Topics: Food and Drink, Netflix, Advice, Health, Documentaries, Social Media, TV And Film, Real Life, True Life
Experts have issued a pretty serious warning on the controversial diet that Brian Johnson - AKA the 'Liver King' - made infamous.
Johnson, who has since starred in a brand-new bombshell Netflix documentary titled Untold: The Liver King, effectively made a living out of eating a brutally carnivorous diet of, you guessed it, raw liver and other meat for over a decade.
However, after years upon years of convincing his millions upon millions of social media followers to strive towards a more primitive lifestyle - the American influencer shockingly denounced his all-meat obsession and experts have since issued a serious warning on such a diet.
Take a look at the official documentary trailer here:
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Now, while advocates of the carnivore diet, which includes many animal-based foods like steak, eggs and butter, claim to experience a number of health benefits doctors from the Indiana University School of Medicine have warned that eating like this diet could lead to increased risk of agonising kidney stones.
Kidney stones are usually found in the kidneys or in the ureter, the tube that connects the kidneys to your bladder.
They can be extremely painful, and can lead to kidney infections or the kidney not working properly if left untreated.
The warning follows a recent case of a patient who adopted the diet after learning about it on YouTube and suffered some pretty major complications.
The researchers wrote in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that the 68-year-old man lost two stone while only eating meat, and tests done a year after he started the carnivorous diet showed that his body was in the earliest stages of forming the painful crystals.
It was found that the man had an increased risk of all three types of major kidney stones, those formed of calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate, and uric acid - all of which were at 'levels consistent with stone growth'.
After eventually convincing the patient to leave behind the viral diet, he was administered medication to help with gout, a type of arthritis and the condition he was attempting to treat with the extreme eating plan.
And, just a year after giving up the diet, the medics reported that he remained kidney stone free.
"This patient’s urine studies demonstrate the potential hazards of the carnivore diet," the researchers said.
"Due to increased animal protein, the exclusion of dairy products, and the removal of fruits and vegetables, the diet creates an optimal environment for the development of all stone types."
They added: "The lack of literature on this and other fad diets’ safety and efficacy should be a cause for alarm among physicians.
"The advent of social media and the use of such communication for health information will make fad diets a continually growing issue."
Untold: The Liver King is currently available to watch on Netflix.
