that's unbelievable serious non-americans you know that's sort of like an 11 year old sort of level 11 to 12 year old level you know so that's fantastic I was like that and my dad was too yeah so it actually that was really crazy because I was in special education obviously because I had the bipolar disorder so I was an ed LD and because I was the same way it actually prevented me from getting diagnosed with my learning disability because nobody believed okay I didn't get diagnosed with my learning disability until like 10 years after I graduated from high school it was ridiculous I was so mad but I was so happy when I finally found somebody that I was describing it too and they were like do you know what you have when I was like I don't know no and then they told me and I'm like and they showed me the list and I was like are you kidding me I was a special education teachers in these Specialists and they couldn't figure out that this is exactly what I was explaining to them what is this why Ali can you can you just explain it a little bit more to me is it like you you had a learning disorder but you didn't know that you did because you were functioning at um like a few grades above your age it wasn't just a few words above it was majorly because I was complaining so bad they actually did a series of testing on me in the ninth grade I didn't actually get to finish this test because I was taking so long on it the lady came over and looked at where I was and stopped me where I was I would have loved to have known where I was able to go but she stopped me at grade 18.4 come on yeah so 12.9 of course is you're the equivalent of somebody who's graduated from high school and then you add you know 13.1 is one year of college so 18.4 is yeah that's good yeah I was mad if I had known why they were testing me I would have just fail it yeah yeah help yeah so I sorry if you don't mind um what what sort of learning uh issue did you have okay which is dysgraphia is it's a um fine motor coordination defect where the brain and the fingertips don't connect with words basically so you have trouble writing okay your trouble putting the words on paper um some of the symptoms are you're trying to write um you miss words um your hand will cramp up it's very painful so and and it was incredibly frustrating to me because I couldn't write things like essays and stuff like that and I was seeing here and I was complaining to my teacher I'm like look I can dictate this to you all day long but I just I can't make it come out you know what I think I think a lot of people struggle with stuff like that like obviously yours is very cute but like you know writing these long-term essays handwritten you know that's only going to suit a small percentage of students I think yeah and mine actually um some people did well with typing mine actually crossed over into typing I had trouble typing I was so frustrating yeah yeah so it was frustrating but um some things that uh I could get typed up my mom could type it up my mom can type really fast she was actually um a secretary for the Interior Department she could I forget how many words a minute she used to be able to type yeah a lot more than me I'm sure yeah so I could just dictate it to her and she'd type it up and I'm like okay here you go okay yeah and that was like a voice to text where I use voice to text all the damn time if I had had that that would have been great it would have been perfect yeah but they didn't have yeah and now they have that and that that was actually if I remember correctly I remember when that first came out and they were gearing it towards people that had learning disabilities and I was like bastards yeah before I graduated yeah you could have done College yeah so how how old was your son when you sort of figured all this stuff out when you first went to that first Meetup and you saw that that big big change uh in him um I was getting he was getting ready to turn four okay it was about a month turning four all right oh sorry um I was just gonna say like and so so he's had a a few years now of eating a better diet and yeah to sort of develop better have you seen like like a difference in his trajectory of development as well since you sort of made these these uh dietary changes yes he's definitely um increased on the growth chart as well as far as height okay yeah that's because he was a really low percentile yeah and and I figured that was just kind of Norm at all all of my children have because everybody eats this way you know the whole whole family does but I thought it was kind of normal because their dad was never on the growth chart that's a very long story but is his brother's like half a foot taller than him okay well it's like all right yeah my brother did that to himself you know like he just he's just a picky little eater and so like he just wanted to eat white rice and tempura sauce there's like sugary carbs and soy and um you know he just he just you know he would eat some other stuff sometimes but he would that was that's what he wanted all the time and it was just he was like a carb and sugar addiction and unfortunately my mom you know he was the baby so she just sort of given up at that point and on trying to make it do anything it was it was one of us it was just been like that's yeah you're not getting away with that um you know but with him you know she made a lot of concessions and was like well I I have to get him to eat something like he has to eat something I was like he doesn't have to eat crap you know like he needs to eat actual food and I mean I was like I was you know 10 or 11 telling trying to admonish my mom's like no he needs to eat real food not just eat anything you know that's not this it's not the same thing and you know he's um I think it's like 5 10. 511 at the at the most is 5 11. I think he's under five eleven five eleven though he's like five ten something I'm 6'3 my brother's six four you know right and we ate a standard American diet just without a lot of sugar we never had sugar in the house you know and um one of the interesting uh things both uh my brother and I both had to be treated with this diet because we both got very sick he ended up um having the exact same problem that I did but um his was actually earlier on and the gastroenterologist told my parents they they said look uh this this is gonna prob this is gonna cause some um problems with nutrition and they're not going to be as tall as they should be and especially when he was looking at my dad and kind of like I'm sorry your son's not going to be as tall as you kind of thing yeah well you never know I mean like you know getting along like an actual diet he was up with my parents it's like look they're just not going to get the level of nutrition that they that they need to grow properly yeah well you know I mean you know hopefully now you know though I mean like you say you know they they've increased on the growth chart already you know so you know they've got a lot of developing to do with brains and bodies so you know I think there's there's a lot of room to catch up you know and um you know I I unfortunately came across this when I was already you know fully fully developed and well yeah and um and so that that sort of pissed me off because like I didn't get to grow uh uh you know with uh with that with that sort of level of nutrition but um you know your kids still have like a ton of time to grow you know so that that's great I you know I'd be excited to see you know just how much more they go just because you know they have they have a ton of time you know you could say your your son's been doing this since he was four that's a lot that's a lot better than a lot of people get and so even though he had a bit of a rough start you know he may very well end up you know well above the a curve you know if he keeps this up which it sounds like you know he's developing that that sense of why he's doing this and that that aversion to these things because he can see very clearly the direct result of eating poison you know he's and he has a very clear difference you know which yeah it'll be very very beneficial to him you know down the road yeah we we've had um my um my primary care is actually a friend of mine and she's kind of jokingly kind of predicted where he's going to be he's like well if he takes after your side of the family it's going to be interesting because all the men on my side of the family they go through this growth spurt where they grow about seven to eight inches in one year before they stop and she said that's not normal that doesn't normally happen so if they don't do it it'd probably be about here but if they do it this is where we're going okay I just don't want to feed him then yeah yeah good job yeah yeah it's like you kids are going to have to work for your meat I know I'm like if I have friends that own a cattle farm that's the way to do it you're gonna need a cow in the backyard it's gonna be kind of funny at some point though I have a feeling it's like I need another half cow you bought one last week I know but they already ate it yeah yeah but they just went through a growth spurt though yeah yeah we need two yeah and people are shocked sometimes when I talk about the amount that they can eat because um my youngest was basically he's just been carnivore and he loves it people eat meat over anything else and he actually threw a temper tantrum at my mother's house because she was trying to help everybody was tired that weekend and she had taken these pre-made meatballs and she put them in sauce and all kinds of stuff and he he won't eat spaghetti he won't eat anything like that he hates noodles and stuff like that and he got mad and I had left some steaks there that I was gonna I had to end up cooking him a steak and my mom was just this is just people why kids love spaghetti they love meatballs and I'm like no not this one you put sauce on he's not gonna eat it you put noodles near it he's not gonna eat it it's just not happening but when they when I first transitioned them even it was just amazing because he wasn't even two years old and so I had basically I had a five-year-old a four-year-old and a not quite two-year-old and I could cook two pounds of sausage in the morning and they would devour it the three of them and so they were eating about three quarter pound a piece at each meal [Music] well that's awesome and my youngest one he he likes to gnaw the the bone because I I do that for like ribs and stuff like that like pork spare ribs if I eat that and they actually we have two um barbecue places that are family-owned barbecue places in the area and they nicknamed him the Bone Crusher because they just got the biggest kick out of him because he wasn't even two years old he's very he's gnawing through the bone to eat the marrow out of it nice that's awesome like okay well ali um thank you so much um for coming on and tell us your story and uh and tell us about your son is a very personal um you know thing and it's not not something that that uh Everyone likes to share with a wider audience but it's important very important and I really appreciate it because I think there's there are a lot of people out out here that maybe they are interested in a carnivore diet or not but you know they think that like this isn't manageable because I have kids and I can't get them to eat this that and the other but you know maybe and especially with autistic kids sometimes they could be very um you know they don't want to if they don't want to do a certain thing like maybe they don't want to eat meat or they want to eat these other things they can be very difficult to sort of bring them around um and it can be it could be quite hard and so uh you know having your story and having you you tell us about how your son made this massive massive turnaround in his health and his development you know that that might you know help people with that and just be okay I've just got to figure this out I've this is too important my child's health and their development is just because you know once you stop developing that's pretty much it you know you can you can sort of affect how your your set mechanics operate but you cannot develop again you know and so it may be enough for them to say like okay well this is too important I can't I have to get this before this becomes permanent I have to I have to do something before uh while they're still developing while they're their brain still has a chance to catch up um and develop you know because that's what autism is really it's it's a misdevelopment of the neurons in your brain and you know there's different reasons for that but either way the neurons aren't actually uh developing normally and they so they don't don't work as normal and so they have they have differences in um their development in that way but also just the functionality as you say you know in three days you know what what he has already developed Works entirely differently and now he's developing differently as well and so hopefully this will inspire people more to say okay I know I've really gotta I've just gotta figure it out whatever I can do I need to do this because this is you know my child's health and development is too important so I thank you very very much for sharing a very personal story yeah and I I was actually um very excited um we had we had a different um primary care doctor um when I first did this and he he traded uh the entire family and so when he saw him and then you know I took him back after the dietary change and he said so what are you doing and so I kind of just explained it to him and I was a little nervous about it and then he he just kind of looked at me and he said I'd rather change his diet than medicating it's not yeah oh my gosh I almost hugged him yeah well it sounds like you actually had had some doctors who had brains you know yeah because my current uh primary care doctor is actually a friend of mine and she got tired of just treating yeah uh patience and having to follow these set of rules so she left the practice that she was in to do her own practice and now she's it's holistic a lot of holistic treatment even though maybe she doesn't necessarily prescribed exactly what I'm doing she thinks it's wonderful and it's a totally different atmosphere to walk into her office than to walk into a regular doctor's office because you don't have these uh you know notepads laying around or something pharmaceutical companies you walk in and there's like natural supplements and all this stuff and and here's here's a massage Clinic that you can go to here here's another friend of mine that I know that's a lactation consultant here's her card it's it's all that kind of yeah and it's completely different because it's like this is natural care she you know she still does you know if you need an antibiotic or something like that that's great but she tries to treat everybody who's willing to do it naturally yeah well that's good I mean and that's the thing you know it's just it's it's the difference between you know Health optimization and disease management you know you're trying to you're trying to get actually get people healthy not just mitigate you know disease and damage you know and recognizing that these aren't diseases that you can actually you know get rid of them by doing certain lifestyle changes and you know you know we've been influenced uh for better or worse uh by pharmaceutical companies I mean some of these things are are actual Miracle drugs and as we've gone wow that's amazing antibiotics holy crap you know but you know then we've sort of saying like every new drug is a good thing maybe a lot of them are but you know we we've we've gone away from treating people and treating the person to now treating the disease and you've sort of lost sight of that and now we're just we're just trying to find a pill for something oh you've got this problem oh that's funny pill for it well there's enough people to have it oh okay you know 13 of the population have this thing let's get a pill for that thing you know or maybe think about like well why do we have 13 of people having that thing when we used to have no one no one had that thing a few people had that thing now says oh let's get a pill for that thing well we didn't it's not the problem isn't that people stop taking the pill and they have the problem the pill never existed that disease never existed so what the hell is 13 of people you know have it now why the hell is nine percent of people in America diabetic why the hell are 40 uh pre-diabetic you know 100 years ago that wasn't a thing you know instead of asking a question okay what the hell happened to change that you know they're just saying well let's get some pills you know and so we've just changed our mindset on how we approach these diseases and and these conditions as doctors and uh and we need to change that and so it's really good to see you know your friend has has actually figured that out and is is taking a step back to me like this isn't this isn't how you should do this you know so that's great yeah I never have a problem with it because I was kind of always like an outside of the box kind of thinker so all of this always kind of worked for me like I remember a conversation that I had with my dad because he was explaining why we did certain things and he was explaining you know trying to explain you his dad had a heart attack and there's diabetes I was about six years old and I was like so what is diabetes I didn't even understand what it is and so he's how do I explain this to a six-year-old and so he just kind of said it's high blood sugar they have two sugar in their blood and I looked right at him and I said well why don't they just stop eating sugar but yeah yeah and then I remember my mom went to this diet place and they gave her all this food and she came back with it and I thought to myself okay what's wrong with our food that makes my mom gain weight but this food is different and so I was always questioning things and I drove an instructor nuts when um I went to college because I took this health and wellness course and he was asking about multivitamins why do we take a multivitamin and I I was actually the person that answered the question I raised my hand and I said in case we don't get everything that we need in our our diet every day and then it just hit me as soon as I said then I was like when did they make multivitamins they haven't had multivitamins forever how did we survive as a species without multivitamins what's wrong with our food yeah well that's it we're we're too many Inuits where are the multivitamins for squirrels you know right how do they not how do they survive without these supplements these life-saving supplements that everyone has to have because no one can possibly get you know full nutrition from their food that's another concept that people things like I was talking to a you know a vegan um uh dietitian actually she was finishing her her PhD in nutrition and we had this big back and forth I ended up actually converting her but you know that was that was one of the things that that got her was uh the supplement thing she's okay so what supplements do you take I'm like I I don't yeah he really took me back that was the first time I that that had um you know sort of come up and I was like I I don't it's like no of course you do you have to everyone everyone takes supplements I was like no no they don't like I don't I don't take any supplements why would you have to take supplements if you're eating well you're biologically adapted to with your your species specific diet is like why would why would you need to you shouldn't have to and that all of a sudden hit her because she takes a bluntload of supplements at the time and so like all of a sudden she's like that's right you know like how can I say this is nutritious if you have to take a whole bunch of pills with it just to get basic nutrition you know so that doesn't that doesn't pass you know that doesn't pass muster so um you know it's uh uh it's a it's a big one you know people say oh everyone's saying so and your food is taking something to give me B12 injections to cows and so you might as well just take it yourself it's like you don't get B12 injections to cows eat grass dip you're only doing that to people that they're like sitting in Grain feedlots for six months because they're not eating what they're supposed to eat either you know it's just like you have all these people going around giving B12 shots they're like squirrels and field animals and things like that like where are these you know benevolent You Know Field Marshals that were you know going around just doing it like Jesus I mean what what how did these squirrels survive before you had all these forest rangers going around giving them B12 shots that's amazing you know that we have this service for free vitamins for squirrels there's a business idea yeah yeah diet started taking off again I somebody was recommending it to me and my my first thought was I knew my grandmother had a completely different blood type than my mother and I was like how does that even make sense very confusing yeah I read a book on that and I think that yeah and then one of my other first thoughts was okay we're species do other species have blood types so I looked it up real quick and I and I was like by golly they do and my first thought was you don't have a pack of lines out in the wild and they take down like a zebra or something and they stand around going like Bob Jill you know Joe and I can eat the zebra because we have the A4 and you guys are you know D9 so you have to wait till we get a giraffe you know yeah and that's the thing you know this is this is one Protein that's that's different on red blood cells and that's it you know so it was like what's what's how are you fundamentally changing your entire digestive tract based on one protein on one cell line in your body what the hell kind of sense does that make yeah no it doesn't make any damn sense you know but I think that you know maybe it's like you go into one of these things oh you should be eating this and you should be eating this I didn't hear a blood type for you know processed crap you know you're the processed crap blood type you know so every single one is going to like a whole food approach and so everyone when compared to uh you know process crap approach they all improve oh no I did that and I actually got better it's like well yeah of course you did because you got rid of things that were even worse you know but like I'm a positive so I I should be a bloody vegan like don't think so yeah it's okay it's not gonna work I know I went through the whole list so I just out of curiosity pulled up the list and I'm like okay if I eat like three quarters of this stuff I'm gonna be doubled over in pain with my stomach this is not happening and and it's just the look appetizing I'm like tofu I actually ate tofu one time I thought it was regular cheese on a platter oh that was bad I was like gross I mean it's very very creative idea but there's there's no there's no logic to it is it what what is this and they were like it's no food for me and I was like okay what else did you bring because I'm not getting married um yeah that was great thank you yeah thank you both it was great to Great to chat with you guys [Music]