Eat Red Meat, Live Longer

While the whole medical community is telling you that eating red meat will kill you…I have one more piece of proof that they’re wrong.

There’s a nutrient in meat that can help you live longer, and you can’t get it from any other food source.

It’s an amino acid called L-carnosine. Your body uses L-carnosine to repair tissues and clear away toxins.

But here’s something else it can do that even I didn’t know until recently…

red meat

Eating your steak rare can help you live longer.

It helps preserve your telomeres – the tiny “time clocks” in your cells that I’ve been telling you about. By doing this, it extends the life cycle of your cells.1

In other words, it can help you age better.

I first read about carnosine’s anti-aging talents in a study done in Beijing. Researchers saw that cells grown with carnosine had healthier telomeres than cells grown without it. After a lot of digging and a little math, I discovered that the dose they used was extremely high. It would be about the same as taking 17.1 grams of carnosine.

I don’t recommend that you take that much. You can get the benefits for your body at a lower dose.

Carnosine is stored in a few places in your body, and your muscles and brain get the most of it. But when it comes to your blood, carnosine doesn’t stick around for very long. I recommend 1000 milligrams of carnosine every day to keep the levels in your blood high enough to make a difference.

Here’s how you can get it…

  • Grass-fed, pasture-raised meat is the best way to get carnosine from food. A typical 3.5-ounce serving of beef has about 124 to 220 milligrams of carnosine. When you eat red meat, carnosine can be detected in your blood for about five hours afterward. When you don’t eat it, you won’t have any carnosine in your blood at all.
  • You can find out more about how to get pasture-raised meat delivered right to your house, and where to buy it online, by visiting these websites:

    1. American Grassfed Association (americangrassfed .org) – Certifies farms and ranches around the country, works with the USDA to standardize what pasture-raised means, and has news and even recipes.
    2. US Wellness Meats (grasslandbeef .com) – A resource for naturally produced meat, with videos and insight from experts.
    3. Local Harvest (localharvest .org) – A complete index of farms near you.
  • When you cook your meat, try not to use high heat or a lengthy slow-cooking method. Overcooking denatures protein, breaks down vitamins and removes nutrients, including carnosine. That’s another reason I like to eat my steak rare and recommend that my patients do, too.
  • To supplement carnosine if you can’t get enough by eating red meat, I recommend taking 500 milligrams twice a day instead of all at once. That way your body always has some on hand to use for protecting your telomeres, supporting your muscles, and encouraging tissue repair.

To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
Al Sears, MD


1.Shao L, Li QH, Tan Z, “L-carnosine reduces telomere damage and shortening rate in cultured normal fibroblasts,”
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2004 Nov 12;324(2):931-6.