Carnivore entry and early changes

• Brendan found carnivore in 2018 through a What I’ve Learned video that introduced Mikhaila Peterson and made all-meat eating seem possible.
• Brendan already had diet troubles, including gluten, nightshades, and other plants, so plant defense chemicals did not feel foreign to him.
• A testimony from someone who seemed exactly like Brendan gave the diet a relatable path that facts alone had not given him.
• Brendan threw out vegetables, potatoes, grains, and moved straight into carnivore.
• The early transition brought oxalate-dumping trouble because Brendan had moved suddenly from a high-oxalate diet to a very low-oxalate diet.
• Brendan did not manage oxalates at the time because he did not yet know what they were, and the symptoms later dissipated.
• Oxalate foods still make a major difference for Brendan when he slips up, and symptoms can come back.
• Looking back, Brendan was pale, a bit anemic, and low on iron markers before carnivore.
• Anxiety had felt normal for most of Brendan’s life until it stopped, and then calm, confidence, and groundedness were obvious.
• Mild gender dysphoria also changed, and carnivore was the first time Brendan felt masculine and confident in the way he thought he should.
• Brendan used to get sick one to three times each year, and now he does not get sick.
• Brendan used to bruise easily, and after years on carnivore he no longer sees bruising even after a hard baseball hit.

Pallor, blood, color vision, and visible health

• Physical health and mental health improved together, and the diet also changed Brendan’s worldview.
• Brendan had been anxious about climate change, society, and the world, and that outlook shifted toward calm live-and-let-live thinking.
• No new reasoning changed Brendan’s mind; his physiology changed, and the same world looked different.
• Brendan started seeing a pattern: people with gender dysphoria or mental illness often seemed to have pallor in the skin.
• Pallor can come from low melanin after little sun, or from lack of blood under the skin and loss of a rosy glow.
• Human and some primate red-green vision makes sense as a way to see blood under skin.
• Red-green vision helps humans see emotions such as blushing, anger, and fear, and health signals such as bruising, greenish sickness, cyanosis, circulation, and fertility cues.
• The pattern Brendan noticed joined anemic pallor, mental illness, gender dysphoria, and a woke social-justice outlook.
• The pattern was far more common in women, and Brendan connected it to higher anemia risk in women.

Anemia, oxygen, and mental symptoms

• Brendan began to see mental health as a reflection of physical health.
• Chronic anxiety can come from inner physiological signals that things are bad, not only from the outside world.
• High-altitude material connected oxygen shortage with higher suicide, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and delusional thinking.
• Holding the breath shows how less oxygen and more acidity can produce panic without any psychological trigger.
• Anemia means lack of blood, and less blood means less oxygen delivery to tissues, especially the brain.
• Low oxygen and rising acidity activate brainstem pathways for more breathing and panic; the desire to breathe and anxiety use the same pathways.
• Iron matters mostly through hemoglobin and oxygen transport, not mainly through a small brain enzyme.
• About 80% of iron usage goes toward hemoglobin production, and oxygen is needed by nearly every tissue.
• The brain is only about 2% of body weight but uses about 20% to 25% of body oxygen.
• Neurons rely on aerobic metabolism, and other cells help supply them with oxygen, lactate, glucose, and waste clearance.
• Depression fits the same energy pattern: low energy makes conservation adaptive, like the behavior of a sick child.
• Carnivore benefits are often talked about as ketosis and protein, but oxygen and anemia need to be central in mental-health conversations.
• Diet worsening, larger body size, less animal food, more ultraprocessed plant-based food, and low oxygen move together in the pattern.

Iron, plant foods, and absorption

• People in iron-deficiency groups often want to fix iron deficiency without meat or red meat, using spinach or beetroot.
• Plant foods will not fix iron deficiency in Brendan’s view; animal heme iron is needed.
• Tannins, phytates, oxalates, and soy inhibit iron absorption and create a double problem with low heme iron intake.
• Avoiding plant foods high in those compounds can improve the situation for some people.
• Coffee may matter because of tannins.

Anemia testing and blood volume

• The medical anemia test is wrong because hemoglobin concentration is used as total blood amount.
• Concentration does not equal total amount; a person with three liters of blood can match a person with five liters on hemoglobin concentration.
• In that example, the person with three liters delivers only 60% of the oxygen delivery of the five-liter person.
• Carbon monoxide rebreathing can calculate total hemoglobin mass and blood volume for performance research, but it is not routine clinical testing.
• Papers say the method is now widely available, cheap, simple, and safe, yet routine care still does not use it.
• Ferritin is the storage protein for iron; below 30 is bad, and the target Brendan gives is around 100 to 200.
• Low ferritin means the body is starving for iron and cannot make enough red blood cells.
• Paleness in anemia is not just hemoglobin concentration; blood volume and blood distribution explain blushing, blanching, and many symptoms.
• Hypovolemia helps make sense of dyspnea, restless legs, hair-growth problems, and shared symptoms of iron deficiency with or without anemia.

Young women, red meat, and the book

• Young women are particularly affected because menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, rapid growth, and lower testosterone raise blood and iron demands or reduce erythropoiesis.
• Women also tend to eat less meat and especially less red meat, with red meat maybe culturally seen as masculine.
• Anti-red-meat health and climate messaging is especially troubling for teenage girls in this model.
• Beyond the Pale is Brendan’s book on anemia as the visible yet unseen cause of mental illness and gender dysphoria.
• Brendan wrote the book because videos had limited reach and one video on gender dysphoria seemed flagged after doing well.
• Brendan has read a couple hundred studies on the topic, and scientists and researchers do not understand the anemia and mental-illness connection properly.
• Iron deficiency is hard to solve, and not everyone is willing to eat large amounts of red meat.
• Altitude sickness gives an analogy: poor sleep and suffocation alarms can occur, and women may be more prone because they begin with less blood for oxygen delivery.
• With anemia, limited blood goes to vital tissues first, so the digestive system may get less blood and nausea, poor appetite, and low desire for meat can follow.
• Meat may be easier to digest overall, but it has a higher upfront stomach-and-intestine cost than crackers or some plant foods.
• People who need meat the most can be prone to not wanting it, especially if iron deficiency began before or during development.
• The book identifies the problem and does not give recommendations; Brendan’s advice outside the book is to eat much more meat, especially red meat.
• Darker meat typically has more iron than lighter meat, such as dark chicken meat versus white chicken meat.
• Brendan would also remove high-oxalate, high-phytate, high-tannin foods and soy, while using plain carbohydrates such as white rice or bread if tolerated.
• Plants can be eaten by choice, but they should not be relied on to fill nutritional reserves.

References

• [00:07] Meat is the Healthiest Food? (Mikhaila Peterson at the Oxford Union) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg38vohsdKQ
• [10:30] Bare skin, blood and the evolution of primate colour vision — https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2006.0440
• [30:52] Hemoglobin concentration, total hemoglobin mass and plasma volume in patients: implications for anemia — https://doi.org/10.3324/haematol.2017.169680
• [38:12] Beyond The Pale: Anemia: The Visible Yet Unseen Cause of Mental Illness & Gender Dysphoria — https://www.brendanjreesor.com/