After struggling for 25 years to understand the cause behind her severe autoimmune reactions, Mikhaila Peterson turned to something called the ‘lion diet’

Woman Who Ate Only Beef For 8 Years Shares The Startling Changes It Had On Her Mind And Body

Jordan Peterson’s daughter has opened up about how switching to an all-beef diet dramatically affected her physical health and mental state.

Toronto native Mikhaila Peterson was just 17 years old when she had to undergo hip and ankle replacement surgery. These drastic procedures came after many years of painful symptoms and medical complaints.

Now 33, Mikhaila—who is the daughter of well-known media figure Jordan Peterson—spoke about her health journey during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast eight years ago. She revealed she had battled autoimmune issues like arthritis, which had significantly impacted her life.

Her mother first noticed something wasn’t quite right when Mikhaila was just two years old. She recalled being told that her daughter had started walking in an unusual way. But the doctor brushed it off, saying it was probably just “growing pains.”

By the age of seven, she was officially diagnosed with “juvenile rheumatoid arthritis,” and by that point, the disease had already affected 37 joints in her body. By the time she reached 17, she had lost all cartilage in both her hip and ankle.

When traditional medical treatments failed to improve her condition, Mikhaila began following an elimination diet. This involved cutting out certain foods one by one. That’s when she realized even seemingly healthy options like rice and vegetables were making things worse for her body.

But there was one food that didn’t seem to cause her any trouble—and that was beef.

Speaking on her own platform, The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast, where she interviews various health experts, she explained to clinical nutritionist Dr. Josh Axe how her journey with the beef-only diet started in December 2017. She also talked about how it brought both physical and mental relief over time.

She told her guest: “I started it thinking, I’ll do this. I like, I know I don’t react to beef. I’ll do this for six weeks and reintroduce some foods and see what’s bugging me and causing the autoimmune responses.”

“And I started with olives, and they were like preservative free – really high quality olives. Just olives had a huge immune response – and it was scary enough that after that, I was like, ‘I’m just gonna wait’.”

“It took about two weeks for the arthritis symptoms to go away. It happened really quickly. It took about six weeks for me to stop crying in the morning because I was very depressed. I was off of antidepressants, but I was still not stable.”

She continued to explain how her transformation unfolded, adding: “And then five months later, my lingering anxiety went away, and since then, it’s been me spending the last eight years trying to figure out why my body reacts to everything but beef.”

“But I’ve popularized the lion diet because there seems to be thousands, tens of thousands of people with autoimmunity or psychiatric disorders that will go into remission only eating meat, which is nuts.”

“Some of those people managed to bring food back and identify exactly what’s causing it, but a lot of those really chronically ill people are stuck only eating meat happy because they’re in remission.”

Mikhaila shared that the main reason she took such a strict dietary route was because she believes she suffers from what she called “extreme gut permeability.” According to her, this condition has triggered severe food sensitivities, which in turn have led to autoimmune and mental health problems.

She added: “So it’s been a wild ride.”