Has Anyone Tried the Carnivore Diet for Osteoarthritis Pain Relief?

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johnask
johnask Member Posts: 6
edited 16. Jul 2025, 14:25 in Food and Diet

I’m currently dealing with daily pain, especially in my hips, knees, legs, shoulder, and hands. I know my weight is a contributing factor, and I have quite a bit to lose. Unfortunately, due to the pain, I now live a very sedentary lifestyle, so exercise isn’t really an option right now.I’m hoping to find a way to kickstart weight loss and potentially ease the pain. I’ve struggled with sticking to diets in the past, so I’m looking for something relatively simple and effective to get started.Has anyone here tried a carnivore or zero-carb approach for managing osteoarthritis or losing weight with limited mobility? Any advice or personal experiences would be really appreciated.

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  • noddingtonpete
    noddingtonpete Moderator Posts: 1,442

    Have a look at the following booklet

    https://shop.versusarthritis.org/products/eating-well-information-booklet

    You can get a digital copy free

    Need more help? - call our Helpline on0800 5200 520Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm

  • Moreen
    Moreen Member Posts: 1

    I’m not sure what the carnivore diet is but, when I was in my teens I did the doctors quick weight loss diet which involved eating just protein. I did lose lots of weight but I don’t think it was very healthy and, in retrospect I think I could have really damaged my health. The main mistake I made was not drinking the recommended amount of water. Decades later ( and still on theneverendingdiet) I find that fasting has really helped me to lose and control my weight. I try not to eat anything after my evening meal and go for as long as possible before eating again ( I’ve never been a breakfast eater anyway). I do sip hot water if I need a drink and always have a cup of hot water when I wake up. My mobility is so bad these days (knee arthritis now in both knees which has suddenly got much worse) that it’s difficult to use up any calories!

  • noddingtonpete
    noddingtonpete Moderator Posts: 1,442

    Hello @Moreen and welcome to the Online Community forum. We are a friendly and supportive group and I hope that will be your experience as well.

    In addition to the link in the post above you could always take a look at the following

    https://www.versusarthritis.org/news/2025/january/the-positive-impact-of-a-healthy-diet-on-your-arthritis-what-our-research-tells-us/

    I hope you find something that works for you and though major exercise may no longer be an option you could try doing some stretching - every bit helps, see

    https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/64375/stretching-videos

    Best wishes

    Peter

    Need more help? - call our Helpline on0800 5200 520Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm

  • frogmorton
    frogmorton Member Posts: 30,475
    edited 15. Jul 2025, 09:14

    Gosh no @johnask quite the reverse! I am plant based vegan doing the 30 a week varied diet; veggies, fruit, seeds nuts etc it's dead easy. I believe that the biggest part of our immune system is the gut and as such improving the gut microbiome should have a knock on effect on the immune system thereby our arthritis. Personally (and this is personal experience) I feel much better for it. Legumes if you can manage them are super filling.

    Certain types of meat have been classified by the World Health Organisation as a carcinogen so even more reason for me to dodge it.

    My sister did the 'vegan' keto diet briefly to kick start her incredible weight loss - the whole of me! It wasn't easy as she was forced to eat a lot of processed vegan alternative meats. Once she'd got going (she could not walk more than a few steps) she went back to just calories I think and was able to exercise more.

    I also intermittently fast like @Moreen by not eating until maybe 12 noon at the earliest every day and stopping by 6pm.

    Best of luck one of our members @Arthuritis is really interested in diet and how it affects our arthritis.

    Toni

  • Arthuritis
    Arthuritis Member Posts: 580

    @johnask @frogmorton @Trish9556

    I am so sorry to hear about your situation. Don’t despair, there’s hope yet.
    First on weightloss… and it’s myriad benefits

    The good news is you do NOT need to excercise to lose the majority of your excess weight, but gently exercising as much as you can without pain will preserve your muscle mass, and you really need to retain it to recover.

    80% of your weight change will be due to what you eat. That’s both good news & bad news.

    Our modern world of industrialised food production has made abundance of food something our ancestors never had, and did not evolve to handle. We evolved to survive on limited food and frequent famine, efficiently storing away carbs, especially fructose as fat for the long cold winter. This is fine if you spent your days chasing rabbits for food and occasionally found edible berries. Now we have the ease of supermarkets! So I speak from experience, trying to reduce or “diet” is as hard as for a drug addict to reduce their habit. Near impossible. However “going cold turkey” worked really well. I Checked with my GP, got some indicative blood tests to mark my baseline, the usual RA set plus HbA1C, cholesterol & blood pressure, and then went on a water & black tea only fast. For 7 days that’s all I had, and I felt great after day 5, no longer hungry, lost weight at 300g per day, so I continued for a further 3 days. Lost 3Kg in 10days, didn’t go to the gym, just watched TV and drank water. After that I started going to the gym a bit to continue.

    Unfortunately carbs, bread (gluten) fire your brain’s reward centre so much that the very thought of that “sugar high” makes you reach for something to fill that void, but nothing ever does for long, keeping up the weight gain cycle. You have to break it with a long-ish fast. Once you have some control you can do that more regularly for shorter periods of fasting eg not eating after 6PM, until at least 6AM.

    That’s on weightloss. Regarding other elements of diet, a lot depends on what your unique immune system finds “offensive” which may come as a surprise that things you ate before RA, you cannot anymore. It shocked me that food that I really liked, beans, soya, chicken, salmon, cheese and fruits (fructose) were all triggering RA flares. But green veg and beef did not. So I could stay 100% green vegan and pain free but weak or occasionally indulge in a steak and maintain muscle mass.

    I have previously posted my journey, RA’s impact and diet changes plus interviews eg with Dr Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, DipABLM a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University who confirms the impact of diet changes on RA experimentally, plus interviews with doctors who themselves became RA patients. Please search under Arthuritis or Katsumoto and you should get some results. I found fasting to be key.

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