My Thoughts on Dr Jordan Peterson and His Current Health Situation
I begin by expressing my sincere sympathy and indeed empathy for what Dr Peterson is going through. I would also add that I admire him greatly for his work, intelligence and his heart.
When I first heard that Dr Peterson had adopted an all meat diet I had already listened to a number of his lectures and had gained insights from all of them.
I remember reading a headline that Mikhaila Peterson https://mikhailapeterson.com/ had revealed on a Joe Rogan podcast that both she and her father had started eating nothing but meat for health reasons. I was shocked. I had never heard of such a thing.
Plus it was shortly after I had gone through some concerning issues with my heart and through personal research had discovered Dr Robert Morse, a naturopath in Florida who advocates a diet of fruit. More about Dr Morse later.
I am not qualified in the least to defend the long term health benefits of a diet based on nothing but meat or a diet based on nothing but fruit in any academic way. But I believe that I am qualified to at least opine based upon my personal experience and dare I say critical thinking ability.
I have read that Hippocrates wrote something like, “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food”.
Even if he didn’t it still rings true to me.
After the heart thing sent me to the emergency room and the doctors put me on five different medications that were making me feel like crap I got serious about natural stuff. Within the first week I had found and switched to natural alternatives for every medication that they had me on and I started feeling better right away.
At the one follow up visit and the last time I saw a western medical doctor I was honest and told the doctor that I had stopped taking the medicine and replaced them with natural alternatives. After she made it clear that she felt I was being foolish and never asked about the herbs that I was ingesting, I realized that what I had already pretty much figured out about our modern medical establishment was correct. It can save your life in an emergency. It can keep you alive. But it doesn’t want you to get well or stay well. There’s no money in that.
Bottom line is that I got serious about what I ate and the results were amazing.
Am I eating nothing but fruit these days? No. I am probably around 75 to 80%. I am not a fanatic and I cheat occasionally.
I don’t eat meat or dairy so I guess that makes me vegan. My chiropractor told me that I was sensitive to gluten so I do my best to avoid it. I make my own bread for a slice of avocado toast in the mornings and take some supplements and vitamins. The heart problem is a thing of the past. And at 63, considering the way I have treated my body, I’m in pretty good shape. I feel better than I have in decades.
What I am saying is that the changes that I have made in my diet and lifestyle have been effective in very significantly reducing what ailed me both physically and mentally.
Am I suggesting that the scientists who discovered that eating a pure meat diet was effective in reducing the symptoms of and or curing an autoimmune disease or the doctors who recommended that Dr Peterson adopt it are wrong? Hell no. I would assume that they know what they are doing. I assume that the diet acts like a medicine would in a way.
I don’t know a thing about the science but I have read, and it makes perfect sense to me that while you would like a medicine to simply affect the part of the body that is creating the problem. That is not what happens. A heart medicine has to travel through your entire system. Can it do so without having an effect on parts of the body that have nothing to do with the heart. No. Simple as that.
The diet that was prescribed to Dr Peterson as a remedy for the autoimmune disease that he was suffering from had to affect his entire system. Just the same way that if he were taking a medication on a regular basis.
But what are the contraindications of that diet? Has it been studied in combination with benzodiazepine?
If this were a real scholarly article. I suppose I would have had to research how many cultures in the world live on nothing but meat and just how well that works out for them. But I am not going to do that. I doubt that I would find anything that would convince myself or anyone else one way or the other.
Here’s where the critical thinking part comes in.
I know that a gear head could mix up some fuel or hook up a nitrous oxide bottle that could really increase the acceleration rate or speed of his engine but at what cost? Doesn’t that “diet” of super duper fuel cause a little extra heat? A little extra wear and tear?
While I can understand using diet to control a disease I cannot understand sacrificing one’s whole body to do so. And I believe that trying to live and thrive on nothing but meat is something that our bodies are not designed to do. And expecting a patient to react to a medicine such as a tranquilizer in a textbook fashion while his body is in the midst of such trauma doesn’t seem reasonable.
I am reminded of a Paul Simon song from my youth “Run That Body Down”. One of the lines went like this ;
“Paul, you better look around
How long you think that you can
Run that body down?
How many nights you think that you can
Do what you been doin'
Who you foolin?"
I am not claiming that being vegan is healthier. Not the point.
What I am saying is that adopting an all meat diet to treat a single disease without fully investigating all the other options seems like it goes against common sense.
Back to Dr Morse. https://highergroundhealing.ca/a-tribute-to-dr-morse/
These are his words.
“Once called omnivores by many, humans are actually frugivores. Man’s diet should be predominantly fruits vegetables, instead of dead animals, their milk, and dormant foods (grains & beans). Because of the type of foods and chemicals man has been (and is) consuming, humans have created a state of toxicity, genetic weakness, decay and degeneration of cells never before seen in any species.”
When I first heard that, it resonated with me. Man didn’t evolve roaming the forests and jungles prowling for food to kill and eat. Man was the food and we were swinging around in the trees. Where the fruit grows.
I have no way of knowing whether or not Dr Peterson has returned to a more healthy diet as a result of his recent crisis. I can only hope that the Russian doctors who saved him have set him on a more healthy path.
There is no reason to believe that his beautiful daughter Mikhaila has given up her meat only diet. Especially since it has reportedly brought her so much relief from her ailments.
I pray that either I and people like Dr Morse are entirely wrong about this or that she gets lucky and never has a problem. But mostly I just hope she is introduced to an alternate way of thinking about how to heal herself.
One that makes sense.
Just my two cents.