Latest / Common Sense Health / The Carnivore Diet Result Bryan Johnson Should Have Tried
Transcript
- Stephen: Hello. Brian Johnson is 48 and has recently told people he has autoimmune gastritis, AIG. I'm 62 and at his age I was a high carb, no red meat advocate and I was getting fatter and sicker. Going low carb at age 50 turned my health around and here I am 14 years later with the metabolic age of 48 at the age of 62. I do believe that looking healthy is a reasonable but not 100 % clue to how healthy someone is. Now with that said, I want to respond to Brian Johnson's post in a fair way because I think there is something important here that gets lost if this just becomes another internet shouting match. First, I don't think anyone sensible should claim that meat magically cures AIG or that sunlight is a simple cure for autoimmunity. Autoimmune gastritis is a real condition. involves the immune system targeting the stomach's parietal cells, which can affect stomach acid, intrinsic factor, iron absorption, B12 status, and digestion more broadly. So Brian is right about one thing. Low ferritin can be a downstream of AIG rather than the cause. If the stomach environment is damaged and stomach acid is compromised, iron absorption can become much more difficult. And that's a valid point. But I think the problem with Brian's argument is that he's fighting a simplistic claim with another simplistic claim. He is saying essentially, because meat and sunlight are not direct cures for my autoimmune disease, they are unlikely to be relevant. And that is where I think his thinking is too reductive. Health is not a courtroom where one intervention is either the sole cause or completely irrelevant. Biology is more like an ecosystem. If a forest is burning, you could say, well, the lack of rain did not cause the lightning strike. That may be true, but rainfall, soil quality, tree density, wind, microbial life and the overall condition of the forest still affect whether the fire spreads. And this is how I see this issue with animal food, sunlight and autoimmune disease. Brian says that people think meat will remedy his AIG. But I don't think the strongest argument is that steak is a pharmaceutical drug for AIG. The stronger argument is that humans evolved eating nutrient dense animal foods, including foods rich in heme iron. B12, Retinol, Zinc, Carnitine, Creatine, Taurine, Choline, Collagen, Fat-soluble nutrients and highly bioavailable protein. Now, none those are fringe benefits or fringe nutrients. They are basic biological building blocks. So if someone has low ferritin and impaired absorption, autoimmune gastritis and is relying on a highly engineered plant-based diet plus a very large supplement stack, it is reasonable to ask whether the overall approach is truly producing resilience or whether it is creating an artificial system that looks good on paper while the body is sending warning signs. Now that does not mean eat meat and everything is cured. It means maybe a diet that requires extreme supplementation, constant tracking and clinical workarounds is not automatically the gold standard for human health. There is a difference between managing numbers and managing health. then says he has tried every oral ion formulation including heme ion polypeptides and he did not correct his ferritin. Now that is relevant. If stomach function is impaired simply adding oral ion may not overcome the problem. Right, fair enough. But that still does not prove that animal foods are irrelevant. It only proves that once the system is already impaired one isolated supplement may not be enough to fix a downstream marker. exactly the problem the way he is framing it. He is treating meat as if people are recommending it merely as an iron supplement. and all foods are not just iron tablets with a pulse. They are complex nutrient dense foods with a matrix of nutrients that humans have eaten for a very long time. Meat, fat, organs, marrow, eggs, seafood. These are not strange modern inventions. They are deeply aligned with human history. So the broader question is not merely can oral iron correct ferritin after AIG has developed. The broader question is what kind of diet and lifestyle best supports immune regulation, gut integrity, stomach function, nutrient status, hormonal health, satiety and long-term robustness. Those are not the same question. If a house has a leaking roof, putting a bucket under the leak is downstream. Replacing the plaster, that's downstream. But if someone says maybe the design of the house, the materials, the ventilation and the weather exposure, they all matter. That is not the same as saying a new carpet will cure the roof. It is a wider systems question. The same applies to sunlight. Brian says the sunlight argument claims his low vitamin D is making his immune system misfire. But his vitamin D has been substantially high for years. Now again, that is too narrow. Sunlight is not just a vitamin D delivery mechanism. Reducing sunlight to serum vitamin D is like reducing exercise to calorie burning. Yes? People say exercise burns calories, but that is not the whole story. Exercise affects insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial function, mood, lymphatic flow, bone density, muscle mass, blood pressure, brain health, and immune regulation. If someone said, will burn those calories by eating less, so exercise has nothing else to offer, most people would immediately see the floor in that argument. And sunlight is similar. Sun exposure affects circadian rhythm. Nitric oxide release, vascular function, mood, immune signaling, hormone rhythms and the way the body understands time. Morning light, UVA, UVB, infrared exposure and natural outdoor light are not identical to swallowing vitamin D capsules or maintaining a high blood level. So when Brian says my vitamin D is high therefore sunlight is unlikely to be relevant that is reductive. I'm being polite there. It takes one measurable output of sunlight and treats it as a whole phenomena. that is a very modern mistake. someone cannot be fully captured or something cannot be fully captured in a blood marker, it gets treated as secondary. But the body was not built in a spreadsheet. It was built in nature. Now to be clear, I'm not saying everyone should burn in the sun or ignore skin cancer risk. Of course not. Dose matters, skin type matters, latitude matters, time of day matters. But the fact that excessive sun exposure can be harmful not mean sunlight itself is biologically irrelevant. Humans are outdoor mammals. We are not designed to live as indoor lab projects under artificial light and try to compensate with supplements and tinted windows, gloves, umbrellas and blood tests. That may optimise one variable, but health is not one variable. And this brings me to the bigger point. Brian uses an analogy where he says trying to cure a genetically driven immune failure with meat or sunlight is like trying to fix corrupted software code by altering the temperature of the room. Now that is a clever analogy but I think it reveals also the weakness in his world of you because the body is not just software. is not merely code running inside a machine. It is an adaptive living organism in constant conversation with the environment. Food is information, light is information, sleep is information, microbes, movement, all information. Stress is information, temperature is information. and social connection is information. If you change the environment around a living organism, can absolutely change how its biology expresses itself. Genes matter, but genes are not destiny. Immune architecture matters, but immune function is also shaped by exposures and nutrition and infections, stress, gut health, circadian rhythms, toxins and metabolic status. And here is the contradiction. Brian's entire project is based on the idea that lifestyle can change biology. He tracks his sleep, diet, exercise, supplements, biomarkers, body composition, inflammation and aging markers. Sorry, a bit boring really, but clearly he believes the environment matters. But when people suggest more ancestral environment inputs like animal foods or sunlight, outdoor living, simplicity, suddenly he frames that as naive, as if people are trying to fix a software error by changing the temperature of the room. Now that is inconsistent. Lifestyle is either powerful or it is not. You cannot say lifestyle is powerful when it supports your protocol, but simplicity when people suggest inputs that existed long before the supplement industry are also important. Now let's talk about the stomach specifically. The word gastritis literally means inflammation of the stomach. Gastric refers to the stomach and itis refers to inflammation. Now, AIG is not just ordinary irritation from food. It has an immune component. So we should not oversimplify it. But it still fair to ask a basic question. What is repeatedly going into the stomach every day? If someone is eating the same highly controlled plant heavy meals, blended foods, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, powders, pills, supplements and engineered longevity products every day. It is not unreasonable to ask whether that is truly a calming, species-appropriate input for the gut. That does not prove a causation, but it absolutely justifies the question. Plant foods can contain compounds that some people tolerate well and others do not. You have lectins, oxalates, phytates, protease inhibitors, fibres, fermentable carbohydrates and other plant defence chemicals. They may be irrelevant to one person and a major problem to another. The lazy version of the argument is plants are toxic. I do not think we need to say that the more precise argument is this plants are chemically complex and the dose context preparation gut health and individual tolerance all matter if someone already has autoimmune issues and digestive compromise it is at least plausible that a very plant-heavy repetitive diet could be aggravating rather than healing now this is where Brian's approach sometimes seem to confuse measurably controlled with biologically appropriate But they're confused. A meal can be beautifully designed on a spreadsheet and still be wrong for the person eating it. that is the green mush problem. can blend broccoli, cauliflower, lentils, mushrooms and olive oil into a perfect looking nutrient profile. You can calculate polyphenols, fiber, calories, minerals and antioxidant, but the body does not eat spreadsheets. The stomach does not digest ideology. The immune system does not care whether the meal had good branding. It responds to what arrives. And for some people, especially people with autoimmune or gut issues, A simpler animal-based diet may be far less irritating and far more nourishing. That does not mean carnivore is proven to cure AIG, but we also should not dismiss the thousands of people reporting improvements in autoimmune systems. chronic pain going away, digestive issues clearing up, blood glucose stability, satiety and energy when they remove plant foods and focus on meat, fat, eggs, fish and other animal foods. Are testimonials the same as randomized controlled trials? No. But neither are they meaningless. When people say my symptoms improve when I remove those foods and eat more animal products, The correct response is not to sneer at them. The correct response is curiosity. Anecdotes are not proof, but they are often where better questions do begin. And this is important because nutrition science itself is not as solid as many people pretend. A lot of dietary advice is built on observational studies or food frequency questionnaires and associations. People are asked to remember what they ate weeks, months or even years ago. They misremember healthy user bias creeps in, unhealthy user bias creeps in. Associations are treated like causation. Then meta-analysis combined weak studies, headlines exaggerate the results and suddenly everyone is told the science is settled. But when people improve their health in the real world by eating in a way that contradicts the guidelines, we supposed to ignore that because it does not fit the model. Well that's not science, that's gatekeeping. Good science should be humble enough to say, maybe our models are incomplete. Brian is clearly a very intelligent man. He's very disciplined. more than almost anyone I've ever seen. has a team, has access to testing that most people could only dream of. And yet with all of that, he still has significant health issues. That... should not be used to mock him. Illness is not a moral failure, but it should make us ask whether optimisation has become over-complication. If someone needs over 100 supplements, regular interventions, constant testing and a medical team to maintain a protocol, is that truly health? Or is it highly sophisticated management system? A species-appropriate life should not require a daily chemistry set. That does not mean supplements are always bad, some are useful, some are necessary in certain contexts. when the supplement stack becomes enormous it starts to look less like optimisation and more like compensation. It is like building a house with the wrong materials and hiring a team of engineers to stop it falling down. At some point someone has to ask, would it have been simpler to use the right materials in the first place? And this is where animal foods matter. Animal foods are not magic, but they are dense. bioavailable and ancestrally normal. They provide nutrients in forms the body can use efficiently. Heme iron is more bioavailable than non-heme iron. B12 comes naturally from animal foods. Retinol is pre-formed vitamin A. We've got zinc, taurine, creatine, carnitine, choline and high quality protein. They're all abundant in animal foods. Now you can try to recreate all of that with supplements, but at some point you are rebuilding the cow capsules and the cow did a pretty good job in the first place. So Brian says his autoimmune profile began when he was young when he was eating red meat and spending time in the sun. But that does not settle the matter either. Eating red meat in a modern diet does not automatically mean someone was eating a species appropriate diet. What was the rest of the diet? Was it ultra processed food, seed oils, refined carbs? What was his stress levels? What was his sleep like? Antibiotic exposure, there infections, environmental toxins? gut damage, emotional stress, overtraining. Saying I ate red meat and went in the sun when I was younger and I still developed auto-immunity is not proof that meat and sunlight are relevant. Don't forget it was many many years ago, at least two decades ago that he was doing that. I mean that is like saying I drank water and I still got sick therefore hydration has nothing to do with health. The presence of one healthy input does not cancel out every unhealthy input. And again nobody serious should say meat and sunlight are magic shields but they are foundational signals. They are part of the environment humans adapted to. The internet may be wrong when it says just eat meat and go outside and you'll be cured. But Brian may also be wrong if he says because these things are not targeted cures, they are probably unimportant. Both of those are oversimplifications. The balance for you is this. AIG is complex. It may involve genetics, susceptibility, immune dysregulation, parietal cell antibodies, intrinsic factor issues, poor acid production, impaired nutrient absorption, and links with other autoimmune diseases such as thyroid disease. So Brian is right to investigate it seriously. Sequencing immune cells may provide useful information. It may help identify immune patterns in future therapies. But the body's terrain still matters. Nutrient density does matter, Bioavailability matters. Stomach acid, gut integrity, circadian rhythm, sunlight, outdoor living, satiety, simplicity, all matter. Evolutionary context matters. A microscope can show you the rogue soldiers. as he puts it, but it may not tell you why the battlefield became vulnerable in the first place. Brian talks about rogue immune soldiers and identifying their keys. Fine. That might be useful. But soldiers do not operate in a vacuum. They operate in terrain. If the terrain is inflamed, undernourished, overstimulated, poorly timed, artificially lit, chemically burdened and constantly manipulated, the immune system may behave differently. You can identify the rogue platoon, but you still have to ask what trained the army. That is where think Brian's model risks becoming too narrow. He's looking for the most advanced possible answer before fully respecting the most basic ones. He wants to sequence a million immune cells but many people are simply asking, are you living in a way that matches the organism that you are? Are you eating the foods humans have reliably used for deep nourishment? Are you getting sunlight as a biological signal, not just maintaining your vitamin D number? Are you supporting stomach function, digestion and satiety through real food? Or are you managing markers through a complex process? And to be fair, Brian does many things well. I mean he cares about his sleep, he exercises, he measures, is disciplined, he's willing to share his data publicly and that takes courage. But discipline and data do not automatically equal wisdom. You can be extremely precise and still be precisely wrong about the bigger picture. A map with a thousand details is not useful if it is missing the mounting. The mounting here is that human beings are not designed to be supplementary. movement-dependent indoor optimisation products. are biological organisms shaped by food, light, movement, rest, stress, relationships, microbes, seasons and environment. So my respectful challenge to Brian would be this. Do not dismiss animal foods and sunlight by reducing them to iron and vitamin D. That is not what they are. Animal foods are not just iron pills and sunlight is not just vitamin D. And health is not just biomarkers. If someone says animal products may help, the strongest version of that argument is not that meat cures AIG overnight. It is that nutrient-dense bioavailable, evolutionary normal foods may support the body in ways that isolated supplements cannot fully replicate. If someone says sunlight may help, the strongest version of that argument is not that vitamin D alone cures autoimmunity. It is that natural light is a master environmental signal with effects far beyond that one blood marker. And if someone says your current health problem suggests something may be wrong with the approach, that is not necessarily an attack. It may just be a reasonable observation. The point is not to shame Brian for being sick. People get sick for many reasons and illness is not a character flaw. The point is that when someone presents themselves as a model of ultimate health and that model requires extreme intervention while significant health issues remain, people are allowed to question whether the model is truly optimal. Maybe the answer is not less science, maybe the answer is better science. Science that is humble enough to include evolution or ecology or nutrient bioavailability, sunlight, satiety, digestion, common sense, and the complexity of whole body living. Because sometimes the most advanced health strategy is not adding another layer of complexity. Sometimes it is removing the artificial layers that made health so complicated in the first place. And perhaps the simplest question is this. If your health protocol requires a medical team, a laboratory, over 100 supplements, avoidance of the sun and a diet that would have been impossible for humans to follow for most of history, maybe it is worth asking whether the protocol is truly human or merely highly engineered. Because the goal should not be to win the spreadsheet. The goal should be to build a body that works in the real world.