🥶 Cold Plunges, Cortisol, and Carnivore: The Biohacked Burnout of Carb Deficiency

Nutrition Science

Jul 17

💥 You don’t have adrenal fatigue. You have a glucose deficiency.

I just listened to the Joe Rogan x Gary Brecka interview from a few months ago, and by the end of it, I felt like I was eavesdropping on two men trying to survive a famine — one cold plunge and ozone sauna at a time.

No one said the word “cortisol” once. Not in a 2.5-hour conversation about stress, optimization, morning routines, energy crashes, and biohacking.

Not. One. Time.

But that’s exactly what this was: a full-length, high-production podcast episode on how to manually override your biology when your body is running on stress hormones 24/7 because you refuse to eat a carbohydrate.

🍳 The Carnivore Grind: Steak for Breakfast, Stress for Dessert

You know the type.
Shawn Baker, Anthony Chaffee, Ken Berry — the poster boys of "peak performance" on a diet of nothing but ribeyes, butter, and beef liver.

No carbs. No sugar. No fruit.
But plenty of cortisol.

Let me say it plainly: these men are not thriving.
They are surviving — on adrenaline, norepinephrine, and every biohack under the sun.

You see them chugging coffee, skipping meals, hitting the cold plunge at 5am, blasting red light at their faces, popping testosterone injections, taking metformin “for longevity,” meditating while wired and inflamed, bragging about how they haven’t had a carb since 2003...

🚨 That’s not health. That’s crisis management. 🚨

❄️ Cold Plunges Are a Symptom, Not a Solution

Don’t get me wrong — I love a good cold plunge. But let’s be honest about what it is:
It’s a sympathetic nervous system bomb.

If you need a freezing tub of water, followed by coffee, followed by red light therapy, just to feel alive — you're not optimizing. You're desperately chasing the dopamine your nervous system is too depleted to produce.

And if you’ve been living in ketosis long enough, that might be the only way to feel anything at all.

🔥 Cortisol Is Carrying You (and You’re Calling It Discipline)

Carbohydrate deficiency triggers a predictable cascade:

Liver glycogen tanks.
Blood sugar drops.
The body panics.
Adrenal glands crank out cortisol to keep you conscious.

At first, you feel “clear-headed,” “sharp,” maybe even “unstoppable.”
Because cortisol feels good — for a while.
Until it doesn’t.

Eventually you crash:

Insomnia
Constipation
Blood sugar swings
Anxiety
Tanked testosterone
Fatigue so deep it takes an ozone chamber and 16 supplements just to take a poop

This isn’t vitality. It’s just living off your stress hormones.

🥩 The Truth About Carnivore "Optimization"

Let’s talk about the carnivore influencers.
A recent comment from Jay Feldman or Mike Fave (I forget which, they both crush) mentioned that Shawn Baker’s testosterone is allegedly bottomed out. Like… dangerously low.

How does that happen to a guy who lifts every day and eats nothing but steak?

Simple: no carbs = no insulin = no conversion of thyroid hormone = no signal to the testes = no testosterone.

Yes, you can look shredded while running on fumes.
Yes, you can build muscle while slowly tanking your metabolism, hormone function, and mental health.

But you won’t feel good. And it won’t last.

🧠 I Was There Too

I’m not writing this from the outside. I lived it.

I was keto for eight years — hardcore. The last year of that, I went full carnivore. I hadn’t eaten more than 20 grams of carbs a day in nearly a decade. I lived off ribeyes and coffee, and listened religiously to every podcast Paul Saladino put out.

And then, one day, I heard him talking about the dangers of long-term carb restriction — and it hit me like a truck. Every symptom he described? I had it:

Muscle cramping
Morning anxiety
Insomnia
Low libido
Cold hands and feet
PMS from hell
Joint pain
Depression
Constipation

Eventually I tested my thyroid and found out my T3 was low — the missing puzzle piece that made everything make sense. I was stuck in survival mode, living off cortisol, pretending it was “discipline.”

So I did something radical:
I added back carbohydrates. Not all at once, but in small, steady amounts, spaced throughout the day. Within weeks, every single symptom started to disappear. My mood stabilized. I could sleep. My cycle regulated. My body warmed up. I came back to life.

🍊 Carbs Are Not the Enemy — They’re the Missing Piece

Carbs are not toxic.
Sugar does not “feed disease.”
Fruit is not why you’re tired.
You’re tired because your mitochondria haven’t seen glucose since Obama was in office.

Carbohydrates are:

The body’s preferred fuel
The thyroid’s best friend
The antidote to cortisol
The fuel for progesterone, serotonin, dopamine, and testosterone

You don’t need another cold plunge.
You need orange juice.

🎯 Summary — The Biohacked Burnout Checklist

✅ Cold plunges are a cortisol crutch
✅ Carnivore = constant stress signal
✅ Low-carb = low testosterone, low thyroid, low mood
✅ Biohacking is just symptom suppression in disguise
✅ Real energy starts with eating carbs — not avoiding them