The REAL Nutrient Missing in Carnivore (It’s NOT What You Think)

Opening on Symbiosis and Connection 0:00

Mitochondria, why we are, that was the original collaboration. Again, they're another species. They aren't human. they have a totally different DNA inside of us. Symbiosis is our origin story. You would not be here if there wasn't this incredible symbiotic relationship between multiple species going on. The whole gut, I don't even know. I can't talk about that. That's too much. But when we isolate, when When we eat alone, don't let people in on what we're doing. We are really defying life itself because energy only exists in exchange.

It's been so refreshing. It is not like a lot of people know me, but nobody here knows me. And they're like, I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. That's so fantastic. So you met me as Stephanie. Most of the time people call me Dr. Rimka. Sometimes I am tired of that because it misses the connection people can have with me because they'll put me over there instead of here. Exactly. So this is really interesting. What I'm going to talk about is what I think is the most common nutrient missing in the carnivore diet.

I was going bring lots of slides, lots labs. Because I don't have all that, you really should be taking notes because there's going be a lot of gene polymorphisms to take note of. Are we ready for that? Was that on the bingo card? All right, just kind of a single bit of science almost. So I think the most common missed nutrient, and stick with me here before you get pissed, it's vitamin C. But just wait. It's going to be okay. Before I say a word about meat, mitochondria, the vitamin c, clitorises or orgasms, I want everybody just to look around for a second.

And although you're far apart from each other, some of you are all close. Really take a moment, take deep breath, and look in someone's eyes. Do it. I'm going to watch, I am going wait. The faces, the shoulders, posture, everyone here made a very big journey. We did it for one reason. It's to remember who we really are, how to be, and this is the real medicine. So what I think is missing the most and what i've been seeing in the food culture, carnivore tribe, however you want to call it, is this sea of connection.

Right. So even though I'm here for health, clarity, truth, what we really came here is to be with each other because in my 30 years of doing this, and yes, I am of that age, there we go. I'll go back over here. You can eat the cleanest food on earth, but if you're doing it In fear, in isolation, you can still die of starvation. So, because it's not about pain or fat deficiency. It's really about loss of signal. And that isolation factor is one of the biggest causes of disease, death and dying, as you could imagine.

Stephanie Rimkau2019s Background and Healing Philosophy 3:34

I think we've forgotten that healing is a sport. It's meant to be done with another. We're not leaving the sun. All right, so a lot of you don't know me. So let me start with that. I wasn't going to do it, but I was inspired by everybody else. And I'm like, wow, OK. so I am Dr. Stephanie Rimka. Um, I started as a talk therapist in a mental hospital working with schizophrenics a very long time ago. i'm also a chiropractor, a neurofeedback therapist, clinician that does a lotta labs, i am a mitochondrial geek, and I AM a mother.

But mostly, I'm a woman who's spent my whole life suffering. I grew up in chaos. My father went to prison for robbing a bank when my mother was pregnant with me. I was the fourth child, so it was a very rough time for her, as you can imagine. My brothers both battled OCD, dyslexia, tremendous shame led to drug addiction, alcoholism, and their own time in prison in trouble with the law. So I really spent a lot of years as well believing that all of that was my fault because I was the mistake that broke my entire family.

Because after all, daddy robbed a bank because he was stressed out that the unexpected baby was coming, right? Now, nobody told me that. It's a story, you know, I made up for myself, but it really drove me to hate myself through most of my childhood, but it also created a huge why. It was a value creation in me to prove that I wasn't a mistake. So I made a very big vow very, very early at three years old. I remember it very distinctly. But I was like, if I could just understand pain deeply enough, maybe I can fix it.

Maybe I couldn't fix me. maybe i could fix the family. So that vow turned into my career. I became obsessed with mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, brains, nervous systems, voltage, light, sound, water, fascia, on and on. So after 20 years in practice, I kind of settled on my hierarchy of healing that I deal with when I first think see a patient. The very first thing I do is focus on safety. Then I bring in sound. then I bring in electricity, then magnetism, and then light. Notice you haven't heard me say the word food yet.

It is not where I begin because you can't digest when you don't feel And did the word safety get disappeared on that? That was fascinating. Yeah. You can't digest if you don't feel safe. you can heal in danger and nothing heals you faster than being seen, being heard, known, understood, and received. And many of you told these stories about these doctors who didn't give you that. We often call it gaslighting, right? So food of course found me. I have a food story too, I never tell the story and I'm like, why should I tell this story?

For 14 years I was a vegetarian, 12 of those I I was righteous, pure, certain. I absolutely spiritually enlightened, just like Phil, right? Lots of everything, all of it. But my body was certainly quietly dying. My hormones collapsed. Ended up breaking my back in a college soccer game, blew three discs. Uh, I ended up paralyzed in traction, not once, but three times, told I never playing any sports again, never running again. And if I unlucky, was never walking again Fast forward many more years, still persistent vegetarian.

I hit early, I'm that dumb, early menopause at 31 or 32 I think, infertile, told I was never having children. And believe it or not, was still kind of preaching plants and perfection. But then that endocrinologist, believe or it not there are some good ones out there, he was 70 so try to find someone much older, an endocornologist actually was compassionate and loving and broke it down and said, you have celiac disease. You cannot eat the gluten and the soy you're consuming. It's killing you. That was a very hard moment for me to deal with.

And he was so loving, and kind, trying to explain, God doesn't want you to suffer. If you keep going like this, You're never going to be able to help anybody. So I decided my rules, my disordered way, and my disconnected way of being clearly didn't make sense. And I'm like a, I don't know, 40-year meditator at this point, but in a meditation, believe it or not, a lion came to me and with such wisdom and love kind of gave me the permission to let it go. So, i added animal proteins back and took the gluten and soy out.

I never really at the time made the connection about what the meat did. I was giving all the credit to taking out the gluten and the soy, which was certainly significant.I had developed cystic acne back then, like 30 to 50 cysts throughout my face and scalp and neck. It was very, very intense. People think I have good skin. Oh, I tried the diet. I don't know if any of you guys have heard that. It's a dermatologist, so it was like salmon three times a day, berries, no grains, like salad or whatever.

So it's like paleo, whatever, with three days of that, it like my favorite movie, which is The Wizard of Oz. Everything went from black and white to technicolor, and it so shocking. I didn't know that wasn't normal. And I then started telling my friends, like, yes, this is what we've been telling you. You're not okay. But I would see patients and I'd smile and do the thing and have hope and come home and be like I pretty much just want to die. I hope I don't wake up tomorrow. It would happen again.

Personal Health Crisis and Dietary Transformation 10:11

Then I go and serve because it was my duty. And I would go through it all again. And that's when I started fasting. I have done so much water fasting, I can't even describe how many 10 to 15 day water fasts I've done, and I used to fast every week, every weekend, multiple times, because that was the only time I felt good. Now I know it wasn't the fasting it was I finally was not eating the plants that were trying to definitely kill me. So, six months later, mic check? Six months into eating salmon and some meat again, without trying, and quite unexpectedly, I was also pregnant.

So being told I'd never have children, there was, he was. Now it ended up being a very dangerous pregnancy because I had extremely low hormones. Everything was outrageously depleted. My placenta erupted at four and a half weeks. I hemorrhaged every day for 10 weeks, I fell down two flights of stairs because that was blacking out so much.I had two offices and I was renovating four homes and they were like, you're done. You need better rest. And I said, what are you talking about? How can I do that?

And they said, you know, so lovingly, trying not to say what they knew I knew. You're most likely going to miscarry. The biggest issue is you're losing so much blood. If you abrupt, You could die. So you must be observed. Who can watch you? So I went home to my mom. Six weeks bed rest turned into eight months. I had to have two high-risk OBs and a neurologist in the room. It was incredibly difficult. Turned into a rough emergency C-section with my son in a NICU and me in hospital for six days. And in America, insurance pays for nothing that long, so I wasn't doing well.

But he made it, I made, and that little boy just turned 19 last month. Yeah. And he's fantastic. Harry, I'm going to need some birth microbes, however. Okay, great. Perfect. I am shipping them to you. So, it took me about five years, though, after that birth to feel like myself again. It was, you know, breastfed for a long time. But the experience really taught me something, like the food can wake you up. wake the soul back up, but food alone really, it wasn't enough for me. So about eight years ago, like many of you, I tried a 30-day experiment, this whole carnivore thing.

I'm like, yeah, my keto, paleo, whatever. Yeah, 30 days, just I don't really like asparagus anyway, and like kale, right? Sucks. But I thought I was supposed to be eating it. And I made kale chips for my son and all the things. Well, it was super simple, easy, powerful. I loved it. What I got that first 30 days, you know, in the second, third month, I just stayed with it, was this, most of you probably had it that outrageously stronger, like lioness, my libido went from 10 to 12. A confident swagger that I was like, whoa, fire all the time, but a very strong parasympathetic, yes.

It was incredible. So I just kind of, you know, kept going with it. So it's eight years in at this point. But in that journey, I got hit with something else. And I'm going through all this to kind explain, because a lot of you deal with this, these things, and I forget that I ever had any of those things. I forgot I didn't used to sleep. forget I had headaches. Forget I was depressed. Forgot I wanted to die all the time. That was me. Because it can all change. Got over that. But then I was diagnosed with MS, multiple sclerosis.

People don't know a lot of times what I'm going through. I am not public about these things on social media at all, but I couldn't feel anything from my knees down. And I could actually coordinate my legs very well. It was a lotta stuff and it just was that moment of, I mean, MS did all the training with Terry Walls and all that, and I just said, you gotta be kidding me. Did I got what they got? I'm not going out in a wheelchair. This can't be happening." And they're like, yeah, you got to prepare for the decline.

But if you've seen me on social media or if did ever meet me here and have a conversation, I think you probably picked up already that I have whole lot of fuck you in my mitochondria. So I did what I didn't for my patients. Fuck you. And that's not happening today. So, I tightened up the protocol. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room. Everything was super clean. I rebuilt and here I am. Not broken, not sick, just forged from fire and discipline and love. That's what I think a lot of people are missing sometimes in this way of eating.

Running away, I ran to my community. I talked to people and I let them love on me while I was doing this and was not doing it alone. And I went to the MS community, the other doctors, and said I do need to surrender to you for you to help me a little bit. That is the thing about this. It concerns me sometimes. Like the carnivore does the both. It can strip away the noise so you can meet yourself again. But I've also seen it become a prison if we forget that health is relational. And here's the paradox, because this is supposed to be ancestral eating, but our ancestors never ate alone.

The hunt, the fire, dancing, marry the dancing. The laughter was all ritual and they metabolized not only fat, but constant connection. But today, and I know I'm guilty of it, we often grill alone, scroll alone. Chew in silence. We're measuring ketones and not conversations. Were tracking macros, But where's the meaning? So dogma of any sort can isolate us as much as the disease. And so if your way of eating, I love you, but if you're way eating is separating you from your tribe, your family, you loved ones, socializing, You may have fixed your inflammation, But you also might be fracturing your spirit.

Because let's talk about the biology of belonging. I will talk a little science. Does everybody know what that is? Great. And some people are like, we're tired. We're not talking. Okay. So they're these incredible other creatures that we borrowed that came and said, let us help you. Because it's the biology of belonging, and the biological is never going to lie. Mitochondria are not energy factories. They're doing all that, but they are really social creatures. And they're pulsing in rhythm with each other and also in direct rhythm and communication with all the microbiome because they are cousins or twins or something.

Carnivore Diet Benefits and MS Recovery 17:28

I'm not real sure on that yet. Mary can tell you. But they synchronizing through photons, through sound, though love. And whenever you're touched kindly, you laugh with joy, You hug someone, right? The mitochondrial voltage actually rises. And when you feel isolated, it falls. Social isolation increases mortality by nearly 30%. It's one of the worst things you can possibly do. It is the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Raises cortisol, CRP, interleukin-6. Literally shortens your telomeres, which are protecting your DNA.

So, yep, state matters. I love it. But so does laughter. And so, does connection. Because your mitochondria are not really just processing fat and electrons, right? They're eating frequency. So there's a reason our mitochondrion, do you guys know they only come from your mother? Okay, great. All of them, they throw daddy mitochondria out. Mitochondria only come from the mothers. It's a feminine, maternal energy. They carry the memory of warmth and beauty, the lullaby. The regulate through safety, not domination.

And we've made healing and the whole practice of it incredibly masculine. Metrics performance control. but your cells heal through reception, through surrender, though the feminine act of receiving. That's what my new book is about. It's called Receive. People have been saying, what's it about? I'm like, I'll talk about it. But it's about the courage to soften, to metabolize pleasure, grief, beauty, because whatever you are refusing to receive, your body has to try and manufacture. And it's a waste of energy, and it is exhausting.

It is a lot for women, but it not just for them. But the most important person that needs to learn to receive is the feminine. Okay, so all of you women I am talking to you. I wrote it really, really quickly. Kind of flowed through me, poured out in seven days. but I had to pause the edit because life had something in store for me. Taught me something else that I wouldn't. this last year. After those years of rebuilding myself, after becoming strong, vibrant, radiant, feminine, very free, and very certain, I fell in love with somebody that I was not expecting.

And I think it's significant and I would love anybody, maybe Mary one day can explain this to me. I date men and women. I had been seeing mostly women since college. My husband was kind of a fluke, I guess. But I was vegan when I picked him. And when started eating meat, that was a problem. There was lot of knowing myself and clarity. Like, peace out on you. You're wrong. Everything was woof. Anyway, so that such a bad experience. And it was just exclusively women for 18 years. And then after being a carnivore for five, six years or whatever it, I fell in love with a man for the first time in a very long time, right?

So it's like, how did that happen? I still don't, but I'm like yeah, you know, ate a lot of meat, testosterone got raised, and now all of a sudden he smells good. That's fascinating. And I mean, he smelled real good, like, I don't know what to do about it. But it was like starting all over. I'm like oh my God, feel like I am 16. Like I only know how to deal with it and I had to call all my straight friends. What do I do? Because I didn't now. It was really true. That was kind of for you, Norm, but not really.

All right. So, his name was Chip. He was absolutely my best friend. My mirror, my home, My inspiration. My big leader on earth. And I definitely thought this is it. The fairy tale that I've earned, I receive it, it was, you know, through the building of myself and my softness that brought him in, called him forth. But a couple of years into it we heard something we weren't expecting. Nobody is ready for this. Heart failure. heart transplant. It was during that time that I wrote this, but there was not a single ounce of he's gonna die in my system, right?

We got through the transplant, Interestingly enough, my dad died at the exact same time. I couldn't get home to him because I was in the hospital in Johns Hopkins and Baltimore. Everything was going really well. Eventually Chip and I went to Houston, Texas, met up with Mary for dinner one night, bought land, getting ready for a couple horses and some chickens and the rest of our lives and everything I ever wanted. It was actually a week before Thanksgiving. So it was a year ago, like last week, we were in Texas and I flew home to Detroit for Thanksgiving with my family.

He stayed in texas and a few days later he's like, I don't feel good. That ended up, he ended back in the hospital, me back on a plane. So he was still in kidney failure at the time and on dialysis and an immunosuppressants obviously for life. So a fungal infection had taken over because of the drugs, as sometimes happens. Within two days of me getting to the hospital, he was in ICU. The next day, He was on a ventilator. I spent about 30 days in the ICU with him, watching his brain and spinal cord disintegrate, stroke after stroke, falling in love with Him still more every

Grief, Loss, and Mitochondrial Recalibration 23:38

single day. And on January 2nd last year, At 12.32, he took his last breath. I was with him. He was in my arms. My soul walked him home. Unless you've ever had that experience, it's a love and peace that's beyond expression. But the deep silence after is shocking. I was on a plane back home within six hours. I did not want to be there any longer. A Christmas tree was still up, even though Christmas hadn't been recognized. Dog was waiting. Everything was familiar, but nothing was the same. I didn't work for months.

I don't leave my house.I was afraid to go outside. No longer saw the sun. And I no longer really slept. But I did it run for many of it. Just wanted to let myself feel every second of that.And this is what I learned even though I've been talking about it that grief is very electrical, it's very biological, because well beyond the emotions involved. When he died, my mitochondria lost their rhythm. My voltage entirely collapsed. Fatigue, inflammation, insomnia, brain fog. This, though, at the time, this wasn't pathology.

This was recalibration because the mitochondria are social and they co-regulate just like your nervous system does. So when the one you've been trained with disappears, you do go offline. If you know anybody grieving, I highly suggest you just go be with them because they need to start in training with other people. And it's often you don't have to talk. You don' have do anything. Because it will help change their resonant frequency a little bit more towards normalization It'll bring their charge up because it definitely feels like your own death But if you stay awake through it you keep moving and if your fuse to number bypass The system will reorganize around an entirely new frequency And that really, for me, I think is the alchemy of grief.

I haven't completely wrote about it, but that's what I rewrote the book in three days at Easter. And I said, it called to me and I'm like, let's go. His name was not in this book before. they are now, even though it's not about him. A month ago, Phil talked about the eight-year mark with kidney stones. I've been at eight years. Last month, I thought I was totally dead. Layed on the floor, 14 days of severe pain, had kidney stone and pilonephritis. Seven days of a high fever, hallucinating, unbelievable, but I was too afraid to go to a hospital that they would murder me and do God knows what and, you know, alter me into a eunuch.

I don't know. It wasn't going. But I thought death and moving, going to him would be a better option. That didn't happen because it came to me, and I realized I had kind of taken on his kidneys and that despair, that hopelessness that he was going through. And I did a moment of just saying, you know, telling him, whatever this is that I'm holding on that isn't mine, I give it back to you. And literally in a moments of sobbing, fever broke, and I went to sleep and woke up feeling very, very different because healing isn�t always about the food, the peptides, or the supplements.

This is the problem with Western medicine. They like to do everything way too independently. Be strong. Do it alone. Live together. Everything's isolated, isolated. Nobody else does this. And the mitochondria, why we are, that was the original collaboration. Again, they're another species. They aren't human. Symbiosis is our origin story. You would not be here if there wasn't this incredible symbiotic relationship between multiple species going on. The whole gut, I don't even know. I can't talk about that.

That's too much. But when we isolate, when armor, and when eat alone, don' t let people in on what we're doing. We are really defying life itself because energy only exists in exchange. So I'm hoping the next carnivore upgrade isn't going to be about more discipline or what to eat or how strict or grass this fed rubbed with crystals on their balls. I don't know, I need magical steak. But I hope it's about community, more connection, communivor or something like that. I want you to eat the steak, but I wanted to either on a fire with people you love I Want you?

To laugh dance touch cry They like when I swear Everybody wanted funny. I'm like, I don't think it would be funny, but because ultimately when hearts beat together, that's when voltage rises. Life force is how much electricity and voltages, how alive are you is based on how voltage you have. And if you get that from being with people, from touching, connecting, laughing, dancing, the food is actually not as important as you think. It's just an incredibly easy lever to use when you're working with But please don't do it in a way that's keeping you disconnected, because it breaks my heart.

Because doing it together is how you get coherence and how get healing. So I asked like tonight before you guys have dinner, take a second and look at people in the eyes. Maybe give them a hug. Say thank you so much for taking the journey. Tell Phil, oh my God, I love you. Thank you for doing this. Phil thank so you much. I So this is what I want you to know. The body does not heal from perfection. It heals from connection. And I would like from, you know, I'm going to ask something to indulge me, because look, if you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, Would you capture it or let it slip?

Yo. So I wanted to read the forward of this book because it's incredible and it was written by Mary Ruddock, but then I realized she's right here.

Connection, Community, and the Biology of Belonging 30:38

And if I could have the honor of having you read this to them, Mary, please. Thank you. Oh, and so I have 15 copies totally as gifts. If anybody wants them, let me know. I think women should have first right. It's not on sale yet. We launch it December 9th. This is just my gift to, it's all the copies I could get. And I love Mary Ruddick so much. So I wrote her name on a piece of paper long before we ever had a conversation to do this. Then we met and all of the things and then she did it and it was like, Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.

I love you so much. And Evan? I cant believe you brought it in. Too dead. Okay. This is the forward to receive. You have been wondering, not just in body, but in blueprint, separated from the rhythm of your original design. Burdened by a forgetting too ancient to name. A woman is a vessel of salt, of myth, Of memory and music. I mean, those were good lyrics. And this book. This book is the echo of her remembering. It arrives in a time of utter fracture. The feminine has been contorted into performance.

Pleasure is pathology. Softness is shame. Cycles are silenced. And the cost is everywhere. autoimmunity, infertility, insomnia, hormonal collapse, nervous system disarray. This isn't a lifestyle epidemic. It's a biological exile. We have lost rhythm, and with it, the ability to receive. As a human ecologist, I've worked at the edge, living amongst the world's last unbroken tribes, where the men walk in such unshaken masculinity that it steals your breath. And the women are so soft and surrendered that your cells exhale in safety.

My field, personally, is microbes, mucosa, and villi. My obsession is pattern. I study what makes a body thrive outside of our modern dog and why some never do. And I've found that beneath every so-called miracle is the same ancient truth. The body does not need to be fixed. It needs to revered. Collapse, whether from heartbreak, infection, toxins, or epigenetics, often begins the same way. The bodies stuck in striving. and it has forgotten how to receive. That is why this book matters. Receive, it's not a guide.

It's a reclamation. it is the medicine I have longed to place in the hands of every woman who has ever whispered. I am so, I'm going to add a rimca word, fucking tired of holding it all. This is the book we didn't know we were allowed to want. And now that it's here, I can't imagine healing without it. It could not have been birthed from a better source, FYI. Dr. Stephanie Rimka does not write from theory. She writes from transfiguration, from blood, from the brutal beauty of rebuilding in real time.

Introducing the Book Receive 35:48

She is part Goldblum, part goddess, a chaos theorist in black, decoding trauma like a physicist, then guiding you back to your hips like priestess. She is the apricot pit, soft skin, tender fruits, and inside a sunstone, burning silently even in the mouth of night. She doesn't defy categories, she disintegrates them. Stephanie makes mystical cellular, as you've all seen today, the invisible undeniable. So when you read this or you pick it up or buy it or give it to your friends, do not call this a book.

Call it what it is. This is a dance floor made of paper. A scroll from the womb of the earth, a sanctuary stitched from scar and memory, or a resurrection manual disguised as prose. So read slowly. Let each sentence enter like breath after drowning.Let it unfasten the cages gently. let it call home the parts of you that once went quiet to survive. And when you finish, do not close this book. Turn your body into one. a sacred text of scar and pulse, a living gospel of what happens when women finally allow her cup to be filled.

Because you, dear reader, are the last chapter. And this aching world has been waiting for your return. It's an honor to introduce this book. And the fabulous, can we all say fabulous? Fabulous, fabulous woman. Bold enough to write it. May your cup overflow. My pleasure. That is it. I don't know if you would have questions. Some of you probably want to know about melanin and peptides and sunlight. There's been all kinds of that. And I know I'm known for that, and I can be very sciencey and brash and bold on the gram.

That's me as well. But this is more where I am moving. Obviously, I still do see patients. This probably is my last year as a clinician just because it's getting very hard to do everything I do. And to those of you here, I'm looking for any good clinicians I can refer to in the other countries. So please, if you have good conditions and all you guys who spoke here I'd contact information. But that's it for me.