Mikhaila Peterson Fuller - important presentation

"When I was two, I started to limp, and at seven I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in 37 joints. At age eight, I was put on injectable immunosuppressants. At 12, I was diagnosed with severe depression and put on antidepressants. At 14, I was diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia, which is a fancy definition for chronic fatigue, and I could barely get out of bed for years. My hip and ankle were replaced when I was 17 from the arthritis that wasn't managed by the medications I was on. And I spent a year on Oxycontin, limping around what felt like broken bones, trying to stay hopeful and not kill myself. I went to University for Biomedical Science when it became apparent that nobody in the medical system could help me, and the life-saving treatments I was on weren't saving my life. When I was 23, I completely changed my diet, which was radical, and I didn't think it was gonna work. I removed processed foods and only ate whole foods, primarily meat, and my life changed rapidly. I felt like I had stepped out of hell. I didn't know that I was trapped in, into heaven. It turned my world upside down. Then I had to get off of the medications I was on. Antidepressant withdrawal, that neither me nor my doctors knew existed, was worse than the opiate withdrawal I had been through after I was treated with OxyContin. After I stopped taking the eight medications I was on and had a baby, my autoimmune symptoms and depression started sneaking back in and willing to do anything to not be sick. I tried and this sounds ridiculous but I tried eating only meat and by that I mean beef salt and water only. Knowing beef was the one food that didn't contribute to my arthritis and depression. Eating only meat put my symptoms into remission again in six weeks. I've only been eating beef and lamb for seven years now in order to keep my symptoms in remission. I'm not on any medication. I have no symptoms of disease. I'm in complete remission after spending 16 years being medicated with multiple joints replaced. I spent seven years trying to get the medical community to take this seriously and conduct some studies. The plant free ketogenic diet I'm on, which is what it is. It's gone viral on TikTok, has over 500,000 people following it on social media. The number of Google searches for these ketogenic diets has skyrocketed since about 2017. I have groups online with over 30,000 people who follow the same diet as me for autoimmunity and mental disorders that they've been unable to treat any other way. These people are putting their diseases into remissions after decades. This way of treating disease has garnered an international attention from the Times to Fox to Sky News Australia. The problem is, most people don't know that what they're consuming is making them sick. They know junk food is bad, but they don't realize it's causing chronic disease, and neither do their healthcare providers. When you're diagnosed with a mental or autoimmune disorder, diet and the state of your gut isn't even mentioned. If it is brought up, you're ostracized. One of the leading theories to get a bit nerdy in understanding chronic illness is increased intestinal permeability, which you can measure with lab work with zonulin levels. In a healthy digestive system, the gut lining serves as a barrier, allowing nutrients to pass through while keeping harmful substances out of the bloodstream. However, because of the high carb recommendations and ultra-processed foods we're exposed to and chemicals we're currently encouraged to consume from the food pyramid and our doctors. Our diets damage our gut barrier, which causes particles from the gut to leak into the bloodstream. A lot of the chemicals and preservatives in foods we consume are actually legal in other countries. I spent years so livid at the medical industry that I wouldn't go into a hospital. How dare I be treated with medications and end up losing joints when dietary intervention works? How dare these medical doctors tell me there was nothing I can do? I'd never be where I am today without this diet. I truly believed I would have died. I'm not suggesting the average person does this extreme version of a ketogenic diet. I am specifically suggesting that this diet is researched as a potential treatment for autoimmunity and psychiatric disorders with the goal of eventually healing the gut and reintroducing more healthy whole foods, and that the ideological war on meat needs to end. I've seen tens of thousands of people seek complete remission in as little as six weeks. Most drugs don't work that fast, and no drug fixes the root cause. Approximately one in four Americans are on psychiatric medications for psychiatric illness and approximately one in 10 has an autoimmune disorder. I believe all these millions of people could be symptom-free with proper dietary interventions ranging from low carb to ketogenic to plant-free ketogenic to whole food, depending on the severity of the illness. Dietary intervention is what doctors should suggest first before putting people on medications that do not treat the underlying problem, some of which cause horrible dependence, making them nearly impossible to get off of treating chronic disease, which we now know is caused by the environment and our diet, without looking at diet as the treatment, should be considered malpractice. My request, shared by millions of people using these diets to treat themselves, is for the government to fund studies on ketogenic and plant-free ketogenic diets as potential treatments for autoimmunity and psychiatric disorders. There are only a few studies that don't list because of the lack of funding. One study shows remission in treatments of Crohn's disease, which is a terrible intestinal autoimmune disorder that can result in people using colostomy bags for the rest of their life. Another study shows complete remission of anorexia. Unless people start being treated with dietary interventions using these ketogenic diets, and the food pyramid prioritizes meat and low carb whole foods so that people can avoid becoming chronically ill in the first place, and Americans are told that the ultra processed foods aren't just unhealthy, they're making us chronically ill. America is going to get fatter, sicker, more mentally ill, and more expensive. If the government funds these studies, America could be at the forefront of these scientific discoveries. Thank you very much for your time. It's an honor to be here. Thank you."