Endometriosis

Endometriosis—a condition in which tissue resembling the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, causing chronic pain, heavy bleeding, and often infertility—has long been treated as incurable. Yet across podcasts and YouTube channels documenting carnivore and ancestral diets, a pattern has emerged: women with endometriosis, sometimes after years of failed medical management, report that their symptoms receded or disappeared after they removed most plant foods and ate primarily meat.

Patient stories

One woman in her forties had suffered with endometriosis for decades before working with a functional-medicine practitioner. The pain had been severe enough that she "basically can't do anything for one week out of the month," she said. After adopting a carnivore diet focused on meat and fat, her endometriosis reversed. By the time she shared her story, she was holding pictures of women with babies they "never thought they'd be able to have."

A woman named Fumi had struggled with endometriosis, Graves' disease, and joint pain she had known since childhood. She underwent surgery for the endometriosis but continued to suffer, eventually becoming so ill on a vegan diet that she described herself as "almost dead" and "emaciated." When she finally ate meat again, she felt immediate relief. Within three months on a carnivore diet, her visceral fat dropped from eight to five kilograms, her muscle mass increased, and the abdominal bulge she had carried since her C-section—attributed by doctors to age and surgery—began to disappear. Her endometriosis symptoms resolved.

Lily, a young woman who does not appear on camera, was diagnosed with endometriosis at sixteen. She also suffered from a painful skin condition called hidradenitis suppurativa and was placed on birth control pills at age thirteen in an attempt to balance her hormones. During the height of the pandemic, she developed blood clots and required open-heart surgery at thirteen. Her father describes the family's regret: "She wouldn't have had bad menstrual flow had she been eating the proper human diet." After Lily adopted a carnivore diet, she saw most of her conditions improve in a short time, enough that she began speaking with other young women about endometriosis.

Another woman had been dealing with severe menstrual pain, ADD, and weight gain from birth control prescribed to manage her cycles. She had been told early on that a condition—later identified as endometriosis—would make it hard for her to have children. After switching to carnivore, she reported that within a year, all endometriosis pain vanished. She had suffered complications after a partial hysterectomy, including an enlarged ovary and ongoing pain that required her to remain on birth control. On carnivore, the pain from the remaining ovary disappeared entirely, along with her depression, asthma, and recurrent infections.

The pattern

The dietary intervention these women converged on eliminates grains, most dairy, seed oils, processed sugar, and the majority of plant foods. What remains is ruminant meat—beef, lamb, bison—along with fatty fish, eggs, and animal fat. Some women eat only meat; others include small amounts of low-toxin plants. The mechanisms proposed include reduced gut inflammation and intestinal permeability, elimination of plant lectins and oxalates that may trigger immune responses, and normalization of insulin signaling. Dr. Robert Kiltz, a fertility specialist, argues that most inflammatory disorders affecting reproduction—including endometriosis, PCOS, and uterine fibroids—stem from "gut inflammation secondary to a high plant low animal fat diet and eating multiple meals a day." He describes menstrual blood as providing "culture conditions for microbes to flourish" and suggests that what is called endometriosis may in fact be infectious endometritis, a microbial infiltration from the gut.

What the doctors say

Dr. Kiltz reports seeing "so many people suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome endometriosis" improve on carnivore diets; he has "even seen uterine fibroids shrink." He notes that couples conceive naturally "when just nothing's been happening for so long." Dr. Zach Loveless connects women's hormonal disorders—including PCOS and endometriosis—to insulin resistance, explaining that "when insulin goes up cortisol goes up which is going to affect progesterone which is going to affect estrogen." He criticizes the standard use of birth control to suppress symptoms, pointing out that it creates endocrine disruption linked to infertility, cancer risk, and immune dysfunction. Dr. Anthony Chaffee emphasizes that social media has allowed the carnivore pattern to spread in a way earlier generations of physicians could not achieve.

These are not randomized controlled trials; they are case reports, testimonials from individuals who changed multiple variables at once. But the pattern is striking: women with a condition long deemed incurable, who had exhausted pharmaceutical and surgical options, found relief by eating meat and removing plants. The convergence is worth knowing.