Douglas Schorr

I threw out the pills, diaper-strength underpants, and COPD pumps, told my guide, “I can manage now,” and packed a bag for the gym.

I had a PVC floor laid. Today I noticed I’d forgotten last week’s cracked and stained tiles. My carnivore journey’s the same. I’ve forgotten the nasties that were big at the time that have disappeared. Acid reflux, constipation and diarrhea that would scramble the doctor, bloating, horse-worthy farting, putrefying burps that had my daughter gagging, gone. If you like, I’ll remember, but meanwhile, here are the Big Three.

A spot of blood on the toilet paper one morning was interesting but not concerning. I’d been trained that at 66 things wear out. But it reminded me of my father’s illness. Half a world away, decades earlier, I had watched Dad in Tygerberg Hospital outside Cape Town. The bleeding took him from powerful at 81 to frail, with emergency rushes after collapses from blood loss. The script: “age-related,” “ulcers,” “drink this, don’t eat that, eat more of this” and he started mixing his own muesli. If only I had known then not to trust what they knew not! The irony is I had met a San family—the ancients who had once roamed the Cape as hunter-gatherers—but I never thought to ask them about diet and tummy issues.

Anyway, when my tissue wetting started I was settled in Malaysia. My GP sent me to her tummy specialist. Soon the dad-parallel was impossible to ignore except I was so much younger. My medical merry-go-round brought tablets and “mixtures,” but still every five to six weeks came my messy “period.” Each visit brought the same ritual: scope, puzzled looks, “We can’t see anything wrong,” and the receptionist cooing, “Please pay before you leave.”

The final straw came when I had a “blowout” during a consultation. Shocked, my GP booked me in as an emergency, but I wasn’t going anywhere looking as I did. An hour later and cleaned up, the nurse’s grave examination of the leftovers I produced—declaring a few spots “a lot of blood”—highlighted the disconnect between my reality and their perception. My decision to turn down their final suggestion—an invasive exploratory procedure—in favour of going carnivore wasn’t bucking convention; it was choosing to break a generational cycle of failed treatments.

My eye problem announced itself when I ladled hot soup over my hand instead of into the bowl I was holding. The professor of ophthalmology confirmed my left eye’s vision was gone except for peripheral lace: macular degeneration. My visit for a second opinion was a shock: the palatial waiting room was packed with as many young as old. And there was an urgency—”Seven”expensive injections, no guarantees, but what choice do you have? You’re 73.”

That assembly-line approach sent me back to the professor. Her response to my rejection of injections was quietly approving. Instead of age-based resignation, she offered practical solutions: cleaning out my ducts, establishing eye hygiene, and addressing root causes—stress reduction, exercise, and eliminating sugar.

Her warning that carbs feature alongside sugar was to rear its head again in my battle to breathe. The first warning signs appeared in my mid-30s with low lung capacity. Youth’s resilience masks creeping damage, as did those colorful supermarket inserts promoting “family food bargains.” Yes, by the 1980s, Southern Africa had embraced sugars, fruits, grains, and processed foods. The consequences mounted.

At 60, the heart specialist dismissed me to “walk around hills, not up them” and sent me next door. The respiratory specialist diagnosed COPD, saying I’d worsened a condition I was likely born with. Despite exercise and “healthy eating” and the prescribed pumps and pills, my lung capacity declined very much faster than it should. “Medicine,” he announced, “can do no more for you.” While I pondered what it had done, he suggested I invest in a wheelchair with oxygen.

It was my wake-up call, and with it I discovered Professor Lustig. His NO sugar message led me to the proper human diet (phd).

I’m sure you noticed there are many common threads in these three snippets too. As you read in the intro story, despite my exceptional fitness, the national blood bank rejected my application to do what they advocate the fit, active and healthy do—give blood. Except for one young nurse-60ish—asking if I was married, without a second glance, they echoed conventional medicine’s response to my bleeding, vision, and breathing: “Too old, too much damage done.” The laugh was that I was probably fitter and definitely stronger than 8 of the 9 specialists I was seeing, and the oldest was 12 years younger than me. As the lady doc who turned me down for a life policy was huge I say I can rightly use the cliche 9 of 10!

But the lung specialist was right—lifestyle choices had worsened an inherited problem. But here’s my complaint: those government-and-industry-recommended choices had tipped me into years of misery, mostly endured by my loved ones. After Lustig things began improving and when I went full carnivore on 1 September 2022, zoomed.

For my lungs my measure was a jungle-edge hill. Pre-carnivore, it required multiple inhaler doses and rest stops. A year into carnivore, I abandoned COPD treatment entirely. At 18 months, I discovered the inhaler actually worsened my performance. No, I wasn’t able to overtake any kids but as they huffed and puffed past, they made awesome comments making me feel one of them.

When I suggested to the senior gastroenterologist that “fiber and stuff like muesli” might be the problem, he suddenly had “a patient needing attention.” That was the last I heard, and within a year, no more blowouts. So too has my eye gotten better. Technically I’m still blind, but I can now navigate my way around the house and along a jungle path or pavement that I’m reasonably familiar with to be confident enough to try.

My doctor explained that since the 1970s, medical schools have virtually eliminated meaningful nutrition education. Most doctors receive less than 25 hours of training in the complex relationship between diet and cellular health. The focus shifted from prevention and cause detection to pharmacological interventions. My GP stated at best she’d be happy to pit what she’s read against what I’ve read. She acknowledged that her colleagues give dietary advice based on industry-influenced guidelines, while evidence-based metabolic science sits ignored. In the age of the internet, I should have looked earlier. But that was not my role in the economy. I would have kicked up a noise if doctors had started interfering in “my” sector yet reality is too many are now not medical professionals but fancy pharmacy marketing personnel.

My deteriorating endurance forced me to quit jungle jogging, yet in the gym and with my measurement tool, the shot put, I maintained elite performance. This disparity warned me as it should warn you: the basic machinery—muscles and skeleton (already showing signs with rheumatic-like pains)—would be next in this cascade of failure.

I woke up in time. The bleeding stopped, my affected eye’s black center became translucent grey and my vision is returning, and instead of needing a wheelchair, I progressed from struggling with two flights of stairs to conquering 45. One year into carnivore, I could do those steps with a 20kg backpack, and my machine bench press hit 150kg, surpassing my pre-carnivore record of 8 years earlier by 20.

The shot put needs work—my drive foot’s all wrong: I need a coach. Thanks to all you coaches out there, I’ve learned what “sugar” really means and that their “age-related” symptoms missed the point. It’s not about age but about how long the body’s been abused. Never give up… given the right fuel, our bodies have remarkable power to heal.