From Sick & Tired to Thriving: Derek's Health Transformation Using the Carnivore Diet

#008 | What if the foods you thought were healthy were actually making you sick?

For years, Derek Ermatinger struggled with chronic illness, digestive issues, and autoimmune symptoms, bouncing between doctors with no clear answers. It wasn’t until he took his health into his own hands that he finally found relief—through the Carnivore Diet.

In this episode of Healthcare Wayfinders, Derek shares his incredible health transformation, from mystery symptoms and endless frustration to newfound energy, healing, and a completely different way of eating.

🔍 What You’ll Learn:
✅ The long journey to discovering he had celiac disease, Hashimoto’s, and multiple food sensitivities
✅ Why traditional medicine failed him and how functional medicine played a role in his healing
✅ What the Carnivore Diet is and why it worked when nothing else did
✅ Surprising lab test results and how they changed his approach to food and health
✅ How he navigates social situations, family meals, and long-term health goals on Carnivore
✅ Practical tips for anyone struggling with autoimmune issues, food sensitivities, or unexplained chronic symptoms

If you’ve ever felt like your health problems were dismissed or unsolvable, Derek’s story is one you won’t want to miss. Tune in now! 🎙️🔗

Contact the Healthcare Wayfinders Podcast

• Email us at podcast@grassrootslabs.com

Special Thanks to:

• Seth Aten who produces the podcast.
• Grassroots Labs for sponsoring the show.

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Transcript

Zach Aten: [00:00:00] What if the foods that you thought were healthy were actually making you sick? Hey everyone. And welcome back to the Healthcare Wayfinders podcast, where we are routing you to more accessible and cost effective healthcare. I'm Zach Aten. And today's episode is a powerful one. My guest is Derek Ermatinger, a longtime friend of mine. 

Who's been on a relentless quest to understand and heal his body. For years, Derek struggled with mystery symptoms, chronic fatigue and autoimmune issues, bouncing from doctor to doctor with no real answers. Then he did something that changed everything. He completely transformed his diet. In this episode, Derek shares how he went from feeling sick and tired all the time to thriving using an unconventional approach, the carnivore diet. 

We'll dive into how celiac disease and Hashimoto's, Why traditional medicine failed him and what he did instead. What the carnivore diet is and why it worked when nothing else did. What his lab tests revealed after months on this diet. And his [00:01:00] advice for anyone struggling with chronic illness and food sensitivities. 

Derek's story is inspiring, eye opening and packed with practical insights. So whether you're curious about the carnivore diet, battling an autoimmune issue, or just want to hear an incredible health transformation story, this episode is for you. Let's jump in. 

Derek Ermatinger. Hello, my friend. It is good to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the Healthcare Wayfinders podcast. How are you doing tonight? 

Derek Ermatinger: Doing great. Thank you for having me. 

Zach Aten: we we're doing something a little bit different tonight. We're doing this in the evening, after work, after putting the kids to bed. 

So we both have a nice beverage to go along with tonight's session. 

What are you having, Derek? 

Derek Ermatinger: Uh, I have a Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Zach Aten: Very  

Derek Ermatinger: Very fancy, from a box. 

Zach Aten: Yeah. It's great. You know, do you do what you got to do? I've got a, uh, Ancho Reyes Verde with tequila, a little spicy tequila, poblano peppers. I've been really enjoying that recently. 

Derek Ermatinger: Mm. 

Zach Aten: but, [00:02:00] yeah. So this is going to be just really easy tonight. Derek is actually a long time friend of mine and has just done some amazing stuff in his life including really going after health and just living life well. 

And, living healthily and he's had to, manage some things. And I just found his story really inspiring. And I think it's going to be inspiring for all of our friends who are listening. And I think they're going to learn a lot from you, Derek. So I'm super happy and thankful to have you on the podcast. 

So 

thank you. And why don't you start off at just give them a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then we'll jump in. 

Derek Ermatinger: Well, we've known each other for like 14 years now, I think that's right. I moved here in 

2010 from Michigan where we both are in Georgia. So it's been a long journey for me of getting to know my health and figure things out as I grow and [00:03:00] change as an adult over the years. And, I never had great doctors guiding me through the process of, for instance, my brother, he was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple years back. He met with a doctor, they taught him everything, they diagnosed him, pretty easily based on his symptoms, and he had this great coach to just launch him into being healthy and living his best life. I, on the other hand, you Struggled for a long time, not knowing what was going on. Went to doctors, but never really got diagnosed with anything helpful. At 18, the diagnosis was IBS. They just said, well, you've got indigestion and, you know, all these other symptoms, so you just have IBS and do the best you can to manage it. No instructions are in that. But when I think when I really started taking health in my own hands was around 2014 I had a, I think really it's when you get desperate because of pain that you're experiencing in your life and you go, I need to figure this out and the doctors aren't helping me. [00:04:00] And so I decided to just try going gluten free. I had heard of that. And 

so I was like what do I have to lose? Started trying to go 

Zach Aten: that's no bread,  

right?  

Derek Ermatinger: no, so yes, gluten is, wheat, rye, and barley, and Surprisingly enough, all of our food in America is, or almost all of our food is processed and has some level of wheat or cross contamination of wheat in it or other 

gluten contaminants. and I didn't know this at the time, you know, I just decided I'm going to, you know, stop eating it. And I did start to feel better, but over time, I had similar symptoms going on. I found out I had I think this was in about 2014, 15, I had a rash on my arm. And same process, go to the doctors, they couldn't figure it out. They're diagnosing me, not diagnosing me, they're trying to, but they're giving me lots of medications, trying to fix the problem, which, I'm grateful for their help in the process, but none of them could really figure it out. Even a dermatologist who took a biopsy was like we don't really know what it is, we think it's some type of [00:05:00] eczema. And I'll get to what 

it is later in the story, but Those were two moments in 2014 and 15 when I started to really go like I need to figure this out I need to get some help.  

Zach Aten: Like that for you emotionally and mentally? 

Derek Ermatinger: I think it was taxing not only Emotionally just trying to figure out. Okay. I don't know what's wrong and I don't know how to keep these symptoms down but even socially when you have this type of digestive issue, and then you're also trying to avoid gluten, and people don't know what it is. It can hinder, social interactions. Of just trying to go out to eat together, go have a good time, while you need to talk to the server and figure things out. And, I didn't really know how to navigate that at the time, so I just learned as I went. So that was definitely challenging in a lot of ways. And then When I started taking a couple of medications for the rash that had showed up on my arm I reacted to one of them. It was taking an antibiotic Amoxicillin, I believe it was, [00:06:00] and apparently my, I have, my mother's allergic to that as well, which I didn't know at the time.  

Zach Aten: Oh, wow. 

Derek Ermatinger: I reacted to that with a new rash over my entire body. And they, obviously prescribed steroids to help calm it down, and then eventually it went away. But that kind of cycled me into having even more digestive issues, and I wasn't really sure what was going on. it's interesting because being a skinny person, everyone just looks at you and goes, oh, you were so healthy. But in, on the inside, like I can tell that there was a fire going on and I was not healthy and I needed to figure that out. So after getting what felt like more and more sick, I was starting to lose weight, and as a skinny guy, when you lose weight, you get a little alarmed. Saw some doctors, they're like let's go, let's go get you a colonoscopy, endoscopy, all that, just to figure out what's going on here. 

And all that came back inconclusive, which at that point, I'm like, well, what do I do now? And so I ended up actually seeing a functional. [00:07:00] doctor for a little while and they were prescribing lots of supplements and that seemed to help and actually kind of a funny aside story is that rash that I had developed from that antibiotic I had taken, when I started taking these supplements part of their goal was to boost my elimination system in their organs. That rash came back, for just a couple days, and when I talked to the doctor, he said it's called retracing, where your body's actually it was unable to heal through something in the past. And so now that it has the right nutrients or, health or strength in your body to take care of it, now it's taking care of it. 

It's actually eliminating it from your body. So essentially I had those antibiotics hidden in my body somehow still causing issues. and all along I, I'm just trying to figure out like, okay, well, you know, do I just keep taking these? Do I, you know, do I go see more doctors? I'm just. You know do my best trying to figure this out here And so I decided to [00:08:00] keep trust in this doctor and it did go away and I started getting a little bit better but the rash that was on my arm still didn't go away and as I learned more and more about what it means to be gluten free and I started figuring out oh i'm actually sensitive to a thing called cross contamination and so that is where in a lot of the processing facilities, they might have equipment that they process gluten on, and then they'll clean that equipment and then process something else on it that would be technically gluten free. But because there might still be little bits of gluten in there, it contaminates the food, and so some people are sensitive enough to actually react to that. And so I was like, oh, okay, guess I'm probably one of those. 

And I Right. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think it was around this time when I started to feel like you know, I go to the grocery store and I wasn't really sure what I could eat. 

I think that was really A pain point for me of trying to figure out. Okay. What do I do? So I started seeing some more friends that were functional doctors and [00:09:00] following their programs and you know, they would help in some ways but It was always a kind of a I found myself You category of my own, a little bit, until this was about, three years ago, I was seeing another functional doctor. 

I've been through a bunch of them actually. it's just because I, I want to be healthy. Like, I believe that you know, the way that my body was designed was to be healthy and that, you know, sickness and all these, you know, illnesses aren't, aren't my portion, if I could use religious terms there. and so I, I just feel really strongly that, you know, this isn't how God designed me to live and how he designed my body to be. And I feel like I have access to health and whether it comes through him giving it to me or whether it's a doctor, you know, it's, either's great. I feel like either's God. 

Zach Aten: Yeah. 

Derek Ermatinger: and  

Zach Aten: And all of this you were doing, on your own dime, right? Because [00:10:00] insurance doesn't cover functional medicine doctors,  

Derek Ermatinger: insurance kicked in a little bit for things like colonoscopy, endoscopy, but I still had to foot the bill mostly because, you know, you gotta meet your deductible and, you 

know, I was always on the high deductible care plan because I didn't need much help, you know, in the past. I just always kind of dealt with it on my own. So yeah, it became very expensive, um, and that actually was a big pain point for me too because sometimes I felt like, oh, if I could just go see this other functional doctor, I could maybe get some results. Or if I could do this testing, I could get some answers to what's going on here. and let's see, it was, uh, yeah, around three years ago that, uh, started seeing a functional doctor who's a little more on the affordable end. 

And I had found, a, a nice big testing facility who specializes in autoimmune diseases and. You know, we went and got a blood draw and sent it in and came back saying that there's a high probability that [00:11:00] you're a celiac and there's a high probability that you have dermatitis herpetiformis which is a skin condition that some celiacs get. 

I think it's about 1 percent of celiacs. Winner again.  

Zach Aten: Play the  

Derek Ermatinger: yeah, I guess so. Yeah. 

Zach Aten: and just for, just for my knowledge and everybody else's, tell me what, tell me what celiac disease  

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, so celiac disease is, the most sensitive version to gluten intolerance, if you could put it in plain terms in more in depth terms. Your immune system, when it sees gluten in either your bloodstream or your digestive tract, it attacks it like it's a threat to your body. And in doing so, it will damage some of the intestinal wall lining of your digestive system. And a lot of celiacs, if they go undiagnosed for a long time, they're unable to absorb nutrients, and they start losing bone [00:12:00] density. And they're, in your digestive tract you have lots of microvilli on the walls and those can be, like, turned into nubs, where there's not, they don't have long fingers anymore, they can't absorb anything. And having 

celiacs is You know pretty severe you do have to take it seriously and some people more so than others you know because it can shorten your lifespan and you know when I hear things like that i'm like, okay I gotta I want to be healthy for my family I want to be 

there for my kids. 

I don't want to be the the sick dad growing up and so I When I saw this test and I got some more advice I stopped going to restaurants I stopped, eating anything except for certified gluten free things. And, in the gluten free world, if you want to write something that, if you want to write gluten free on your food label, it has to be less than 20 parts per million. But if you go with a certified item, it's, Less than 10 parts per million and there's different certifications. Not all of them are the 10 [00:13:00] parts But it just so happened that anything anytime I eat something that was not certified gluten free I would still react it took about four days for a rash to show up on my arm or on my hand and that would Usually take about a month to go away and I think that just shows like how much my body is actually reacting to it and this is something that I have to take seriously. 

I think sometimes it's easy to downplay it because, you know, it just gets in the way socially, and other people don't understand. But, if you have good friends that care about you, they help you. Like you have done. and so, yeah, it's, that's when I started to see some improvements there.  

Zach Aten: Certified gluten, is that like a specific label that's on the food or how would somebody know  

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah a person, or a food, there's a couple different certifications. There's one called Beyond Celiac, and there's one called, you know, I think it's just certified gluten free, and their organization is called GFCO. org, I think. I didn't [00:14:00] confirm that, or we can confirm that in the notes later. Um, yeah. Those are the two that I really trust, to be, you know, less than 10 parts per million and to not react. and in this whole, you know, journey, I've kind of hopped throughout my timeline here. But, uh, I also, you know, when you have an autoimmune disease, unfortunately you tend to collect other autoimmune diseases. And in I think it was 2021, I had started a new job and it was quite a challenging job and I found myself just stressed out a lot and running out of energy and getting home from a work day just totally zonked. And everything I had learned up until that point, I had like, okay, well, I'm trying my best to go gluten free. 

This is before I stopped going to restaurants and stuff. I was like, I, I need to figure out what's going on in my body. And so that's when I actually, you were starting grassroots labs and I was like, okay, I just need to go get a test and I'm going to go test my [00:15:00] thyroid because I know that can deal with low energy, and brain fog and I didn't have any weight gain, but that can be a symptom of low thyroid hormone. And I think I had some other symptoms going on as well. And sure enough, I went and got tested. Results came back saying your TSH, which is your thyroid stimulating hormone, was really high. I think it was at a 10 in the reference ranges, like 1 to 4 and a half, I think, or maybe 5. 

Zach Aten: Wow. 

Derek Ermatinger: And so, not only did I see that my TSH was high, my thyroid antibodies were high, because I also tested those. and so that indicated that I had, Hashimoto's. Which a lot of people who have celiacs also have Hashimoto's. And that is where your immune system begins to attack your thyroid gland. And when it's attacking the thyroid gland, that prevents it from being able to produce the thyroid hormone. 

T3 and T4 [00:16:00] in the manner it's supposed to. There's actually receptors in, I think, every cell of your body for T3 and T4. And so it's a very important hormone for regulation throughout your whole body especially for energy when you're low on that. Which that was actually felt like an answer to prayer. 

Just finding out okay there is something going on here. I need to go get some help. I'd, been through so many doctors in the past. I was like, I don't really know who to turn to at this point to get some prescription. But I did find a doctor eventually and I tried for a little while just trying to figure it out without any medication. But as I became more educated about the thyroid and this autoimmune condition and the hormone that was available to take I decided okay, I think that this is actually the best route for my body is to take this and I can still work on improving my health while taking this and maybe one day I can come off of it, but in the meantime, this is a godsend that I have this to [00:17:00] take and so now fast forward to seven months ago, I was looking to, I had actually gotten to a pretty good place with my health. 

I was testing my thyroid quarterly. I was seeing a doctor who only did it annually, but, since I had access to grassroots, I was like I'll just run my own tests in between whenever I want to check up on it. And they don't usually check all the antibodies, but I want to get a baseline for, is my autoimmune getting worse? 

Is the numbers going up? Or is it getting better? Is it going down? Because there will be fluctuation in there, but if I know my baseline, I can tell when I start to get better. Whereas if you only test once a year, it's really hard to get a feel for that. So I was doing good, but I wanted to continue to improve. Just getting healthier for my family. And I stumbled upon a bunch of people talking about the carnivore diet. And at first I wrote it off as, uh, yeah, it sounds like a fad diet. So that's pretty extreme where you get your nutrients from. 

[00:18:00] Because I had always looked at, you know, meat as just protein. Like, didn't really think of 

anything beyond that. but then I, heard of, uh, Michaela Peterson. She's a well known podcaster, YouTuber who has a pretty significant story about having multiple autoimmune conditions ever since she was seven and then when she was about 20 or so, maybe 21, she decided to cut everything out except for meat. And all of her autoimmune conditions went away, her depression went away, her anxiety went away and she's able to have healthy babies on this diet. And so I was like, I think I need to 

look into this more. 

Zach Aten: Yeah, 

Derek Ermatinger: and so. I I went down my research rabbit hole on YouTube, on Reddit, everywhere, just looking up what is this, how does this work, does it help people with thyroid or celiacs. And so, it seemed like it was a good option for me, I just decided to dive in. [00:19:00] And, you know, it's been an interesting journey, I've learned a lot about health. Just in this last seven months by learning from these people who are called carnivore doctors like Sean Baker Ken Berry and then Anthony Chafee there's a bunch of other doctors out there that have been really helpful on YouTube and not just on the internet but I think You know, my main takeaways was that Keto was already, had already become a popular diet, it was maybe losing popularity. And I didn't really understand what it was, but when you take the Keto diet and then you modify it into the Carnivore diet, you actually get something that's really it can be, for some people, a really healing diet, from what I understand. 

Zach Aten: and keto is, and maybe I'm wrong, it's just meat and vegetables,  

Derek Ermatinger: Keto, the purpose of that is no carbs, actually. 

Zach Aten: Gotcha. 

Derek Ermatinger: [00:20:00] changing your fuel source from, whereas if you eat carbs, your body turns those into glucose really quickly. But if you cut those 

Zach Aten: Okay,  

Derek Ermatinger: your body will use ketones for energy. And fun fact one ketone has twice the energy of one glucose. And so often people's bodies are more I guess efficient. 

I'm not sure if I if that's the right word. I'm not the doctor here, but um people feel like they have more energy on this and sometimes Uh, you know for me my body temperature is a little bit higher while i'm on this diet, which is interesting I always had kind of a lower body temperature which could have been due to low thyroid. Um, But uh, my body temperature has actually been a little bit warmer for some reason  

Zach Aten: interesting. 

Derek Ermatinger: I know fun fact Yeah Um But the keto diet, it had some downfalls with doing lots of vegetables and then lots of fats from vegetables, because some [00:21:00] people were very active to vegetables. Uh, you know, one thing, when I did that test, uh, three years ago, uh, to find out that I was a celiac and had DH. 

That's the short term for DH: Dermatitis herpetiformis. I also did a food sensitivity test and they came back with, you know, 180 foods that they tested saying that was very sensitive to 90 percent of them. and 

so I was like, Oh, this, this makes a lot of sense. You know, I've always reacted to a lot of types of foods and I wasn't sure why. and now, you know, I have at least an idea of that. 

Zach Aten: Is that because like your body's already in this like heightened state because of what you're dealing with or like you're just literally allergic to all these foods? 

Derek Ermatinger: yeah. I don't know. That's the short answer. 

I have some 

ideas.  

Zach Aten: could say that. 

Derek Ermatinger: What's that? 

Zach Aten: So it's a brave man who can  

say that.  

Derek Ermatinger: You know, there's lots of theories. [00:22:00] The lab, the lab that they did the test, they said it's a probable mold exposure and that it should SIRS, which is chronic inflammatory response syndrome. 25 percent of the population has a gene that is not able to eliminate mold spores from their body, and so when they get exposed, they just get sick, and then they stay sick, and the symptoms can vary from person to person, and I'm, this is a highly complex diagnosis, and I'm simplifying it a lot, but that's what they told me to go look at. And so I started looking at that and looking into the testing and it was going to be really expensive. And I'm not even really sure that's what it is. And I, one thing that they mentioned was that there's probably poly antibodies in my body, which might be a result of the mold. Poly antibodies are basically [00:23:00] where you have antibodies that can latch onto anything. whereas typically your body will produce specific antibodies bent for specific, antigens, is that the right word? I'm pretty sure. to attack them and then remove them. But if your body is producing antibodies that can attach to anything, like it can attach to my thyroid, it can attach to my digestive tract, it can attach to my joints, things like that And then it can start destroying those along the way along, you know with the food that's also trying to destroy and so I've wondered, if this was something that maybe I just Got luck of the draw had the bad DNA that got this crazy strong antibodies because i've been a picky eater as a kid I'm, not a picky eater anymore unless you count the carnivore diet as being picky but You know, I was always a picky eater, always had lots of reactions to things, and I'm like, has this been going on for my whole life in some fashion? You know, I obviously wasn't, uh, [00:24:00] gluten free until I was about age 25, but I've always had something going on. And so it could be that, it could be something I was born with, it could be the mold exposure, uh, and it could just be that I have a lot of sensitivities to various, plant proteins. you know, there's a lot of people who talk about the anti nutrients in vegetables and other plants. 

You know, these are, basically anti nutrients are there to, you know, kind of block your body's absorption of various nutrients. And they come in various amounts in various different plants that we eat. and so a lot of people in the carnivore space talk about those. As being a possible reason why the carnivore diet works so well is because you're not getting any anti nutrients in your food. and so I, I don't know. I don't know what it is. and I, I'm okay saying that right now. I'll keep figuring it out as I go. but thank you for calling me brave. Ha ha ha ha. 

Zach Aten: Oh, you are. You are. And, you [00:25:00] know, letting listeners into a little bit of like our friendship, you know. I mean, we, we lived together for a couple of years. 

We're roommates, so I got to see it firsthand. And, um, you know, just have been great friends ever since then. So, you know, I've gotten to see you and, you know, all the social settings like you talk about and what you have to do and, You know, I mean, we've talked, cause like I've watched stuff on Netflix and it's like MMA fighters that have gone totally plant  

talking like meets the devil and all this kinds of stuff. 

And I'm just like who's right. But I, but like with you, at least, It's he feels better, and he looks better, and, 

It's working for him I'm sure there's smarter people out there than us who could tell us what's going on, but at least from, an outsider's perspective, it's I can see that you feel better,  

And It's working for you, at least in [00:26:00] this, the short amount of time that you've been doing it. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, and I think that, getting to, the results of what I've experienced in the carnivore diet. I think 

the,  

Zach Aten: Yeah, tell us about  

Derek Ermatinger: When I first started on it, I was also looking to run a half marathon within two months. And yeah, I've been a little bit of a runner over the years, but not hardly anything above a mile or two on occasion. And so I was like am I going to be able to do this if I go carnivore? But what I've found is I actually have much better energy levels and it probably has to do with Just how efficient ketones are. But I used to when I was just eating a kind of standard american diet or my modified version of that I would eat, oatmeal or an apple and some nut butter in the morning, and then I just would I would crash in three hours. 

Like I would just have super low energy levels and just need food right away I would get hangry for sure But now on the carnivore diet, it seems like that type of experience has been [00:27:00] completely eliminated because the body has been so satiated with the nutrients that it needs and the energy that it needs to just keep going. 

I could skip meals very easily now, not because it's not I'm, you know fasting for any specific reason like I might just be working and forget to eat because I don't feel that need for more energy. That's not always like that, but is very like my energy level feels very flat like always consistent. 

I don't have any dips in there I don't have any big spikes in there which is a great added feature for me in this lifestyle and then I also used to have joint pain in my hands and my knees and my hip and that is just a common when you have multiple autoimmune things that can happen, people will get generalized joint pain. I wouldn't say I had rheumatoid arthritis or anything like that, but all of that's gone now and so I don't ever really 

deal with any joint pain yeah, and it's funny. [00:28:00] I'm not sure I've noticed anything in my physical appearance as far as like my skin looking healthier or anything like that. 

But I have had multiple people comments say that I look much healthier over the last seven months just being on this diet. I feel healthier. I think I feel healthier. Look healthy. I don't know if I 

look significantly healthier, but 

Zach Aten: You've put some meat on your bones, pardon the pun. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, 

Zach Aten: In a good way, in a good way. 

Derek Ermatinger: being a skinny guy putting meat on the bones is a good thing 

Zach Aten: Yeah, you and I have the opposite problem. 

Derek Ermatinger: If we could just combine and be the 

Zach Aten: I've wished, yeah, I could give you some of my pounds. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah now, my autoimmune stuff, I have been getting regular testing done throughout my time as a carnivore I did the kind of an annual physical I checked my cholesterol, I checked my liver numbers and a bunch of other things. Things, and it's, [00:29:00] nice to have Grassroots Labs available for that because, when you see your doctor, sometimes they understand what you're going through and want to help in the process, and sometimes they don't. Fortunately, right now, I have a great doctor that is helping me in here, although I might not always have that resource available. And I know, though oh, I can always schedule something with Grassroots, and especially to supplement what my doctor is helping me with. And so what was interesting about the labs is as a carnivore, you're eating a lot of fat. And people always associate high cholesterol, especially LDL, high LDL cholesterol is bad. There's a specific I think it's called phenotype. It's like a body type that responds differently to different I guess bodily environments. I guess you could describe it like that. Called the Lean Mass Hyper Responder. This is typically people who are on the skinnier side who eat a ketogenic diet, which is more on the fattier side. [00:30:00] I would say that my fat to protein ratio is about 50 50 right now. Some people will scale it up to 70 30, 70 percent fat, 30 percent protein. And so my LDL came through on the first time I can't remember if it was 250 or 300 which, the reference range is, they want you below a hundred. And so the doctors were immediately like, oh my gosh, this is way too high. It was like, it's okay. I'm on a ketogenic diet. I am most likely a lean mass hyper responder because. It's good that your doctors are concerned when they see that because if it wasn't good in the context of the rest Of your cholesterol numbers, then there would be you know reason to be concerned but when you look at the total ratio of my LDL HDL triglycerides i've actually in a very healthy space and so i've yeah, i've continued to monitor that though because I think This carnivore diet is still novel, there's not like tons of studies on it And I think it's [00:31:00] just good to keep an eye on it and notice if anything changes which is helpful 

Zach Aten: And then some of the doctors that you've talked about that talk about carnivore diet, they've, they talk about labs, right? Like in about the, how someone who's on a carnivore diet, how their labs are going to be different than somebody who's not. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, and I think a lot of that is just because of the ketogenic diet that carnivore is in that category of. I remember when I first decided to go carnivore, I was texting my brother. He's a great person who has the opposite opinion of me. And he was like where are you going to get your vitamin C from? 

Where are your glucose from? Apparently, when you're on a ketogenic diet, specifically even a carnivore diet, um, you're, you're not eating any carbs, and so you have a very small amount of glucose in your body. And when you have a small amount of glucose in your body, there's nothing to [00:32:00] compete with the absorption of vitamin C. Whereas if you have a carb heavy diet, Carbs turn into glucose, which then competes with the vitamin C absorption. So that's why a lot of times we take, a thousand, two thousand percent of the recommended daily volume of vitamin C and we're totally fine. We're not getting vitamin C toxicity. People on the standard American diet are just able to absorb what they can and then pee out the rest. And, but when you're on carnivore, you actually. Most carnivores don't take any supplements. Some take a few. But you're able to absorb a lot of your nutrients a lot better. And, coincidentally, beef has one of the best, just complex, formations of all the different nutrients that your body needs. There's obviously still a few that you need elsewhere, from fish and whatnot, but It's amazing how many nutrients you are actually absorbing through your food as opposed to [00:33:00] trying to always, like for me, I was taking, 5, 10 supplements every night just trying to get all the nutrients I need. 

Zach Aten: I've heard that Americans have some of the most, uh, expensive pee out there. 

Derek Ermatinger: That's the best, 

I think that's a good way  

Zach Aten: of  

Derek Ermatinger: it. Yeah.  

Zach Aten: and, uh, most of it just gets passed right through. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that supplements are great. You know, I think that they really do help especially some people who, I might have a nutritional deficiency in something, but I really like where I'm at now with, I don't need those anymore because all my labs are coming back great and it's just, I think it just is, I'm shocked by it, honestly, the fact that I can get all the nutrients I need from meat. Yeah. There's one doctor who wrote a book. I'm trying to remember what the doctor's name is now. Judy Cho, I think it is. Dr. Judy Cho, I think she she's more of an autoimmune specialist that recommends the carnivore diet for a lot of it, but she has a [00:34:00] book that goes over all the different nutrient nutrients in various types of meat, like beef and venison and fish and, all those different options there in the animal kingdom. It's just interesting to read through that and go okay, this actually has a fair amount of vitamin c and their riboflavin b12, it's just great and b12 Hard to get that from anywhere but animal kingdom foods. It's wow i'm actually Absorbing all this because I don't feel like i'm deficient in any of it the one area that I'm still working on and I'm actually due to go get some more labs done is the autoimmune side which was one of my main goals while going on this diet is can this help with my autoimmune? 

Because if I can fix or help my autoimmune, that's going to help me with my goal of being healthy for my family. And so my thyroid numbers have basically stayed the same on this process of going carnivore which has been a little discouraging, but I'm like maybe it's too soon to tell. 

I want to give it a full year at [00:35:00] least to see if it improves it. But even if it doesn't improve the autoimmune thyroid numbers, I am already, experiencing so many other benefits considering just staying on this diet long term, or at least some version of it. Where I've worked my way into now is what they call animal based diet. Dr. Paul Saladino is a big proponent of this diet where you just add in a few fruits And that can look like, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, and then also squashes. So you can add in a few vegetables if you're not sensitive to it along the way. And that's actually, he's, he actually talks about drinking raw milk things like that, which has a little bit of carbs and sugar in it, but not much. And I've adopted that in a way that works for me. Because I think I still deal with some food sensitivities, like I tried to add in like tomatoes and other things like that, and I didn't react to them very [00:36:00] well. But I can have plantains and squash very easily. And so I think that, where I'm at with that aspect of my diet, I'm hopeful that I'll have some good results in my next autoimmune panel for my thyroid. But yeah, I, 

Zach Aten: who do you do that through, Derek? 

Derek Ermatinger: the autoimmune panel, I'll do that either through my doctor or through Grassroots Labs. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's just the simple thyroid panel with some thyroid antibody 

tests in there too, yeah.  

Zach Aten: I didn't know if it was like some specialized,  

Derek Ermatinger: no, nothing, nothing special. Yeah, 

and it's actually been really helpful because, you know, talk about just carnivore labs. there's so many doctors and YouTube videos out there who go over carnivore labs and teach you all about them. There's one guy that even has a book. I think it's, uh, Common Sense Labs by Dr. 

Ken Berry. he goes over, you know, what is, what is, What a lab's supposed to look like when you're on the carnivore diet, because it can be challenging [00:37:00] to interpret the results and if your doctor doesn't know how to do that with you then, it'll be invaluable to have, you know, a doctor from afar over the internet to actually teach you what it's supposed to be. I don't think that they're overly complicated. I think that We're just not taught through society how to read those labs, like for instance the high cholesterol that I had, most doctors would be afraid and say, you need to go on a statin right away. But in the world of a lean mass hyper responder carnivore I'm actually very healthy. So yeah, Dr. Ken Barry is a great resource there. And there's a few others that I can provide you to maybe put in the, notes for this podcast. 

Zach Aten: That's great. I appreciate you sharing that with the audience. what is a typical, 

you know, yeah. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or how do you, how do you do  

stuff?  

Derek Ermatinger: You know, there's a great clip on the internet of Michaela Peterson, Piers Morgan was asking her, you know, what do you eat for breakfast? And [00:38:00] she said strip loin. What do you eat for lunch? Strip loin. What do you eat for dinner? Strip loin. That's kind of what it is some days. You look for the fattiest cuts of meat that you can, and sometimes you supplement with additional fat to that, but some days that really is all I have. 

Zach Aten: What do you mean by that additional fat? 

Derek Ermatinger: so I'll have, this is most people probably won't like this, but it's, I'll have scoops of tallow beef tallow, which is 

just beef fat rendered down and then processed in a way to remove any extra bits of meat or anything like that. So it's just pure beef fat, and I'll have a scoop of that maybe once or twice a day. 

I just because I want to keep my my fat to protein ratios a little bit on the higher side of fat my reasoning is that your body makes hormones out of fat, and if I have, an adequate amount of fat in my body, hopefully it can continue to make the proper hormones. [00:39:00] That's yet to be seen as true, but, haha, my labs will tell me, but  

Zach Aten: You're still just testing this  

Derek Ermatinger: yeah, I'm just, I'm a, my own guinea pig here. 

Zach Aten: You must have a great relationship with your butcher. 

Derek Ermatinger: I do know the butcher and I've gotten to know the people at Costco very well and Kroger, yes, all the different butchers and some of the best tallow and meat that I've had is actually from regeneratively raised farms. Those are farms that, you know, they have cows on one plot of land and they just kind of rotate them to a new plot of land. 

So they're 100 percent grass fed and finished, but they also are actually helping return CO2 to the atmosphere as opposed to taking away from it with and it's just overall better for the environment and the soil. And the meat actually turns out, and the tallow turns out, just so much better. It's wild. I've had one scoop of just regular tallow from the grocery store, and [00:40:00] I couldn't eat that on a daily basis. But I've had one scoop from this regeneratively raised cow, and it tastes like butter. It's just silky smooth, delicious I literally could, eat that with every meal. It's amazing what difference it makes.  

Zach Aten: What, what if you don't mind me asking, what's this diet, how is it like financially compared to a normal diet or what you've had to do in the  

Derek Ermatinger: That's a great question. That's a great question. Yeah. I think in general, you know, I, Then back up. I remember I told, I told someone, this was a year or two ago, like, yeah, I don't eat at restaurants anymore. It's like, oh, you must be saving so much money. Well, unfortunately, all the stuff that's certified gluten free is like two, three times more expensive. And so my grocery bill was actually kind of high. Now I probably, You know, could have found ways to bring that down lower. But I was also taking lots of supplements, [00:41:00] and I was also seeing the doctor more often on a regular diet. since being on carnivore, I haven't gotten sick once, which, seven months, knock on wood, hopefully going on strong. 

I've, you know, been around lots of sick people, haven't gotten anything on this diet. And I also don't have to take any supplements. That's a big plus. Although the diet in general can be a little more expensive I think that long term actually more, it's more budget friendly for me just because the other costs have gone down so much. And there are ways to save money, I talk about eating a strip loin every day. I go to Costco and I buy a huge strip loin. And I cut it up at home and I vacuum seal it and I'm paying eight dollars a pound. I usually eat about Two to two and a half pounds a day Sometimes just one pound a day. 

I might supplement it with other things like squash or plantains but that will save some money and then you can you know, there was actually a study done on some carnivores where [00:42:00] One group of carnivores ate just the cheap ground beef from Walmart, like the four dollar tubes of ground beef, and other cheap cuts of meat that were not, you know, grass fed, grass finished. And then another group, you got a joke in there? 

Zach Aten: No, I'm trying not to laugh.  

I'm sad. 

Derek Ermatinger: The other group, they ate all grass fed, grass finished meat. And at the end the differences in their labs were nominal. They basically couldn't see any major difference in their labs. I think that was a good sign that you're gonna get lots of nutrients, from this lifestyle and you don't have to get the most expensive cuts it just happens that I prefer to have steaks every day as opposed to ground beef you do get tired of things after a while. 

You got to mix it up like I'll eat a pack of bacon for breakfast. I'll have fish every a week or so. We'll do chicken and you cook it in different ways. Like you can air fry [00:43:00] chicken to get really crispy. And some carnivores go so far as they, they make things like carnivore pancakes. There's YouTube videos in that. 

I can't explain how they make it, but yeah, and a lot of carnivores do dairy. I've only been able to do raw dairy, but a lot of carnivores will have sticks of butter too and just in the middle of all that, they, there are ways to save money and not go, you're not eating an 18 steak at every meal and just running your budget up through the roof. So there's definitely ways to do it, but yeah, good 

Zach Aten: How, how does your, how does your family, like, how do you guys all eat? Like, do you eat separate from them? How does that  

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, that's good. That's not a good question. For me, Sarah and our daughter we, I'll try to cook up a meat that I can share with them. And it's great. I love seeing my daughter with a little piece of steak hanging out her mouth. Call her daddy's little carnivore. I'm not [00:44:00] trying to make her do that. 

I just think it's funny. And Yes, I'll try to cook something that they can eat too, and then I'll also help cook whatever Sarah's gonna eat whether that's, vegetables and some grains or, potatoes, and sometimes I'll join in, have a little bit of sweet potatoes, or we'll cook, one big meal that I can eat too, and we'll all share that. If it was like adding some other fruits in the meal with some meat, but meat is the main staple and it, so it works well at home when you go to family gatherings, like we have Thanksgiving coming up in a couple of weeks here That's a little more challenging for two reasons. One, the carnivore, and two, me being a very sensitive celiac, it's hard to go into other people's kitchen and let them cook me a meal, even if it was just meat, and not be somewhat cross contaminated. So I often will bring, I'll cook my own steak ahead of time, and I'll bring that to the dinner [00:45:00] and, that I just, there was one family dinner I showed up with my steak and that's all I ate and no one asked any questions. I was like great. All right, this worked out. I didn't have to explain carnivore diet and everyone think that was crazy. Other times when i'm traveling it's the same process. You just cook ahead of time. You get a cooler You stack up on some steaks, if you aren't able to have a knife, a fork and a knife to cut up your steak in the moment, you cut it up ahead of time and then you just eat your steak, cold. And it's surprising, I've actually gone a couple days without having a steak before. And I said to Sarah, I was like, Oh, I'm just really excited to have a good steak. She was like, you had one two days ago. It was just funny how it, Your body is just craving it after a while. That's what you eat all the time. 

You don't get sick of it somehow. I could get sick of ground beef, but I can't get sick of steak. Something great about it. 

Zach Aten: That makes sense. That makes  

sense. We're coming to the end of our time, to bring this [00:46:00] back. You're not a doctor, but you're on this diet because it has had positive effects on your health that you haven't been able to find elsewhere. 

Do you feel like this is something for everyone or is it something for folks who, are dealing with some of the similar health challenges for you, like in your opinion? 

Derek Ermatinger: I wouldn't say this is for everyone. You know, just like we were talking before, like, there's some people who do really well on a, you know, vegan or vegetarian diet. I think that everyone's body chemistry is different, and not just chemistry for me my immune system's different and that affects how I eat so I, I think that, it's not for everyone, but I do think that it's worthwhile a try if you have some autoimmune conditions, You know, I was using ChatGPT the other day asking about, you know, what do you know about polyantibodies, like testing its medical knowledge and, and I was like, so if [00:47:00] someone had all these things, I listed everything that I have going on, would a carnivore diet be a good way to manage all that? 

And ChatGPT was like, yeah, it seems like a ketogenic carnivore diet would be a good fit for you because of the reactivity that you have to all these different food proteins, the autoimmune conditions. And it helping with your energy levels and joint pain and all that. so yeah, it was interesting to have that feedback from chat GPT yeah, I, I think that, Americans in general, you know, might benefit from trying a ketogenic diet at one point in their life just because we're, we're kind of all raised on, you know, carbs all the time. Uh, I've I found it surprisingly, you know, great benefit from doing this keto diet. and I just happen to also believe that the carnivore version of that is the best one. 

Yeah, good question. 

Zach Aten: All right. In closing, what, if somebody has been listening to your story today and is like, [00:48:00] gosh, that, that, sounds very similar to my own. Where, what, where would you lead them to like, go on a journey of you know, pursuing a similar, similar solutions to like what you have, or what, what would you tell yourself if you were talking to yourself 10 years ago, like, what should you do now? 

Uh, or look into to find out if something that would work for them. 

Derek Ermatinger: Yeah, honestly, if I, if I could talk to myself when I was like 24, 25 and dealing with all these symptoms, I would. I would strongly encourage them to go get some blood tests to go find out what's really happening on the inside. If I had found that out, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, that would have made a world of difference for me, I think, and maybe even preventing from getting more autoimmune conditions. 

Yeah, that would be my number one recommendation to, people. But to, figure out where to start with that, you probably only need to find a [00:49:00] doctor that can help you figure out what tests you need to get and how to interpret them. But if you want to go the more DIY route it would be more experimenting with your diet. The blood test can help guide you with that, if you're thinking about gluten sensitivity, you want to know how sensitive you are then yeah, I definitely recommend getting a doctor. A test for that, but yeah, experimenting with your diet is another key factor in in this process. 

And for me I think, again, the blood test for the food sensitivities, that made a big difference for me as well, because I finally figured out here's all the things I'm sensitive to, and here's my short list of what I'm not sensitive to. And if I had stuck to that and not had to experiment so much, it would have saved me a lot of. time and just, pain and difficulty over the years. And then once you figure out okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut this out and I'm gonna try this diet. Maybe you're thinking about the carnivore diet. There's so many resources online [00:50:00] to help you figure out, what to do on this diet and how to start and how to, navigate. The hurdles that, inevitably come with changing your diet from the American, standard American diet. Yeah, get some blood tests, experiment with your diet, get a doctor to help you along the way. And don't be afraid to fire your doctor and go find a new one. If the one that you have isn't working well for you, they're there to work for you. I know sometimes it can feel like it's their way or the highway. You can, there's lots of doctors around. If you are looking for a good resource to start with online, I would actually recommend a YouTube channel The Steak and Butter Gal. She teaches a lot on the carnivore diet and how to get started on it. And then once you're on it, you know, what are some different things you can eat on this diet and how do you navigate that. So yeah, that would be my, that would be my recommendation.  

Zach Aten: Derek Ermatinger, thank you so much for [00:51:00] coming on the Healthcare Wayfinders podcast. You are an amazing man and have done some amazing things, and I think your story is super inspiring. Appreciate you coming and 

Derek Ermatinger: Thank you 

for  

Zach Aten: vulnerable and sharing your  

Derek Ermatinger: Thank you. Yeah, it's been an honor. Appreciate it. I hope that helps somebody out there. And yeah, thank you again.