Type 2 Diabetes and the Carnivore Diet

What it feels like

You keep a meter in the kitchen drawer. The number is a little higher every visit, and the prescriptions keep piling up: one pill, then two, and then the talk about insulin. You're tired after meals, thirsty at night, and you've been told it's progressive. Many of the people below were exactly there.

Real people, real stories (N=1)

Our thesis

Our thesis: We think type 2 diabetes is largely a mismatch between a carbohydrate-heavy modern diet and a metabolism that evolved without one, so we expect that removing most dietary carbohydrate lowers the glucose and insulin load at the source. The people above describe exactly that direction. This is understudied: there are no carnivore-specific diabetes trials. The only paper cited here is a self-reported survey, so we're making a bet, not citing proof.

The bet

• A directional shift. The stories above come from real people, on camera and in their own words. They are anecdotes, but they point the same way, and we think that's worth taking seriously.
• Lower risk with your doctor in the loop. Eating meat, eggs, salt and water for a set trial period is a reversible experiment. Insulin and sulfonylureas can cause dangerous lows as carbs drop, so doses change with your doctor first. The trial happens with your doctor in the loop, not around them; see the Safety check above for the details.
• Why the research is thin. Randomized trials are built for drugs and are expensive. No one can patent a steak, so the industry has little incentive to fund primal-diet research. A missing trial isn't proof that it works, and it isn't proof that it doesn't.
• The primal lens. The human body was shaped long before refined sugar, seed oils and ultra-processed food existed. We see the modern diet as the uncontrolled experiment, and a meat-based trial as a step back toward the conditions our biology evolved in.

Overview: the condition, holistically

Type 2 diabetes is, at its core, insulin resistance: cells stop responding well to insulin, so blood glucose stays high and the pancreas works harder and harder. Common drivers include excess body fat (especially around the middle and in the liver), family history, inactivity, poor sleep, stress, and a diet heavy in refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed food. It often comes with high blood pressure, fatty liver, sleep apnea and high triglycerides.

Standard care is lifestyle advice plus medication that steps up over time: metformin, other oral drugs (SGLT2 inhibitors, DPP-4 inhibitors, sulfonylureas), GLP-1 drugs, and eventually insulin. Those drugs lower glucose. The advocates below argue that removing the carbohydrate that raises it gets at the cause.

How carnivore is claimed to help

What advocates say, attributed to them:

• Turn off the faucet. Dr. Nelson Vazquez, a family physician, uses a "bathtub" picture with his patients: stop the flow of carbohydrate instead of adding drugs to handle the overflow (from his interview with Dr. Chaffee, chapter "Diabetes Analogy" at 23:09).
• Remove sugar, grains and seed oils, and eat fatty meat. Dr. Ken Berry's five steps (chapters starting at 2:53).
• Lower insulin demand. With almost no dietary carbohydrate, the argument goes, the body needs far less insulin, and insulin sensitivity, weight and blood pressure can improve together.
• Satiety and simplicity. Meat is filling, which advocates say makes the change easier to sustain than counting calories.

Doctors and advocates

• Dr. Ken Berry

  Family physician; lays out diet steps for type 2 diabetes and tells how he reversed his own prediabetes.

• Dr. Shawn Baker

  Carnivore advocate and podcast host; shares a message for people with diabetes and Elaine D's story.

• Dr. Anthony Chaffee

  Host of the Anthony Chaffee MD channel; interviews Dr. Nelson Vazquez about his diabetes and insulin story.

• Dr. Jay Wortman (via Diet Doctor)

  Medical doctor; describes how cutting carbs normalized his own type 2 diabetes blood sugar.

Questions to ask your doctor

Ask: "If I cut carbs, how should we adjust my diabetes medications, and what numbers should I watch?" "Can we recheck my A1C in about 3 months to see if it's working?" Not sure your concerns are being heard? See when to question the advice.

Try it

• Go through the Safety check above with your doctor before you start.
• Log your baseline blood sugar numbers.
• Build simple meals (beef, eggs, butter, salt) with the KC Meatup calculator.
• Find KC butchers, steakhouses and low-carb-friendly clinicians in the directory.

Not medical advice

Personal stories, not medical advice. If you take medication (especially for blood sugar, blood pressure or mood), change your diet with your doctor in the loop.

Related conditions

Sources

Research

• Lennerz BS et al. (2021). Behavioral Characteristics and Self-Reported Health Status among 2029 Adults Consuming a "Carnivore Diet." Current Developments in Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzab133. This is a self-reported online survey, not a controlled trial.

Videos (all verified by oEmbed. Timestamps are confirmed against YouTube auto-captions or YouTube chapters. Quotes are from the auto-captions.)

• Reverse Type 2 Diabetes in 5 Simple Steps (Doctors Won't Tell You This), KenDBerryMD, uploaded 2021-03-16
• How I Reversed Prediabetes and You Can Too, KenDBerryMD, uploaded 2020-08-26
• If you know someone with diabetes, this is an important message!!, Shawn Baker MD, uploaded 2022-03-11
• 🔴 The Carnivore Diet Gave Me My Life Back! | Dr. Nelson Vazquez, Anthony Chaffee MD, uploaded 2024-09-02
• How to reverse type 2 diabetes, Diet Doctor, uploaded 2013-05-30
• 5 Year Carnivore: Reversing Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance, Laura Spath, uploaded 2023-04-26
• Elaine D lost weight and reversed type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure on a carnivore lifestyle, Dr. Shawn Baker Podcast, uploaded 2021-06-10