Joe Rogan Experience #1164 - Mikhaila Peterson

Joe Rogan 0:02 Five, four, three, two, one. And we're live? Yes. Hello.

Mikhaila Peterson 0:11 Hello.

Joe Rogan 0:12 What's happening?

Mikhaila Peterson 0:13 Not much. I'm excited to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:15 I'm excited to have you here. Uh, your father speaks very highly of you.

Mikhaila Peterson 0:18 That's good.

Joe Rogan 0:19 What is it like to have Jordan Peterson as a dad? Is it weird? Do you have to check yourself constantly and make sure you're on, you know-

Mikhaila Peterson 0:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:25 ... on steady ground and-

Mikhaila Peterson 0:27 I didn't-

Joe Rogan 0:27 ... don't say anything ridiculous?

Mikhaila Peterson 0:28 No. Not at all. Not at all. I didn't realize it was weird until I went away to university, and then kind of s- so, like, just was away for a while, and then when I came back to the house especially, 'cause the house is full of, like, paintings and masks and statues and, like, 32 different paint colors, and I came back and was like, "Oh, maybe he's a bit eccentric."

Joe Rogan 0:47 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 0:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:50 No, he's definitely eccentric. Um, we were talking off-air about what it was like to watch your dad become famous and, and become famous in, in his 50s, right? Like-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01 ... I hope-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01 Like, 54, 55.

Joe Rogan 1:03 That's when he became famous. Before that, relatively unknown, respected professor. One issue with this one transgender bill, the, the, the preferred pronouns bill.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14 And then boom, off to the races.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:17 Yeah. It was-

Joe Rogan 1:18 Is this strange?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:19 It was ... Yeah, it was super weird, especially how the media was portraying him and how what was actually happening at the events wasn't what was being portrayed in the media. So that was weird to watch, and then people recognizing him on the street is strange. It's ... Yes, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:34 When you say-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:35 It's been weird.

Joe Rogan 1:35 ... what, what happened in real life was not was, what was being portrayed, like, what was different?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:41 Um, mostly what he was saying. So most of what he's said is on film anyway.

Joe Rogan 1:45 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:46 So you can go to YouTube and see what he's been saying. Like, not, there's not, like, some secret that's going around. But what's been portrayed has been so much more negative than what he's actually said. Or they'll take, like, sound bites and just weave a story that isn't quite true, which I didn't re- for some reason I ... Now it looks silly, but for some reason I just thought that what the media was portraying was honest and-

Joe Rogan 2:08 Always.

Mikhaila Peterson 2:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:10 Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 2:12 Yeah. And it's not.

Joe Rogan 2:13 Well, they're writers, you know? And what's ... There's a real issue today, um, that, that issue I've talked about this before, but the issue is clicks. Um-

Mikhaila Peterson 2:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:22 ... it's not just about what's the facts of the story. It's about these publications are struggling to stay alive, and one of the only ways that they can get people to click on stories is salacious headlines, real, make things really clickbait-y, and that's what they focus on. And they focus on negative aspects that are gonna get people riled up. They have to have an angle. And I've talked to people who are writers who, um, will write something, and then I'll, I'll talk to them, and I'll say, "Hey, man, this is not what we talked about or what happened." And they said, "I'm gonna be honest with you. I didn't even write that."

Mikhaila Peterson 2:55 Wow.

Joe Rogan 2:55 "The headline was completely written by the editor, so the editor came in, changed it all up, changed this, switched the, put some dot, dot, dots out of things," you know, like the ... So cut off sentences-

Mikhaila Peterson 3:06 Wow.

Joe Rogan 3:06 ... so that they seemed more, um, you know, just more controversial than they really are because they didn't allow the counterpoint of ... You know if sometimes you say something and then you say, "Or, it could be this"? Well, the, "Or it could be this" part is cut out. You know, they-

Mikhaila Peterson 3:20 Oh.

Joe Rogan 3:20 They do things like that just to stay alive because I think when ... I mean, really big publications, whether it's The New York Times or, you know, The Boston Globe, like big publications are struggling for their life right now because people don't want to buy newspapers anymore. And, you know, and getting people to read things online is very difficult, and you have to, you have to do something salacious. You have to do something that's enticing for them to click on it.

Mikhaila Peterson 3:44 Yeah, I guess, but I ... Wouldn't you say that's just driving them down?

Joe Rogan 3:48 Yeah. Yeah, I would. Yeah, they're fucked.

Mikhaila Peterson 3:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:51 It's, it's a bad p- place to be.

Mikhaila Peterson 3:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:53 And I think it's ... You know, it opens up the door for alternative media. Um-

Mikhaila Peterson 3:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:59 But some of those alternative media sources don't have journalistic integrity either, so then it becomes a real issue, you know? Um, that's, that, that's a problem with a lot of online news shows is, like, they take a very obvious editorial spin as well on the news, and if you just read or watch their show, you would go, "Oh. Well, it's this way because these guys are saying it's this way."

Mikhaila Peterson 4:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:24 But it might not be that way. There's no real objective source. It's very hard to find a good obj- objective source. I mean, sometimes I count on The New York Times, but there's been some things that I've read from The New York Times that I know are not accurate.

Mikhaila Peterson 4:37 Oh, I think they, they had a terrible article about Dad-

Joe Rogan 4:40 Oh, yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 4:40 ... in, like, June or something.

Joe Rogan 4:42 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 4:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:43 Well, he didn't make it any easier on himself by using that forced monogamy argument-

Mikhaila Peterson 4:48 Term? No.

Joe Rogan 4:49 Yeah, enforced monogamy argument or term 'cause I don't, I don't ... Even with the, when you understand it as a psychological concept, that it is a, uh, culturally enforced idea, I still don't think that applies to incels. I don't. I just don't think it has-

Mikhaila Peterson 5:04 Mm, no.

Joe Rogan 5:05 I don't think it makes any difference at all, and he and I discussed it on the podcast. I'm like, "You're not ... Just because you say it's a good idea and the culture agrees that it's a good idea for people to be monogamous, I don't necessarily think that that is gonna help these guys at all."

Mikhaila Peterson 5:19 I don't think we know what's gonna help those guys.

Joe Rogan 5:22 Yeah. Well, obviously they're all individuals and their situations vary, but what, what we're talking about for people like, "What the fuck are they talking about?" There was a-

Mikhaila Peterson 5:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:32 ... a quote in The New York Times where this woman was asking him what to do about these incels, which are involuntary celibates, and one of them had driven a car into a crowd of people and killed a bunch of people 'cause he was frustrated because he couldn't find a mate.

Mikhaila Peterson 5:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:50 And your dad suggested that, um, inf- culturally enforced monogamy would be perhaps a solution for that, and then a bunch of people went crazy saying that, like, women ... He's saying that women should sacrifice themselves-

Mikhaila Peterson 6:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:05 ... and fuck these guys so that they don't...... drive cars into crowds.

Mikhaila Peterson 6:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:08 And this is- (laughs) You know, it's like-

Mikhaila Peterson 6:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:10 It was- The whole th- Everybody made a mistake. (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 6:14 Y- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:14 Yeah. Um, I don't think there's an answer for those guys. I really don't. But-

Mikhaila Peterson 6:19 No.

Joe Rogan 6:19 But tha- but that i- th- that wa- those kinda articles were like... The editorial articles and opinion articles, it's really- it's a different thing than reporting on the news, right?

Mikhaila Peterson 6:31 Yeah. I thought, I thought... So honesty was always a big thing in our house, and it was like, don't lie, because if you lie, eventually the lie will surface and it'll be so much bigger than m- the hell you get from telling the truth.

Joe Rogan 6:42 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 6:43 So I kind of just assumed that-

Joe Rogan 6:46 The world-

Mikhaila Peterson 6:46 ... the media did that. Yeah, the world just worked like that.

Joe Rogan 6:50 Yeah. Nope.

Mikhaila Peterson 6:51 No. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:52 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 6:53 I know that now.

Joe Rogan 6:54 Yeah. So you and your dad are both on this wacky diet.

Mikhaila Peterson 6:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:00 You're both on this wacky carnivore diet, and this is probably one of the most controversial things, uh, in r- relationship to- in relation to food today. Um, when- when people discuss diets, you know, there's a lot of people that are vegetarian or vegan or trying ketogenic diets or paleo, but when you say carnivore, that is one of the ones where people just universally seem to, like, step back, roll their eyes. Uh, m- most people don't think it's a good idea. They don't even know why they don't think it's a good idea. And then you tell them about people like you or my friend Chris Bell, who has similar autoimmune issues and he's had hip- two hip replacements. He's only 36.

Mikhaila Peterson 7:49 Wow.

Joe Rogan 7:50 And I think he had both of them done by the time he was 30, right?

Narrator 7:54 36.

Joe Rogan 7:54 Pretty sure. 'Cause he's had them for quite a few years. Um, you know, massive joint pain, all k- all sorts of issue. And you- when did you- You got a hip replacement. How old were you?

Mikhaila Peterson 8:05 17. And an ankle replacement at 17.

Joe Rogan 8:08 Whew. (exhales)

Mikhaila Peterson 8:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:09 That's crazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 8:09 It was a rough year.

Joe Rogan 8:10 That is crazy. Um, what i- Do you- so your whole life you've had arthritis issues or?

Mikhaila Peterson 8:17 Yeah. Um, so I started walking kinda funny when I was two, according to my mom, and she brought me to the doctor and they said, j- just having growing pains or something. When I was seven, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and I had like 37 joints affected, and then I was put on immune suppressants in grade four, so I was actually the first kid in Canada to be put on, uh, this biologic called Enbrel. So I was on Enbrel and methotrexate fore- ever, like leading up to the hip and ankle replacement, and they did help reduce some of the pain, but I still ended up with no cartilage in my joint and hip, my hip and ankle, um, when I was 17.

Joe Rogan 8:54 And this is just from the effects of arthritis and the inflammation and swelling, and it just chewed the cartilage up?

Mikhaila Peterson 9:01 Uh-huh. So I wasn't even particularly swollen. I didn't have a very, like, inflammatory, visually inflammatory arthritis, so my rheumatologist who'd been at SickKids for 20 years said that I had the worst arthritis she'd ever seen, so it was very severe. It wasn't particularly, like, swollen. My joints just disintegrated.

Joe Rogan 9:25 Wow.

Mikhaila Peterson 9:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:26 And what do they think causes something like this?

Mikhaila Peterson 9:28 They didn't know. So it was l- eventually after the hip and ankle replacement, the diagnosis was changed to juvenile idiopathic arthritis, so it was literally like, "We don't know."

Joe Rogan 9:39 Wow. And w- how did you go from these, uh, medications, pharmaceutical medications to getting into this carnivore diet thing? What was this- this path?

Mikhaila Peterson 9:54 Well, okay, I'll give you a background of the path. Um, we were very, like, science oriented, especially Dad. So even though Mom kinda wanted to delve into diet and was like, "We should go sugar-free or stop eating, you know, whatever. Make sure you eat whole grains." Like, all that stuff, we never gave diet, uh, a chance because there was no scientific evidence for it. So I basically got sicker and sicker and sicker and I ended up... By the time I got to university, uh, I ended up with arthritis. I was severely depressed. I was on antidepressants as well. Um, I had idiopathic hypersomnia, so I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. My whole body was itchy all the time. That started when I was about 14. Um, and so that was when I started university. And then my diet just got disastrous in university and I was, like, drinking all the time and eating, like, pizza and beer. And I gained, like, 30 pounds in the first year and ginger ale, a lot of ginger ale. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:58 (claps hands together)

Mikhaila Peterson 10:58 Anyway, I gained about 30 pounds in the first year. My mental health declined even further and I didn't really know what was going on. And then I started getting skin issues, so I started getting rashes, cystic acne, and I was like, "Okay, I can deal with, like, four really awful health problems, but I can't deal with things affecting my skin on top of that. There's too many things." So I went to a dermatologist and they basically told me I was anxious and, like, causing these rashes by itching. So that was the dermatologist's opinion, which was very unhelpful. Anyway, I spent a lot of time... I was eventually prescribed Adderall for the hypersomnia, so I spent all my time googling, reading papers, trying to get a background on skin disorders, and eventually I came across this, uh, celiac disease rash online, and that's what I had. It looked exactly the same. So I cut out gluten. I read a whole bunch about, like, the effects of gluten on the gut and thought, "Oh, there's actually some evidence that gluten isn't good for people. Why aren't people being told this? Like, why didn't my doctor test me for celiac disease?" Because celiac disease couples with autoimmune disorders all the time. Like, they test type 1 kids for celiac disease.... but for some reason, they don't test kids with arthritis for celiac disease. So I cut out gluten and that kinda helped, maybe like 20%, but it was hard to tell 'cause it was the summer. I was like, "Maybe I'm just feeling better from the summer." My rash kinda went down, but it was still there. And then, so it was September 2015,

Mikhaila Peterson 12:30 uh, my mom dragged me to a naturopath and they gave me this sheet of foods and like, "Try this elimination diet." And I looked at the sheet and thought, "This doesn't make any sense." Like, "Why can I eat lemons and not oranges? And why are almonds on there, but other nuts are off?" So I cut... So I thought, "Okay, if I'm gonna do an elimination diet," which I didn't believe in at all, um, "I'll cut down to what I consider safe foods." And I had no idea what I was doing, so I just thought, "Okay, vegetables are pretty safe. I'll get rid of nightshades 'cause people talk about them being bad." And-

Joe Rogan 12:59 Nightshades? What is nightshades?

Mikhaila Peterson 13:00 Nightshades like tomatoes, eggplant, those kind of foods. For some reason, they're... I just knew that they were-

Joe Rogan 13:07 I've never heard them referred to as nightshades.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:09 I feel like literally everybody has heard them referred to as nightshades.

Joe Rogan 13:13 No. Have you heard 'em?

Narrator 13:15 I've heard the term, but not... I couldn't tell you what it was. I wouldn't have been able to say it was tomatoes and eggplants, I don't think.

Joe Rogan 13:20 Hm. Maybe it's just Canada.

Narrator 13:22 So that's it.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:22 (laughs) I don't think it's Canada.

Joe Rogan 13:24 Is it a Canadian thing?

Mikhaila Peterson 13:24 I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 13:25 No? Oh, okay. Well, I'm sorry.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:26 We'll let the YouTube comments decide.

Joe Rogan 13:28 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:28 Um-

Joe Rogan 13:28 Definitely don't let them decide.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:30 (laughs) Okay.

Joe Rogan 13:33 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 13:33 Um-

Joe Rogan 13:33 That's like calling demons for help.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:36 Anyway, go ahead.

Mikhaila Peterson 13:38 Um, anyway, I cut down. So I was eating mostly like green vegetables. I was still eating rice at that point 'cause I thought, "Everybody eats rice. Rice is safe." Uh, and meat. But I cut out like dairy, most grains, soy, uh, sugar, processed foods. And then in the next month, my joints got way better and my skin healed. And my skin never healed like for, for a couple years. I'd ha- I'd always have these flare-ups, it never went away. And that was just on a like relatively low carb diet, just like, just less f- I don't know. I was still eating rice, right? But it was still mostly meat and vegetables. And I thought, "Okay, maybe there's something to this." And then I made almond flour, gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free almond flour banana muffins and I ate a bunch of those one night and I woke up and the next day my wrists were sore. And I thought, "Okay, maybe that's weird." And then I had a bunch more of the muffins, because the muffins were good. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:41 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 14:41 And, and then I went away to a cottage that weekend and I couldn't walk 'cause of my knees. And I never had flare-ups that badly. Like I used to get... My shoulder was always sore when I slept, so I took Tylenol 3 at night for sleeping. And my wrists were stiff, but I never had like a flare-up like I couldn't walk. Um, so that was that weekend. So then I went back to the diet and got really strict with it. And then things were better, like my skin was better. I, I lost... This was weird. I lost five pounds, which wasn't a lot, but I went down three pant sizes. So it was all bloating that I didn't realize was bloating 'cause it never fluctuated. So that was the first month. And then 2015, and then I started trying to reintroduce foods because I was having cravings and I missed going out to eat with my friends and everything. So I tried to re-... The first thing I tried to reintroduce was (laughs) Sour Patch candy because I was having

Mikhaila Peterson 15:41 really intense sugar... Don't look at me like that. I was having really intense sugar cravings and I looked at the package and I thought, "Okay, no one's allergic to s- sugar. Um, there's no dairy, there's no gluten, there's no soy. This'll be fine." And I really wanted to eat them. (laughs) And I had those, and the next day, my whole body was itchy again. And it was like, like mosquito bites everywhere itchy. So I thought, "Okay, maybe, maybe that was a bad idea." So I waited a couple weeks and I tried to reintroduce almond butter, organic almond butter, 'cause I wanted something fast, protein fast. And then I had, um, it's like abdominal cramping, diarrhea, then this itch came back.

Joe Rogan 16:24 Jesus Christ.

Mikhaila Peterson 16:25 Yeah. So for the next year, um... Well, I'll slow down. We've got some time. So that was the, that was the almond butter. So then I waited a while and I felt pretty good, and this was November 2015. And then I started feeling really good and I went off of my antidepressants. And I had been taking antidepressants since I was in grade five. A really high dose of, um, an SSRI, which had been very helpful, but-

Joe Rogan 16:52 Did you wean yourself off and did you do it under a doctor's supervision?

Mikhaila Peterson 16:55 No. I didn't-

Joe Rogan 16:57 You didn't wean yourself off?

Mikhaila Peterson 16:58 ... trust... I, I weaned myself down. So I went down to half and then I went to a quarter and then I s- went to an eighth and then I stopped taking it.

Joe Rogan 17:04 Over how long a period of time?

Mikhaila Peterson 17:04 Two weeks. It was nothing really.

Joe Rogan 17:06 Over two weeks?

Mikhaila Peterson 17:07 It was two weeks, yeah. I didn't have withdrawal symptoms, like I, I think maybe I was lucky that way.

Joe Rogan 17:13 And so your diet- And so your diet at this point was?

Mikhaila Peterson 17:15 Um, so at that point, I was eating rice occasionally, but it was mostly like broccoli, salad, chicken, beef, fish, you know, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper. Um, at that point, I was also eating pears and apples. So it was kinda like paleo, kind of.

Joe Rogan 17:36 Kinda paleo.

Mikhaila Peterson 17:36 Very restricted paleo.

Joe Rogan 17:37 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 17:37 Dairy free. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:39 And so you're feeling good, you're off your medication, your joints feel better, no more rashes.

Mikhaila Peterson 17:44 No more rashes yet, eh, so everything seems to be improving. I was shocked when the depression lifted because I thought, "That runs in my family, that's familial. We have some sort of brain chemistry problem, th- that can't possibly be diet." I thought n- I thought the skin maybe that was diet 'cause of this gluten link. And then maybe 'cause of the celiac gene that I got tested for, maybe the arthritis was part of that, but I never thought mood was associated with it. So that was a surprise in November. Anyway, I went off of the antidepressants and then, um, about a

Mikhaila Peterson 18:14 month later, I tried to reintroduce soy and this is when things started getting really weird that year.So I was having-

Joe Rogan 18:23 Why are you re- reintroducing things if you're having all these positive benefits?

Mikhaila Peterson 18:27 I was having cravings like crazy.

Joe Rogan 18:28 Oh.

Mikhaila Peterson 18:28 And I would miss eating out. And I thought there were probably like four or five foods I was really sensitive to, and I, if I could just figure out what they were, I could eat pretty normally. I didn't realize, like I didn't know what was going on.

Joe Rogan 18:41 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 18:42 If I had known, I would've done it much differently.

Joe Rogan 18:44 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 18:44 But I tried to reintroduce soy, 'cause at that point I still thought soy was a health food. Um, so I ate a huge meal of like edamame beans, and bean sprouts, and miso soup that I made myself so it was gluten-free, and soy sauce and tofu. I literally ate soy in every form. And I had the same kind of reaction with almond butter. I had ... Immediately got bloated. I had diarrhea like within maybe 20, 30 minutes of eating it. And I thought, "Okay. That sucks. I guess I can't eat soy." And then about four hours later, my legs got itchy, and then my whole body got itchy. And I was like, "Okay. That sucks. I'm, clearly I'm reacting to soy." And then the next morning, the depression came back, and it came back like ... That was the worst depressive experience I've ever had. Um, I was medication-free, and it came back in the morning. And I got in the shower, and I just like, I bawled in the shower, and thought, "How could I be so naive to think that my horrible autoimmune disorder and the dep- depression and everything was caused by food? Like what an idiotic thing to think. How could I be that hopeful?" And then I had to remind myself, "Okay. No. You ate a whole bunch of this food. Then you had this like digestive distress. Then you got itchy, and now the depression is back. There's clearly a pattern here." But it was hard to think like that-

Joe Rogan 20:08 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 20:08 ... when I got that depressed. So that day was like ... I spent a lot of that day crying. Then the next day got worse. And this is, this is when it gets weird. Um, so that night, I went over to my parents and I was just like, "I don't know what's going on," right? Um, and they're like, "Well, do you wanna take a car back to your apartment?" And I said, "I don't think I can drive. Like I can't ... I just can't think. I don't know what's going on." So ju- my brother, um, drove me home, and I was like on the verge of having a panic attack, for no reason, right? It was just like my heart rate was increasing. I was trying to find my keys, and I turned around to look at my brother in the car, and h- his head was a, like a kind of a demon ... This ... (laughs) I know how this sounds. But he had like a demon head for about a second and a half, and he looked at me, and then he turned, and then it was my brother again. So I was standing at the-

Joe Rogan 21:07 So you're hallucinating.

Mikhaila Peterson 21:08 For like a, yeah, about a second and a half.

Joe Rogan 21:10 Any other hallucinations?

Mikhaila Peterson 21:11 Um, that year, yes. Before that, no.

Joe Rogan 21:14 That year?

Mikhaila Peterson 21:15 Yeah. After this. I'll get into it.

Joe Rogan 21:18 So you ate soy and started tripping?

Mikhaila Peterson 21:21 Yeah, two days later. I know how it sounds. That's how it sounded to me too.

Joe Rogan 21:26 Have you found comparable stories online?

Mikhaila Peterson 21:30 So ... So obviously I did as much research as I could possibly do.

Joe Rogan 21:33 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 21:33 Um, to soy, no. To gluten ... To people who are schizophrenic from gluten, yeah. There are people with celiac disease who have schizophrenia induced by gluten. So I found that, but I didn't find anything for other foods.

Joe Rogan 21:50 But sch- does schizophrenia include hallucinations?

Mikhaila Peterson 21:53 Uh, rarely visual, but I did find a case study of a woman who was seeing demons from her celiac disease gluten.

Joe Rogan 22:01 Now, when you say you looked over and you saw your brother and his head was a demon head, like describe it.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:07 Like ... No. I found-

Joe Rogan 22:11 Vivid? Vivid?

Mikhaila Peterson 22:11 Mm ... No. It was like e- you know when it's really dark in a room?

Joe Rogan 22:15 Uh-huh.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:16 And I don't know if this, you've experienced this, but it's really dark in a room, and then you kind, kinda see things in the dark?

Joe Rogan 22:22 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:23 It was more like that. It was dark at night, and it was like I was so anxious that-

Joe Rogan 22:28 So you're so distraught, you're a mess, and maybe you just caused yourself to-

Mikhaila Peterson 22:33 Well, something happened.

Joe Rogan 22:34 ... have this idea. Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:35 Yeah. I mean, and I saw it. Like I can remember what it looks like-

Joe Rogan 22:38 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:38 ... but it wasn't a vivid demon or something. It was like ... But it was there.

Joe Rogan 22:42 Okay. So you're freaking out basically.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:43 I'm, so I'm freaking out, so I'm like, "Okay. That's not good."

Joe Rogan 22:46 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 22:46 So I find my keys and I go upstairs, and then I went into my bedroom and like shut the blinds, turned on all the lights, and then like smoked as much weed as I could possibly smoke to try (laughs) and calm myself down, and then hid under the blankets all night.

Joe Rogan 22:59 I would think that would be the worst thing to do after you see a demon.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:01 You- you'd think that-

Joe Rogan 23:02 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 23:02 ... but then if you smoke ... No, so I've had that comment before. But enough, and it calmed me down.

Joe Rogan 23:09 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:10 So then I spent the next couple of weeks basically stoned because I didn't know when it was gonna end. I didn't know what was going on, and I couldn't find anybody on the internet who had had the same experience as me. And then about two and a half weeks later, it started going away. And so ...

Joe Rogan 23:29 When you say it, you mean the depression? Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:31 Depression, the arthritis. It wasn't the, just the depression that came.

Joe Rogan 23:34 And had you adjusted your diet?

Mikhaila Peterson 23:35 That's just the worst ... No, I didn't go back. I, I mean, I didn't eat soy again, but I went back to the initial diet I was eating.

Joe Rogan 23:41 So essentially, just this one meal, this one great meal of soy threw you off for a couple weeks, radically.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:48 Yeah, like almost four, like three weeks, but after-

Joe Rogan 23:52 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:52 ... two weeks, it started getting better.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 23:54 Um, but the symptoms were like ... So this deplorable ... The itching started. I had bloating, and then the depression came back. And then about a week later, my skin started breaking out. And then maybe 10 days later, my arthritis came back. So I wrote all my symptoms down every day because I was going crazy and I didn't know what was going on, and I wanted to write it down to see what was going on.

Joe Rogan 24:19 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 24:20 So then it started lifting, and then I started feeling better again. And I was like, "Okay. Thank God that's over." And then-... waited a while, things were good again. My symptoms went away. And then over the next year, I tried to reintroduce foods over and over and over again. And I was making ... Like, I tried whey protein powder, and that did n- nothing ever got to as bad as that soy experience. But I had a number of other experiences where it was the worst depression I've ever experienced, and it was on the verge of seeing, like, I don't know, seeing faces and things.

Joe Rogan 24:56 Okay. So you're having all these health issues. How do you get to the carnivore diet?

Mikhaila Peterson 25:01 So I decide, about a year later, I decide, "Hey, maybe I don't want to keep cycling in and out of a horrible autoimmune and mental problems. Maybe I'll just stick with the original diet."

Joe Rogan 25:10 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 25:11 And then I got pregnant. And so then my autoimmune symptoms flared again.

Joe Rogan 25:18 During the pregnancy?

Mikhaila Peterson 25:18 Yeah, like right away. As soon as I found out I was pregnant. It was like before I found out I was pregnant that my autoimmune symptoms came back. So my legs were itchy again. Uh, I was ... My joints were stiff. My skin was breaking out.

Joe Rogan 25:30 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 25:30 My anxiety was back, and it was hard to tell, well, what part of this is pregnancy and what part of this is an autoimmune disorder? Um, so throughout my pregnancy, I cut down on all the carbs I was eating. So I cut out fruit. I cut out sweet potatoes. I went down to meat and greens. And I think Dad was on here one time-

Joe Rogan 25:48 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 25:48 ... and he was on a meat and greens diet. So that was during that part. So we're both on a meat and greens diet, mostly because we didn't realize you didn't need greens t- to survive. So we were eating meat and greens. And then I had this-

Joe Rogan 26:02 Did you say mostly because we realized you didn't need greens to survive?

Mikhaila Peterson 26:05 Well, we didn't, we didn't realize m- only meat was an option.

Joe Rogan 26:10 You hadn't realized.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:10 Okay. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:11 We hadn't realized that. We didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 26:12 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:13 So it was meat and salad, and it was a very simple salad with like olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, cucumbers, lettuces-

Joe Rogan 26:20 Uh-huh.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:20 ... spinach. Pretty simple salad.

Joe Rogan 26:23 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:23 And then meat and fish. So we did that for about a year, and then I had my daughter, and then I didn't get better. So then I found out, okay, so these symptoms aren't really pregnancy-related. It's just me now. For, for some reason, I've lost the tolerance to these foods I used to be able to eat. And in-

Joe Rogan 26:42 But you're just eating salad and meat.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:45 And-

Mikhaila Peterson 26:45 And I'm still having autoimmune symptoms now.

Joe Rogan 26:47 The same symptoms that you used to have back when you were eating everything?

Mikhaila Peterson 26:50 Not, not nearly as bad. Not nearly as bad. Like, my fatigue wasn't back.

Joe Rogan 26:54 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 26:54 My anxiety was manageable without medication. Um ...

Joe Rogan 26:58 But you hadn't achieved the levels of-

Mikhaila Peterson 27:01 I didn't-

Joe Rogan 27:01 ... health that you had-

Mikhaila Peterson 27:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:02 ... when you were eliminating things from your diet earlier.

Mikhaila Peterson 27:05 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, I reached a really good point.

Joe Rogan 27:08 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 27:08 And then I got pregnant, and I couldn't reach that point again.

Joe Rogan 27:11 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 27:12 So then this is 2017, so it's like November, and I'm getting really frustrated about being itchy. I'm just randomly itchy again. I'm randomly arthritic.

Joe Rogan 27:21 And you're just eating meat and vegetables?

Mikhaila Peterson 27:23 Just meat and salad. Yeah. And I thought, "Okay, maybe I just have an autoimmune disorder and I can't control it with diet anymore." Um, "Maybe this ... Maybe I'm just stuck like this." And so I googled, like out of desperation, I think I googled allergic to everything food-wise, something like that into Google.

Joe Rogan 27:40 Uh-huh.

Mikhaila Peterson 27:40 And I found this story about Charlene Anderson who's been mentioned a couple times, and she'd been diagnosed with Lyme disease and has been eating nothing but like red meat for 18 years. And there were pictures of her family online, and I thought, "Okay, I know I'm not..." I think I googled allergic to everything except meat.

Joe Rogan 27:59 Uh-huh.

Mikhaila Peterson 28:00 So I found her. Then I found that Shaun Baker episode you did, and he'd been doing it for two years. And I think that night I thought, "Screw it. I literally have nothing to lose here. I'm only cutting out salad." So that's when I switched over. That was December. And then I switched over, and the itching got better pretty quickly, like within the first couple of days. But then my digestion just got totally screwed up, so like bloating and diarrhea every time I ate. And after about a week, I thought, "Okay, this is a bad idea," (laughs) obviously.

Joe Rogan 28:36 Bloating and diarrhea every time you ate meat? Just meat?

Mikhaila Peterson 28:39 Just meat.

Joe Rogan 28:40 Jesus Christ.

Mikhaila Peterson 28:41 And salt. Yeah. So I thought, "This is a bad idea. Obviously this isn't working. My body doesn't like it." So I reintroduced salad again, and it was literally lettuce, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper. That's what I reintroduced. And I woke up the next day, and the itch was back, and my joints were stiff. And I thought, "Okay, if I have to (laughs) choose between itching and arthritis or diarrhea, I'm gonna choose the diarrhea." I was in a rough place.

Joe Rogan 29:08 Hmm. I guess.

Mikhaila Peterson 29:09 So I stuck it out, and at six weeks of just doing this, uh, my di- the bloating went away, the diarrhea went away, and everything started to improve. So that was mid-January. But I was still pretty skeptical because I thought, I thought maybe the reason the carnivore diet worked for people was because they just accidentally cut out everything that wasn't working for them. Um, processed foods, sugar, you know-

Joe Rogan 29:35 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 29:35 ... grains, all that. So I tried to reintroduce olives, like organic olives and olive oil. Uh, and that was February. And then I had this itching came back with the depression. Um, my skin broke out. And it was minor in comparison to like soy.

Joe Rogan 29:49 So you think, essentially, to give us the CliffNotes, you're allergic to everything?

Mikhaila Peterson 29:55 Yeah. Uh, but-

Joe Rogan 29:58 That's fucking crazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:00 It's crazy, but then here's the thing. I started this blog, so the blog's Don't Eat That!

Joe Rogan 30:04 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:04 And I started this blog because I thought if, for some reason, there's someone else out there like me, and they're googling these things-

Joe Rogan 30:11 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:11 ... it'd be nice for them to know that they're not alone.

Joe Rogan 30:14 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:15 And I found other people like this who are equally as sensitive.

Joe Rogan 30:19 I'm sure. I mean, look, if you exist is, there's probably quite a few people that have that issue. Look-

Mikhaila Peterson 30:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:23 ... makes sense. It makes sense that (coughs) we all, we all have different tolerances, and we all have different allergies.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:29 I mean, some people are allergic to cats. Some people have no problem with peanuts. Some people eat a Brazil nut and they die.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:36 This is just ... We do-

Mikhaila Peterson 30:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:37 We know this.So the idea-- this is one of the problems with diet is that people wanna think that a diet that works for them works for everybody, and it doesn't work that way. And thing- m- and people want you to follow their diet, no matter what it is, whether it's vegan or paleo, people are very ideological with that.

Mikhaila Peterson 30:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:54 They, they would love you, for you to do exactly what they're doing, so it'll reinforce what they're doing is correct. Um, there's a lot of pushback against this carnivore diet idea. But I don't, uh, I, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that someone like you might actually really be allergic to everything.

Mikhaila Peterson 31:15 Yeah, I mean, I was, like, very sick, and from coming from that place to now, I can see how sick I was, and it was like I was dying.

Joe Rogan 31:22 Did you ever-

Mikhaila Peterson 31:23 I was on a whole bunch of medication. It was bad.

Joe Rogan 31:24 Did you ever do anything with probiotics?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:28 Yeah?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:28 I can't tolerate probiotics.

Joe Rogan 31:29 You can't tolerate them?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:30 No. So the original idea was heal my gut-

Joe Rogan 31:33 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 31:33 ... repopulate with bacteria that maybe I'm missing-

Joe Rogan 31:36 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 31:36 ... and then maybe incorporate more foods.

Joe Rogan 31:38 Right, so what happened when you tried to do that?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:40 Same autoimmune flare-up.

Joe Rogan 31:42 Okay, but this is the same autoimmune flare-up that you got when you ate salad?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:48 No, not quite.

Joe Rogan 31:49 Not quite as bad?

Mikhaila Peterson 31:51 Not ... It was different. It was, like, with salad, there's more of the arthritis-

Joe Rogan 31:56 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 31:57 ... uh, and, like, body pain, and then ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:00 With probiotics, what'd you get?

Mikhaila Peterson 32:01 Mood issues.

Joe Rogan 32:02 Mood issues.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:02 So, like, really volatile. And itchy.

Joe Rogan 32:06 Right. Itchy.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:06 So I've still got the itch. Yeah. So I think it was I probably had leaky gut.

Joe Rogan 32:11 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:12 And so the probiotics were just going everywhere.

Joe Rogan 32:14 One of the things your dad brought up to me when he was here was, um, emulsifiers.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:19 And that, yeah, and then, then I started reading up on it after he discussed it with me, and, uh, it's something I'd never even considered before, but fast-rising yeast and all these different emulsifiers that they put in, in bread and, and various foods.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:35 They're terrible for you.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:36 Oh my God, yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:37 Terrible for your stomach, and they're, they're so prevalent. They're everywhere.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:40 Yeah. Soy lecithin?

Joe Rogan 32:42 Yeah, like-

Mikhaila Peterson 32:42 It's in, it's in everything.

Joe Rogan 32:43 It's in everything.

Mikhaila Peterson 32:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:44 It's ... And then, and then I started really paying attention to it, and I've read several articles on it and, and a couple studies. It's, it's crazy how this is something that's never even discussed, and it, it has all sorts of, uh, negative effects on y- your gut and your gut lining. It's awful.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:00 Yeah, combining that, and then it looks like grains aren't so good for people, combining that and grains, it's no wonder people are ill.

Joe Rogan 33:09 Some people. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:10 Some people.

Joe Rogan 33:11 S- yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:11 Most people, though. If you look at, like, obesity or-

Joe Rogan 33:14 Uh, I wouldn't go most. I would say some. I'd say most people are sedentary. That's one of the primary issues.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:20 Yeah, but I don't think that's the issue.

Joe Rogan 33:22 What do you mean?

Mikhaila Peterson 33:23 I mean, okay, say, I mean, I guess, no, I'm not a great example, but, I mean, people start gaining weight, if they're lucky, when they're middle-aged. If they're unlucky, when they're around 25, and they start gaining weight. I don't think it's from lack of exercise. I think it's from diet. And g-

Joe Rogan 33:38 Yeah. I think diet has a lot to do with it, yeah, for sure, um, but it's also lack of exercise.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:45 I don't know. I'm not convinced because people who've gone onto this carnivore diet especially-

Joe Rogan 33:52 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 33:52 ... lose that weight.

Joe Rogan 33:53 Right, but there's a lot of people out there that are not overweight that don't follow the carnivore diet, so how do you explain that?

Mikhaila Peterson 33:59 Well, I'd like to see anybody above the age of 50-

Joe Rogan 34:03 I know, but, I know-

Mikhaila Peterson 34:03 ... who's on a standard, standard American diet.

Joe Rogan 34:05 ... a bunch of people. What is a standard American diet? I mean, you're, you're saying-

Mikhaila Peterson 34:08 Like carbs.

Joe Rogan 34:08 ... are they eating terrible?

Mikhaila Peterson 34:10 No, I just mean standard American diet.

Joe Rogan 34:11 I mean, they eat some carbs.

Mikhaila Peterson 34:12 I mean, do they watch what they eat?

Joe Rogan 34:14 They ... I mean, this, this is, these blanket statements are a real issue, and that's one of the reasons why your diet is fascinating is 'cause, like, y- y- y- you know, I don't think you can make blanket statements when it comes to people and diet, you know, that ... I think there's some people out there that are goddamn food dumpsters. You could throw anything in there, and they're fine. They just don't-

Mikhaila Peterson 34:33 There are definitely people-

Joe Rogan 34:34 They, they don't seem to have issues.

Mikhaila Peterson 34:34 ... closer to that.

Joe Rogan 34:35 They don't gain weight. Yeah, there's a lot of people-

Mikhaila Peterson 34:36 My brother is pretty ... well, he's not so good with l- like, lactose, but he's pretty stable compared to me, anyway.

Joe Rogan 34:43 Well, you know Michael Phelps, that Olympic swimmer?

Mikhaila Peterson 34:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:46 That, that guy eats, like, 10,000 calories a day-

Mikhaila Peterson 34:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:48 ... and several pizzas? Look at him.

Mikhaila Peterson 34:49 Yeah. I know. I read about him.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Thin as a rail. He's fucking jacked. There's no problems at all. He's not fat. It's, uh, because ... but that's an issue of enormous, like, uh, expenditure of energy. I mean, he's-

Mikhaila Peterson 35:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:02 ... he's constantly exercising, and his body has ridiculous calory, uh, ca- calorie requirements.

Mikhaila Peterson 35:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:08 Caloric.

Mikhaila Peterson 35:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:10 So, I mean, it's, it's hard to say, but I think sedentary lifestyle is a giant part of it.

Mikhaila Peterson 35:16 But-

Joe Rogan 35:16 Most, most of what people do is what we're doing right now. Most of what people do is sit down.

Mikhaila Peterson 35:20 But is that because they don't feel like running around? Because some people, like, people who exercise, generally, you have to put in a little bit of effort to make yourself go exercise, but a lot of people who are overweight and sick don't have enough energy to do that.

Joe Rogan 35:35 I don't know about that. Um, some of them, maybe, but I think some of them just don't have discipline. There's an issue with that as well. There's also an issue with momentum. You're not used to doing it. It's not a part of your life. It's not something that you're accustomed to, pushing yourself. There's been many, many, many, many, many, many, many days where I didn't wanna work out. I just didn't feel like I had the energy, and I just forced myself, and I think there's very few people out there that know how to force themselves. That's a learned-

Mikhaila Peterson 36:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:01 ... that's a learned skill. It's a-

Mikhaila Peterson 36:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:03 ... that, that kind of discipline and focus, you have to have, like, real rigid requirements of yourself where you don't allow yourself to back out of things, and you don't allow yourself to slack off, and I don't think people put those kind of requirements on themselves as if it's, um ... it, it is a, uh, a daily principle of life, like what you must get done, you know? You must brush your teeth.

Mikhaila Peterson 36:27 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:27 You must exercise for 45 minutes. And if you did that, I think you'd be healthier and happier, and you- your body would perform more smoothly, and you- if you require your body to do things like that, I think it rises to the occasion. There are very few people that have that kind of discipline, so because of that, they come up with excuses, and excuses are a giant part of the problem.It's not simply a physical health issue. There's also mental aspects of it, and discipline's a big one. I just know way too many people who are weak mentally. And I, I, I can't, I can't just chalk it off to only, you know, their physical... The, the way they physically feel. Because I've felt like shit 100 times, and then I worked out and then I felt way better.

Mikhaila Peterson 37:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:08 It's just, it's just a fact of life. That's real. You know, you just gotta-

Mikhaila Peterson 37:11 Yeah, yeah. And...

Joe Rogan 37:12 And people don't know how to do that. It's not a... And if you're used to doing this: get in your car, sit down, drive to the office, sit down, go to the lunch, sit down. You know, go to the board meeting, sit down. Get in your car on, on the way home, sit down. Get home, in front of the TV, sit down. Then go to the gym? (clicks tongue) Fuck off. They don't have any energy. You know? Their, their body's not... The, their body's like, "I don't have it in me to do this."

Mikhaila Peterson 37:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:37 And I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think it's, it's... A lot of it is the, the mindset.

Mikhaila Peterson 37:42 So I, I partly agree with that, but because... And I know. I'm like... I was a very sick individual.

Joe Rogan 37:47 You're in a different case. You have real, legitimate, diagnosed physical issues.

Mikhaila Peterson 37:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:53 This is, this is a very different thing. You have a severe autoimmune disorder. I mean, listen, you got your hip replaced when you were fucking 17.

Mikhaila Peterson 37:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:00 That's crazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 38:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:01 You don't hear that. This is a different... I'm talking about the average fat fuck-

Mikhaila Peterson 38:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:06 ... who's just sitting around being lazy. That's really what it is. It's like, I'm sure a lot of it is diet and a lot of that diet affects their physical health, but there's been many, many people that have just put their foot down and said, "Enough. I'm, I'm gonna change my life." And they, they don't take in excuses and they feel way, way better. Diet is most certainly a part of that, but there's also a discipline aspect. And these things are not mutually exclusive. They, they exist together. They're all together. There's... And they work symbiotically. The way you... Your, your mindset affects the choices you make with your diet, and the mindset also affects the choices you make in terms of, like, whether or not you require yourself to exercise. And I think these are, these are critical aspects that people like to gloss over or they like to make excuses about, and they get very angry if you don't accept those excuses. And that's a sign that they're trying to, they're trying to enforce this standard and this idea and push it on you and give themselves an excuse. And it's one of the reasons why they get angry. Uh, it's one thing if someone has a l- legit physical issue like you do, but there's a lot of people who do not. They just have poor diet choices, they have a sedentary lifestyle, and they have the momentum of this sedentary lifestyle that's holding them back. They're, they're accustomed to being lazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:24 Okay. I kind of, I kind of agree. I just... From, like, my perspective, I've seen my dad and he was very, like... You can see from the videos from 2014 before he started going low-carb and everything-

Joe Rogan 39:36 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:36 ... he was carrying about 50 extra pounds.

Joe Rogan 39:38 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:38 And he didn't exercise. And he didn't have enough energy to exercise.

Joe Rogan 39:42 That's not true.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:42 But it didn't look like that.

Joe Rogan 39:44 That's not true. That's not true. He just didn't do it.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:46 No, I, I don't believe that.

Joe Rogan 39:47 When, when you say, "He didn't have enough energy to exercise," did he walk around? Did he walk-

Mikhaila Peterson 39:51 Well, yeah, but you can drag yourself through things.

Joe Rogan 39:53 And you can drag yourself through an exercise routine? You can.

Mikhaila Peterson 39:55 Mm...

Joe Rogan 39:56 Oh, you most, you most certainly can. You most certainly can. You don't have to do a lot, you just have to do something. You walk up hills, you jump a little rope, you take a little tiny kettlebell, you do a couple cleans and presses, you do a few push-ups, you do a few sit-ups. You get your blood pumping. You're moving. You're alive. You're exercising. To say you don't have enough ecsh- energy to exercise, that's crazy. Can you walk to the refrigerator?

Mikhaila Peterson 40:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:17 Then you can exercise. Uh, I'm not saying that you have to run marathons. You can exercise. And everyone should fucking exercise.

Mikhaila Peterson 40:24 I agree. Everyone should exercise.

Joe Rogan 40:26 But don't ever say...

Mikhaila Peterson 40:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:27 These people are so crazy. They s- they, they want you to believe, "I don't have the energy to exercise." Goddamn it, everyone does. If you're alive, you can exercise.

Mikhaila Peterson 40:35 I know. I bel- I believe that. I've been there. I know I'm a different case, but I've seen my dad there and then here's the thing: once he fixed up his diet, once he went to this carnivore diet, he's exercising now.

Joe Rogan 40:45 Sure, he's got l- less weight on his body, he feels better.

Mikhaila Peterson 40:47 And he has energy.

Joe Rogan 40:48 And he's ex- That's wonderful. He could've exercised then, too. He would've felt shittier, for sure. Wouldn't have felt as good as he's feeling now. But to give people this excuse, "I don't have the energy to exercise," that is crazy to say. Can you walk to the fucking refrigerator? Yes. Well, you can exercise.

Mikhaila Peterson 41:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:04 You don't have to do anything crazy, just walk around the block. There's, uh, there's 80-year-old ladies who take yoga with me. They're, they're, they're fucking really old and they're in there. They're, they're going after it. They could easily say, "I don't have the energy to do that," but they don't. It's a mental attitude. They make a decision.

Mikhaila Peterson 41:22 Yeah, I agree. Like, there's... A lot of it's discipline. You're gonna get people who just won't exercise.

Joe Rogan 41:26 Yeah, but you don't have to kill yourself. You don't have to go to a CrossFit class and try to do the workout of the day. You don't have to go nuts and do clean and presses with 150 pounds. You don't have to do that, but you have to do something. Just get, get your blood moving. Your body has requirements. It wants to move, it really does. And when it does, you feel better. But people like to give themselves this excuse, "I do not have the energy to do this." Whatever. If you decide that, that's true. But if you watch a motivational video, there's 100 of them on YouTube, thousands even. You go watch one, you'll get fired up. You're like, "Fuck it, I'm gonna jump some rope." You jump some rope, you do something. Just do some push-ups, do something. Do some body weight squats. You'll feel better. But it's also, like, learning that. Learning that and having that as a part of your daily life. It has to be... And, uh, again, I'm not talking about someone like you who's in the throes of this autoimmune disorder where you're getting your hip replaced at 17. I'm not talking about someone with, like, serious degenerative illness. I'm talking about just a regular person who's overweight. You can do it. There's a lady who's, like, 450 pounds that takes yoga with me. She's enormous. She's in there. Which is probably really embarrassing. Very hard to do.

Mikhaila Peterson 42:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:32 You know? And she's in there. We could... A- Anyone can do it. We can do it. And again, I'm not t- saying, "Do what Michael Phelps does." I'm just saying, just do something. Gotta do something.

Mikhaila Peterson 42:42 But-

Joe Rogan 42:42 We, we have fucked up lifestyles.

Mikhaila Peterson 42:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:45 The, the lifestyles that people have-

Mikhaila Peterson 42:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:46 ... are just... The human body is not designed to sit down all day, and it's certainly not designed to be stuck in traffic and be in an office and just be l- l- you know, fluorescent lights-

Mikhaila Peterson 42:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:56 ... and just sitting there-

Mikhaila Peterson 42:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:57 ... in front of a fucking computer monitor, watching your soul get sucked through the, the, the, the, the LCD screen. It's crazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:04 Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Joe Rogan 43:06 I think we gotta be really careful with just the way we describe things. It's like, say, "I don't have the energy to do something." Like, fuck off. Stop.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:15 I don't know. I, I believe it still. That was good, but I'm still not convinced.

Joe Rogan 43:20 You're still not convinced?

Mikhaila Peterson 43:20 I think, well, I think you change your diet.

Joe Rogan 43:23 It helps.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:23 And then you can exercise.

Joe Rogan 43:25 You can exercise without changing your diet. There's a lot of people who do.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:28 They do, yeah. But, and that has... Partly, that's discipline.

Joe Rogan 43:32 Yes.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:32 But partly that's being able to. I'm still... I, I don't know. You haven't convinced me completely.

Joe Rogan 43:38 So what do you think is holding them back?

Mikhaila Peterson 43:41 Um, well, I think if you're carrying around extra weight, like a quite a bit of extra weight, and you say, "I don't have enough energy," there's something serious going on that isn't just, "Oh, I have a few extra pounds."

Joe Rogan 43:52 There could be.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:53 And I don't think we know exactly what that looks like.

Joe Rogan 43:56 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 43:56 But a lot of that has to do with energy. I mean, Dad was sleeping, he was sleeping for two hours a day in the middle of the day, and he was impossible to wake up. Like he couldn't wake up. I had to like shake him and-

Joe Rogan 44:06 Right. But your, your-

Mikhaila Peterson 44:06 ... couldn't wake him up.

Joe Rogan 44:07 ... dad told me he was on a standard diet of like s- sandwiches and pasta and things along those lines.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:14 Mm. Mm.

Joe Rogan 44:14 So you'd have that big insulin dump.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:17 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:18 But, I mean, most people who don't have enough energy are, and a lot of those people don't realize, like we were eating whole grains. We didn't know that whole grains were just grains.

Joe Rogan 44:27 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:28 We thought that whole grains were healthy. So I was having sandwiches for lunch because I was having cheese and bread, and that was protein.

Joe Rogan 44:35 Right. But your dad has autoimmune dis- disorders as well.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:38 Pretty significant, right? And depression.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:40 Well, the depression was the-

Joe Rogan 44:42 Depression, pretty significant.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:42 ... that was the main one.

Joe Rogan 44:43 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 44:43 That was very significant. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:45 Yeah. I think, you know, it's hard to di- it's hard to also figure out, like what is depression?

Mikhaila Peterson 44:51 Yeah. That's for sure.

Joe Rogan 44:52 Like if you say you have depression, to a person who doesn't have depression, like myself, I hear that and I go, "Okay, what does that mean?"

Mikhaila Peterson 44:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:58 What does it... Does it mean you feel bad? What does it mean? Does it mean there's like a thick, wet blanket over your life that you can't get out of?

Mikhaila Peterson 45:04 Yeah. It means like, eh, there's a couple of things. Um, the closest... It's im- it's impossible to think of when you're not depressed, but the closest I've get to is, if you're in a really, really stressful situation and a whole bunch of things go wrong at the same time, that stress you feel is kind of like a really, really mild version of being depressed.

Joe Rogan 45:24 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 45:25 But being depressed is like if you look at something, the colors seem muted. You don't get joy out of anything.

Joe Rogan 45:33 Like the, this color of the sky, like everything?

Mikhaila Peterson 45:35 Uh, reds. Like just colors... Everything's in grayscale. Kind of feels like you're walking through molasses. And then you have a whole bunch of anxieties pop up all the time that are like worst-case scenarios of everything in your entire life that won't happen. But that's all you can think of all the time. That's partly anxiety, but it, it's hell. Like I, having arthritis, I would choose arthritis a million times over than this depression.

Joe Rogan 46:02 Wow.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:02 It just wrecks you.

Joe Rogan 46:04 So what leads you to the carnivore diet? This lady has been living on it for 18 years. You read about her.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:11 And that she's still alive without eating-

Mikhaila Peterson 46:13 And her Lyme disease gone, and she looks great. There's a before and after picture. She looks great.

Joe Rogan 46:18 And is she taking vitamins as well?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:20 Nothing.

Joe Rogan 46:20 Nothing?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:21 Beef and salt.

Joe Rogan 46:22 Right. So this is what you hear. So this anecdotal story is what leads you to give that a try?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:27 Well, I thought-

Joe Rogan 46:28 In what year is this?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:29 This is a year ago?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:29 This is 2017, so December.

Joe Rogan 46:31 December?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:31 Almost... Yeah. So not quite a year.

Joe Rogan 46:34 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:35 So I switched over, and then I had these transin- transition symptoms.

Joe Rogan 46:38 Diarrhea.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:39 Yeah. That was basically it. Some craving.

Joe Rogan 46:41 So it's bold to hang in there with six weeks of diarrhea.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:44 Yeah. But the alternative was like anxiety and itching and arthritis.

Joe Rogan 46:47 Well, you were also probably at the end of your rope, right? Where you're like-

Mikhaila Peterson 46:50 Oh, yeah. There was-

Joe Rogan 46:51 ... "Jesus Christ, I can't even eat miso soup."

Mikhaila Peterson 46:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:54 Right?

Mikhaila Peterson 46:54 Yeah. There's nothing. I was like, "I don't care about salad."

Joe Rogan 46:56 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:56 "I've already given up everything I love."

Joe Rogan 46:58 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 46:58 "Just take it away." Um, and then after six weeks, it got better, and then I reintroduced olives, and that went badly, and I thought, "Okay, I'm done with the reintroductions. I'm just sticking with meat."

Joe Rogan 47:08 Your dad said he's gonna try to reintroduce mushrooms.

Mikhaila Peterson 47:12 Yeah. We'll see how that goes. He seems to be weirdly sensitive to it, like in the same category as me. But instead of getting arthritis and all these other things as well, he just gets the depression, which is the worst one.

Joe Rogan 47:24 Well, he said he d- he introduced something to his diet, and he didn't sleep for like 24 days.

Mikhaila Peterson 47:29 Yeah. So when-

Joe Rogan 47:30 I'm like, that's not even possible.

Mikhaila Peterson 47:31 Well-

Joe Rogan 47:31 Like you would be dead.

Mikhaila Peterson 47:32 No, it... That's what it felt like. I had the same... We... I had the same thing. We ate the same thing. I think it was sulfites in apple cider in a stew I made.

Joe Rogan 47:41 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 47:42 I don't know what it was. I think that's what it was. And yeah, and then there was... The itching came back, and the doom came in. This depression came in. And then that's, that's weird and it hasn't happened very many times, but I got stuck with insomnia. And it felt like we weren't sleeping.

Joe Rogan 47:59 So you slept like a little bit and you wake up? A little bit and you wake up? Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:01 Probably, yeah. It does not what it felt like-

Joe Rogan 48:03 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:03 ... but I'm sure, you know, it's not physically possible to stay awake for that long. But it didn't feel-

Joe Rogan 48:07 I don't think it's-

Mikhaila Peterson 48:07 ... like sleeping.

Joe Rogan 48:07 What's the world record that someone's ever stayed awake? I think it's only like 10 days.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:11 Yeah, I think it's 11, 10 or 11.

Joe Rogan 48:13 Yeah. Something along those lines.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:16 God, why would he do that? Was it just a test?

Joe Rogan 48:19 It's crazy.

Narrator 48:19 Person, 11 days and 25 minutes.

Joe Rogan 48:21 (laughs) 25 minutes. What? At that 26th minute, that dude went down hard. (imitates snoring) (laughs) Wow, that's crazy. Um, so obviously your dad must-

Mikhaila Peterson 48:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:33 ... unless your dad stomped the shit out of that world record.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:37 No, I'm sure he was sleeping, but it was like-

Joe Rogan 48:39 Little bit.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:39 ... it was-

Joe Rogan 48:39 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:40 ... it didn't feel like that, and it wasn't very much.

Joe Rogan 48:42 It's just crazy that one thing... What, what, do you remember what it was that he reintroduced to his diet that-

Mikhaila Peterson 48:47 That was... Might have been... It wasn't a reintroduction, it was app- we were just still eating apples at that point, and it was a cider and it had sulfites added. And I looked at it-

Joe Rogan 48:56 Oh.

Mikhaila Peterson 48:56 ... and thought, "Whatever, it's like parts per million sulfites. It'll be fine." And then it... That was the only-

Joe Rogan 49:03 That killed him off.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:03 ... thing that was new.

Joe Rogan 49:04 So do you think that, as you get onto this elimination diet and you start taking things out and you get-

Mikhaila Peterson 49:11 You get more sensitive.

Joe Rogan 49:11 Yeah, you get more sensitive.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:12 So it's like one of the things that ha- that I noticed...... in, in a big way, is when I cut sugar out of my diet. If I have sugar now, like if I go crazy and have an ice cream sundae, I hit a fucking wall so hard where I can't even get up.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:25 I have to sit down on the couch, I'm like, "Oh..." It takes like an hour or two for it to get out of my system. So, for like an hour-

Mikhaila Peterson 49:31 Oh.

Joe Rogan 49:31 ... I just sit there and I'm like, "Oh, God."

Mikhaila Peterson 49:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:33 I feel like shit. And then two hours later I'm like, "Okay, it's done. It's passed."

Mikhaila Peterson 49:37 That's it? It's two hours?

Joe Rogan 49:38 And I start getting really... Yeah, about two hours. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:39 It's like 24 days for me.

Joe Rogan 49:41 Yeah. No, I, I believe you. I believe you. But for me, it's just, for two hours... I mean, and again, it's not, I'm not depressed for two hours, I just feel like I have a brick in my stomach.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:52 And then I feel like I'm, I'm on a tranquilizer.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:56 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 49:57 Yeah. So most of the... That's how I lived a whole bunch of my life.

Joe Rogan 50:00 That's crazy.

Mikhaila Peterson 50:00 The tranquilizer, like the, it's idiopathic hypersomnia. Which is like, I was falling asleep during exams. I drove home on the highway one time when I was 22, and I was falling asleep at the wheel. And I was like, "Oh my God." Like, "I can't stay awake." Passing out. And I like moved over into a lane and a truck came by and honked at me, and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna die." And then I went on Adderall.

Joe Rogan 50:23 Whoa.

Mikhaila Peterson 50:23 I was like, "I need to stay awake or I'm gonna die." It was terrifying.

Joe Rogan 50:25 Did y- did you get off the Adderall?

Mikhaila Peterson 50:27 Oh yeah, yeah. I'm off of everything. And the Adderall... So I stopped taking the immune suppressants when I cut out gluten, just to see how my f- arthritic flare-ups would go, if anything would happen. Then I was... Then I got off of the antidepressants November 2015. And then my fatigue lifted in January 2016. So I got off the Adderall right away then.

Joe Rogan 50:51 Hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 50:51 I was taking a lot, and it was great when I was in that like, feeling like I was on tranquilizers, it was great. But once you don't need it, it's kind of awful being on that amount of amphetamine all the time.

Joe Rogan 51:02 I know so many people that are on that shit.

Mikhaila Peterson 51:04 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 51:04 It's so disturbing to me how many people are, are taking that and they, they talk about their productivity and they're always, they're always-

Mikhaila Peterson 51:11 It makes you feel like you're being productive. I don't know if it actually makes you more productive. And it just sh- destroys your short-term memory.

Joe Rogan 51:19 Does it?

Mikhaila Peterson 51:19 Destroyed mine. I was taking a lot though. I was on 40 milligrams a day, uh, in the morning, the long release. It was-

Joe Rogan 51:26 This is one of those things I've always thought about trying. I'm like, "Hmm, maybe one day."

Mikhaila Peterson 51:30 If you have energy... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:33 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 51:33 If you have energy, I don't think it gives you the kick like if you're exhausted all the time. It's just kind of unpleasant. And it makes you like, weirdly antisocial.

Joe Rogan 51:43 Hmm. Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 51:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:45 So you haven't been on this diet for a year.

Mikhaila Peterson 51:48 No.

Joe Rogan 51:48 What, what has the change... Once you got over the diarrhea, what has the change been like?

Mikhaila Peterson 51:55 So, um, the arthritis and like the autoimmune stuff went away fairly quickly, when I was still having diarrhea.

Joe Rogan 52:02 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 52:02 That went away. The mood started to pick up six weeks into the diet. And then in May... So I'd been December, January, February, March, April, May. So five months into it, I had a huge improvement. So things just got better and better every day, and I finally got to the point where I was pre-pregnancy. So since May, it's h- I would say it's still getting better. So it's-

Joe Rogan 52:26 So it's only been three months that you've been okay?

Mikhaila Peterson 52:28 No, I've been okay since January, but my mood went from like a eight to like a nine and a half, like great, in May. So I was feeling good after I started, after this first six weeks. But then things got a lot better in May. It seems to be just improving.

Joe Rogan 52:47 Now what kind of blood work are you getting while you're doing all this? Are you, are you going and getting tested for nutritional deficiencies? 'Cause the one of the issues that many people who are nutritionists or who are studying biology have with this carnivore diet is that meat, just meat, is very deficient in many, many nutrients. It's just, it's very deficient in vitamin C, it's deficient in several things that we think that you need in order to, to live.

Mikhaila Peterson 53:18 Yeah. Well, I did get blood work done because people were asking.

Joe Rogan 53:22 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 53:22 And not because I particularly trust blood work, because my blood work was always pretty normal. I was always low in zinc and vitamin D since I was a kid.

Joe Rogan 53:29 Even when you had severe arthritis?

Mikhaila Peterson 53:31 Yeah. Everything was normal. I had no blood markers and I was like, dying. This-

Joe Rogan 53:35 But did... What about for inflammation?

Mikhaila Peterson 53:38 Um, my white blood cell count was high.

Joe Rogan 53:40 Okay. So that's-

Mikhaila Peterson 53:40 So that can be a sign of like infection.

Joe Rogan 53:42 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 53:42 So that was high. My vitamin D and my zinc were low.

Joe Rogan 53:45 Right. But that's not-

Mikhaila Peterson 53:46 That's what showed up.

Joe Rogan 53:47 But that wouldn't be normal, right? If you went and you got your blood tested and they showed you that you have a high white blood cell count, they would go, "There's an issue here."

Mikhaila Peterson 53:54 Yeah, it wasn't abnormal enough to have caused the problems I was experiencing.

Joe Rogan 54:00 But how about... How, how m- different was it from the norm?

Mikhaila Peterson 54:04 White blood cell count?

Joe Rogan 54:06 Yes.

Mikhaila Peterson 54:06 Um, well I had white blood s- raised white blood cell count and I had white blood cells in my urine. And that's a l- that's a little weird, because that is generally like, well, some sort of bacterial infection, which I didn't have symptoms of.

Joe Rogan 54:20 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 54:21 So that was a little weird. But that was never focused on from the doctors.

Joe Rogan 54:25 Why not? Well, that seems like that's, that's an issue. If normal people don't have that and you have problems that normal people don't have, I would say-

Mikhaila Peterson 54:33 And link them?

Joe Rogan 54:33 ... like your blood work is not link... I mean, uh, your blood work is not normal. That's not normal. Right?

Mikhaila Peterson 54:37 No, but I mean, I was on all the medications they could put me on.

Joe Rogan 54:41 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 54:41 So there wasn't... And they never looked at diet, so...

Joe Rogan 54:44 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 54:44 I was kind of at a standstill.

Joe Rogan 54:45 Right. But y- when you said that you don't trust blood work and then-

Mikhaila Peterson 54:48 Well, I did get it done.

Joe Rogan 54:49 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 54:49 Mostly for the blog so that everybody could see I wasn't dying. Um, I can pull it up.

Joe Rogan 54:54 Okay. That was, uh, one of the issues with Shaun Baker. Shaun got his blood work done and one of the things that people noticed is that there's quite a few issues there, and one of them was-... very, very low testosterone, which is crazy 'cause he's a gorilla.

Mikhaila Peterson 55:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:07 He's a big-

Mikhaila Peterson 55:07 He's huge.

Joe Rogan 55:08 ... six foot five, 250-pound dude. So it's like, well, he doesn't look deficient in testosterone. Like, what the hell's going on here?

Mikhaila Peterson 55:14 Yeah. I don't have testosterone readings.

Joe Rogan 55:17 He also said that part of that might, you know, he and I have gone back and forth about this. He said part of that might have been, had to do with taking the test, um, when he had, uh, done like a very heavy weightlifting workout the day before. Like he'd done squats and deadlifts and all kinds of stuff, and so maybe broke his body down a bit.

Mikhaila Peterson 55:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:34 Which kind of makes sense.

Mikhaila Peterson 55:35 It would be nice for s- like a medical professional to take some of these groups of people doing this diet and just do a study.

Joe Rogan 55:42 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 55:42 So we could actually get some information.

Joe Rogan 55:44 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 55:44 Instead of like, everything's anecdotal and I put my stuff up, but just because, so I can show it to you, but everything is normal. Everything is normal. My ferritin is slightly, slightly elevated, but like people-

Joe Rogan 55:58 What is ferritin?

Mikhaila Peterson 55:59 Uh, iron.

Joe Rogan 56:00 Oh, okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:01 So that's slightly elevated. Um, slightly.

Joe Rogan 56:03 Because you're eating a lot of meat, red meat. But that's not bad.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:07 Not necessarily, and it was still like my doctor said, he didn't care. It wasn't elevated enough.

Joe Rogan 56:12 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:12 But like-

Joe Rogan 56:13 What about vitamins?

Mikhaila Peterson 56:14 Um, so for vitamins, vitamins, my zinc is still low. My vitamin D is still low.

Joe Rogan 56:24 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:24 That hasn't recovered. And it's been like that-

Joe Rogan 56:26 That's kind of interesting.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:27 It's been like that forever.

Joe Rogan 56:28 Do you go outside?

Mikhaila Peterson 56:28 Well, s- it's hard in Canada. Like I have some pictures on Instagram and I'm green because there's no light for like six months.

Joe Rogan 56:35 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 56:35 (laughs) Um, and then, I'm outside all summer. So I'm probably deficient.

Joe Rogan 56:43 Mm.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:44 I, I think that has something to do with the autoimmune disorder. I tried supplementing with really high dose vitamin D and didn't see any benefits. Um, so I should-

Joe Rogan 56:52 What one did you go for?

Mikhaila Peterson 56:52 And I don't take supplements anymore. The high dose vitamin D.

Joe Rogan 56:55 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 56:56 Um, I tried once when I was 21 for about a year, and then again when I was doing the low carb diet.

Joe Rogan 57:03 But what about now when your issue is with vitamin D, you're in your blood work-

Mikhaila Peterson 57:07 I just got my blood work back.

Joe Rogan 57:08 Okay.

Mikhaila Peterson 57:08 So I was doing no, no supplements so that I could see what happened.

Joe Rogan 57:12 Mm-hmm. Um, also, I probably wouldn't recommend high dose of vitamin D. I would just recommend supplementing with a normal dose of vitamin D.

Mikhaila Peterson 57:20 I think I'm just going to wait and see and get tested in a year. I'm not too concerned.

Joe Rogan 57:26 See-

Mikhaila Peterson 57:26 And see what happens because here's, here's what's interesting. When I went to the low carb diet, my B vitamins were low. So this was during the pregnancy, I got this first test, and it was, my B12 was fine but everything else was low. Folate was low, B1, B3, B6, and biotin were all low on the low carb diet.

Joe Rogan 57:46 Mm. Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 57:46 Uh, and my naturopath said, "Maybe you have a microbiome problem." Whatever that means.

Joe Rogan 57:52 Whenever someone says, "My naturopath said," I just go, "Ugh."

Mikhaila Peterson 57:55 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:56 I don't care what else they say.

Mikhaila Peterson 57:56 I was like, I was like that-

Joe Rogan 57:57 You need a crystal in your pocket.

Mikhaila Peterson 57:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:59 Keep a crystal with you at all times.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:01 (laughs) Uh, you know what? They were there telling me to cut out gluten for years.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Mm.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:06 And I was like, "What do you know?"

Joe Rogan 58:07 Right. Crazy person.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:09 Yeah. I could have probably stopped some, stopped some suffering.

Joe Rogan 58:11 You need to put a dream catcher on your wall. Put a dream catcher above your bed. That'll help. Hmm. (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 58:18 Anyway-

Joe Rogan 58:18 Anyway.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:18 ... this new micronutrients test, uh, vitamin D and cal- not calcium, vitamin D and zinc are still low. But all my Bs have gone up. So none of my Bs, folate is still borderline, but it was deficient before, and all my other Bs are, have gone up to normal.

Joe Rogan 58:40 What about vitamin, what about vitamin C?

Mikhaila Peterson 58:41 Oh, vitamin C was always normal. Vitamin C hasn't changed at all.

Joe Rogan 58:44 That's fascinating because that's one of the ones they think people are deficient, uh, if you are on this diet.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:50 Well, I did some background reading, um, because I've been, I thought people died of scurvy if they didn't eat vegetables, just like everybody thinks that.

Joe Rogan 58:58 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 58:58 Uh, but it turns out vitamin C and glucose compete.

Joe Rogan 59:03 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:04 So if you don't eat glucose, you just don't use as much vitamin C.

Joe Rogan 59:07 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:09 And I haven't been supplementing, but my vitamin C's totally fine.

Joe Rogan 59:12 Yeah, Sean Baker sent me something about that, something along those lines, that, uh, w- some of the vitamin C that you're taking in is competing with glucose, and that you need far less of it and it's far more effective.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:26 So there is some vitamin C in beef.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:29 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 59:29 Are you choosing to eat grass-fed beef? Are you, do you care?

Mikhaila Peterson 59:33 So initially, I tried to get rid of all the variables 'cause I didn't know what I was reacting to. So I was eating grass fed, antibiotic-free, all that stuff.

Joe Rogan 59:40 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:40 And now I'm eating, mostly I try to stay away from the antibiotic and hormone meat, but I'm eating grain-finished because it's just so much cheaper than grass fed.

Joe Rogan 59:48 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:48 And it doesn't, I have no problems with it.

Joe Rogan 59:50 How would you know whether or not beef has antibiotics or hormones in it?

Mikhaila Peterson 59:55 You just trust the labeling.

Joe Rogan 59:57 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:57 That's it.

Joe Rogan 59:58 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 59:58 But I, but I've gone out to eat in restaurants where I'm sure the meat's lower quality and I haven't had an autoimmune flare-up with that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:04 Mm-hmm. Hmm. So when you go out to eat, you know, one of the things you posted the other day was that you had a steak that had pepper on it.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:12 Yeah, I had pepper on Monday.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Pepper, like ground pepper? And you were freaking out?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:16 I was freaking out on Monday, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:18 That's pepper.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:18 So I was like, I don't know what happens.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 Wow. That's-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:21 It's okay. I'm fine.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 (laughs) But that's-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:23 But yeah, I was freaking out. I was stressed out for the whole day.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Pepper.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:26 But it's like, if it flares, first of all, these flare-ups don't happen instantly.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:30 So it gives you enough time to freak out about if they're going to happen for a couple days.

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:34 And then it's like a month of an autoimmune disorder and depression and brain fog and not being able to think. And it's horrible.

Joe Rogan 1:00:42 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:42 So yeah, I'm freaked out, but I'm okay. The one thing I've found really helps, the only thing I've found that helps these reactions is an infrared sauna. If I get in there like once a day and sweat.

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 Only an infrared one? What about a regular one?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:55 Um...

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 Do you know?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:00:57 Honestly, no, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:00:58 You don't know. So the idea just the elevated heat temperature, whether it's infrared or not-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:04 Yeah, I don't know if it's, I've just read all the benefits of infrared.

Joe Rogan 1:01:06 Mm. What are the-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:07 But I haven't-

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 ... benefits over a regular sauna?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:10 Well, there's like longevity studies from Finland.

Joe Rogan 1:01:13 Those are done in a regular sauna.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:14 That's a regular sauna?

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 Yeah. The ones that are done, that show the decrease in mortality of 40%.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:20 That's a regular sauna?

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 That's a regular sauna. Yeah. Pretty sure-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:23 What about mitochondrial health?

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 Why don't you, uh, Google that, please? There's a study... Maybe Rhonda Patrick has it up on her website. But, um, 'cause I asked her whether I should get a regular sauna or a, uh, infrared, and she said the studies that were done were done with a regular sauna.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:37 Why-

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 But she said that-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:38 Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan 1:01:38 ... the real issue is that, um, your body's producing heat shock proteins. So whether it's infrared or regular, the whole, the real issue is your body's in this extreme 170 degree temperature, produces these cytokines and these, um, cytokines, cytokines? I don't know how to-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:01:52 Cytokines.

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 And your body is reacting to this incredible temperature, and this is what produces this anti-inflammation effect. I would think for someone like you with arthritis in particular, anything that reduces inflammation would be a, a great benefit, so-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:06 Yeah. No, it's great.

Joe Rogan 1:02:07 ... sauna would be awesome.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:08 I just, if I'm reacting, like sauna makes me feel, I don't... Like 20% better. Like a lot better.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 A lot better.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:13 After I get out.

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:14 If I'm not reacting, I don't sweat as much when I get in, and it's nice, but it's not like a huge relief like it is when I'm reacting.

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 It's giant for me. I mean, I don't have the autoimmune issues that you have, but boy, for me, it's just, it's a game changer.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:29 I get in there for 20 minutes, half hour, and I get out of there, it's just like everything just feels better.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:34 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:34 And it hits me like about 20 minutes after I get out.

Joe Rogan 1:02:37 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:37 And I get this mood up, and it's just like, ha.

Joe Rogan 1:02:38 Yeah. Once your body... I think that what that is, is your temperature normalizes, uh, your body temperature normalizes after you're out of that heat, and then everything's just like, ah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:48 Yeah. No, it's great.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:50 It's great.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 Have you done the cryotherapy?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:52 Similar feeling, right?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:53 Yeah. Not as good I don't think.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 No?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:02:56 Um, but similar feeling. It's better actually for pain. So I have... My ankle replacement still gives me problems because it's an ankle replacement. Uh, so I've done cryotherapy for that, and that's... Works better for pain I think than the sauna does.

Joe Rogan 1:03:10 Now, what do they do when they replace your ankle? Do they cut off the bottom of the joint and recap it and put something else there? Is that what it is?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:17 So they cut off, yeah, they cut off the bottom of the tibia. That's a big bone.

Joe Rogan 1:03:24 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:24 Tibia, and then they replace the top of the talus.

Joe Rogan 1:03:27 (whistles)

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:28 It sucks. And I got it done in 2009 when the ankle joints weren't as good as they are now. So now I'm left with this like old ankle joint, and I'm 26, so I have to get it looked at because it's giving me problems.

Joe Rogan 1:03:45 Are you gonna get another one?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:47 Oh, God, no. I hope not. I think they're just gonna try and fix it.

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 Get some super dope carbon fiber new model.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:52 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:03:53 (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:53 They don't have that. Nobody's like making anything cool.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 No?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:03:57 No.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 It seems like them, they're constantly improving that. I mean, uh-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:01 That's what it looks like on YouTube, but that's not really what it looks like in real life.

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 (laughs) No?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:05 No. I was like, maybe I could just get a new foot. I could get a better foot, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:09 You want a new foot. Do you want a new foot?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:10 Well, if-

Joe Rogan 1:04:12 Want some robot foot?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:13 Maybe.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 Go to the nail salon, they're like, "What the fuck is this?" (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:16 (laughs) Depends on the robot foot.

Joe Rogan 1:04:19 You'd be down for a robot foot if it like took away all your pain?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:22 Oh my God, yeah, if I could run again. I can't run with an ankle replacement.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 But what about your hip replacement? You could run with a hip replacement?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:27 My hip replacement's fine. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 But they... I have friends that got a hip replacement, they said running's out of the question, it's out of, out of the idea.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:34 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Like, there's no way. You can't run.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:36 I could run on the hip replacement.

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 Really?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:38 Yeah, I can limp along with my ankle, but the hip replacement gives me no problems. It's great.

Joe Rogan 1:04:43 But I thought that the load that is placed on the hip is not-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:48 I don't think they recommend activities like that-

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:51 ... all the time.

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 All the time.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:52 But even like a, um, what's, an elliptical?

Joe Rogan 1:04:55 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:55 Like that's pretty low impact.

Joe Rogan 1:04:57 Right.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:04:57 And I can't do that 'cause of my ankle, but my hip is fine.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Have you ever tried a VersaClimber?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:03 No.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 We have one out there.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:05 I don't even know, what is that?

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 It's a, uh, an angled, like a, a beam like, uh, with handles on it, and you do this. Phenomenal cardio. It's amazing. Works your core 'cause you're at an angle, so you got... You're kind of planking almost a little bit while you're doing it.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:21 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 1:05:22 Yeah. It's awesome.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:23 That might work better.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 Yeah, do... You do sprints with it and then do like TABATAs, like 20 10s.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:29 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Like 20 seconds on, 10-second break, 20 seconds on, 10-second break. It's phenomenal.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:34 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 Yeah. It's one of the best exercises in terms of cardio.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:38 Huh. I stopped... So-

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 Can you do a bike?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:41 I can't really do anything with this ankle.

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 Wow.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:43 But I did start a... Yeah, it's a huge pain. I'm, I'm gonna need to get surgery. I think I'm getting something done in January.

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 And what are they gonna do?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:51 So basically bone has grown into the joint.

Joe Rogan 1:05:54 Boom.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:54 So it's basically fused.

Joe Rogan 1:05:57 Ooh.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:05:58 So I just don't have any movement. And it kinda hurts. And it doesn't hurt like it hurt when I needed it replaced, but it hurts. So they're gonna go in and clean out all the bone and pray that that works.

Joe Rogan 1:06:11 Jesus.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:12 Tha- So that's, that's what my January is gonna be.

Joe Rogan 1:06:14 Does this make you think that like if you got on this diet-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 ... when you were younger, you could've avoided-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 ... all this shit?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:20 This is why I'm not very pleased with the medical community.

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 Well, how do they know? I mean, they didn't know back then.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:24 But they could have said... I don't know. They could have looked at the celiac thing. Then I would have at least been clued in that gluten was a problem, and maybe just removing that would have been good enough.

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 Well, it seems that the amount of research that they would have to do, I mean, think about how many different things you had to look at to come to that-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 ... conclusion, the time you had to spend.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:42 Yeah, like three years.

Joe Rogan 1:06:42 And-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 And Canada has public... I mean, you have public healthcare, right? So it's, it's, it's weird, right?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:51 They're, they're not as motivated.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:53 They're not... It's not ideal for people with very special problems.

Joe Rogan 1:06:57 Right. And-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:06:58 It's good for general public.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 And it's great if you don't have money and you need to get taken care of.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:07:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:03 But they have a lot of people coming in and out, right? It's constant.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:07:07 Yeah. I'm getting the surgery done in North Carolina.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 Wow.... just fucking turn your back on Canada, huh? (laughs)

Mikhaila Peterson 1:07:14 (laughs) Or I could wait around for, like, three and a half years for a surgeon that's not as good.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 Yeah. Yeah. That, um-

Narrator 1:07:21 On, on this infrared thing, I'm finding a- very interesting stuff because I remember reading what you said.

Joe Rogan 1:07:26 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 1:07:26 But I'm not finding that. And I've only found-

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 What are you finding?

Narrator 1:07:29 ... stuff that, like, I found a Ben Greenfield. I think it was, uh, transcription of a podcast he did with Rhonda.

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 1:07:35 And something else very similar, which is information from Dr. Joel Kahn-

Joe Rogan 1:07:39 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 1:07:40 ... um, that says only sunlight, sunlight and far infrared saunas have been shown to increase core temperature for effective detoxification because they get... You can stay longer in the, uh, threshold area they want of around 130 degrees. You can be there up to 45 minutes or so.

Joe Rogan 1:07:58 Hmm.

Narrator 1:07:58 And you, I guess you can't, unless you can st- withstand it in a, in a regular heat one because it's heating the air around you, not light heating your body.

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 Oh, interesting.

Narrator 1:08:08 Yeah.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:08:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 So the infrared one is heating your body in specific, rather than you being in the heat.

Narrator 1:08:14 Correct.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 Ah, interesting.

Narrator 1:08:17 So you can do it longer and that's where the benefits-

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 What, how much longer? How long are you supposed to do it for?

Narrator 1:08:22 It said at least 30 minutes.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 But that's what I do anyway.

Narrator 1:08:25 I don't know the difference in the-

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 So infrared sauna is good if you're a pussy, is that what it says?

Narrator 1:08:28 That's where I didn't want to say that.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:08:30 (laughs)

Narrator 1:08:30 But hey, maybe that's what they're saying. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:08:32 Well, it, it seems like you get more benefit with less suffering. That's what it would seem like.

Narrator 1:08:39 Probably.

Joe Rogan 1:08:39 Because you could do it longer.

Narrator 1:08:40 I think that's what they're getting at. But yeah, I don't know if that's the reason why. Like, I don't know if people have to just quit after 20 minutes and they can't get to the 30. I don't know if that's what they're-

Joe Rogan 1:08:46 Well, people do, man. They get, does get uncomfortable. But, but if you could ev- if you get the same benefits and you could avoid the discomfort, why wouldn't you do that, right?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:08:54 Mm-hmm. It also just... It's just uncomfortable right before you start sweating and you're like, "Oh, I'm really hot." And then you start sweating and you're... It's not as bad.

Joe Rogan 1:09:00 There's a new company that's making an infrared sauna that you work out in. It's got a chin-up bar in, and it's got all these, like, uh, of, like, resistance cables.

Narrator 1:09:11 The other part of this too, which is... I'd have to go more into sciences that I don't know, is that the LEDs, like the infrared light can penetrate your skin, whereas the heat maybe can't.

Joe Rogan 1:09:21 Oh.

Narrator 1:09:21 Because it's just heat, and it's heating up your skin. It's not lit- like, infrared is literally a wave. It's a light wave. It's a different kind of-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:09:29 Yeah. It invigorates your mitochondria.

Narrator 1:09:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:31 So maybe-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:09:31 It, like, works at that level.

Joe Rogan 1:09:32 ... the studies that they did in... What was it? In Norway?

Narrator 1:09:35 Finland, I think.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:09:36 Finland?

Narrator 1:09:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 Maybe they just didn't have infrared there.

Narrator 1:09:38 May- maybe, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:09:39 'Cause, like, those Russian banyas, they do the regular saunas. They use regular saunas, and they go hot, cold, hot, cold. And they've had some pretty, uh, awesome benefits of that.

Narrator 1:09:50 And so there might be something to that because they're using light.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:09:53 Hmm.

Narrator 1:09:53 Like, dentists are using light now to harden fillings. So, like-

Joe Rogan 1:09:56 Right, right.

Narrator 1:09:56 ... that's, that's pretty new.

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 Yeah. Science.

Narrator 1:09:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 She blinded me with science. Fascinating stuff. It is all very fascinating stuff. But, um, so sauna definitely helps you either way.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:10:08 Yeah. Yeah, and I think, like, I've read some studies on it working at a mitochondrial level. I, I don't know anything about it. I've just-

Joe Rogan 1:10:15 Hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:10:15 ... there's something to it, and it... After about half an hour, it's the only thing that's helped. I've tried, like... I tried everything to get rid of these reactions faster, like detoxification things or mostly just different, weird different sort of detoxification things. And nothing's helped except the sauna.

Joe Rogan 1:10:32 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:10:32 They still last for as long, but they're not as awful.

Joe Rogan 1:10:36 So I was telling you that this guy, um, Kevin Bass, uh, who is a PhD and a scientist, and he, um, contacted me and I contacted him. Put, put on my glasses, so I could see you better. And he... Uh, we went back and forth about this online. Um, and so he sent me a bunch of stuff, uh, what he thinks. Um, and one of them is nutrient deficiency and that, uh, immunosuppression from, uh, nutrient deficiency. And that in... The idea is that maybe in having less nutrients and having less d- d- you, you, your dietary immunosuppression via deficiency might be helping you. Oh, and he said, basically, crazier things have happened and that you reported still having symptoms when you get sick, even on a carnivore diet. And he said that it shows that the carnivore diet is, uh, a symptomatic treatment. It's not because she's removed the offending antigen.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:11:44 What?

Joe Rogan 1:11:45 Yeah. That's what he's saying.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:11:46 I don't even know if I understood all that properly.

Joe Rogan 1:11:48 Hmm. Well, i- this is a very long...

Mikhaila Peterson 1:11:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:51 He, he wrote a very, very long piece on this, and I appreciate that he took the time to do this. Um, one of the things that he's saying is, like, vitamin A, th- that, this, this, that, this diet could be vitamin A deficient, vitamin C deficient. We went over that.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:07 The thing is I have-

Joe Rogan 1:12:07 Vitamin E deficient, vitamin K deficient. Um, so you got your results back. So you, you got tested.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:16 And my vitamin K is-

Joe Rogan 1:12:17 Everything's good?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:18 ... is normal. Vitamin A is normal. Normal, like above it says anything above 30 is okay for vitamin K2. Mine's 40. Everything above 70 is okay for vitamin A. Mine's 79.

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 Hmm. He said also that a lot of your symptoms, including joint destruction, fatigue, depression, et cetera, can be caused by the drugs that are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:40 Although our rheumatoid arthritis came first, though.

Joe Rogan 1:12:42 Mm-hmm. Right. But then the joint destruction, was that-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:47 But how do you test-

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 ... post... Was that post you being on those medications?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:50 How are those studies even done? How do you test-

Joe Rogan 1:12:52 Th- I mean, I don't-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:12:52 ... if it's the drugs or the arthritis causing it?

Joe Rogan 1:12:55 I don't know. I mean, this is his take on this, is, uh, the potential scenarios. I mean, without rejecting it totally, you were on those drugs far, far earlier-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:05 ... than your joints destroyed, right?

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:06 Yeah. I started the drugs grade four and then grade 11-

Joe Rogan 1:13:11 Hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:12 ... were the replacements.

Joe Rogan 1:13:14 Yeah, um, look, this is a- this whole thing is, uh, a very fascinating subject because people are not having the response that nutritionists would like them to have.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:26 No.

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 Right? Nutritionists would like you guys to be freaking out and falling apart and-

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:30 ... everybody seems to be doing well. Uh, I have a friend of mine who lives in San Diego who's been on the carnivore diet for a while and, you know, he's a Navy SEAL. He said he feels fucking fantastic.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:39 He said... You know, he said he just tried it out to see what it was like and he's never felt better in his whole life. Um...

Mikhaila Peterson 1:13:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 Elimination diets. This is, this is a big thing. Like, getting, getting yourself down to a very small number of foods, you know? And that this seems to have some sort of a large benefit for people as well.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:14:00 Yeah. I mean, I think it would depend on the foods.

Joe Rogan 1:14:03 Yeah, it's like your body not having too much to manage and that people with, uh, autoimmune dis- disorders and diseases, um, having less to manage could put potentially be what- what is benefiting you as well.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:14:19 I don't think it's less though, 'cause if you survived only off of soy, you're not gonna do well.

Joe Rogan 1:14:23 Mm-hmm.

Mikhaila Peterson 1:14:24 I think it depends what you're eating.

Joe Rogan 1:14:25 One of the things that he's saying too is that when you get sick, the systemic inflammation probably opens up your intestinal barrier which causes autoimmune systems to kick in again. And he said