Hello everyone,

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One of the questions I get all the time is “What about the keto diet?” or “Should I go carnivore?”

I’ve avoided answering this in an email for an obvious reason. It’s based on my opinion and observation, which others may not exactly agree with. Disclaimer—my personal opinion as a natural health clinician with 27 years’ experience follows!

I certainly understand how people can become emotionally attached to a certain diet. When I first got better after being sick 29 years ago, I thought the Zone Diet was the answer to everything. But then I realized it was just one way to help people, and it just happened to be the way that got me better.

(By the way, I think the reason why the Zone Diet worked so well for me was because it minimized my consumption of carbohydrates. Especially refined carbohydrates. When I look through just about all the popular diets today, that’s one thing they all have in common: carb—especially processed carb—restriction.)

All right, so back to the first question: what about the keto diet, or the more recent craze, the carnivore diet? But before I answer this question, let me explain to you which diet I usually do recommend and why.

About 100 years ago, as the various vitamins, minerals, and their functions were first being studied, there were a bunch of nutritional pioneers, many of them dentists (because they noticed that people’s teeth were in horrible shape), and a few were medical doctors. Among them were Royal Lee, Weston A Price, Francis Pottinger, and Dr. Melvin Page.

The doctor who did the best work on diet was Dr. Page. How did he come up with his Page Healing Diet? Well, people used to fly in to see him in Saint Petersburg, Florida, for two weeks at a time. During this time, he would give them a specific diet, which he called the Page Diet, along with some whole food concentrates—similar to Standard Process supplements—digestive enzymes, and maybe some small doses of hormonal concentrates.

And then he did something brilliant. He actually retested his patients’ blood every couple of days! Over a two-week period, from what I’ve read, he would run five lab tests. This way, he could see exactly what his diet was doing to the patient’s biochemistry. What a brilliant idea! Giving the person a diet and following up rapidly is a brilliant way to monitor results.

Guess what he found? He found that most people did extremely well on a diet consisting primarily of vegetables, with moderate amounts of protein, in the form of meat. He applied this approach (similar to Page Phase One) for two to three weeks as a detoxification/induction period before switching the person over to a long-term maintenance diet, consisting of once again, mostly vegetables, moderate amounts of meat, but then incorporating higher carbohydrate foods, such as sprouted grains, legumes, potatoes, lower-carb fruits, up to three times per week. (Want to learn more about the Page Diet? Take our course!)

Of course, the FDA and the AMA didn’t like him doing this, so they took him all the way to the Supreme Court for practicing medicine without a license. To this trial, he brought 3500+ patient case studies and 40,000 labs. He provided volumes of evidence and won the case!

Fast-forward to 1998 when I started to practice nutrition. Since that time, I’ve been promoting this diet to my patients and getting great results.

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Why does the Page Diet work? There are three main reasons.

1) It helps to reverse insulin resistance, which right now seems to be the number one health emergency on the planet.

2) It feeds the body a lot of unrefined food, rich in vitamins and minerals that have been depleted in the soil. This is common sense— we all know that we need to eat more high-quality food, specifically vegetables, fruits, and high-quality protein.

3) It’s a very flexible diet. You can eat as many vegetables as you can handle, as much protein as you can handle, a little bit less fruit, and moderate amounts of sprouted grains and legumes.

In summary, the Page Diet helps to reverse insulin resistance, feeds the body with high-quality vitamins, minerals, proteins, and essential fatty acids, and is actually pretty flexible. It teaches us how we should eat for health. This is the reason why I suggest the Page Diet instead of going straight to a Keto diet or carnivore.

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The Potential Problems with Keto and Carnivore

There are a couple of problems with both the keto diet and the carnivore diet. First, they’re highly restrictive. And while they may produce results, they don’t teach a person how to eat for the long term to promote health and prevent illness, which is what brought them to our office in the first place. In addition, by being highly restrictive, they turn off many of the patients who need help in the first place.

Asking an honest question: is it easier to go from the Standard American Diet (SAD) of processed grains, pasteurized dairy, and sugar, to a diet based on vegetables, fruits, meats, and small amounts of sprouted, grains, and legumes, or is it easier to transition to a diet that is devoid of all fruits and vegetables, sugars, grains, and dairy? The answer is obvious. So basically, the Page Diet is the most effective diet for helping the largest number of people.

Are there situations where people should try other diets, like the keto diet or the carnivore diet? Who would do really well on a diet like this?

One—if the primary issue for the patient is insulin resistance. (Duh!) Considering that keto and carnivore’s primary method of action is correcting insulin resistance, you think that would be the first thing that people consider! But it’s not! Why? Well, I’ve only seen one doctor one time order a fasting insulin for a patient, and it was at the patient’s request. To know if you have insulin resistance, you must check the fasting insulin!

(If you don’t know if you have insulin resistance, check out this link.)

By the way, if you think that insulin resistance means weight gain, that may or may not be true. Lots of patients who have insulin resistance are at a completely normal weight, or even underweight. Don’t guess, get checked! Also, keep in mind that insulin resistance may be a primary cause of heart disease, arthritis, hypothyroidism, immune system dysfunction, psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, and even cancer.
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Two—do you like extreme diets? Do you like meat? Most people don’t need to totally cut out carbohydrates, especially fibrous vegetables and fruits. It’s just not needed for most people. That being said, some people like a challenge, and so if eating nothing but meat piques your interest, try carnivore! if eating nothing but meat and a little bit of vegetables is more of your pace, go ahead and try keto!
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​Three—you have severe insulin resistance, as diagnosed on a blood test, have tried Page Phase One, and it’s not working! Then keto or carnivore is right for you if you can handle it! Alternatively, you could try exercising more. I’ve noticed that some people have a tendency to want to do extreme diets rather than exercise enough. If this is you, you could just try exercising more before you do the keto or carnivore diet.
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​Four— you have insulin resistance as determined by blood testing, and you have severe psychiatric symptoms. One of the reasons why I wanted to write this article today was because I watched a seminar over the weekend with Dr. George Ede (you can learn more about Dr. Ede here) and how she uses the ketogenic diet for severe psychiatric symptoms, and then I remembered a movie called “First Do No Harm” about how a child was helped with his epilepsy, using the keto diet as taught in the Mayo Clinic.

The keto diet, and more recently, the carnivore diet, may really help severe psychiatric symptoms. That being said, I would make sure that you’ve been diagnosed with severe insulin resistance first before you try it. And people with low insulin levels, and who are hypoglycemic, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you have any questions about whether you have insulin resistance problems, get tested!
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So we’ve talked a lot about who the keto and carnivore diet would be good for, who would it be bad for? I would say keto and carnivore are not advised for anybody who already has hypoglycemia issues, does not have insulin resistance, and must be especially avoided in patients who have eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia. That’s it!
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If you have any questions as to whether the carnivore or keto diet would be right for you, just give our office a call or send us an email!

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Keith and Laura Sheehan

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