Darren Schmidt Interview: Chronic Disease & Beef Liver

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What’s your background?

I was a farmer from age 9 during the summers for 17 years. 

I always wanted to be a doctor of something. In college, before taking the entrance exam for medical school, I interviewed a dozen doctors and students of medicine and none of them encouraged me to go into medicine. So I looked at podiatry, veterinary, optometry medicine and finally spent a couple hours with a chiropractor in my hometown.

He showed me that pain can appear in one area of the body such a the leg but the cause was somewhere else such as in the back. I really like the holistic viewpoint. Also, it was manual labor which I was used to doing. 

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How did you get into the low carb space?

During Chiropractic College, I attended a lot of weekend seminars outside of school including nutrition. One seminar put on by Dr. Joel Wallach taught me that the reason why American are so sick was because our food supply is so poor (the year was 1996). I decided to be a chiropractor who focused on nutrition so I could help people with Root Causes using the most basic, inexpensive, and most healing therapy for the widest variety of conditions- food and supplements.

After I graduated, I attended an educational meeting put on by a chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I learned that some fats are healthy for us and excess carbs were not a part of the traditional diets of our healthy ancestors. This was in 1999 and I decided to go low carb then. I remained below 75 grams of carbs a day for the next 16 years. I went very low carb to acheive ketosis in 2016. I went carnivore as best I can in 2018. 

What do you think are the underlying roots of chronic disease?

There are 3 main Causes of chronic disease.

  1. Excess sugar metabolism by the cells due to the diet
  2. Pathogens including viruses, bacteria, parasites, virus, mycoplasma, Lyme.
  3. Toxins including seed oils, heavy metals, chemicals, and radioactive elements.

How did you discover the benefits of beef liver?

I learned about the benefits of beef liver from Weston A. Price. It was/is a sacred food in many indigenous tribes. 

In 2016 when I unknowingly suffered from toxic black mold, some liver supplements kept me feeling better at 80% for the next 9 months until I found the black mold. Then I could address the real cause of my mold symptoms. 

In early spring of 2020, one of my practitioners cooked 3 pounds of liver for her husband before she flew out of the country for a week. He is a tennis coach suffering for a long time with tennis elbow. He had tried massage, supplements, acupuncture, chiropractic, and other things with no relief. After 3 days of eating all of this liver his elbow was 95% better.  This is a success that can not be forgotten.

Can you please talk about cases where you’ve prescribed beef liver and the results you’ve seen.

In May of 2020, I had a new patient with severe neuropathy pain starting from his feet going up to his brain. 

He had a car accident in 1991 which broke his back and required a fusion of T11 to T12. He was paralyzed in a wheelchair for 3 months then slowly he could walk again. 

His daily level of neuropathy pain was 9-10/10. 

He was a full-on 100% carnivore for 1.5 years before seeing me so he was already on a keto and low-inflammatory diet.

I told him on day 1 to eat as much liver as he possibly could everyday. I also recommended a supplement whose first ingredient is liver. The dosage was 30/day which is a lot. (cataplex B from Standard Process).

He cooked one pound of liver each day, gave a little to his girlfriend and he ate the rest. 

3 days later, all of his neuropathy was gone. 

Another patient later said this about his experience:

“My wife and I ate beef liver for 4 days in a row about a half a pound each night.

My arthritis and neuropathy is about 80% gone my wife’s arthritis is about 40% gone.”

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How much beef liver do you prescribe?

If someone has severe symptoms, it would be a pound a day. I have recently recommended only 3 servings per week to someone who was in pretty good shape but needed some extra. 

Why do you prescribe beef liver and why do you think it works so well? Please discuss the mechanisms in as much detail as you can. 

The liver could be from any animal but I think beef is healthier to eat than the other options.

Liver is the healthiest food you can eat. Just google “nutrients in liver” and click on images to see nutrition comparison charts. 

The mechanism of great healing from eating liver could be related to the high amounts of B vitamins in it. In my career, I have learned that high carb eating and stress deplete B vitamins tremendously. This leads to the most common mechanism of chronic disease. It is called

Lactic acidosis and was well defined in the 1930’s whereas the modern definition has diluted its clinical significance.  (BTW, There are many mechanisms of chronic disease.) This mechanism is resolved with ketosis, cleaning the blood, and making the liver function well. 

The greatest way to get the liver to function well is to eat liver. This is called “glandular therapy” and it was mastered in medicine by the 1930’s then lost after WW2.

Are you concerned about vitamin A toxicity? Why or why not? 

I am not concerned.

There is a common confusion that retinol is vitamin A. Retinal, retinoic acid, retinyl palmitate and carotenes such as beta-carotene are also NOT vitamin A. 

In the 1920’s and 30’s, it was known that vitamins are big, complex chemical structures that contain minerals, enzymes, and other molecular components. The real vitamin A comes from whole food, not a chemical isolate from a supplement. 

You can get retinol toxicity but not a vitamin A toxicity. 

There are 100+ year old case studies showing that sometimes men got sick from eating bear liver and sometimes they didn’t. Only 1 out of 5 polar bear livers caused illness in the book “The Fat of the Land”. And it only took a few bites to cause illness which means there was probably a heavy metal toxicity in that liver. Either way, if you are concerned about vitamin A toxicity from eating polar bear liver, then don’t eat polar bear liver. Stick with beef and chicken. Also, avoid taking retinyl palmitate in supplements. 

What are some other keys to a healthy diet that you recommend? 

I change my diet recommendations depending on the patient. 

If someone is toxic with black mold, they need to eat around 100 grams of carbs a day so its not too high and not keto. Ketones and sugar can both feed mold.

If someone wants to lose weight, I recommend low carb, low fat and high protein eg. 

If someone is diabetic, ketosis is vital.

If someone has fungus, I have an anti-fungal diet.

If someone has a chronic virus, I have an anti-viral diet.

If someone loses too much weight on low carb, they have to eat high carb. I have seen this happen to only 2 men in the last 15 years though.

I have some people eating a pure carnivore diet because it fixes their intestines or helps kick out parasites. 

Conclusion

Chronic disease is a complex tree. But diet is one of the biggest levers you can pull.

If you’re interested in our new beef liver crisps, make sure to sign up here for early access.

Separately, if you’d like to start the carnivore diet sign up below for my 14 day guide to getting started.

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