I had a Stroke

According to the CDC: Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a stroke. Every 3.5 minutes, someone dies of a stroke. That 1 every 3.5 min was supposed to be me. I am here because of two things. First, I give it to God my Father. He clearly has more work for me to accomplish. Second is the carnivore lifestyle in which I was deeply rooted at the time.

Based on your general knowledge about obesity, heart disease, strokes, cancer, and all that jazz, if I showed you several photos of me, can you pick out the person I was just prior to the stroke? Here goes…no cheating. Which one of the photos below represented me just before the stroke? From left to right, 254lbs, 248lbs, 245lbs, 174lbs.

If you guessed the runner on the far right, go directly to the head of the class. The timeline: Nov 2018 through June 2019, I was a very active person. In August, I hurt myself (more in a bit) so I stepped way back from activity. However, until then, I was a marathon runner, swimmer, and cyclist, and ran three 5k’s a week (my own mixed with sponsored weekend events). Going through expensive running shoes nearly monthly, it’s no stretch to say I ran 25+ miles every 5-8 days. I used to joke about the runner life, and I learned why running was so awesome. But I wasn’t always this way. In fact, my heaviest was in the 250s when I lived in Alabama until 2015, the home of the tastiest and deadliest comfort food on the planet. That’s shown on the far left of the above photo. Just so you can relate to the rest of my story and not have to scroll back up, the middle two photos represent me about a year after the stroke, with the “guy in the tie” a photo of me at my sister-in-law’s wedding in May 2022.

My mother passed, and I got so heavy again because I turned to drinking bourbon with my stepfather, and eating carbs as per my usual. I remained this way until Summer 2022 when I finally stared at myself in the mirror long enough and got mad.

I live on the Florida East Coast and spend my spare hours on the beach, in the seawater, windsurfing, and mild wave surfing (It’s pretty difficult). My family and I were avid boaters and swimmers. With this active life, I could literally eat 10,000+ calories per day and lose weight overnight. But eating anything and everything didn’t mean I was doing right by my body. I had taken 4 months off from running and stopped Crossfit because I felt like I was destroying my body. In fact, while racing my daughter on the beach without stretching first, I managed to strain my Gastrocnemius muscle. I was on the verge of a muscle tear, so I was sidelined for months because of that alone. Compare this to an Achilles tendon tear, and you’ll understand the severity and why I was sidelined. I gained about 40 lbs and felt every ounce of it. This was a pretty rough summer, because my body was not getting the physical activity it was used to, and I hadn’t really changed my way of eating. Although I was consuming 3000+ calories a day, I wasn’t burning them off, so the fat began to store in my body. I knew it was time for a change so I could get back to my normal activity.

I had always heard “health begins at the plate,” and I couldn’t move like I used to, so it was time to put this statement to the test. Carnivore seemed sustainable, and it worked for my 51yr old friend who was not active, so why not give it a try? September 2019, off I went down the carnivore path on the advice of my friend. I spent the next 3 months eating no more than 5g of carbs a day. My typical daily intake was steak, eggs, bacon, butter, chicken, avocado, cheese (much cheese), fish, shrimp, scallops wrapped with bacon, and burgers. Along with the burgers, my condiments included Duke’s mayo, mustard, and Heinz ketchup, however, the times I used condiments were rare at best. I’d say no more than a tbsp of anything except butter or mustard. At the time, I had no knowledge of seed oil damage, hence that wasn’t part of my eliminated foods. More later. I was in the healthiest feeling of my life at 49 and headed into my 5th decade on this planet feeling unstoppable.

On Dec 5, 2019, I was to hop a DC-3 bound for Haiti in support of our church mission to help those affected by Hurricane Dorian. On Dec 2, I went to a doc in the box for what felt like a sinus infection. After arguing that I didn’t want to take a steroid, I was instructed it would be “Take the Methylprednisolone or face dire illness at 8000 feet over the Atlantic, 175 miles from a good hospital if you survive.” 15hrs after taking the steroid Methylprednisolone, there I was, on a Tuesday morning, face down in my kitchen, and couldn’t move. That was after the first 4 pills of the first 7 part dose. My fiance rushed me to the hospital (against my will because I was 100% sure this was food poisoning) and yet there I was, faced with either a brain tumor or a stroke…they weren’t yet sure what. A few hours later, I showed positive for a stroke. But mind you, the stroke I had was unlike the standard one. It was in my brainstem, where there is zero room for swelling from a clot (less than a half inch of space). When the clot enters the vein and blocks, it swells, cutting off the blood supply to my brain, and I’m supposed to be dead before gravity drags me to the floor. This is a 1 in 3 million survival of a stroke (not one in 3 million people…one in 3 million strokes) and one that none of my doctors in that hospital had ever seen someone survive. I was told quite emphatically that I should have been dead.

My Indian doctor (in the hospital), while very good at what he does, was immediately skeptical of my dietary intake. He suggested eating meat only was unwise and that red meat especially was wrong (he is Hindu). He insisted that I should be eating plant-based and that I needed to immediately watch “The Game Changers” documentary. Now listen, I like a good documentary as well as the next, but when you realize that particular film is propaganda to buy into a plant (soy) based life, you quickly understand the notion of “follow the money, and you’ll find the science.” Might seem a broad stroke to say what I just did, but the producer of that docu is James Cameron, who along with his wife, are both vegan and own several million dollars of plant-based, mostly soy, farms. Recognize the name? He directed Titanic. Ok, so now, do you see why I say propaganda? He wants you to believe eating his soy-based offerings are the key to your health.

Let me emphasize that I don’t hold any ill will toward the Camerons. They’re very kind people, he is very talented, and he is a businessman. He has a lifestyle he believes in, and the ability to profit from it. Just as he believes in that, I believe the opposite. This doesn’t make either one of us bad people. We are merely different.

I suggested to my doctor that if the man owned chicken farms, my doc himself would be clucking. He didn’t like that response. But what can I say? I apparently defied all odds because he said himself, I should have been dead before I hit the floor. As he stood alongside 3 other white coats trying to figure out what happened to me, he told me there’s a stroke every 4 min in America alone, and 1 in 4 is fatal…the one I had. So they were all rightfully very puzzled about my survival. When I replied that I led a virtually carb-free life, it seemed I sucked all the intelligence out of them. Preposterous! It’s impossible to get all my nutrients from meat alone they said. Yet there I was, staring them in the eyes from my own half-opened ones. They even “broke protocol” and let my wife sleep in the bed with me that first night because I surely wouldn’t make it to the next morning. Granted, surviving something like a brain stem stroke is a big deal, and apparently, it had these folks stumped. But the fact remains, there I was. So it is plausible my lifestyle had something great to do with surviving the stroke. I am compelled to tell you that I was also growing skeptical of the lifestyle because I have always felt doctors should know what they’re talking about. After all, it was me who changed my diet months ago. 49 years, and no stroke, so surely I caused this, right? As I dug deeper, inquiring of some very well-known doctors in the carnivore space, I was reminded it was this lifestyle that saved me. I have a family member who to this day is fully convinced that carnivore nearly killed me. Yet she has no problem taking an injection to curb her appetite, and still eats harmful foods. Funny how people are so trusting of injections of all sorts, ready to accept any side effect, yet when they hear of a natural path to health, they become great skeptics and researchers. This is quite common and will remain so forever, unfortunately.