Blood Tests and Other Tests on the Lion Diet

First off, doing in-depth testing can lead you down a road of too much information and too many problems you could potentially solve, and it can distract from what can fix you now, which is diet. You don’t want to end up on a bunch of supplements that are not only not helping but possibly contributing to any symptoms you’re experiencing. So, get your tests done with a grain of salt.

However, if you have been on the diet for more than 6 months and your symptoms are still here then you should get testing done.

You should also get testing done at least once even if you’re feeling good so you can see if there’s a massive problem that could be your root cause, or have a baseline of health for when/if you get sick again. More data is generally helpful IF it doesn’t make you go down rabbit holes. I have been down many.

VITAMIN TESTING: you can just go to a walk in clinic or your GP and ask for regular blood work plus vitamin C, Bs (plus folate), and Vitamin D. That’s cheap and will at least give you the bare minimum for vitamin testing.

IN-DEPTH VITAMIN/MICRONUTRIENT TESTING: https://www.spectracell.com/micronutrient-test-panel

This needs to be requested through a doctor. It’s pricey but if you’re suffering while on the diet, get it done. Take the results with a grain of salt.

WHAT TO DO WITH THOSE RESULTS:

If you have a severe vitamin deficiency, supplement. Low folate and low vitamin c seem to be somewhat common in the carnivore community and normally don’t cause symptoms but honestly, this diet is new and I think you should supplement if you’re low. Vitamin IVs and shots are what I’ve done for low vitamin D and general infusions and they never seem to cause flare ups. Vitamin C powder that’s pure is rarely safe so reintroduce it carefully. Too much can cause diarrhea. Supplements can be tricky, I’ve tried supplements that cause insomnia even if they’re pure (zinc for instance). So introduce any vitamin supplements like you’re introducing a new food and find ones that don’t have extra fillers.

STOOL TESTING: https://www.gdx.net/products/gi-effects – this is much better than any stool testing your GP is going to suggest.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR RESULTS: depends on the results. If you have a massive overgrowth, even antibiotics may be appropriate. If things are only a bit off, you can use diet to treat your symptoms and retest later. If you want to try probiotics – try low histamine probiotics BUT these can also cause autoimmune flare ups in people so.. honestly it depends on the results. A lot of dysbiotic microbiomes can be controlled by diet but not all (c. diff, hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria). Good luck.

MOLD: Make ABSOLUTELY sure you haven’t been exposed to water damage or mold. This can flare symptoms badly and cause lasting issues. If you’re in an area that smells musty, GTFO NOW. You can work with a CIRS practitioner to do bloodwork that tests for an immune response to mold. I’ll post more about that soon, and update this post about my results here.

Here’s a useful CIRS resource: https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/shopping/lab-work/chronic-inflammatory-response-syndrome-cirs-testing

What you can do now though is do an ERMI test on your environment: https://www.envirobiomics.com/product/ermi/?v=7516fd43adaa

FOOD REINTRODUCTIONS:

When you reintroduce foods, hands down the best way to judge how you tolerate them is by reintroducing a SMALL amount and then waiting a few days then doing that again. It’s a slow process but no blood test is going to pinpoint your body’s reaction to food. That being said, if you reintroduce foods and it’s going well and you’ve varied your diet quite a bit and start not feeling as good, this test might tell you which food is causing issues. It only identifies IgG and IgE reactions so it’s not useful for all immune responses but I thought it was pretty spot on for me before I went to the lion diet: https://www.gdx.net/products/food-sensitivity

To conclude:

Again, more data is good to have but can also lead to paranoia and just lead you in the wrong direction in general. So, take everything with a grain of salt. Sometimes there’s only one issue (cough mold cough) and all of your vitamins, hormones, and immune markers are off. It’s not multiple problems, it’s mold, but the tests will all point to multiple issues. So just be wise gathering data because just because there are multiple things wrong, doesn’t mean that they’re not caused by the same problem. It’s the problem you need to focus on.