I agree! Especially given the latitude I live in. Of eating locally and seasonally, I would only have access to leafy greens and nuts for a few months but would have access to fish and animals year round.
Australia has a huge Seventh Day Adventist culture that believes in vegan/vegetarianism. I worked with WK Kellogg’s grandson on a book about his Grandfather. The Kellogg family were Seventh Day Adventist with lots of mental and physical health issues.
Something else besides eating too much meat is causing the disruption in acid balance. Maybe vaccines? Would be interesting to see unvaccinated carnivore study!🤩🥩
Would you consider the anatomical differences between known carnivores (cats) and known herbivores (eg horses)? Start with their teeth. Then look at ours. This is really obvious. There are many more differences that are less obvious, but that's a start. It's the anatomy that indicates the natural diet.
Look at the teeth of a panda or camel. Look at what primates eat when they get the chance. Look at what humans have primarily eaten in the last few dozen thousand years.
Barbara ONeils Seventh-day Adventist Church roots are showing here.. Not all of us are convinced that meat and dairy are bad and grains, seeds and green leaves are good. The combo of grains seeds and leaves nearly wrecked my teeth and bones for good. I was saved in the nick of time and gradually unpicked the adventist church influence on diet culture .. It's worth knowing which agendas are behind our influencers. Was the man who got Barbara to become a public figure a member of her church ? . I like her a lot and she is everso similar to my diet mentor who is also a lovely lady, but she steered me very wrong when it came to bone and teeth health, 'acidity' etc.
Wonderful article as usual. I would like to qualify that when Ulric Williams talks about starch and sugar, he means the processed ones, such as white flour, white sugar, not the natural ones. This is so often misunderstood.
New research is out that the 8L of water per day is one of the causes of kidney failure. I haven't followed the research that much about water, but I am physically incapable of drinking that much water unless I live near a toilet.
Vit D3, K2 and magnesium are required to maintain calcium balance.i think Barbara O'Neill has some great ideas and most do work. Her treatment would most likely work no matter what was the cause of kidney failure, whether the person had stones or not. But her dietary recommendations leave a little to be desired.
For example, she and others make NO distinction between pasture raised meats and CAFO raised animals. Bad science as bad food, no exercise, anti-biotic laden animals lead to toxic seed oil overload in the person who eats meat. Pasture raised free roaming animals do not produce toxic meats. Same with raw milk. The pasteurization process cleanses the milk of all the food stuff. I have nothing against legumes and grains if cooked right, but failure to discern how the animal was raised is following faulty science put out by Big Food who want us eating bugs and GMO laden soy!
I’d be very cautious about throwing around numbers like "8L of water per day is one of the causes of kidney failure," without actually citing the research.
Noakes TD, Wilson G, Gray DA, Lambert MI, Dennis SC. “Peak rates of diuresis in healthy humans during oral fluid overload.” South African Medical Journal 2001; 91(10):852–857.
In that study, Tim Noakes and colleagues showed that healthy adults can sustain urine production on the order of roughly 0.6 to 1.0 L per hour under maximal water loading, depending on body size and hormonal state. That is not a rigid cutoff, but it does define the upper range of what the kidneys can continuously excrete.
If fluid intake persistently exceeds renal excretion plus sweat and insensible losses, plasma sodium can fall, producing dilutional hyponatremia. That is the central risk, not the absolute daily volume by itself.
In 2007, the famous public hyponatremia case unfolded in real time during a contest called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” in which participants were encouraged to drink large volumes of water without urinating. One contestant reportedly consumed more than 5 L in a short period, later went home, and died from acute water intoxication with cerebral edema caused by severe hyponatremia.
When excessive free water is consumed rapidly, plasma osmolality falls as sodium becomes diluted. Water then shifts into cells down the osmotic gradient. Neurons are particularly vulnerable, and cerebral edema can develop, raising intracranial pressure and impairing cerebral perfusion. That is the fundamental pathophysiology in acute water intoxication.
Edward Adolph did some groundbreaking work on hydration and humans in 1921:
In that paper, Edward F. Adolph estimated daily water turnover using serial body-mass measurements in people working long hours in hot environments. He showed that laborers exposed to extreme heat could ingest extraordinarily large daily volumes, in some cases approaching 16 L, because sweat losses were correspondingly high. Intake and output remained matched, so plasma composition was maintained.
So volume itself was not the issue in that context. The danger lies in intake rate exceeding renal excretion capacity - consuming water faster than the kidneys can eliminate it, even temporarily.
I would be very cautious about the one size fits all of mainstream medicine. We are individuals and finding what works regardless of what it is: water consumption, balance of proteins between animals and plants, the amount of fat consumed, vegetarianism is more of a craft than following the dictates of experts. Just like there are people who can't consume that much water without going into kidney failure if done long enough, there are most likely people who need more without being chronically dehydrated.
The problem isn't the science. It is that we are trained to believe the experts and not our own intuition. Yes, intuition requires truth, but we are throwing around facts, not truth. We are told that intuition is BS and to follow the advice of experts. By all means drink that much water and see how you feel. If something is not right, then cut back until it does. We have to take the recommendations and use discernment. I don't feel right with that much water. I feel right at much less. Others require more; I know people who do.
So my objection is the one size fits all and that the experts know better than we do in how our bodies work. They don't and frequently they are wrong for everyone. The substack by The Midwestern Doctor talks about medical lies and how to use discernment to figure out what works for you. We are individuals with different reactions to medical dictates and it is up to us to find out what works, not some expert who has never talked to you, let alone examine you. The truth is most likely a mineral issue rather than how much water, something hidden from us in the water narrative.
I agree with one important point here: 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝘆𝗱𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴. Sweat rates vary enormously. Kidney handling of water varies. Sodium losses in sweat vary several-fold. Gut tolerance differs. Age, medications, climate, pace, and body size all matter. Good clinicians actually try to individualize recommendations for exactly these reasons.
Where I would push back is framing this as “experts versus intuition.”
Modern physiology is not built around rigid prescriptions like “everyone must drink X liters.” In endurance medicine especially, the field has moved away from quota-based hydration toward principles such as:
Drink to thirst rather than targets.
Avoid forced intake.
Adjust for heat, pace, and body size.
Watch for warning symptoms.
Those shifts did not come from ideology. They came from observing real people collapse with low sodium or heat illness and then working backward to the underlying physiology.
Intuition can help, but it is not infallible. Thirst perception blunts with age. Nausea and bloating often signal over-drinking before someone consciously recognizes it. Exercise-associated hyponatremia exists precisely because people sometimes keep drinking even when the body is already water-replete. That discovery came from bedside cases, not theory.
On the kidney side, the issue is not that some people can drink endlessly while others cannot. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀. During prolonged exercise, vasopressin commonly rises, reducing free-water excretion in the collecting ducts. At the same time, sweat becomes the dominant route of water loss - as opposed to urination. Individual variation determines where someone hits trouble, not whether those constraints exist.
Minerals absolutely matter. Sodium balance strongly influences how water distributes between compartments and therefore plasma osmolality. But volume balance still dominates. Even high-sodium drinks cannot protect against sustained intake that exceeds sweat losses. Framing this as hidden mineral truths versus a water narrative oversimplifies what is actually a three-compartment system governed by osmolality, Starling forces, capillary permeability, kidney handling, hormones, and skin losses.
A more accurate version of what you are arguing might be:
Population-level recommendations are guardrails, not personalized prescriptions.
Individuals still need to experiment within physiologic limits.
Symptoms matter.
Blindly forcing intake in either direction is unwise.
That position does not reject science. It is how careful medicine actually works.
The real danger is not listening to experts. It is assuming that experts claim uniformity, when most are actually saying something closer to this: 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝘆, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀.
I have mentioned in other posts the souvenir I got from eating a whole food, plant based diet - a .45 caliber kidney stone. 12mm calcium oxalate. You won’t pass that no matter what concoction you drink. I had the lithotripsy. The author has written before about oxalates and what they do in the body. The sources of oxalates? What this post tells you that you should eat; greens, legumes, etc. Don’t do it.
For legumes and grains, soaking in an acidic solution (I use whey from making yogurt, or ACV or Redmond's salt) for 7-12 hours. This leaches the anti-nutrienta from the beans or seed grains before eating. The soaking is for phytates and oxalates.
The best defense against stones in the first place is a diet sufficiently high in calcium and vitamins D3 and K2 — and lower phosphate levels. This shuts down parathyroid hormone. PTH is what causes lactic acid to build in the bones, dissolving calcium and releasing calcium into circulation. High calcium diets and sufficient D3 and K2, lower phosphate, suppress parathyroid hormone and keep calcium in the bones.
we are told Urolithin is a key to longevity, but is very expensive? In fact, it is already in use via the ancient Ayurveda method which you can easily do at home: see “Amaroli” also called “Shivambu.” I have used it for 25 years and still kicking !!!
No mention of eating more fruit especially juicy ones. I also recommend reading The Liver Rescue book by Anthony William the medical medium. He also has free information on his website.
That celery seed option really works. My wife has struggled with high BP and poor kidney function for years, steadily worsening as she gets older. Drs threw lots of drugs at her, saying getting her BP down would magically fix her kidneys (it didn't), and the side effects of all of these pills were horrific and likely slowly destroying her kidney and liver function.
We removed all but one BP and started taking celery seed extract and watching her diet more. The difference was amazing. Not only did her mild gout disappear (overnight), but her BP dropped by almost 20 points to within a normal range for her age being 160/70 which for a 70 year old is fine. I even discovered a large Cochrane study that indicated there was zero benefit in lowering her blood pressure further below this. Sent it to her Dr who seemed annoyed and dismissed it.
Also a well-meaning nurse practitioner friend of ours was most concerned about what my wife had done, saying taking celery seed while on BP medications was "dangerous" and she must stop it immediately, even knowing that all the most recent BP pharma meds had put her in bed sick for days with horror side effects. This is the sad mindset of modern medicine.
Am now looking at a little-known electrotech method to purify her blood in a safe, non-invasive manner, which should further assist her kidney function and general circulation...
Little by little: on all-day motorcycle rides in the summer, I could feel the brain fog increasing. More caffeine didn't help. I did finally realize that I was dehydrated, so I would slam a 20 oz bottle of water at every fuel stop. It helped, but wasn't enough. I bought a CamelBak hydration bladder and strapped it to the bike. Easy to get a few sips of water every few miles. No more dangerous brain fog while riding.
Interestingly, these two ladies kind of say a different thing regarding hydration... one just doesn't know what to do! here's the link just in case: https://youtu.be/0boqdGS4v3A
I am extremely dubious of anything that says humans should avoid eating meat.
Yes, I would trust it more if it called for balance in diet, or temporary cutback in eating meat to rebalance.
I read just not at every meal.
I agree! Especially given the latitude I live in. Of eating locally and seasonally, I would only have access to leafy greens and nuts for a few months but would have access to fish and animals year round.
Australia has a huge Seventh Day Adventist culture that believes in vegan/vegetarianism. I worked with WK Kellogg’s grandson on a book about his Grandfather. The Kellogg family were Seventh Day Adventist with lots of mental and physical health issues.
Something else besides eating too much meat is causing the disruption in acid balance. Maybe vaccines? Would be interesting to see unvaccinated carnivore study!🤩🥩
I have survived and thrived without meat for over 40 years. What most people are missing is fresh fruit and other unprocessed wholefoods.
Would you consider the anatomical differences between known carnivores (cats) and known herbivores (eg horses)? Start with their teeth. Then look at ours. This is really obvious. There are many more differences that are less obvious, but that's a start. It's the anatomy that indicates the natural diet.
Lol. No, it's the diet that indicates the diet.
Look at the teeth of a panda or camel. Look at what primates eat when they get the chance. Look at what humans have primarily eaten in the last few dozen thousand years.
Barbara ONeils Seventh-day Adventist Church roots are showing here.. Not all of us are convinced that meat and dairy are bad and grains, seeds and green leaves are good. The combo of grains seeds and leaves nearly wrecked my teeth and bones for good. I was saved in the nick of time and gradually unpicked the adventist church influence on diet culture .. It's worth knowing which agendas are behind our influencers. Was the man who got Barbara to become a public figure a member of her church ? . I like her a lot and she is everso similar to my diet mentor who is also a lovely lady, but she steered me very wrong when it came to bone and teeth health, 'acidity' etc.
Wonderful article as usual. I would like to qualify that when Ulric Williams talks about starch and sugar, he means the processed ones, such as white flour, white sugar, not the natural ones. This is so often misunderstood.
New research is out that the 8L of water per day is one of the causes of kidney failure. I haven't followed the research that much about water, but I am physically incapable of drinking that much water unless I live near a toilet.
Vit D3, K2 and magnesium are required to maintain calcium balance.i think Barbara O'Neill has some great ideas and most do work. Her treatment would most likely work no matter what was the cause of kidney failure, whether the person had stones or not. But her dietary recommendations leave a little to be desired.
For example, she and others make NO distinction between pasture raised meats and CAFO raised animals. Bad science as bad food, no exercise, anti-biotic laden animals lead to toxic seed oil overload in the person who eats meat. Pasture raised free roaming animals do not produce toxic meats. Same with raw milk. The pasteurization process cleanses the milk of all the food stuff. I have nothing against legumes and grains if cooked right, but failure to discern how the animal was raised is following faulty science put out by Big Food who want us eating bugs and GMO laden soy!
I’d be very cautious about throwing around numbers like "8L of water per day is one of the causes of kidney failure," without actually citing the research.
Noakes TD, Wilson G, Gray DA, Lambert MI, Dennis SC. “Peak rates of diuresis in healthy humans during oral fluid overload.” South African Medical Journal 2001; 91(10):852–857.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11732457/
In that study, Tim Noakes and colleagues showed that healthy adults can sustain urine production on the order of roughly 0.6 to 1.0 L per hour under maximal water loading, depending on body size and hormonal state. That is not a rigid cutoff, but it does define the upper range of what the kidneys can continuously excrete.
If fluid intake persistently exceeds renal excretion plus sweat and insensible losses, plasma sodium can fall, producing dilutional hyponatremia. That is the central risk, not the absolute daily volume by itself.
In 2007, the famous public hyponatremia case unfolded in real time during a contest called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” in which participants were encouraged to drink large volumes of water without urinating. One contestant reportedly consumed more than 5 L in a short period, later went home, and died from acute water intoxication with cerebral edema caused by severe hyponatremia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDND
When excessive free water is consumed rapidly, plasma osmolality falls as sodium becomes diluted. Water then shifts into cells down the osmotic gradient. Neurons are particularly vulnerable, and cerebral edema can develop, raising intracranial pressure and impairing cerebral perfusion. That is the fundamental pathophysiology in acute water intoxication.
Edward Adolph did some groundbreaking work on hydration and humans in 1921:
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.1921.sp001960
In that paper, Edward F. Adolph estimated daily water turnover using serial body-mass measurements in people working long hours in hot environments. He showed that laborers exposed to extreme heat could ingest extraordinarily large daily volumes, in some cases approaching 16 L, because sweat losses were correspondingly high. Intake and output remained matched, so plasma composition was maintained.
So volume itself was not the issue in that context. The danger lies in intake rate exceeding renal excretion capacity - consuming water faster than the kidneys can eliminate it, even temporarily.
I would be very cautious about the one size fits all of mainstream medicine. We are individuals and finding what works regardless of what it is: water consumption, balance of proteins between animals and plants, the amount of fat consumed, vegetarianism is more of a craft than following the dictates of experts. Just like there are people who can't consume that much water without going into kidney failure if done long enough, there are most likely people who need more without being chronically dehydrated.
The problem isn't the science. It is that we are trained to believe the experts and not our own intuition. Yes, intuition requires truth, but we are throwing around facts, not truth. We are told that intuition is BS and to follow the advice of experts. By all means drink that much water and see how you feel. If something is not right, then cut back until it does. We have to take the recommendations and use discernment. I don't feel right with that much water. I feel right at much less. Others require more; I know people who do.
So my objection is the one size fits all and that the experts know better than we do in how our bodies work. They don't and frequently they are wrong for everyone. The substack by The Midwestern Doctor talks about medical lies and how to use discernment to figure out what works for you. We are individuals with different reactions to medical dictates and it is up to us to find out what works, not some expert who has never talked to you, let alone examine you. The truth is most likely a mineral issue rather than how much water, something hidden from us in the water narrative.
I agree with one important point here: 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝘆𝗱𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴. Sweat rates vary enormously. Kidney handling of water varies. Sodium losses in sweat vary several-fold. Gut tolerance differs. Age, medications, climate, pace, and body size all matter. Good clinicians actually try to individualize recommendations for exactly these reasons.
Where I would push back is framing this as “experts versus intuition.”
Modern physiology is not built around rigid prescriptions like “everyone must drink X liters.” In endurance medicine especially, the field has moved away from quota-based hydration toward principles such as:
Drink to thirst rather than targets.
Avoid forced intake.
Adjust for heat, pace, and body size.
Watch for warning symptoms.
Those shifts did not come from ideology. They came from observing real people collapse with low sodium or heat illness and then working backward to the underlying physiology.
Intuition can help, but it is not infallible. Thirst perception blunts with age. Nausea and bloating often signal over-drinking before someone consciously recognizes it. Exercise-associated hyponatremia exists precisely because people sometimes keep drinking even when the body is already water-replete. That discovery came from bedside cases, not theory.
On the kidney side, the issue is not that some people can drink endlessly while others cannot. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀. During prolonged exercise, vasopressin commonly rises, reducing free-water excretion in the collecting ducts. At the same time, sweat becomes the dominant route of water loss - as opposed to urination. Individual variation determines where someone hits trouble, not whether those constraints exist.
Minerals absolutely matter. Sodium balance strongly influences how water distributes between compartments and therefore plasma osmolality. But volume balance still dominates. Even high-sodium drinks cannot protect against sustained intake that exceeds sweat losses. Framing this as hidden mineral truths versus a water narrative oversimplifies what is actually a three-compartment system governed by osmolality, Starling forces, capillary permeability, kidney handling, hormones, and skin losses.
A more accurate version of what you are arguing might be:
Population-level recommendations are guardrails, not personalized prescriptions.
Individuals still need to experiment within physiologic limits.
Symptoms matter.
Blindly forcing intake in either direction is unwise.
That position does not reject science. It is how careful medicine actually works.
The real danger is not listening to experts. It is assuming that experts claim uniformity, when most are actually saying something closer to this: 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝘆, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀.
I have mentioned in other posts the souvenir I got from eating a whole food, plant based diet - a .45 caliber kidney stone. 12mm calcium oxalate. You won’t pass that no matter what concoction you drink. I had the lithotripsy. The author has written before about oxalates and what they do in the body. The sources of oxalates? What this post tells you that you should eat; greens, legumes, etc. Don’t do it.
For legumes and grains, soaking in an acidic solution (I use whey from making yogurt, or ACV or Redmond's salt) for 7-12 hours. This leaches the anti-nutrienta from the beans or seed grains before eating. The soaking is for phytates and oxalates.
Yes, and I've also read they should be pressure cooked.
The best defense against stones in the first place is a diet sufficiently high in calcium and vitamins D3 and K2 — and lower phosphate levels. This shuts down parathyroid hormone. PTH is what causes lactic acid to build in the bones, dissolving calcium and releasing calcium into circulation. High calcium diets and sufficient D3 and K2, lower phosphate, suppress parathyroid hormone and keep calcium in the bones.
Absolutely Superb 5-Star Report !
*****
we are told Urolithin is a key to longevity, but is very expensive? In fact, it is already in use via the ancient Ayurveda method which you can easily do at home: see “Amaroli” also called “Shivambu.” I have used it for 25 years and still kicking !!!
No mention of eating more fruit especially juicy ones. I also recommend reading The Liver Rescue book by Anthony William the medical medium. He also has free information on his website.
That celery seed option really works. My wife has struggled with high BP and poor kidney function for years, steadily worsening as she gets older. Drs threw lots of drugs at her, saying getting her BP down would magically fix her kidneys (it didn't), and the side effects of all of these pills were horrific and likely slowly destroying her kidney and liver function.
We removed all but one BP and started taking celery seed extract and watching her diet more. The difference was amazing. Not only did her mild gout disappear (overnight), but her BP dropped by almost 20 points to within a normal range for her age being 160/70 which for a 70 year old is fine. I even discovered a large Cochrane study that indicated there was zero benefit in lowering her blood pressure further below this. Sent it to her Dr who seemed annoyed and dismissed it.
Also a well-meaning nurse practitioner friend of ours was most concerned about what my wife had done, saying taking celery seed while on BP medications was "dangerous" and she must stop it immediately, even knowing that all the most recent BP pharma meds had put her in bed sick for days with horror side effects. This is the sad mindset of modern medicine.
Am now looking at a little-known electrotech method to purify her blood in a safe, non-invasive manner, which should further assist her kidney function and general circulation...
Not everyone gets kidney stones
Little by little: on all-day motorcycle rides in the summer, I could feel the brain fog increasing. More caffeine didn't help. I did finally realize that I was dehydrated, so I would slam a 20 oz bottle of water at every fuel stop. It helped, but wasn't enough. I bought a CamelBak hydration bladder and strapped it to the bike. Easy to get a few sips of water every few miles. No more dangerous brain fog while riding.
Interestingly, these two ladies kind of say a different thing regarding hydration... one just doesn't know what to do! here's the link just in case: https://youtu.be/0boqdGS4v3A