 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Depression 2 Expression. My name is Scott, as you know, and we have a guest on the channel. Michaela Peterson. This has been a collaboration I've wanted to do for a long time. Here's a little clip to show you. She was on the TVO network, The Agenda, with Steve Pakin. Here's a little video right there. There she's with her dad, Jordan Peterson, and they were on that a few times, and I watched that years ago, and then recently came upon it and I said, oh my gosh, she was on there, what was it, 2016? 2016, yeah. 2016. Talking about the new diet she's now on, treating her autoimmune disorder and depression, and this is obviously a mental health channel, so I thought she could come on and talk about her new diet and how it's really treating her mental health in a positive way, and the autoimmune disorder. Did I get that right? Were those the two big things? Those were the two big things. Okay, so Michaela, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. This is exciting. Okay, so I guess starting from the beginning, what's your history with mental illness, with depression, and what was the treatment that really helped so much without going into too much detail because we'll talk about the diet later, but what's the history there? So I was formally diagnosed with depression, summer of grade five, so that makes me, I think, eleven or twelve, and I was not having, I just wasn't happy. I was very unhappy and I guess mostly angry, and I was having nightmares and I was having some like obsessive, compulsive stuff going on, so you know, reorganizing all your books in your bookshelf from like A to Z, and then by author, and then by like type of book, and like late at night as a kid, and that I did did for no reason, so that kind of stuff, and it was not a good time, and dad recognized it as depression because he has it, and it kind of runs in our family, so my grandpa has it, and my great-grandpa had it, and it's just like horrible, severe depression, and he looked at me and thought, okay, she probably has it, so we went to a psychiatrist and they gave me antidepressants, so I was on, I think I started with Prozac, but switched over to Selexa fairly quickly, and that actually helped like a huge amount as a kid. I can remember starting them and then just relaxing, as if I'd been like holding myself in like a rigid position for a really long time, so that helped a lot, and I took those until I was 23, and unfortunately like they helped a lot, but the depression was still there, so obviously it's not a cure, so it got worse as a teenager, so when I was 14, for whatever reason I had this, you know, dip, and my mood took a turn for the worse, and then I upped the antidepressants, and then when I was 18 or 19, it happened again, and I upped the antidepressants, and then by the time I was like 20, 20, yeah, I moved away, went to university, and whatever the antidepressants were doing something, but the depression was so horrible that just wasn't enough, so I tried switching antidepressants, I tried adding on another one, and it just wasn't, you know, compared to not being on antidepressants, it was better, but it was horrible, so that's kind of the background with the experiences with depression, and then I had like a plethora of other health problems, which I'm sure like many people with depression do, and it was like autoimmune problems I had, or severe arthritis enough that my hip and ankle were replaced when I was 17, so like bad times, and then chronic fatigue that hit when I was 14, so the same time when my depression got worse, I got really tired, and like tired passing out, like not passing out, but falling asleep in class, like around 11, and then napping in the afternoon, and I was just napping all the time, and that just got worse and worse and worse, and I had skin issues, and then when I went away to university, I gained weight, and it wasn't like the freshman 15 that everyone gains, it was like the freshman like 35 in a really short amount of time, and so that's also when I was going to the gym more, because I was like, gotta counteract this somehow, I'll just work out more, which did not help, yeah, and then I started looking into food. So yeah, that's a long list of, so autoimmune disorder, what does that really involve as far as symptoms? So the main symptom for the autoimmune disorder I had, so I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and then that diagnosis changed to idiopathic arthritis, so it was just arthritis basically, and so that was joint pain, joint swelling, and joint deterioration, so that was the main symptom for that autoimmune disorder, and then people with autoimmune disorders also generally have a whole bunch of other symptoms that are like minor in comparison, so fatigue is a really common one, having rashes, mouth ulcers, like those kind of things are commonly associated with autoimmune disorders as well, and mood obviously, like that hits a lot of people with autoimmune disorders So you're 23 years old, or not now, but you were 23 years old when you stopped the antidepressants, or when you started to look into diet more? Oh yeah, I definitely did not stop the antidepressants before figuring out the diet, because there were like, I couldn't get off of those things, I tried, I was getting side effects, so I tried tapering them down, and it was just so awful tapering them, like the depression would come in stronger, so I was like, I'm on these forever, I'm never going to stop taking them, I actually started looking into diet because I was starting to get really bad skin problems, so I was getting rashes, I was getting acne, and then one winter, I got something, like my skin stopped healing properly, so I had these like, this is just horrible, it was horrible, I had these sores, like here, here, just around, that wouldn't heal, and I went to see some like, doctors and dermatologists, and they basically said, well it's not bacterial, we don't know what's going on, and I was like, holy shit, like this is really bad, not only is it on my face, and everyone can see, but this is not a good thing, and then it slowly, like this was at Christmas, and then my birthday came around, so that's January 4th, and it slowly healed, and I was like, okay, whoo, don't know what that was about, but whatever, so then I started, I'd been looking into it before trying to figure out my weird skin problems, because I'd also had this thing show up where I got little tiny blisters on my fingers, and I had one person tell me I was a hypochondria, I was like obsessively googling these blisters I was getting, so I said, I'll stop being like, such a hypochondriac, and I was like, I physically have blisters, this is not hypochondria, so anyway, I started looking into rashes and whatever, and I finally found this weird rash I was getting, and it was associated with celiac disease, and it took a lot of googling to find the right rash, and I went through a lot of horrible google pictures, I finally found this celiac rash, so that's celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder where you can't eat gluten, and causes gut damage, and anyway, I did my 23andMe, and it turns out I have the celiac gene, so it was possible, I never actually did the biopsy that confirms it, because I don't want to do that, and there's a very high false negative rate. And for the viewers, 23andMe is what? 23andMe is just a genetic testing you can do, so you basically spit into a vial and send it off, and they decode part of your genome, and show you some of your genes, and give you kind of an overview. Right, and is that like more for health reasons rather than ancestry? They do both. Yeah, they get into the ancestry part, which is really interesting. Did you find out anything with that? Shocking? Oh, we totally did, actually. Your quarter Jamaican? No, I'm not, that would have been more interesting, but what we did figure out was we thought part of my family, my grandpa, so my dad's dad, his parents were Norwegian, but it turns out he's half Scottish, so his dad actually wasn't Norwegian, he was Scottish, so that was, yeah. That's cool. Yeah, so we did figure out some interesting ancestry stuff, but I did see the gene for the celiac, and so I cut out gluten, that was May 2015, because I was like, okay, well what if the arthritis is a celiac disease, because autoimmune diseases can clump up, people can have multiple autoimmune disorders. Right. It was like maybe the arthritis was celiac disease, so I cut out gluten, and it didn't do that much, like my skin issues probably calmed down by 15%, but it didn't really solve very many of my problems, so then in September, my mom brought me to a naturopath, and she'd been trying to bring me to naturopaths for decades, and I'd been like, no, they're just taking advantage of sick people and taking their money and giving them false hope. Right. That was my opinion of naturopaths. Right. I went to a naturopath, and they said, well, try an elimination diet, and they give me this list of foods, and I kind of looked at the list of foods and didn't really make any sense. I didn't know anything about diet at all, I just like, you couldn't eat oranges, but you could eat lemons. I didn't really understand that, and there were just a whole bunch of things I didn't get, so I tried it for about a week, and then it was like it's not doing anything, and I made myself gluten-free, like sugar-free, banana, almond flour muffins, and I had a couple that night, and I woke up in the morning, my wrists were really stiff, and I was like, oh, that's interesting, like maybe it does have something to do with the arthritis, right? But then I had a couple more of the muffins because the muffins were really good, my wrists were that stiff, and then two days later I couldn't walk. My knees were in such bad shape that I couldn't walk, and I was in the grocery store, and my knees locked up, and I was like, whoa. So then I cut out like everything I could cut out, and I went down to chicken and actually, well, it's not as restrictive as I am now, but I was eating rice, chicken, beef, fish, root vegetables, but not potatoes and green vegetables. So I cut out a lot, like no dairy, no gluten, pretty much no grain except for rice. I was still eating eggs at that point. Okay, and this was while you were still on Selexa. Okay, just trying this out. Yeah, I had stopped, so before I realized the gluten thing, I had stopped taking my arthritis medication because I wanted to monitor my flare-ups going gluten-free. So I wasn't taking my arthritis medication, so I was immune suppressants, but I was still taking Adderall, Tylenol-free for the arthritis pain, birth control. I was on antibiotics for my skin, and then antidepressants. I was still on a whole bunch of medication at this time. I also didn't think that the diet had anything to do with depression. I thought maybe I could use it to fix my skin and the arthritis. Right, right. It didn't even occur to me that that could be a diet-related thing. Yeah. So I went on that, and most of my problems got 95% better within a month, and it was like my skin was finally clear. My arthritis wasn't there, and this was like a month after eating, just fairly restrictive, but not like now. And that was the, sorry, that was the elimination diet that the naturopath recommended? No, that was a stricter one. Oh, okay. The one they recommended I tried for a week, and then didn't think it was working. And then when I realized there was something to do with food there, I kind of made up my own and cut some of the foods they had included. Got it. But I didn't really understand why they included. Like I cut out all the fruit. Okay. I'd heard from somebody that, well, we've known since grade two that oranges gave me flare-ups, but we just left it at that, and we're like, that's weird. Yeah. We just won't look further into that. Like, I don't know. So I cut out all the fruit. Anyway, after like a painful trial and error of trying to reintroduce things and getting these flare-ups and having my skin break out and getting like itchy and arthritic in December, so that was in September when I started it, in December, or like late November, I started feeling like my mood was better, and that never happened in the wintertime. It always got worse. Yeah. My mood started getting better, and it got better and better and better, and I was like, you know, okay, this is, this is good. And so I tapered down the antidepressants, which I'd never been able to do, and I went off of them completely, and it was like the best I've ever felt. And so I told Dad, because he has the same depression, and I was like, like, holy shit, what if this is diet? Like, you have to, you have to try something too. Yeah. So that was December. I was off my antidepressants, told him to go on it, he went on it, and then I reintroduced soy, because soy was like one of my favorite foods, and I put soy sauce on everything. Yeah. And I had the worst depressive episode I've ever experienced, like for like a three week period, it came back. And it didn't, it wasn't just like, it wasn't just mood. I ate a whole bunch of the, I made my own miso soup so that it was gluten free and everything. And then I ate a whole bunch of that and tofu and edamame beans, like soy in every form. And then I got a huge stomach ache. I spent like the next hour in the bathroom, and was like, okay, so my body doesn't like soy, fair enough. And then four hours later, I got itchy everywhere. So like, like a allergic reaction itchy. And I was like, okay, you know, whatever. And then the next morning I woke up and it was like, I could feel the depression coming back where it was just like a cloud of doom came in. And I like stood in the shower and cried and was like, okay, this whole food thing was just me being hopeful. Like, obviously, it's nothing. And then it just got worse and worse and worse for like the next week. It was just horrible. But like part of me, the logical part of me was like, well, the arthritis did lift. It's never lifted in my entire life. Like, and then for absolutely no reason, other than the fact that I ate all this soy, it's back like hell the next day. It was like this, this is probably food, but it was really hard to convince myself that that was true. Anyway, for the next year, I basically went up and down, trying to reintroduce foods, having these horrible reactions, you know, getting better, trying to reintroduce another food, horrible reaction, getting better. Yeah. So that's been my experience with food. Okay. Is it on? Is it working? Oh yeah, thank God. You can do everything. Come back Sunday. So 2016, yeah. So I'd done the previous TVO thing where I'd gone on and said, you know, antidepressants were God's end, which they were. Right. And then I went and then it was like, holy shit, maybe diet has something to do with it. So I went back on and that was February and that was when I tried to reintroduce way. So I was doing way better then than I had been in the previous video, but I was still not doing particularly well because I was in one of these stupid reactions. Right. So that was, yeah, 2016. And then I spent most of 2016 trying to reintroduce other foods because like you miss eating foods. So, you know, I tried to reintroduce all my favorite foods like soy was first, sugar. Yeah. Cheese. And then I tried just whey protein because I was like, that would be easy in the morning. And then I don't have to cook all the time because I was just cooking all the time. Right. And I was used to eating out all the time. So that was 2016 and then. So, sorry, with the experimentation, say you introduced cheese, how do you know that it's, how long of a time period before you're like, nope, can it, can eat cheese because my, you know, depression came back or my arthritis is back. Is that within the 24 hours that you know? It depends. So if you know within 24 hours, it's going to be a nasty reaction. So like the soy, I knew then like I knew that night, that was bad. Cheese, yeah, cheese, I, well, after not eating dairy for a month, I lost my lactose tolerance. So I got this huge stomach ache, felt like I was going to die. And then this was, I tried to reintroduce cheese when I was still on antidepressants. So in like October, it was one of the first ones. And I spent, I was like crying the next day, which now I realized was because my depression worsened, but I thought it was just because I realized I couldn't eat cheese. And I was really upset about not being able to eat cheese. Cheese is yummy. That's what I thought at the time. And now I know it's because the depression worsened. But it depends. If I ate a whole huge quantity of something, which is what I was doing at the beginning, because I was like, Hey, if I can't eat this, might as well go out with a bang. Then I was getting reactions the next day. But then I started getting, testing smaller and smaller amounts, because I realized how sensitive I was. And sometimes it could take up to four days. So that complicates things a lot, which is why I had to space out the reintroduction so far because it was like, I need something. I'd feel okay. And then the next day I'd feel a little worse, but not enough to be noticeable. And it wouldn't really hit until day four. Okay, got it. So it made it complicated and complicated to explain because it sounded like some sort of conspiracy theory. Yeah. And then the arthritis sometimes would take up two a week. Okay. Yeah. So you had to keep a, it was all journaled yet, because if you have a flare up four days later, okay, what did I eat four days before type of thing? Yeah. And it wasn't just that is when the depression came back. So did all the doubts about whether this was a real thing. So every time I'd have a reaction, I'd be like, Oh yeah, I'm just following some weird conspiracy and this has nothing to do with anything. But then it was always the same period of time and it would lift again. And it was a long time. Like these were three week reactions that the depression would come back and then it would go away again. And then it wouldn't come back until I reintroduced something. So I could see the pattern, but it was just so hard to believe that it was good. I kept a journal. Right, right. And geez, three weeks of that too. Yeah, it was rough. But it wasn't as rough as thinking that I was stuck with that forever. Okay. There was still, you know, I would count down like the days and then I, you know, it would get better. Yeah. So it and I was less tired, like my fatigue had gone away. So that was a huge thing and my skin was better than it had been. So there were benefits. And the depression was going like this instead of just solidly. So right. But if we if we rewind a bit because that's a lot of work. Yeah, that is a lot of work. And was the first motive for you to do this? Was that because of the skin part when you first looked into this, right? Yeah. But then just minor improvements kept you going and experimenting throughout the next, you know, year and a bit. Wow. Because that's so much. I'm saying it's incredible. It's so much effort, though, like what kept you wanting to do more research and keep this journal and introduce food? It was skin like purely looks based. Yeah. It was like, I was like, I can, you know, maybe I can handle severe depression and a whole bunch of medication and maybe I can handle an autoimmune disorder, but fricking my skin too. Like I can't do those three things. Oh, yeah. And the chronic fatigue, like I can handle, I can't do four. Yeah. I can do three things I can't handle for. Right. Like I can't do it. It's too much. I have to fix the skin thing or like it was just emotionally and physically, it was too much for me to handle. Okay. Like I have to fix one of these. Yeah. So that started me going, but then when I realized maybe the celiac disease, maybe that was causing the arthritis. I mean, obviously you want to get rid of the arthritis. Yeah. That's just, that was like a huge bonus on top of the improved skin then. And you're just like, let's follow this trail and see how far it goes. Yeah. And it didn't, I mean, I didn't even expect the depression to have anything to do with it. Just randomly happened November. So it was almost like seven months after I stopped eating gluten. Oh my gosh, we're all set a battery. I fully charged that baby. I hope that didn't, if that cut out, I'm sorry. In regards to the diet that you're on now, I don't even know, do you even call it a diet anymore? It's really just a lifestyle of so, so what you're not up to date. The secret I'm not up to date in this. I'm actually only eating meat. Yeah, that's kind of the face I was expecting. Hold on, hold on. So I'll explain a little bit behind that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I had this original elimination diet and it was pretty much greens, sweet potatoes, apples, pears and meat and coconut oil, like apple cider vinegar. It was very limited, but it was still like, well, very well rounded compared to just eating meat. And I was doing really well on that. And then I got pregnant and something changed and it stopped working as well. So I was still doing better than I was pre diet, but I wasn't at that like my depression is gone like it was. And it took me almost a year to figure out what was going on because that diet had been working. And then, you know, step away from that for a bit. So I had put dad on this diet, which was the same, you know, sweet potatoes, greens, meat. That's about it. And he lost a whole bunch of weight, lost like 50 pounds in the first year. And he'd been trying to lose weight for a while. Okay. I mean, I have people being like, that's not healthy. But yeah, he's about he's like out of normal. Exactly. But it was just fast. And it was, I guess it was kind of scary for us too, because it was fast. Um, so he lost a whole bunch of weight. He stopped napping. He had some psoriasis that cleared up. And his, I would say his depression lessened, but it didn't go away. And the anxiety didn't go away fully. And for some reason, it just didn't go away fully for him. It helped. But not like it helped my mood. So anyway, we'll leave that be. So then this diet stopped working for me. And I started cutting out more and more and more things. And I was eating more and more meat. Because I knew, I don't know how I knew. It's like I can't be allergic to chicken. I don't know. Yeah. Um, um, so then in like frustration in December, I googled like allergic to everything, which is something I'd googled multiple times before. And I came across this lady who had been diagnosed with Lyme disease like 20 years ago. And the only thing she was eating was meat. And she could control her Lyme disease by only eating meat. And the reason I hadn't tried that before was because I thought it was going to die of scurvy like in the first month. Right. So I just, I didn't try it. But I saw that she had only been eating meat for like 18 years and she was fine. Yeah. 18 years. Um, and then I thought, okay, screw it. Like I'm not, I just got a taste of what not having depression was like. I'm not going back into it. Right. If I hadn't had the taste, it would have been okay, I guess. But like I knew what that was like. So I needed to, anyway, I, so I stopped eating everything other than meat December. December. Okay. 2016 December. No. Or sorry, 2017. Sorry. 2017 December. Okay. So this is fairly, fairly fresh. Okay. And, um, when you say only eating meat, I mean water, sparkling water, salt. Okay. Yeah. Elite salt. Yeah. Um, and beef. I'm eating beef. I was eating chicken before. I'm not anymore. And fish? No. No fish. Just beef. I think beef makes me feel the best. Okay. I know how strange it sounds, but it's working. There's a lot of good stuff in beef. Apparently. That's a very scientific answer. There's a lot of good stuff in beef. There's a lot of good stuff in beef. Okay. But you've gone through that experimentation of fish and then you did chicken and pork. No. Um, so I always stayed away from pork. I stopped eating pork in high school because I felt bad about the pigs. Pigs. Yeah. So I stopped eating pork in high school. Okay. And then dad did some food sensitivity tests and pork showed up high on his. So I was also a little, it didn't show up high on mine, but I also hadn't really been eating it. So I was a little wary of pork anyway. So I just didn't bother with pork. Okay. So strictly beef. Strictly beef. Now, um, please check out Michaela's Instagram. Great stories if you're looking for some sweet beef recipes. Um, but so on a breakfast, do you do three meals a day, eat three meals a day? Okay. So I'm looking at your Instagram and you're cooking up a steak for breakfast. So what does your, what, what kind of does your daily intake of meat look like? So I ribeye is what I like generally like the best, which I'm pretty sure most people like the best. So, uh, and it's really fast in the morning. So I'll fry one of those in the morning. Um, and then I could just eat ribeye all the time, but it's expensive. So we have ribs, uh, hamburger, roasts, and then I make jerky on Saturdays so that I have like something easy to grab right all the time. Yeah. And, um, as far as like hunger and cravings of other foods, nothing, nothing, nothing. I show you some sour keys I have here. You don't want sour keys. Sour patch? Like I always really liked sour patch, but no. So I had cravings on the first elimination diet I did. Yeah. I, the cravings were way less than what I used to just get normally. Like before any diets, I was hungry all the time, even if I had just eaten, like I was hungry all the time. So I used to have cravings all the time then. So even with the first elimination diet, my cravings went down, but they never went away. I'd say with all meat, they're virtually gone unless I go out and have a couple of drinks. That's like, that's the cheating thing I'll do sometimes. That's the human condition right there. Oh yeah. And then I'll get cravings the next day. Oh, the next day, not while you're drunk. No. And I mean the consequences to cheating are so high for me that I don't like, there isn't an option. Right. Cost benefits. I'm not spending a month arthritic and depressed. For one, for one Twinkie. No, thank you. For one Twinkie. Not worth it. No. Not worth it. No. Okay. So that is the diet. That is simple time consuming though or no? Not at all. Not compared to cooking like before. I mean, even so a steak that's like 15 minutes, right? Right. Frying it on the barbecue. It's even easier. Oh, I don't have a barbecue right now. Ribs, I don't put anything on them. You just put them in the oven and you take them out. Like it's way easier than even just eliminating the salad that I had been eating. Save a little bunch of time because I don't have to chop anything. It's really easy. Okay. So there's definitely other people in the world that do this. Yeah. So this is the other interesting thing. Okay. Well, first I'll tell you my mom went on it right away because she has arthritic knees. There's not like an autoimmune disorder like what I had, but osteoarthritis and her knees and her hands and she hadn't been able like she'd been on the diet. I had put forth the first elimination diet and it hadn't eliminated symptoms. So she went on. I'll meet a couple weeks after I did and her arthritis cleared up. She went skiing in March and she hasn't skied in like seven or eight years. She's going hiking and Croatian next week. Yeah. So her arthritis cleared up and then last week, no, 10 or 11 days ago, I put dad on the diet because the elimination diet just hadn't been. He was down. He cut out the sweet potatoes because we realized they were for whatever reason, maybe too much sugar or something. They were making the depression worse. So he was eating meat and salad and I said, you know, honestly, it's not like we're eating foods that are super, meat's fun to eat. Everything's fun to eat, but it's not like we're eating pizza or something that you're cutting out. What's the difference between eating meat and salad and just eating meat? And there is a difference, but I was like, just give it a try. Maybe it'll clear up the last of your anxiety because he was having horrible anxiety in the mornings and just in general, and he was fairly volatile. And so he went on it and he feels significantly better and it only took him a couple of days to start feeling better. And he started that 11 days, you said 11, 10, 11 days ago. And from, you know, a few days he felt better and now he's getting better and better. Better and better. Yesterday. And just beef, sorry. Oh no. He's eating chicken and fish and beef. Okay. Yeah. No, and but no veggies or anything else. So just the meat part, but the fish and okay. And he feels better and he's going like, can this really have been the vegetables? Like really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but yeah, he's feeling better and it didn't take him long. But I think the reason it didn't take him long was because he was so close to that already. That's right. But yeah, what do we give it? We're giving science the middle finger here. No, what happened to leafy greens? What happened to omega three, your, your body and brain, especially needing those omega threes or just beef? I don't just beef. I thought that was mostly fish and nuts and everything like that. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I got desperate, right? Because I was like, I seem to be reacting to the salad. So what do I do? If I react to salad and I don't react to beef, am I just going to eat beef if I die? Like, or am I going to die? Like what if, what if I'm just doomed to react to the foods I'm eating? But it turns out you can just cut it out. But there's whole like groups of people, like thousands of people doing this. It's called zero carb. Yes. Yeah. And there are tons and tons of people and obviously it's all, it's mostly anecdotal, but with really good results, especially for people who are really sick, like shocking results. Yeah. So I'm getting some flak online for telling people, maybe you could try it for a bit and see how you feel and then you can try to reintroduce other foods and see how they make you feel, but at least you're at like a baseline. Absolutely. I'm getting some flak for telling people that, but I was really, really horrible shape. Like I had like, you know, multiple surgeries and the depression was just, I wasn't going to make it for very much longer. Yeah. Yeah. How can anyone argue with your testimony, you know, and your own experience and the results? You can't argue with that. Yeah. So I think it's pretty awesome of you to share this and create the blog and show everyone what you've done. Do you have, and so you just moved into your new condo, do you have like a shrine, a cow shrine? I really should. Because cows, that's your shit. Thank God for cows. Thank God for cows, but not the milk. The milk, that's probably bad. No, I have horrible reactions. Oh yeah. It's dairy and gluten are, those are big inflammatory ingredients. Those were the worst, worst. Well, soy was really bad for me. Soy, too. But yeah, on my blog, I recommend like the least you can do for your health is get rid of the gluten and the dairy. And then, you know, if you're not even sure about it, get rid of it for a month, reintroduce it back in and see how you feel. But yeah, those are the two bad ones. So I'm definitely, a lot of people on this zero-carb diet eat just animal products. So they'll eat a dairy, um, yeah, dairy and meat. And that would definitely not work for me. Right. Okay. But they won't do pasta, cookies, crackers, sugar, all of that, all of that stuff. Okay. This could be a simple answer, but since you're doing, you know, this beef only diet and you've completely, oh, sorry. So let's go over this first. You've completely come off of all medications. Oh, yeah. Oh, I haven't been, I haven't been taking medications for quite a while. Like, um, so a year, a year and a half is the last, oh no, that's not true. About a year ago, I started getting seasonal allergies. I'm still allergic to everything. Like, right. The meat diet hasn't cured my allergies. I still experience them. So during the pregnancy, I had just terrible seasonal allergies and I tried to take antihistamines. Turns out, antihistamines have lactose in them. So then they made me depressed. Oh, so now I'm allergic to the outdoors and I was really allergic and I can't take these stupid antihistamines. So that was the last time I took something. So that was a year ago. Okay. But I mean, actual like prescription medication, it's been, it's been quite a while. So yeah, I'm not, I haven't been taking anything. And so that's no medication for arthritis, depression, antidepressants. And so with no Adderall, I've been taking so much Adderall to stay awake. Oh, to stay awake. Yeah, it wasn't, yeah, it was for focus. No, it was for hypersomnia. Okay. There's that new documentary on Netflix called Take Your Pills and it's all about Adderall and college students. Oh yeah. I had no idea it was such a big thing. Oh, really? Not for people like who actually need it for ADHD or ADD, but like just to study. Everyone's taken this stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean it, it's really effective. Like I was taking it to stay awake, but man, can you focus. But it's focused to like a obsessive level. Okay. It's also very useful if you need to clean everything. Right, right. I was just so surprised how many students. Yeah, lots of people, when I went to Concordia, lots of people were taking it to write essays and things. Right, right. So back to the diet though, there's, there's knowing that diet in your case and many others has helped your depression so much and those everything you've experienced mood-wise. Does that make you almost not antifarma, but question that whole business of antidepressants? No. No. The antidepressants, first of all, if you tell anyone that their depression is going to go away if they only eat meat, they're just, that's the end of the conversation, right? No one is going to, you're just going to get laughed out of the room. It's like take the most ridiculous diet you can and say that's how to get rid of your depression. It's really unfortunate because it really works for me. It works for my dad. It works for my husband. He's doing it. Okay. They had severe depression. Okay. There's thousands of people and they're anecdotal, obviously, but it's working for them, but it's ridiculous sounding. So am I antifarma? Like no, because antidepressants helped me. I am a little pissed off that when you go to medical school, they don't teach you anything about nutrition or they tell you, you know, eat your whole grains and like make sure you drink enough milk so your bones stay healthy. Like that was a horrible trigger for the arthritis. Right. That wasn't useful. And I used to just drink. I drank so much milk. I ate so much dairy. It was horrible. It's still the, so on, we're almost out of battery. I hope we don't get cut off. On Michaela's blog, it's like the food pyramids a lie. Yeah. Our kids still taught that food pyramid of whole grains at the bottom and dairy. Yeah. Well, that's a whole Canadian dairy industry thing to say that you still need dairy for healthy bones. Yeah. I had a friend who just went to the doctor and the doctor asked if she was getting enough milk for a calcium and it was like, really? There are other things. Broccoli has so much calcium, spinach. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's strange. So no, I'm not anti-pharma because well, hell, if I hadn't been on all that medication keeping me, you know, half alive, I wouldn't have been able to come to the conclusion that diet would help. Like the Adderall was a godsend for keeping me awake. That being said, if I, you know, if diet had been maybe more looked into originally, I wouldn't have to go on medication. Right. But no, I'm not anti-depressant, anti-anti-depressant. Anti-anti-depressant. They did help you out. They did help me a lot. But I am annoyed that you get laughed at when you mentioned nutrition at a doctor's office. Like, you could at least look into that a little bit more. Right. There was, I did a video, I'll upload it, I'm not sure when, but on the agenda, it was, there was a segment called last week, the science of anti-depressants. And 80% of, on Ontario, 80% of prescriptions for anti-depressants go through a family doctor, not even a psychiatrist. So it's almost like you'd have no time to talk to your family doctor. You have like 15 minutes. They want to do something when someone comes in with distress. They automatically, you know, they have to help, but here's a script. This could make you feel better. It's, it is difficult to ask the questions and analyze diet and give like, kind of go deeper into that. People need to take responsibility if they're able to look into different things like this. Or people need to be told that it's an option. Like, I always assumed, I had people come up to me when I was depressed and say, well, have you looked at diet? And it was just like, you know, fuck you. Like, what do you think I do? Sit around eating candy? And that's causing my horrible depression. Or like, something I'm doing wrong is causing my mental health. That's a, you get, I mean, you get a lot of, you get a lot of that when you're depressed. Like, maybe you don't exercise enough. Yeah, it's like, thanks. Yeah, it's me. And that's what's causing my problems. Right. So I think if we somehow could switch the conversation from diet being something that you're doing wrong, to, you know, some foods may be causing a depressive reaction. Like, that's a different thing. Like if I eat a tiny bit, if I cheat, you know, once, once a week, my depression doesn't go away. Right. But that would, so it's not really something you're doing wrong. It's just people just don't know. I love that. Yeah, it's not putting the blame on the person's suffering saying, you're eating the wrong things. But I hate that you're already suffering. You go to somebody that happened to all the time of the doctors. You go to someone for help and you go, like, these are my horrible symptoms. And they go, Oh, here are three things you're doing wrong. Right, right. Thanks. That's why I came here. Oh my God. Probably sleeping too much. That's right. Eating the wrong foods and not exercising. And if I turned those around, things would be fine. Completely fixed. That's why the mental health and mental illness is so complex. And you're not saying that a meat only diet, if everyone did this, depression cured, like this is a full cure, or are you saying that? Like, I, I don't know. Or are you just advocating? Hey, experiment, try some elimination, like get rid of dairy gluten, see what happens. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So if, if, you know, between me and you, if I were to, to try this meat only solidly for a month, I think you'd see insane benefits. Insane benefits. And I can, like, there's a website called meatheels.com. Okay. And there are anecdotal reports of people going on the carnivore diet, carnivore, zero carb diet. And there are crazy stories on there. And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reports. And there are, and normally I wouldn't believe something like that because it's so strange, but I've experienced it. And my dad has experienced it. Like, his anxiety is gone. And I couldn't get it under control with just eliminating, well, my elimination diet, which was very strict. Yeah. And he never cheated. Right. And he's not, he's not exercising. Like, it's not something else. It's not like some stressor in his life just lifted. It's the diet. Right. So it's not like you weren't, it's not like you weren't meditating and, you know, this is pure diet. Yeah. So the last part before a battery dies, which is such a damn shame. Any other things that you do, other diet was like a huge piece, obviously the biggest, but anything else you do that, that keeps your mind sharp, that keeps you mentally well, that you kind of want to, want to tell people here? Well, so now I would say, okay, yeah, I guess. So like, no, not really, most like it's, it's diet. But if I do end up reacting to something using an infrared sauna really helps me feel better, exercising does give me a boost. So if I do have a reaction, I'll exercise, I'll make sure I'll exercise every day because it gives me a boost or multiple times a day. The infrared sauna helps. What I used to do before when my depression was really awful when I was in university is right. And that helped a lot because then, you know, you get those flares of like, I used to get them anyway, extreme anger where you want to like punch something. I could write until that had calmed down. So that's what I would use. But honestly, I'm in like really good shape now. So I don't, I don't use much. Awesome. And for the last comment, for those watching, many on the channel, I love you all, many have diagnoses, many struggle with depression and anxiety and haven't told anyone. Yeah. And you come on with your dad on TVO years ago and then just two years ago and are really open about how you struggled with depression and, and these physical illnesses as well. Why did you do it? Why, why was it, you know, not easy for you, but any advice to people who are having trouble opening up about these things and not seeking, seeking help? I think it was harder for dad to tell people than it was for me because I'd been telling people for almost my whole life. Dad had a harder time. I think if, if there wasn't so much, I guess stigma is the right word or blaming the person who's depressed for being depressed, that would be easier. But I guess I would say you're not, you're not doing anything wrong, right? You're extremely unfortunate that this has happened to you, but it's not your fault. And it's bad enough to suffer from a mental illness than to also think this is my fault somehow. So about getting help, like, yeah, talk to people. It, it helps and try not to talk to the people that are going to tell you. Right. You need to, you're just lazy and that's why you're depressed. They have all the answers. Some people, yeah. And I guess that's part of depression to expression too. It's like expressing yourself in positive and healthy ways, but there is not a lot of the time one fix all for a lot of people. Like some people writing doesn't do anything for them, right? Exercise didn't do anything for me. Right? See, there you go. It helps. Now I can get a boost from it, but I'm not like, I'm not like I was. Yeah, it didn't help at all. Exactly. So you've been telling people that you started with depression since a very early age, but was that, was that honesty and openness? Was that how you were raised? Like, how did that come more naturally to you? Because some people, it's all internal and they won't tell a soul. Was that kind of what your parents taught you to seek help or to be open with your thinking? Um, how did I get there? Like when I was first diagnosed with arthritis, so that was a grade two. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't want anybody to know. And then in grade seven, I stopped caring for some reason about the arthritis, about the depression. I was just like, I don't know what happened. I guess I just decided, you know, it wasn't my fault. And, and I guess I had told enough people slowly and they hadn't cared that I was like, oh, people generally speaking, and I've had some bad experiences, but generally speaking, don't care. Or they'll say, you know, you'll say, you know, I have, I have this and they'll go, oh, you know, my so-and-so has whatever. So maybe I'm just lucky and didn't get a whole bunch of bad feedback. Maybe it's bad. I'm not entirely sure what it is. I mean, it's not like I opened up to someone and they immediately said, this is your fault. Here are all the things you're doing wrong. And then I was like, Oh, well, I'm not going to tell anyone else about this. Right. So maybe luck. Yeah, to have that that first bit of experience and people not caring as much as you thought they would in a good way. Yeah, yeah. So I would say probably that. I'm not sure. I just didn't care and care. And if people did give me hell, it's just like, fuck you. I generally write, well, I write about what's going on. So for the last, I started when I was on this elimination diet. So I had recipes for, you know, that elimination diet I was on colored greens, you know, broccoli, just different ways to make food that way. So it's a lot different. I'm just eating meat. And the better I feel and the more testimonies I get from people saying, you know, I cut out all the rest of the vegetables and now I feel better. I don't really know what to do because, well, I don't know. It's hard for me not to tell people to give it a try because it made me feel so much better. Yeah. But it's just so out there. Like you get flak from going gluten-free. You get a hell of a lot more flak from being like, don't eat vegetables. Yeah. So anyway, so the blog has that. It has testimonies on there from other people who've had benefits from cutting certain things out of their diet. So there are more and more people who've just gone to meat writing their experience down. Awesome. Yeah. And it has updates about my family. Dad's on there sometime. Yeah. Well, he's everywhere though. He's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. If any of you came to see Dr. Peterson, just YouTube his name and you can probably find a lot of videos. Yeah, for sure. Michaela, thanks so much and everyone take care. Don't forget to subscribe to depression to expression and look at the links below to see more of Michaela. Boom. Cool. Thanks. Well, thanks for having me. That was really interesting. I'm so glad I didn't look at the latest version of it. That is shocking.