A BLOGGER claims she “cured” her depression eating nothing but “beef, salt and water”.
Mikhaila Peterson, the 26-year-old daughter of controversial lifestyle guru Jordan Peterson who also follows the diet, has revealed their remarkable recovery from anxiety and depression using nothing but food.
She has an Instagram account titled Beef, Salt, Water and Bourbon = Cured, and a food blog called Don’t Eat That in which she claims “many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone”.
She said her dad now wakes up without a lingering feeling of doom adding “F*** you, world – we won”.
Mikhaila has become the poster girl for the carnivore-diet movement, attracting fans from people who already idolise her father, according to The Times.
Jordan is the highly influential best-selling author of 12 Rules for Life and hisYouTube videos are viewed up to 50 million times a go.
Mikhaila is the daughter of Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for LifeCredit: Getty – Contributor
Mikhaila is no stranger from the spotlight though, having done her own YouTube interviews that have gained their own attention.
But she knows her diet sounds “absolutely insane” and that there is no medical evidence to support her claims.
“I was always really sceptical about diet. I thought it was for silly Californian girls,” she said.
“Now I’m literally eating the most extreme diet I’ve ever heard of. It’s absurd.”
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She has a daughter who is nearly one and, she also survives on only meat and breast milk.
From when she was a young child Mikhaila was unwell.
She suffered severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that got so bad she needed a hip replacement at 17 and has suffered with chronic pain.
She then developed depression in her late teens that became so crippling she couldn’t finish university.
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Some studies have suggested depression could be linked to inflammatory responses in the body – but there is no evidence to suggest a diet of only meat can cure the conditionCredit: Getty – Contributor
Recent studies have linked depression to inflammatory responses in the body, leading some to believe diet could help treat the condition.
Desperate for a cure Mikhaila was willing to give everything a go, and after extensive Googling she decided to give a meat-only diet a go.
She fries strips of beef in salt and nothing else, even admitting pepper doesn’t work.
Since January her depression and arthritis have resolved, she claims, but her doctors believe the results are a placebo effect.
Mikhaila doesn’t; she believes her gut microbiome is not suited to anything but meat.
Yet she knows this goes against every bit of nutritional advice around.
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Dr Michael Mosley said the guts microbiome feeds on fibre that ‘you’re not going to get from meat’Credit: WARNING: Use of this image is subject to the terms of use of BBC Pictures’ Digital Picture
There’s also no solid evidence to suggest a link between diet and mental health problems – some have found vegetarians and less depressed while others have found that meat eaters are generally happier.
Last year Professor Felice Jacka, the director of the Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University in Australia, tested how diet affects mental health by randomly assigning depressed patients to visits from social workers or the Mediterranean diet.
A third of those on the diet improved significantly, as opposed to just eight per cent of the non-diet group.
Dr Michael Mosley warned the idea someone can survive on meat is a “myth”.
His new book The Clever Guts Diet shows how the guts microbiome feeds on fibre that “you’re not going to get from meat”.
James Hébert, a professor of epidemiology at the University of South Carolina, spent a decade research how foods that cause inflammation affect people’s health and found that increased meat intake led to a higher risk of depression.
Other research has concluded that those who have lived longest in the world had diets relatively low in meat.