#57 Carrie Brown

Meet Carrie:

PART 1

ABOUT CARRIE:

• I was born in England
• After training to be a pastry chef in London, I traveled around
• I lived in Canada and worked as a pastry chef and I came back to London to teach patisserie for a while
• I moved to America and I decided to do a food blog and it was restaurant reviews
• In that process, I realized that I no longer had any control over my own body. I used to be skinny
• I had this journey and it did not matter what I ate or how much or little I exercised, I could not lose weight
• I went to some doctors because I could not lose weight. There was something wrong. He kept saying it’s thermodynamics: calories in and calories out.
• He said to drink slim fast for 10 days. I could not lose weight 
• Then I went on this journey of trying to discover what was wrong with this
• I came across this book, why we get fat by Gary Taubes
• I read it for 2 days and immediately stopped eating all carbs and started eating protein and fats and it was miraculous, but then I stalled
• Then I ran into a gentleman, and his approach was high in protein, low in fat, non starchy and a lot of non starchy vegetables
• And as a result, I decided to start blogging food recipes
• What brought me to Keto was 5 years ago, I had a mental break down, but I kind of managed it
• I had times when I had anti-depressants, and times that I just lived with it
• I had depression for my whole life that I didn’t even know and I just learned how to live with it
• 5 and a half years ago, I had a mental break down and I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder
• Bipolar disorder used to be called manic depression
• People with Bipolar 1 have big periods of manic behaviors punctuated by shorter and less intense depression
• Bipolar 2 has extended periods of intense depression punctuated by hypomania
• We went through about 5 medications before we found one that I could get up and function to a degree
• 9 months after my mental break down, and despite the fact that I was on a variety of medication to help with my mood stability and mood swings, I became suicidal
• And I remained suicidal for 8 months
• I spent 8 months where every waking minute, my brain was trying to kill me
• I could not function properly
• I spent 8 months wanting to die
• After 8 months, I found a new doctor who asked me to try an anti-seizure medication
• 3 days later, for the first time in my life, I felt joy
• For 6 months, life was glorious and after that I was suicidal again and their response to that was to double the dosage and the joy came back.
• 6 months later, I was suicidal again. So he doubled my does again.
• I can’t spend my life randomly becoming suicidal because I might actually kill myself
• Also, I can’t spend my whole life increasing large doses of this thing that’s messing with my brain
• Nobody asked the critical questions. All they were doing was giving me medications to manage the symptoms and keeping me stable
• I don’t want to be stable; I want to know why I have bipolar but nobody’s asking that question
• And I fired my entire medical team
• Of course, everybody told me that bipolar can’t be cured and nobody knew why I have it and so on, but there has to be a reason
• So, I decided to start with genetics and maybe I could find some answers, but if I don’t, then I will start to unravel food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities or other things
• I was very lucky, because I hit the jackpot with genetics
• The doctor I met on Twitter said he can help me with my bipolar
• He put me on a Ketogenic diet
• About a month after that, I found a naturopath and was armed with all these tests
• By the time that I came to see her, I had been Keto for 6 weeks 
• We looked at my food sensitivity test and we took out all the foods that I was sensitive to, which was almost everything, I was left with 9 foods that I can eat
• I ate 9 things for 3 months
• We also discovered I had a massive leaky gut so we started working on cleaning my gut
• I also discovered that I have a massive case of E. coli in my gut that I did not know about
• But the thing that really changed my life was in the DNA
• We discovered that I have a genetic mutation on one of my genes: MTHFR
• One thing is that, I do not have the ability to methylate
• When we ingest B vitamins, they have to be methylated before the before the body could use them and since I cannot methylate, I have deficiency in B vitamins all my life
• B vitamins number one role is neurotransmitter health and my brain never had the required nutrients in order to function optimally
• We also discovered that I’m genetically intolerant to gluten and so the gluten had been attacking my brain
• If you add all that up, at some point my brain was going to go sideways because of this genetic mutation
• After the food elimination, the key thing we did was taking pre-methylated B vitamins
• I have been completely free from medication ever since and have no symptoms of bipolar
• I did not bring the foods back all at once, but I did start adding a little and then adding more
• Last summer, I randomly became sensitive to lamb
• I ate a lot of lamb and I noticed that my feet and ankles were swelling, but I did not know why
• And it started swelling badly, so that I could not walk
• I then start experimenting. I ate animal protein and pork chops and nothing happened
• I ate lamb chops and it started swelling again, and so I did not eat lamb anymore, so I took a break
• And now, I can eat lambs again
• Detox is still a huge thing for me
• If need to do some detox, start with Epsom salt foot baths and do it before bed
• Then go to Epsom salt baths, then magnesium flake baths, then add baking soda
• If you are new to detoxing and you go so fast, you can make yourself ill. So go slow
• There are also supplements that will help you detox, but the infrared sauna is my favorite

• I was not doing Keto for fat loss or weight loss, I was doing it for my brain – therapeutic keto
• My goal was to get my Ketones has high as possible to help my brain
• I was doing therapeutic keto for my brain
• So I was eating zero carbs, just fatty meat, nuts, eggs
• I don’t overdo now and I don’t eat the same food 3 or 4 days in a row
• I am much more moderate on everything now
• I was kind of doing 3 to 1. For every 1g of protein, 3g of fat
• Now, I am probably about 1 1/2 to 1
• Whatever it is that’s wrong with you, there’s hope
• My main focus is always going to be mental health
• When I look at the life I have now with the life I had, I just want people to know that there is hope
• I no longer believe that having a mental health issue is a life sentence
• The life I have now is a completely different life to the life I had
• I now creat the life I love
• I had to do a lot of work, but it was worth it

For Carrie’s Part 2 interview, click here!

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