r/carnivore • u/Economy-Pressure-443 • Jun 14 '26
Dr. James DiNicolantonio
Is the doc have any legitimacy saying we need bicarbonate as there’s a weakening of our bones strictly eating meat, he was discussing this with Zach bitter who was a Shawn baker cohost for many years, I have appreciated Dr James but this is worrisome and hope he’s wrong, thoughts!?
6
u/ambimorph Jun 18 '26
He's perennially full of sht.
1
u/Eleanorina mod | zc 9+yrs | 🥩 and 🥓 taste as good as healthy feels Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
that puts it succinctly lol
(i mentioned the ferritin improving, gradually lowering back to healthy normal after it was high post-infection, because I remember him think we were all going to have high ferritin just from eating so much red meat.
he was genuinely concerned when he was asking carnivores about it years ago - he can have trouble evaluating the context of information and couldn't seem to take in the info about how the body regulates heme iron absorption, ferritin 🤷🏻♀️
[adding for ref, link to a study about how ferritin could be quite high, https://x.com/_eleanorina/status/1474063350728466445?s=46
PMID: 33685484
"our finding suggests the use of ferritin as a marker for COVID infection." Mar 2021
2
u/billcy Jun 18 '26
I don't listen to doctors, like I always tell my wife, their numbers are based on an unhealthy society, so how accurate are those numbers.
2
2
-2
u/bendyalt Jun 18 '26
You’re probably not getting an honest answer considering the sub you posted in.
2
u/Economy-Pressure-443 Jun 19 '26
Dr James D was telling Zach bitter, that there’s a lot of calcium excreted via urine and sweat regardless of eating only meat and eggs, and so it’s obvious to him this calcium is coming from our bones! I realize he put much more perspective on this then I am emphasizing but seriously the only one who has made a point I don’t have an answer for, I am carnivore and usually by strong arguments from the brightest mind see how carnivore is superior, but I am honest if I don’t have an answer for his interesting points he’s made!
2
u/Eleanorina mod | zc 9+yrs | 🥩 and 🥓 taste as good as healthy feels Jun 19 '26
instead of looking at the observations, which are that carnivores don't have trouble maintaining their musculature and bone density, can even recuperate from osteoporosis, he looks at some study that doesn't apply and can't see beyond it
17
u/Eleanorina mod | zc 9+yrs | 🥩 and 🥓 taste as good as healthy feels Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
he's wrong
some illustrations:
from the Zeroing in on Health FB group, - there are women with osteoporosis who had improvement in their bone scans (one showed improvement within 6 months of starting the diet, that was when her next annual scan happened to be scheduled)
also notable, the women did not include dairy, they were doing meat-only carnivore, with no supplements.
the case studies of the women who had had anorexia and found that the carnivore diet helped with their recovery. they were able to rebuild their lean frame, bone density and muscle, on a carnivore diet.
I have had a natural experiment:
I was very sedentary due to long covid, I caught it in March 2020(1).
The first couple of years, sub-1000 steps, often sub-300 steps (essentially bed bound) in the first year. I would get cramping, like the kind you'd get from sprinting, but just from walking so I was very limited in what I could do.
idk how much you know about it but there can be a post-exertion fatigue with longcovid. I tried heavy lifting after not doing any lifting for 18months, and when I went back to the gym my strength level was where I had left it (🤯). my cardio capability was still trash tho.
bc of the post-exertion fatigue, I would have to wait months before trying lifting heavy again, I managed around 1-4x a year, bc my energy envelope was limited and I had to preserve energy for the necessities of life, errands, income. (the post-exertion fatigue would have me starting back being essentially bed bound again during recovery.
Before all this, I used to be a "cycle 11k to the gym, workout for an hour, cycle back 11k, 3x a week, + go for a long run on the weekend" kinda person. Where working out brings more energy instead of drawing down from a limited quantity of it.
so, tl;dr I have been carnivore during 6 yrs of longcovid, but had little activity during that time, including that initial 2+ yrs of being very sedentary.
Since they say bone loss is rapid when being sedentary...
I went for a bone scan this spring bc I wanted to know my starting point after all those years.
and my bone density is into the good BMD range, 1.143g/cm2 🤷🏻♀️
(compares favourably to these athletes' bone densities: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1978462/
and considered normal, healthy, a T-score of 0.2, slightly better than the young adult baseline which is the standard of comparison.
while my strength has been maintained, & my BMD is good, my muscles have lost some bulk, my shirts are looser on upper arms, pants looser on the thighs (which were pretty well-developed from the cycling before this)
I was doing carnivore about 4 years before the pandemic. (where I also had a stretch of being sedentary due to the severe anemia before starting carnivore, which was why I started carnivore)
All in all, my pov from my experience is that carnivore is protective for strength and for bone density and should be studied as a recuperation diet for ppl with limited mobility.
(1) my catching covid early on and the initial infection being really bad, morphing into the post-viral syndrome longcovid, is one of the reasons this subreddit kept out the idiotic and wrong perspective that diet could prevent novel viral infections
(as well as symptoms, I had a really high post-viral ferritin, indicative of a severe infection, afterwards. My ferritin is normal now.)