Mikhaila Peterson launches trial of keto and Lion diets for arthritis, IBD

The real test is not whether the Lion Diet has a devoted following, but whether a physician-monitored trial can separate anecdote from evidence for rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. The new study, registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT07524244, randomizes adults with symptomatic ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or rheumatoid arthritis to a ketogenic diet, a carnivore Lion diet, or a wait-list control, then tracks them through a three-week baseline run-in and a 24-week intervention.

That design matters because the trial is built to measure more than symptom changes. It will assess quality of life, symptom burden, disease activity, nutritional status, cardiometabolic health, and immune activation and inflammation markers, including blood lipids. For keto readers, that is the crucial part of the story: a low-carb protocol may change pain, bowel symptoms, or fatigue, but the lab panel is where the tradeoffs show up, especially when the diet is as restrictive as Lion.

The launch post dated December 15, 2025 said the study would monitor 160 people over six months and identified Dr. Robert Abbott and his team as the researchers running it. The sponsor listed on the registry is the Fuller Research Foundation. Peterson’s own biography says she developed the Lion Diet as a strict plant-free ketogenic protocol after severe autoimmunity in her early twenties, building on a personal history that includes juvenile idiopathic arthritis, treatment with methotrexate and Enbrel, and hip and ankle replacements by age 17.

That backstory gives the trial a lot of emotional charge, but the study design is what will decide how much weight the result deserves. Randomization and a wait-list control are meant to keep expectation from looking like treatment effect. The unanswered questions are the ones that always decide whether a diet trial changes practice: how many people finish, how closely they stay on protocol, which endpoints move, and whether any benefit holds up outside a group of highly motivated followers already primed to believe in keto.

The medical logic for studying both conditions together is strong. A 2020 meta-analysis found people with inflammatory bowel disease had a significantly higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis, with a pooled relative risk of 2.59, while earlier dietary research in RA has remained unsettled because the trials were small, heterogeneous, and often at risk of bias. A 2024 case series of 10 IBD patients reporting improvement on ketogenic or carnivore diets added more interest, but not the kind of controlled evidence that can settle the question.

That is why this trial lands as more than a personal milestone for Peterson. It is an attempt to turn a culture-war diet into a clinical question, and to find out whether keto and Lion can do more than inspire stories, they can survive the discipline of labs, randomization, and time.