Hi,

I am wondering how people keep folate at a normal level on the lion diet. I've been on it for 3 years and my bloodwork indicated low folate, but I ignored it thinking it may be similar to Vitamin C situation. It worked reasonably well until this past June when I first noticed severe and worsening heartburn. Then I noticed my heart racing during mild physical activity. Long story short, I developed severe anemia with hemoglobin at 80, liquid in the lungs, developing heart failure.

I read some stats and understood it was inevitable due to very low folate content in beef muscle meat. One would have to eat a minimum of 150g of beef liver every single day, not occasionally, to get the daily norm. And that might result in copper toxicity, I guess.

So is the lion diet really not viable long term or am I perhaps genetically incapable to somehow preserve folate while others can?

Cheers,

Vini

Welcome Vini.

This is interesting because this is the first time I’ve heard of anyone being on a carnivore diet having a folate or vitamin B deficiency. Especially when eating nothing but red meats.

It appears to me that you may have a unique situation within your body that is causing this. What it may be I wouldn’t know. A couple of things that can cause a folate deficiency are certain medications and alcohol use. Since you have been eating Lion I would assume that alcohol is not in your diet.

It sounds to me like you may need to stop eating Lion and possibly consider adding a few things to your diet if they don’t affect you in other ways. Eggs would be my first choice to add back in followed by liver of some sort with chicken being the mildest. Next would be avocado even though I can’t stand them but they do have a fairly healthy fat. Last would be nuts or legumes such as peanuts and leafy green vegetables. Now I can only speak for myself but before I would start eating nuts, peanuts or vegetables I’d start taking a folate supplement.

We lost a granddaughter at birth to a folate deficiency in her mother so ever since then my daughter has taken folic acid to supplement her diet and has since had three healthy children.

Folate deficiency can be very serious and you really need to do something about it soon as it can lead to other issues in your body both physically and mentally.

I hope this helps and let us know what you decide to do and how it works out for you.