The carnivore and keto approaches found a generation of women who had tried everything else. The autoimmune symptoms eased. The brain fog lifted. The bloating that had been there for years finally went away. The relief was real and the testimonials are accurate.
What the testimonials less often capture is what arrives after six to eighteen months on these protocols. Constipation that did not respond to magnesium. Cold hands and feet. Hair thinning. Sleep that became lighter and shorter. The body that was healing then began to communicate something else.
Chinese medicine reads these diets as deeply warming and Spleen-Yang-strengthening. Meat and animal fat build Qi and Blood. They warm the middle. They reduce the Damp load that grains and vegetables can sometimes increase. For someone arriving with significant Spleen Yang deficiency and Damp accumulation, this is the right medicine for a season.
It is rarely the right medicine forever. Over time the absence of fiber starves the microbiome of substrate. The absence of plant foods removes the cooling, moistening elements the body needs alongside the warming. Yin gets depleted. The body that was warming gradually becomes too warm and too dry. The symptoms shift.
The classical advice is not to pick one diet and stay forever. It is to read the pattern, eat for the season your body is in, and shift as the body shifts. Carnivore and keto are valuable interventions used as interventions. They become liabilities used as identities.
The diet that healed you last year may not be the diet your body needs this year. That is not failure. That is the body doing what bodies do.
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