Depression, Diet & Auto-Immune: Mikhaila Peterson's Research

Depression, Diet, Auto-Immune. Mikhaila Peterson Conquers All; Eventually:

Many people have health problems to fix, some of them tougher and weirder than others.

Sadly, modern medicine hasn’t figured out how to fix them all.

And that can lead people down some very strange roads whose conclusions don’t always involve Snake Oil.

One of those people is Mikhaila Peterson. And her journey to success over immense problems is a freaking small miracle…

Born Under A Bad Sign:
So to start off, Mikhaila was born into a family that had autoimmune-disease on both sides and depression on one.

Unfortunately, she didn’t skate out on those consequences.

She was on Immune-Supressors by the age of 12.

She was medicated for very serious Depression at about the same age.

And by age 17 had to have both a hip and an ankle replaced due to joint damage caused by arthritis.

-Which doctors first thought was rheumatoid, but then decided was just regular arthritis later on.

She also had a type of hypersomnia and CFS where she just could not stay awake. -Almost like narcolepsy.

In fact the list of problems she had was a pretty long one.

It also included gems like: Rashes, Acne, Psoriasis, and Sores that wouldn’t heal.

All Of The Drugs!:
And so as a result of this, modern medicine had her on a CVS pharmacy-full of prescription drugs.

These included:
Multiple Antidepressants
Methotrexate, the chemotherapy immune-suppressor
Enbrel, the immune-suppressor
Antibiotics
And
Adderall so she could stay up instead of being asleep all the time.

In-short, a pharmaceutical onslaught just to not feel completely-destroyed every single day of her life.

Strange Signals And Intuitions:
But amid all this mess, two early signals luckily stuck-out.

When Mikhaila was little, she seemed to get an inexplicable rash immediately after eating foods like strawberries or oranges.

The other one was odd-blisters related to Celiac-Disease.

And those provided the seed of something that would eventually become an amazing solution.

After many years of this, her mother was near her wits’ end.

But she also had a very intuitive idea and convinced her to go to a naturopath.

-Who Mikhaila thought would just be a snake-oil salesman.

But in that visit, the naturopath recommended an elimination diet that was both strict and weird in its recommendations.

The Experimentation Begins:
Sadly, the results were a bit underwhelming at first,

So a few days later, Mikhaila decided to bake and eat a few muffins.

-After which she promptly became so inflammed in her joints that she could barely walk a few days later.

She then decided maybe going back restrictive diet of rice, greens, chicken, beef, and fish was a better idea than the muffins.

And then got almost completely-better inside of 1 month.

But as she went, she decided to try adding back small things she loved to this super-restrictive plan.

Adding-Back, And Then Subtracting Some More:
Strangest of all, she tried to add back some Soy, which promptly made her depressed and arthritic all over again, and knocked her out for about a month.

So no on the soy. -Weirdly. Because women seem to tolerate it fairly well.

So back she went on the restrictive diet,

But this time she tried another experiment.

She switched over to just meat & greens, and her results got even better.

But she kept coming back over the course of a year, trying to re-introduce a little bit more dietary normalcy,

Each time being disappointed, depressed, lethargic, arthritic, and out of commission.

And slowly, it was beginning to seem like consistent bad-reactions to old favorites were proving the new rules true.

Bringing It Back Home:
A her research progressed she decided to tell her dad, Dr. Jordan Peterson, who always had similar but less-severe problems.

He said he thought that he could try almost anything for a month and gave it a go.

Then his symptoms of autoimmune-disease and serious depression started clearing-up, too.

-Which was a real feat, because they had a cousin who died at an early age of similar causes,

So the spectre of something serious was always there.

Depression & Diet: Ditching Prescription Meds For Really Weird Nutrition:

As that first set of miracles occurred, something else amazing came by.

For the first time since she was 12, Mikhaila was able to come off of most medications, including immune-suppressors and anti-depressants with no ill effects.

But after new changes from pregnancy decreased the effectiveness of her modified elimination-diet, the research bug decided to bite her again.

So she went back out and kept googling things like “Allergic to everything”.

And that led her to a weird place: The Carnivore/Zero-Carb Diet.

-Sort of like Atkins, just nothing but Beef & fat. Not even Chicken or Fish!

The Final Experiment:
She figured that she’d tried all kinds of weird, restrictive diets before.

Most of which seemed like complete and total BS to an outsider.

Especially one familiar with prescription meds and the serious conditions they help control.

But she thought, “What the hell? Why not this one too?”

And her results got even better.

So she went back and told her father and mother again about her new round of anti-food-pyramid results.

They tried the second diet also and for the first time in her dad’s life, he was free of anxiety, depression, and off anti-depressant drugs too!

Not only that, but after awhile, her mother who had arthritic knees for a very long time, had such reduced symptoms, that she could actually go skiing for the first time in 7 years.

Let’s Be Honest, It’s A Weird And Narrow Plan:
Now the Carnivore/Zero-Carb Diet is not for everyone.

And although one of the real champions of the diet was a woman Mikhaila found online,

Who had been keeping her symptoms of Lyme Disease at-bay for 18 years,

It is a Really extreme diet.

Mikhaila herself was terrified of the idea, thinking she was going to die in the fist month of some odd pirate-like vitamin deficiency from the 18th-Century, like Scurvy or Rickets.

-But that hasn’t happened yet.

She doesn’t say what she does to supplement her diet with the vitamins and minerals she needs to get to function normally,

But let’s assume she does.

So as weird as it is, there may be ways to make it doable for people in the long-term.

Things We Don’t Know:
Now another one of the things she doesn’t talk about is what her blood-work is like and if she has to take cholesterol-medication as a result of the diet.

Again, let’s remember that Atkins is based on a slightly different context than the Carnivore Diet,

And that because it’s not a widely-explored plan,

The specific biochemistry for any individual may end up being unique and unexpected.

Who knows what their HDL, LDL, and Trig cholesterol levels are like until they talk about them?

Automatic Weight-Loss, Improved Hormone-Function:
The other amazing part of the story is that her father lost a total of about 50 lbs. without even trying.

All that extra fat just came right off.

It’s probably not just subcutaneous, but intramuscular fat, too.

-Which may contribute to healthier organs,

As the worst effects besides excess hormones from high-bodyfat, is the overheating of internal organs,

Which may malfunction in odd ways under those conditions; like diabetes, for example.

Dr. Peterson lost so much weight, he’s back to what he weighed and the beginning of college.

Mrs. Peterson lost a bunch of weight, too.

And Mikhaila herself is also very slim. -Particularly for a new mom!

For Unstudied Edge-Cases, Maybe Anecdotal-Results ARE The Gold-Standard:
So, although we like to focus on results-driven outcomes here that are supported by science,

Every one of us either has, or knows someone who has gotten to the end of their rope with what science/big-pharma has been able to achieve.

-Especially in this case, because controlled-diet studies are one of the hardest things to do. People will just not stick to it.

There might actually be a grand total of 2 studies out there that successfully controlled diet and that’s about it.

So, it’s a perfect example for seeing if the Anecdotal-Evidence is actually MORE valuable than anything a lab or a drugmaker could come up with.

-Also, let’s face it, unless it’s a university, or a very special research group, nobody is going to study odd diets really That much,

Because you can’t patent them.

They Only Study What They Can Turn Into A Pill And Patent:
And it’s very hard to do a Weight-Watchers points-style program built enirely out of meat.

But either way, Mikhaila and her entire family are experiencing an amazing change in quality-of-life results that no university, no study, and certainly no big pharma company could ever have predicted.

-Now wouldn’t it be a gigantic help if one of those companies found out what was causing the gigantic cascade of systemic inflammation in Mikhaila and her family just based on food?

AND solve it with one little pill?

Absolutely!

Sometimes, Exploration Is The Only Solution:
But she, her family, and the people who went out and explored are the real set of reference examples,

That sometimes experimentation into the near-unknown of weird and frequently monty-python-level weird plans,

And Anecdotal Evidence can sometimes be extremely-valuable,

More valuable than a fistful of drugs from giant companies,

And those wacky plans could even turn out to be a Life-Saver, especially for something as serious as diet’s effects on depression and autoimmune disease!

Photo/Video Credits:
Video by Depression To Expression
Image, “Labyrinth Maze Lost”, by Gordon Johnson

Links:
• Source: YT – Depression To Expression Interviews Mikhaila Peterson on Diet And Depression
• More Coverage: Mikhaila Peterson’s Website, “Don’t Eat That!” | MeatHeals.com | Mikhaila Peterson’s Patreon