Eat Meat. Beat Sleep?

When Carnivore Fixed Everything... Except Your Sleep

TL;DR

• 5-6 hours of sleep despite "doing everything right"? You're not alone—and it's not just about diet or light exposure
• Standard blood work lies: Those "normal" results don't measure mineral status, toxic metal burdens, or metabolic dysfunction
• Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) reveals what blood can't: 2-3 months of metabolic activity, mineral ratios, heavy metal accumulation, and your unique oxidative type
• Fast oxidizers burn through nutrients quickly—explaining anxiety, sleep disruption, and skin issues even on carnivore
• Heavy metals block your biology: Vaccines (childhood schedule, tetanus boosters, flu shots, mRNA COVID), amalgam fillings, environmental pollutants, and even "clean" salt like Redmond may be raising your toxic load—aluminum, mercury, cadmium, and lead directly disrupt melatonin production and nervous system function

"I feel great on carnivore, but I notice I don't sleep more than 5 or 6 hours anymore."

You've heard this. Maybe you've said it. The carnivore diet resolved your gut issues, cleared your brain fog, dropped inflammation. You dialed in your morning sunlight, you're grounding, you've optimized your light environment. You're doing everything the Bitcoin health maximalists recommend.

And yet... you wake up at 4 AM. Every night. Like clockwork.

You're not physically tired. You feel alert, even. But you know you should be sleeping. You miss being able to sleep 7, 8 hours. You know that if this keeps happening, it's going to catch up with you.

Or maybe you snap at your kids over nothing. Feel anxious for no clear reason. Your skin hasn't cleared up like everyone promised. You look in the mirror and think: "Am I doing something wrong?"

No. You're not crazy. And you're not weak.

What you're experiencing is your body sending signals that something deeper is off—signals that diet alone cannot address. Signals that centralized medicine can't catch.

The Matrix of "Normal" Blood Work

If you do go to your doctor (and most carnivore Bitcoiners know better), you're already expecting it. They run a standard panel. Your cholesterol is 280, maybe 300. The doctor's face changes. Here comes the statin pitch. "We need to get this under control."

You leave knowing you've been gaslit. Again.

Here's what they won't tell you: Those cholesterol numbers that "require medication" now? Fifty years ago—before heart disease became epidemic—it was common to see healthy individuals with total cholesterol over 300. The ranges shifted. Not because the science changed. Because the pharmaceutical industry needed more customers.

Same thing happened with blood pressure. The "normal" range keeps dropping. More people become "patients." More prescriptions get written.

This is the Overton Window of acceptable health information—the narrow range of discourse that centralized medicine allows. But there's a deeper problem with standard blood panels beyond shifted goalposts: This is the Overton Window of acceptable health information—the narrow range of discourse that centralized medicine allows. But there's a deeper problem with standard blood panels beyond shifted goalposts:

They measure what's in your bloodstream right now, and compare you to sick people.

Standard lab ranges are statistical averages derived from the general population—which is mostly sick. If the average American is pre-diabetic, inflamed, and mineral-depleted, then "normal" just means you're sick like everyone else.

Functional lab ranges compare you to healthy populations. Optimal, not average. There's a massive difference between "you won't die today" and "you're thriving."

Blood tests are a snapshot of right now. They show what your body is maintaining for survival, not what's actually happening at the tissue level over time.

Think of it this way: If Bitcoin is a ledger of transactions over time, blood work is a single block. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) is the blockchain—a permanent record of what's been happening in your metabolic systems for months.

What's Really Keeping You Awake

When you're on carnivore and still can't sleep past 6 hours, three invisible forces are usually at play:

1. Mineral Depletion & Imbalance

Carnivore is nutrient-dense, yes. But here's what most people miss: if you're a fast oxidizer (high metabolic rate), you burn through minerals—especially magnesium, calcium, and potassium—faster than you can replace them.

Low magnesium and calcium make it nearly impossible for your nervous system to downregulate. Your body literally cannot relax. You might feel tired, but your system is running too hot to enter deep sleep cycles. Simply throwing more magnesium at the problem may not move the needle and throw off the ratios of other minerals your body needs to stay balanced.

Elevated sodium and potassium—common in fast oxidizers—indicate adrenal overactivity. Your stress response is stuck in the "on" position. You're burning the candle at both ends metabolically. Are yo remineralizing with salt water and skewing the balance even more?

2. Heavy Metal Burden

This is the part that can be a bitter pill to swallow.

Even if you eat clean, drink filtered water, and avoid obvious toxins, you're still carrying a toxic load. We all are.

The sources are everywhere:

• The childhood vaccine schedule you received years ago—thimerosal (mercury-based preservative) in multi-dose vials, aluminum adjuvants in DTaP, HPV, Hepatitis B
• "Essential" adult vaccines like tetanus boosters (Tdap/Td), annual flu shots, and the mRNA COVID vaccines many took before questioning the narrative
• Environmental exposure from airborne particulate matter, industrial pollutants, vehicle emissions
• Dental work from amalgam fillings placed years or decades ago
• Food sources including the fish you eat (mercury bioaccumulation), the "clean" Redmond Real Salt that may be elevating your lead levels
• Cookware and household items (aluminum, cadmium from ceramics)

Even if you refuse all vaccines now, you're carrying the cumulative burden from what was already injected. That aluminum and mercury doesn't just disappear—it accumulates in tissues over time.

This is the black pill many Bitcoiners took late. You questioned the financial system early. You saw through the monetary lies. But the medical-pharmaceutical lies took longer to see through. They hid behind manipulated science, controlled studies, and captured regulators—selling treatments they knew did more harm than good, or no good at all. Those childhood vaccines, those annual flu shots, that COVID jab you took before you knew better, or worse, to save your fiat mining job—all of it added to your toxic load. The system that told you fiat money was sound is the same system that told you these injections were safe and necessary.

The damage compounds silently.

The EMF Multiplier Effect

Here's what makes this even more insidious: non-native electromagnetic fields may amplify heavy metal toxicity.

Research shows that EMF exposure can mobilize metals from dental amalgams and implants. Studies have documented increased urinary mercury levels after MRI exposure, and mobile phone use correlates with elevated salivary mercury from amalgam fillings.

More concerning: animal studies demonstrate that combining cadmium or lead exposure with electromagnetic fields produces greater oxidative damage than either exposure alone. The mechanism appears to be converging pathways—both EMFs and heavy metals independently generate reactive oxygen species, deplete antioxidant enzymes, and disrupt mitochondrial function. When combined, they create a synergistic stress on your biology.

Your Wi-Fi router, your phone, the cell tower outside, the smart meter on your house—these aren't just creating their own oxidative burden. They may be amplifying the toxic effects of the metals already accumulated in your tissues.

This is why reducing nnEMF matters even more if you're carrying a heavy metal load. It's not just about one exposure or the other—it's about their interaction.

Here's what the research shows:

• Cadmium exposure in the highest quartile makes you 86% more likely to report trouble sleeping and 35% more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea symptoms (PMC11544537, 2024 NHANES database study)
• Aluminum from airborne particles shows significant association with poor sleep quality—2024 data found odds ratios of 1.17 for one-year exposure and 1.28 for three-month exposure (Kim et al., 2024, PMID: 38244965)
• Lead at levels ≥10 μg/dL is associated with decreased sleep duration in children; occupational exposure in adults links to higher prevalence of sleep disorders including insomnia (PMC10528206, 2023)
• Mercury accumulates in your pineal gland—the primary site of melatonin production—directly disrupting your circadian rhythm (Bjørklund et al., 2017; case studies show sleep disturbances in 70% of adults with mercury exposure)

These metals create oxidative stress, generate reactive oxygen species, and cripple the enzymes your body needs to produce GABA, serotonin, and melatonin. They displace essential minerals like zinc, magnesium, and selenium, creating functional deficiencies even when your diet is "perfect."

3. Metabolic Type Mismatch

Not everyone thrives the same way on carnivore. If you're a fast oxidizer, you need more fat relative to protein to stabilize your burn rate. If your ratios are off, you're essentially running a high-performance engine on the wrong fuel mixture.

This creates:

• Blood sugar instability (even without carbs)
• Heightened adrenal activity
• Nutrient depletion
• Chronic low-grade inflammation
• Sleep architecture disruption

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Why Light Alone Isn't Enough

I respect the quantum biology approach; in fact, it has transformed how I view upstream factors of dysfunction when rebuilding my clients health. Morning sunlight, circadian alignment, reducing non-native EMF—these matter immensely. They optimize the efficiency of your biochemical machinery.

Red and near-infrared light enhance mitochondrial function by stimulating cytochrome c oxidase (Complex IV of the electron transport chain), improving ATP production and reducing oxidative stress (Hamblin, 2016). When your mitochondria work efficiently, they support liver detoxification, help balance minerals, and can clear congested pathways. This is real. This matters.

But here's where it gets complicated: Heavy metals cause your mitochondria to leak electrons (Belyaeva et al., 2012). Instead of cleanly producing ATP through the electron transport chain, toxic metals impair electron transport, leading to "electron leakage"—generating destructive superoxide radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage cellular membranes, proteins, and DNA. This oxidative stress directly sabotages the very detox pathways light is trying to support.

Light optimizes the machinery. But it can't provide the missing raw materials—the magnesium, zinc, and selenium that heavy metals have displaced. And it can't physically remove the embedded metals that are crippling your enzymes.

Think of it this way: Perfect sunlight exposure can help your liver function better if the liver has what it needs to work with. But if your detox enzymes are blocked by mercury, if your glutathione system is depleted because zinc and selenium are displaced by cadmium and lead—light alone can't overcome that.

You need both. Optimize your light environment and address the biochemical roadblocks. Not one or the other.

The HTMA Advantage: Your Metabolic Blockchain

Standard blood work is designed for a sick population. The "normal ranges" are statistical averages of mostly sick people. Functional labs compare you to healthy ranges and reveal patterns standard medicine ignores.

Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis gives you:

1. A 2-3 Month Metabolic History
As your hair grows, it incorporates minerals and metals from your blood supply. It's a permanent record—a blockchain of your biochemistry.

2. Mineral Status & Ratios
Not just levels, but relationships:

• Calcium/Magnesium ratio: Affects nervous system reactivity and sleep quality. Here's a critical point about calcium specifically: your body will rob calcium from your bones to keep blood levels looking "normal." You can be developing osteoporosis—literally losing bone density—while standard blood work tells you your calcium is fine. The body prioritizes short-term survival (stable blood chemistry today) over long-term health (strong bones tomorrow). Blood calcium tests miss this entirely because they're measuring what your body sacrificed bone to maintain.
• Sodium/Potassium ratio: Reveals adrenal function and stress response
• Copper/Zinc ratio: Impacts skin health, hormone metabolism, mood stability

3. Toxic Metal Accumulation
Your body uses hair as an excretory pathway. Elevated levels show what's being eliminated—and what's been stored long-term in tissues.

4. Your Oxidative Type
Fast, slow, or mixed oxidizer. This determines your ideal macronutrient ratios, supplement needs, and metabolic vulnerabilities.

5. Patterns Standard Medicine Misses
Multiple mineral deficiencies might indicate poor absorption or chronic stress. High toxic metals suggest environmental exposure or impaired detoxification. The data paints a picture blood work cannot.

You?

"Everyone says carnivore fixes everything. What am I missing?"

"I'm not even tired. But I should be sleeping. I miss being able to sleep longer."

When you look in the mirror at 4 AM, wide awake after only 5 hours of sleep, what's the internal dialogue?

You're not missing anything. Your body is trying to tell you something that diet alone can't fix.

What's Actually Breaking Down

Sleep disruption at this level isn't "just stress" or "just getting older." Your body is stuck in fight-or-flight mode when it should be resting and repairing. Here's what's happening:

Your nervous system can't downshift—mineral imbalances (low magnesium, calcium) prevent your body from switching into rest-and-digest mode. You're running hot even when you're exhausted.

Your stress hormones won't turn off—your adrenals are stuck in overdrive. Even lying in bed, your body thinks it's under threat. Melatonin production is impaired because the glands that make it are damaged or blocked by heavy metals.

Your cellular energy production is compromised—heavy metals cause your mitochondria (the power plants in your cells) to malfunction, creating oxidative damage instead of clean energy. This affects every system.

Your detox system is backed up—your liver can't process and eliminate toxins effectively when the enzymes it needs are blocked by metals or when mineral cofactors are missing.

These don't exist in isolation. When one system breaks, it stresses the next. The cascade accelerates.

THE CASCADE RISK OF IGNORING THIS

Chronic sleep deprivation isn't just annoying. Over time:

• Cognitive decline accelerates—your brain needs deep sleep to clear metabolic waste
• Insulin resistance develops—yes, even on carnivore. Poor sleep disrupts glucose metabolism and cortisol regulation, causing insulin sensitivity to decline regardless of diet
• Testosterone drops (men) and hormone chaos worsens (women)—sleep is when your body produces and regulates hormones
• Inflammation compounds—every system suffers when recovery is incomplete
• Your health stack crumbles—you spent years building sovereignty over your wealth, but your biology is mortgaged to dysfunction

What good is financial freedom at 50 if you're exhausted, anxious, and inflamed?

TESTING AS INTELLIGENT INVESTIGATION

You verify your Bitcoin holdings. You don't trust third parties with your keys.

Why would you trust a medical system that either tells you you're "fine" when you're clearly not—or tells you you're broken and need their pharmaceutical for life?

HTMA is health self-custody. It's your data. Your insights. Not filtered through a system designed to fail you.

For $225, you get:

• Complete HTMA test kit (shipped to you)
• Lab analysis from certified laboratory
• Detailed results with all mineral levels, toxic metals, and ratios
• Comprehensive educational video where I walk you through marker by marker—what each measures, what ranges mean, why it matters for your health

This isn't a diagnostic tool (I'm not a doctor, and I don't diagnose). This is an investigative tool. It reveals where to look. What to address. How to prioritize.

Carnivore? Keto? It's Not Your Diet... It's YOU

Let's be real: You're not a Bitcoin maxi pushing steel and eating steak 24/7 with perfect circadian biology. Most of us can't just move to the ideal longitude and latitude for optimal UV and grounding. Most of us have kids, jobs, real-world constraints.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Carnivore and keto are powerful tools. But they're not magic. They're frameworks that work when your underlying biology can execute them properly.

If your minerals are depleted, if heavy metals are blocking your enzymes, if your detox pathways are congested—you can eat the cleanest ribeyes on earth and still struggle.

You need to go beyond diet. You need personalized data that respects your function, your ancestry, your bio-individuality.

The Real Question

Not: "Am I doing carnivore wrong?"

But: "What's preventing my body from responding the way it should?"

That's what HTMA reveals. That's what functional testing is for.

You're not looking for a diagnosis. You're looking for direction. Where to investigate. What to optimize. How to remove the barriers between your effort and your results.

Your Proof of Work, Your Verification

Functional labs are your verification. Your data. Not filtered through a system designed to keep you "in range" while underlying causes of dysfunction go unnoticed.

You didn't trust the financial system when everyone else did. You learned about Bitcoin because you wanted sovereignty over your money.

Why would you trust centralized medicine with your body?

Health is wealth. What good is building a future if you don't have the biology to enjoy it?

What Happens Next?

If you're reading this and thinking, "That's me. That's exactly what's happening"—you're not alone.

This pattern is common in the Bitcoin and carnivore communities. High performers who "did everything right" but hit an invisible ceiling.

Here's what the process looks like:

1. Email me to Order the HTMA test (simple hair sample, mailed to the lab)
2. Wait 2-3 weeks for results
3. Watch the educational video that breaks down every single marker
4. Understand your patterns—mineral status, toxic burden, metabolic type
5. Decide your next steps based on what the data reveals

The test gives you the map. What you do with it is your call. Some people take the data and run with it themselves. Others realize they want guidance interpreting the patterns and building a protocol tailored to what they found.

Both paths are valid. The point is: you'll have the data. You'll understand what's actually happening in your body. Then you can make informed decisions about what comes next.

The Choice

You can keep trying to optimize around the problem. More sunlight, better sleep hygiene, another supplement stack someone recommended on Twitter.

Or you can verify what's actually broken.

Standard blood work is designed to tell you you're "normal" until you're sick enough to require expensive intervention. Functional labs are designed to reveal dysfunction before it becomes disease.

One system profits from your decline. The other empowers your investigation.

You already know which one aligns with your values.

Not for Everyone

This isn't for people looking for a magic pill or another guru promising overnight transformation.

This is for people who:

• Value data over opinions
• Want to understand what's actually happening in their body
• Are willing to investigate root causes instead of just managing symptoms
• Understand that real change requires knowing where to look first

Some people take their HTMA results and figure it out themselves. Others realize they need a guide to help interpret patterns, prioritize what to address first, and build a protocol based on their specific findings.

Both approaches work. The key is having the data to work with in the first place.

At $225, HTMA is one of the most cost-effective investigations you can run. Less than a month of random supplements. Less than a weekend at a health conference. Less than what you'll spend spinning your wheels for another year.

And unlike blood work that shows a single moment in time, HTMA gives you months of metabolic history in a single test.

A Final Word on Sovereignty

You didn't stumble into Bitcoin by accident. You questioned the narrative. You saw through the lies. You took responsibility for your financial future because you realized no one else would.

Your health is no different.

The mainstream narrative is: eat less, move more, take this prescription, your labs are normal, it's probably just stress.

But you know it's deeper than that.

Just like you knew fiat was broken before most people figured it out.

The same instinct that led you to Bitcoin—that refusal to accept surface-level answers, that insistence on verification, that desire for sovereignty—applies here.

Self-custody your wellness. Verify your biology. Build your health stack with the same rigor you built your Bitcoin stack.

You've already done the hardest part: You questioned the system.

Now act on it.

Cites:

1. PMC11544537 - "Analysis of the relationship between sleep-related disorders and cadmium in the US population" (2024). NHANES database study establishing dose-responsive links between cadmium exposure and trouble sleeping, OSA symptoms, and daytime sleepiness.
2. Kim, B.K., Kim, C., Cho, J. (2024). "Association between exposure to heavy metals in atmospheric particulate matter and sleep quality." Environmental Research. PMID: 38244965 / PMC11404323. Demonstrated significant association between airborne aluminum and lead exposure and poor sleep quality as measured by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.
3. PMC10528206 - "Is exposure to chemical pollutants associated with sleep outcomes? A systematic review" (2023). Comprehensive review confirming associations of lead and mercury with insomnia, cadmium with poor sleep quality, including case studies showing sleep disturbances in 70% of adults with mercury exposure from gold mining.
4. Hamblin, M. R. (2016). "Shining light on the head: Photobiomodulation for brain disorders." BBA Clinical. Explains the mechanism of red/NIR light on mitochondrial function through cytochrome c oxidase stimulation.
5. Bjørklund, G., Dadar, M., Mutter, J., & Aaseth, J. (2017). "The toxicology of mercury: Current research and emerging trends." Environmental Research. Details mercury's affinity for the pineal gland and disruption of neurological function.
6. Amara, S., et al. (2011). "Static magnetic field exposure affects the antioxidant status in rat cortex." Toxicology and Industrial Health. PMID: 20837562. Demonstrated that combined cadmium and static magnetic field exposure decreased antioxidant enzyme activity beyond cadmium alone.
7. Ansarihadipour, H. & Bayatiani, M.R. (2016). "Influence of electromagnetic fields on lead toxicity: A study of conformational changes in human blood proteins." PMC5022290. Found synergistic protein oxidation and reduced antioxidant capacity from combined lead and EMF exposure in vitro.
8. Mortazavi, S.M.J., et al. (2008). "Mercury release from dental amalgam restorations after magnetic resonance imaging and following mobile phone use." Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences. PMID: 18819554. Demonstrated that MRI exposure increased salivary mercury from 8.6 to 11.3 μg/L (p<0.01), and mobile phone use significantly increased urinary mercury levels in participants with amalgam fillings.
9. Mortazavi, S.M.J., et al. (2014). "High-field MRI and mercury release from dental amalgam fillings." International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. PMID: 24748001. Found urinary mercury levels increased from 20.70 to 24.83 μg/L within 72 hours following MRI exposure (1.5T) in patients with amalgam fillings.
10. Belyaeva, E.A., et al. (2012). "Mitochondrial electron transport chain in heavy metal-induced neurotoxicity: Effects of cadmium, mercury, and copper." The Scientific World Journal. PMC3349094. Demonstrated that heavy metals (Cd²⁺, Hg²⁺, Cu²⁺) impair mitochondrial electron transport, leading to electron leakage and reactive oxygen species formation, causing dose- and time-dependent cellular dysfunction.
11. StatPearls - Physiology, Bone Remodeling (2023). PMCID: NBK499863. "When there is decreased plasma calcium concentration, PTH increases RANKL activity, which regulates osteoclastic bone resorption and leads to more calcium released into the plasma to maintain homeostasis." Explains how insufficient calcium intake triggers secondary hyperparathyroidism to maintain normal serum calcium via bone resorption, potentially leading to osteoporosis with normal blood calcium levels.

Note: This newsletter is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition. Always consult with qualified healthcare providers regarding any health concerns.

Rabbit Hole Health is a newsletter by Sleuth Wellness, dedicated to helping sovereignty-minded individuals take control of their health through functional testing, personalized protocols, and verification-based approaches. We respect the Bitcoin health pioneers while acknowledging that not everyone fits the "perfect maxi" mold—and that's okay. Let not perfect be the enemy of good.

Want to go deeper down the rabbit hole? Reply to this email or visit sleuthwellness.com to learn more about functional testing options.

P.S. — If you found this valuable, forward it to someone who's "doing everything right" but still struggling with sleep, anxiety, or unexplained symptoms. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is confirm someone isn't crazy—and show them where to look next.