The episode features a discussion between Dr. Anthony Chaffee, host of the Plant-Free MD podcast, and his returning guest, Dr. Sarah, who shares updates on her health journey with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Dr. Sarah had previously sought alternative approaches to treat her MS after being unsatisfied with the outcomes offered by standard medical care. Her personal journey involved experimentation with dietary changes after experiencing digestive issues and a strong sense that her problems were dietarily related. Initially trying gluten removal, which helped with diagnosed Hashimoto’s and thyroid issues, she eventually stumbled upon the carnivore diet out of necessity due to worsening digestive problems on a previous protocol. She has been following the carnivore diet for approximately two and a half years, nearing three years at the time of the recording.
Alongside the carnivore diet, Dr. Sarah also began a high-dose vitamin D therapy, specifically the Coinbar protocol, guided by a functional medicine physician. She is currently stable on this protocol and expects to maintain her dose indefinitely. This combined approach was described as having “multiple interventions happening at the same time”. The premise behind the high-dose vitamin D protocol is the understanding that people with autoimmune conditions may have a defect on the vitamin D receptor, requiring extraordinarily high doses to correct a “confused immune system”. Vitamin D is viewed as functioning like a corticosteroid or a hormone in the body and is considered vital to the immune system.
Dr. Sarah reported a gradual and then complete dropping off of her MS symptoms after starting the carnivore diet, which she described as amazing and unforeseen. Physically, her MS was quite bad before these interventions, causing difficulty walking, leg weakness, strange sensory issues often temperature-related (like numbness after a hot shower), optic neuritis, eye symptoms, spasticity, balance and coordination problems, falls, pain, dexterity issues, and stiffness. She noted a “miraculous recovery” which they are seeing replicated in others. One of the most notable and surprising improvements was seen on her MRIs, where spinal cord lesions not only stopped getting worse but actually started getting better, correlating with her symptomatic improvements. Furthermore, she experienced a significant reduction in fatigue, which had been severe and long-standing, going from needing 11 hours of sleep including naps to only 6 hours and feeling awake and alert. Her balance and coordination improved significantly, allowing her to return to dancing. She also noted a substantial increase in her B12 levels after adopting the carnivore diet.
The high-dose vitamin D protocol involves taking significantly more vitamin D than typically recommended, with some people taking hundreds of thousands of International Units (IU) daily; Dr. Sarah takes 78,000 IU a day of D3. The dosage is guided not by vitamin D levels, which her doctor considers unreliable due to being based on population averages, but by pushing parathyroid hormone levels down to a low target range (between 6 and 7). This protocol also requires a very low calcium diet (less than 20-25% of daily value) because high-dose vitamin D drastically increases calcium absorption. They discussed the importance of taking Vitamin K2 (100 micrograms for every 10,000 units of vitamin D) alongside D3 to ensure calcium is directed to hard tissues like bone and teeth and kept out of soft tissues. Dr. Sarah also shared that despite the low-calcium diet prescribed for the vitamin D protocol, her bone density improved as shown by DEXA scans, which she attributed to the vitamin D protocol, K2 from meat, exercise, and the elimination of anti-nutrients from plants in the carnivore diet.
The conversation also included a critique of the standard medical system’s reliance on average-based reference ranges for lab tests like B12, which may indicate “normal” levels that are actually deficient according to science and contribute to chronic illness. They argued that while Western medicine is excellent at diagnostics and acute care, its approach to chronic conditions and treatment is less effective. Instead of focusing solely on drugs to alter physiology, they proposed an approach focused on putting the body in the right position to heal itself by removing insults (like inflammatory foods) and providing necessary nutrients (like optimal levels of B12, vitamin D, etc.). This perspective suggests that many people can heal and reverse conditions, including bone density loss, which is often considered irreversible after a certain age by textbooks. Finally, they touched on the potentially damaging effects of social media on interpersonal relationships and its role in isolating individuals.