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Nutrition

Should Vegetarians Take Creatine to Normalize Homocysteine?

"Should Vegetarians Take Creatine
to Normalize Homocysteine?" Almost universally, research findings
show a poor vitamin B12 status among vegetarians because they're
not taking vitamin B12 supplements like they should. And this results in
an elevation of homocysteine levels that may explain why vegetarians
were recently found to have higher rates of stroke. Of course, plant-based eating is just
one of many ways to get B12 deficient. I mean, even laughing gas can
do it, in as short as two days, thanks to the recreational use
of whipped cream canister gas.

That's something new I learned today.
Anyways, if you do eat plant-based, giving vegetarians and vegans
even as little as 50 micrograms once a day of cyanocobalamin, the
recommended, most stable form of vitamin B12 supplement,
and their homocysteine levels start up in the elevated
zone, and within 1 to 2 months their homocysteines normalize right
down into the safe zone under 10. Or just 2000 micrograms of
cyanocobalamin once a week, and you get the same beautiful
result, but not always. In this study even 500 micrograms
a day, either as a sublingual chewable or swallowable regular B12 supplement, didn't normalize homocysteine
within a month. Now, presumably if they had kept it up, their levels
would have continued to fall like in the other study. But if you're
plant-based and have been taking your B12 and your homocysteine levels
are still too high, meaning above 10, is there anything else you can do? Now, inadequate folate intake
can also increase homocysteine, but folate comes from
the same root as foliage.

It's found in leaves, concentrated
in greens, as well as beans. But if you're eating beans and
greens, taking your B12, and your homocysteine level is still
too high, then I'd suggest trying, as an experiment, taking
one gram of creatine a day and getting your homocysteine levels
retested in a month to see if it helped. Creatine is a compound formed
naturally in the human body that is primarily involved in energy
production in our muscles and brain. It's also naturally formed in the
bodies of many animals we eat. And so when we eat their
muscles, we also can take in some creatine through our diet. We need about two grams a day,
so those who eat meat may get like one gram from their diet, and
their body makes the rest from scratch. There are rare birth defects where
you're born without the ability to make it, in which case you have to get it
from your diet, but otherwise our bodies make as
much as we need to maintain normal
concentrations in our muscles. When you cut out meat, the
amount of creatine floating around in your bloodstream goes down, but the
amount in your brain remains the same, showing dietary creatine doesn't
influence the levels of brain creatine, because your brain just makes
all the creatine you need.

The level in vegetarian muscles is
lower, but that doesn't seem to affect performance, as both vegetarians
and meat-eaters respond to creatine supplementation with similar
increases in muscle power output. And if vegetarian muscle
creatine was insufficient, then presumably they would
have seen an even bigger boost. So basically, all that happens
when you eat meat is that your body just doesn't
have to make as much. What does this all have
to do with homocysteine? Okay, in the process of making creatine,
your body produces homocysteine as a waste product. Now
normally this isn't a problem because your body
has two ways to detoxify it using vitamin B6 or using a
combination of vitamins B12 and folate. Now B6 is found in both plant and
animal foods; it's rare to be deficient. But B12 is mainly in animal
foods, and so can be too low in those eating plant-based who don't
supplement or eat B12 fortified foods.

And folate is concentrated in plant
foods, so can be low in those who don't regularly eat greens or
beans or folic-acid fortified grains, and without that escape valve
homocysteine levels can get too high. If, however, you're eating a healthy
plant-based diet and taking your B12 supplement, your homocysteine levels
should be fine, but what if they're not? One might predict that if you started
taking creatine supplements, the level of homocysteine might go
down since you're not going to have to be making so much of it from scratch,
producing homocysteine as a by-product.

But you don't know until you put it
to the test, which we'll cover next..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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How to Reverse Heart Failure with Diet

"How to Reverse Heart Failure with Diet" It is a hopeful sign of the times when
entire issues of cardiology journals are not just dedicated to nutrition,
but to plant-based diets in particular. Dr. Williams, past president of the
American College of Cardiology, starts out with a quote
attributed to Schopenhauer. "All truth passes through three
stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third,
it is accepted as…" like, well, duh. And the truth for the benefits
of plant-based diets, plant-based nutrition
continues to mount. The evidence, we got; the problem
is the inertia, culture, habit, and widespread marketing of
unhealthy foods.

"Our goal must be to get the data out to the medical
community and the public where it can actually change lives…" That's like my personal life's mission
in four words: get the data out. Based on what we already know in the
existing medical literature, plant-based nutrition clearly represents the single
most important yet underutilized opportunity to reverse the pending
obesity and diabetes-induced epidemic of morbidity and mortality,
meaning disease and death. The issue included your typical
heart disease reversal cases: a 77-year old woman with heart disease
so bad she couldn't walk more than a half-block or go up a single flight
of stairs, severe blockages in all three of her main arteries, and referred
to open heart surgery for a bypass. She chose, however, instead to
adopt a whole-food plant-based diet, which included all vegetables, fruits,
whole grains, potatoes, beans, legumes, and nuts. Even though she said she
was trying to eat pretty healthy before, within a single month of going plant-
based her symptoms had nearly resolved.

And forget about a block, she
was able to walk on a treadmill for up to 50 minutes without chest
discomfort or becoming out of breath. Her cholesterol dropped about a hundred
points from around 220 down to 120, with an LDL under 60. But then, a few months later she must
have started missing her chicken, fish, and low-fat dairy, and went back
to her prior eating habits. And within a few weeks, with no change
in her meds or anything, her chest pain was back, and she went on to have
her chest sawed in half after all. Then she continued to eat the same diet
that contributed to cause her disease in the first place and went on to
have further disease progression.

This one, though, has a happier ending.
It started out the same: a 60-year-old man, severe chest pain
after as little as a half-block. Decided to take control of his health
destiny and switched to a whole food plant-based diet from his "healthy" diet
of skinless chicken, fish, low-fat dairy that had been choking off his heart. And within a few weeks, the same
amazing transformation. From not being able to exercise
at all, to walking a mile, to then being able to jog more than
four miles, completely asymptomatic, off all drugs, no surgery,
off to live happily ever after. Now, of course, case reports are
just really glorified anecdotes. I mean, what we need is a randomized
controlled trial to prove heart disease can be reversed with lifestyle
changes alone. And guess what? There was one, published literally
30 years ago, proving angiographic reversal of heart disease
in 82% of the patients, opening up arteries without
drugs, without surgery. So these case reports are just to
remind us that hundreds of thousands of Americans continue
to needlessly die every year from what was proven to be a
reversible condition decades ago. The conventional use of case reports,
though, is to present some novel results in hopes of inspiring trials
to put it to the test.

For example, a case report on a plant-
based diet for congestive heart failure. So not just coronary artery disease, but
the heart muscle itself was so weakened it couldn't efficiently pump blood, only
able to eject about 35% of the blood in the main heart chamber with every
beat, whereas normally the heart can pump out at least half; which is
exactly what his heart was able to do just six weeks after switching to
a whole-food plant-based diet, instead of choosing to get
his chest cracked open. The first report of an improvement
in heart failure following adoption of a plant-based diet, but not the last.
A 54-year-old woman, obese, type 2 diabetic, presenting with
swelling ankles due to her heart failure. She switched from her chicken
and fish to whole plant foods. She started out eating healthier and lost
50 pounds, reversed her diabetes— meaning normal blood sugars on
a normal diet without the use of diabetes medications—and
her heart function normalized, from an abysmal ejection fraction
of just 25% up to normal.

Now since it's not a
randomized controlled trial, all we can say is
that her improvements coincided with her adoption of
a whole food plant-based diet. But given the burden of heart failure
as a leading cause of death, how it usually just gets progressively
worse, and the overall evidence to date, a plant-based diet should be
considered as part of heart failure care. And look, we already know it can
reverse her coronary artery disease, and so any heart failure
benefits would just be a bonus. Now, we just need good strategies
for healthcare practitioners to support patients in plant-based eating. Here are some excellent suggestions
to pause and reflect on. For example, doctors can
use the Plantrician Project's prescription pads and
prescribe a good website or two.

While it is certainly true that
many people would be resistant to fundamental dietary changes, look, it is equally true that
millions of intelligent people motivated to preserve their health
are now taking half-way measures that may provide only modest benefit—
choosing leaner cuts of meat, using reduced-fat dairy products.
Most of these people have neither the time nor the training to actually see
what the science shows themselves. Don't they deserve honest, forthright
advice when their lives are at stake? Those who wish to ignore that advice,
or implement it only partially, are certainly at liberty to do so. I mean, you want to go smoke
cigarettes, go bungie jumping? It's your body, your choice.
It's up to each of us to make our own decisions as to
what to eat and how to live.

But we should make these choices
consciously, educating ourselves about the predictable
consequences of our actions..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Comparing Vegetarian and Vegan Athletic Performance, Endurance, and Strength

"Comparing Vegetarian and Vegan Athletic
Performance, Endurance, and Strength" Few studies have investigated
the impact of a plant-based diet on athletic performance, but
the majority of the studies that have been done show no differences
in endurance, performance, or strength. So, while plant-based diets
do not seem to provide advantages or disadvantages
on exercise performance, what plant-based diets can do
is reduce the risk of chronic disease. This is a point
I made in my video Why All Athletes Should
Eat Plant-Based Diets, because surprisingly,
endurance athletes may have more advanced atherosclerosis
and more heart muscle damage, compared with sedentary individuals.

So, it’s even more important
they eat healthy. But due to the favorable impact
on health, it could be assumed that performance
would also be influenced by plant-based diets. Let’s take a closer look
at the available evidence. This is the most commonly cited review. Studies connecting vegetarian diets
to improved health are well-established; however, the evidence for this phenomenon
to be transferred to improved physical performance
in athletes is less clear, finding no differences
—at least acutely— between a vegetarian-based diet
and an omnivorous diet in muscular power, muscular strength,
short burst, or endurance performance.

The intervention studies in this review,
however, only lasted days or weeks. So, being a vegetarian for four days
may not tip the balance, or even a few months, but that’s
a considerable limitation. These are people
who have been eating meat their whole lives and subsequently adopt
a vegetarian diet only for the duration of the study,
rather than comparing participants who have adhered to a vegetarian
or meat-containing diet long-term. This study compared exercise capacity
of vegan, vegetarian, and meat-eating recreational
runners and found similar maximum power output
among all three groups, suggesting there’s no significant difference
in maximum exercise capacity. But that’s at the same training frequency,
time, and distance. Perhaps plant-based diets
might enhance recovery and allow such athletes
to train longer and harder? A number of studies have come out
since this review was published in 2016.
What’s the update? Well, this study compared
the cardiorespiratory fitness and peak torque strength differences
between vegetarian and omnivore endurance athletes. Most of the vegetarians
were actually vegans and most or at least two years and… results from this study indicate that vegetarian endurance athletes’
cardiorespiratory ﬁtness was greater than that for their
omnivorous counterparts.

They had a greater VO2 max, meaning a greater maximal oxygen uptake, greater aerobic capacity
as measured on a progressive, graded, maximal treadmill test
to exhaustion, though peak torque, peak strength
based on leg extensions didn’t differ between diet groups. Bottom line: these data suggest
that vegetarian diets do not compromise
performance outcomes and may facilitate
aerobic capacity in athletes. In this 2020 study, all the plant-
based participants were eating vegan for an average of four years.

So, they were essentially comparing
those who ate meat for 21 years versus those who ate
meat for 25 years. But after four years
eating plants, you might expect to see
some sort of difference. Yet, no signiﬁcant differences
were noted for upper and lower body muscle strength,
like in the last new study. Both groups of athletes were comparable
for total body weight and lean body mass, though age
was signiﬁcantly higher in vegans compared with omnivores; so, that put them
at a little disadvantage. Yet still, there it is again. Significantly better aerobic capacity. Then, they had them pedal
until exhaustion, and the vegan group lasted
about 25 percent longer— 12 minutes as opposed to
9 minutes. Is that just because their
aerobic capacity is so high? No, even after controlling
for VO2 max levels, there was still a signiﬁcant endurance advantage
in the vegans. The researchers conclude
that in the very least, a strictly plant-based diet
doesn’t seem to be detrimental to endurance
and muscle strength, and endurance might
actually be better in vegans, contrary to popular belief..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Are Vegans at Risk for Iodine Deficiency?

"Are Vegans at Risk
for Iodine Deficiency?" Adequate dietary iodine is required
for normal thyroid function. In fact, the two thyroid hormones
are named after how many iodine atoms they
contain: T3 and T4. Now, given that iodine is extensively
stored in the thyroid gland itself, it's not something you
have to get every day, but your overall diet needs
to have some good source. Unfortunately, the common sources
aren't particularly health-promoting: iodized salt, [and] dairy foods because iodine-based cleansers
like betadine are used to sanitize the udders, which results in some
iodine leaching into the milk.

They also add iodine to cattle feed, and some commercial breads have
iodine-containing food additives. So if you put people on a paleo-type
diet and cut out dairy and table salt, they can develop an iodine deficiency,
even though they double their seafood intake, which
can also be a source. What about those switching to diets
centered around whole plant foods? They're also cutting down
on ice cream and Wonder Bread, and if they're not eating anything from
the sea—seaweed, sea vegetables— they can run into the same problem. Her parents reported striving to
feed her only the healthiest foods. The 3-year-old only got plant-based,
unsalted, unprocessed foods with no vitamin supplementation.
Now that could have been deadly.

With no vitamin B12, those on strictly
plant-based diets can develop irreversible nerve damage, but
in this case, a goiter arose first due to inadequate iodine intake. Here's another case of veganism
as a cause of iodine deficient hypothyroidism in a toddler after
weaning. Now before weaning, he was fine because his mother
kept taking her prenatal vitamins, which luckily contained iodine. Most vegetarians and vegans are
apparently unaware of the importance of iodine in pregnancy, just as clueless
as their omnivorous counterparts. The American Thyroid Association and
the American Academy of Pediatrics have recommended that women even
just planning on getting pregnant should ingest a daily supplement that
contains 150 micrograms of iodine, yet only 60% of prenatal vitamins marketed
in the US contain this essential mineral. So, in spite of the recommendations,
about 40% lack it. Therefore, it's extremely important that pregnant and
breastfeeding women read the labels to ensure they're receiving
an adequate amount. Women of reproductive age have
an average iodine level of 110, which is fine for nonpregnant
individuals, but we'd really like to see at least
150 in pregnancy. It's basically a 24-hour urine test,
in which iodine sufficiency is defined as 100 mcg/liter of pee in nonpregnant
adults, which your average vegan fails to reach in the largest study
done to date, out of Boston.

The recommended average daily
intake is 150 mcg/day for most people, which you can get in like a
cup and a half of cow's milk. Sadly, plant-based milks are
typically not fortified with iodine, averaging only about 3 mcg/cup.
In the largest systematic study to date, although many plant-based milks are
fortified with calcium, they only found just 3 of 47 fortified with iodine. Those that were had as much as cow's
milk, but those that weren't fell short. Plant-based milk companies brag about
enriching their milks with calcium, and often vitamin B12, D, and vitamin A,
but only rarely are attempts made to match the iodine content. The only reason cow's milk has as
much as it does is that they enrich the feed, or it comes
dripping off their udders. So why don't plant-milk
companies add iodine, too? I was told by a food scientist at
Silk that my carrageenan video played a role in them
switching to another thickener. Hopefully, they'll see this video
and consider adding iodine, too, or some company will snatch at
the market advantage opportunity.

The researchers conclude that individuals
who consume plant-based milks not fortified with iodine may be
at risk for iodine deficiency, unless they consume alternative
dietary iodine sources, the healthiest of which is sea
vegetables, which we'll cover next..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Improving VO2 Max: A Look at Vegetarian and Vegan Athletes

This is the first of a three
video series about exercise. Do plant based diets have an
impact on fitness? What are the best times
to workout? Watch the series to find out. "Improving VO2 Max: A Look
at Vegetarian and Vegan Athletes" In my video about comparing vegetarian
and vegan athletic performance, endurance, and strength, I discussed
a 2020 study that found that vegan athletes—even though
they were significantly older— had significantly superior
aerobic capacity and endurance, lasting 25 percent longer on a
time-to-exhaustion cycling test. The question is why? One potential mechanism
that could explain the greater level of endurance performance
in vegans may be a higher amount of carbohydrate intake, which could
lead to better endurance performance through higher
muscle glycogen storage. Other potential mechanisms
that may explain the better endurance performance in vegans could
be due to the anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory
profiles of their diet. Maybe it’s even their hearts. Yet another study showing superior
VO2 max in vegan athletes, meaning superior
aerobic capacity: this time they also
did echocardiograms, looking at their hearts
in real-time using ultrasound, and the lower relative
wall thickness and better main ventricle
systolic and diastolic function in the vegans are most
likely positive ﬁndings.

Now wait a second. Given
the higher VO2 max reached by the vegan athletes, maybe
they were just better trained than the nonvegan athletes,
and that’s why their hearts looked like they
were working better. However, the weekly training
frequency and running distance were similar in both groups,
suggesting benefits even with the same
amount of training. So, it’s important to educate
healthcare professionals; so they don’t try
to discourage a vegan diet and may even want to consider
telling folks implementing an exercise training
program to give it a try. But you don’t know if it
has the same kinds of effects in nonathletes, until
you…put it to the test. A vegetarian vs. conventional
calorie-restricted diet: the effect on physical fitness
in response to aerobic exercise in patients with
type 2 diabetes.

Diabetics were randomized
to the same caloric restriction, the same exercise, but just
vegetarian versus nonvegetarian. They provided all the meals
so they could ensure compliance and closely monitored
the exercising. VO2 max increased by 12 percent
in the vegetarian group, significantly better than in
the non-vegetarian group who didn’t significantly
improve at all. Maximal performance increased
by 21 percent in the vegetarian group, again, significantly better than in
the non-vegetarian group who didn’t significantly
improve at all. In other words, the results indicated
that more plant-based diets led more effectively to
improvement in physical ﬁtness than less plant-based diets, after the same aerobic
exercise program.

Here’s what the graphs look like: significantly better power
output and aerobic capacity in the group that was randomized
to a vegetarian diet. It seems that those eating vegetarian were able to better burn off carbohydrates compared
to nonvegetarians, and had better insulin sensitivity, both markers of improved
metabolic ﬂexibility, meaning the ability
to switch back and forth between burning sugar and fat. Besides physiological
mechanisms, there may also be
psychological factors. They observed reduced hunger
and reduced feelings of depression in the vegetarian group
which may have given them a more positive attitude
towards exercise. Here’s the psychological data. Those randomized to eat vegetarian
had a greater improvement in quality of life and mood. They felt less constrained,
meaning the calorie restriction didn’t seem as burdensome; they had less disinhibition, meaning less tendency
to binge and overeat, along with maybe
less feelings of hunger. Not to mention the superior effects
of a vegetarian diet on body weight, glycemic control,
blood lipids, insulin sensitivity,
and oxidative stress.

Wait, better body weight? I thought they were given
the same number of calories. Yes, both diets were isocaloric,
the same calories, yet just eating meat-free led
to significantly more weight loss— about six pounds more;
more waist loss, a slimmer waist; lower cholesterol, of course;
and less superficial fat, meaning the external jiggly fat; and most importantly, significantly
more visceral fat loss, the most metabolically
dangerous deep belly fat. Same calories, yet more
loss of body fat. And not surprisingly,
better control of their diabetes. All in addition to leading
more effectively to improvements
in physical ﬁtness..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Potential Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency Risks on a Vegan Diet

"Potential Vitamin and Mineral
Deficiency Risks on a Vegan Diet" The "Vegan Diet as a Neglected
Cause of Psychosis" A tragic story of a 47-year-old woman
with a 5-year history of psychosis, treated with antipsychotics,
years of hallucinations. Finally her mother revealed
that the patient was following a strict vegan diet for 7 years
and was not supplementing with vitamin B12. They started giving her B12
supplements and eventually her psychiatric symptoms went away.
But she spent 5 years of her life in a psychotic haze
because she wasn't getting a regular reliable source
of vitamin B12. B12 supplements, or sufficient
intake of B12-fortified foods, is mandatory for vegans — and
effective, but only if you do it. Like in the largest study of vegans
in history, the Adventist-2 study, the prevalence of low vitamin
B-12 status was the same between vegans, vegetarians,
and meat-eaters.

Why? Presumably because they were eating fortified
foods and supplements. The researchers concluded the
encouragement of vitamin B-12 supplementation cannot
be overemphasized. Vitamins B12 and D are the only
two vitamins not made by plants. B12 is made by microbes, and
vitamin D is made by animals — such as ourselves when we walk
outside; it's the sunshine vitamin. Some other nutrients are
only found concentrated in certain plants though. You can become deficient
if you don't eat them. For example, this case
of a 10-year-old girl with night blindness.
She couldn't see well at night. Vitamin A deficiency was
the doctor's first thought, but the kid was vegetarian
and so getting whopping doses of beta carotene in all
the vegetables she ate, which your body turns
into vitamin A. Almost as an afterthought as
they were leaving the office, the doctor just asked the mother, "I assume she is getting
plenty of vegetables, right?" But no, she does not like vegetables
and only eats like, I don't know, Ritz
crackers or something.

So with something like vitamin A,
it's easy getting enough eating greens or any of the orange
fruits and vegetables like mangos, sweet potatoes, carrots,
or cantaloupe, but you actually have to
eat fruits and vegetables. A vegan living off a diet
of fast food is at a greater risk for vitamin A deficiency than
a meat eater living on fast food because at least the cow ate
some greens and passed it along.

Iodine is a similar situation. Cow's milk is a primary source of
dietary iodine in the United States, not because cows somehow synthesize
iodine or any other element. Iodine in milk comes from the leaching
of iodine-containing disinfectants used to clean contaminated udders
and milking equipment into the milk, or from supplements fed to cattle. Regardless, those not drinking
milk or eating seaweed — which is even a better source — may be at increased risk
for iodine deficiency. A study of vegans in the UK
suggested as many as 90% aren't getting enough
in their diet, though this is likely
an overestimate since their food frequency
questionnaire didn't include seaweed or iodized salt, two of
the ways some may be getting it. Are there reports of it
actually causing problems? Yes, indeed: "Veganism as a cause of
iodine deficient hypothyroidism" A 23-month-old boy, breastfed
until 16 months of age, then weaned on a strictly plant-based
diet without iodized salt. Mom was fine, presumably because
of the iodine in her prenatal vitamins that she continued to take, which
spilled over into her breastmilk. The American Thyroid Association
is very clear about recommending that pregnant and breastfeeding
women take a prenatal with 150 micrograms
of iodine a day.

Most kids in the U.S. transition
from breast milk to cow's milk, but those who don't need to get
their iodine from somewhere. Thankfully after an iodine-containing
multivitamin, his deficiency cleared. That's one way, taking
supplements like the cows do, but sea vegetables are the
healthiest source of iodine. A half teaspoon of mild
seaweeds like arame or dulse should get you all the iodine
you need for the day. You can just have a shaker of
dulse flakes at the kitchen table, or two nori sheets of seaweed. That's my favorite method because
you can just eat them like a snack — in fact probably the healthiest
snack since you're snacking on dark green leafy vegetables.

There was also a recent report
of severe iron-deficiency anemia attributed to a plant-based
diet and menorrhagia, which means excess blood
loss during menstruation. A 21-year-old woman presented with
reduced vision in one of her eyes because a vein clotted off,
which can happen when you get really anemic. Thankfully her vision resolved
after taking iron supplements. Now according to the
American Dietetic Association, the incidence of iron-deficiency
anemia among vegetarians is no worse than
that of nonvegetarians, so it may just have been her
excess monthly blood loss. But a more recent review
questioned the official position that iron deficiency anemia appears
no more prevalent among vegetarian women than
among nonvegetarian women. The updated review claimed
to find four studies where this wasn't the case, where vegetarians had
significantly higher rates. Yet, here's the four studies — and as always, I'll put links
to them in the sources cited section beneath this video
on NutritionFacts.org so you can read them yourself, like I do for every study
I cite in my videos — and not a single one
backed up that statement.

But just because vegetarians
don't have worse anemia rates than nonvegetarians, that's not
saying much since up to 1 in 20 menstruating women suffer
from iron-deficiency anemia across the board. Having lower iron stores
is actually advantageous — as I've done videos about — yet another reason to consume
more plants and less meat. But if your blood count
is dropping, if your hemoglobin is getting too low, then you
can enhance iron absorption by eating vitamin C rich foods with your meals, so fresh fruit,
bell peppers, broccoli, etc. And since especially tea,
but also coffee, can inhibit iron absorption, you
shouldn't drink them with meals..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Raw Food Diet Myths

"Raw Food Diet Myths" Is it better to eat our vegetables
raw or cooked? If you’re thinking raw,
you’re right! But if you guessed cooked,
you’re also right! A number of nutrients, like vitamin C,
are partially destroyed by cooking. On the other hand, some nutrients
become more absorbable upon cooking. For example, we get three times more
antioxidants in cooked carrots than raw. More cancer-fighting
indoles in cooked broccoli, and more lycopene
in cooked tomatoes. Leavening increases the mineral
absorption in grain products, and dry roasting can increase
the mineral absorption from nuts. There’s no good evidence
that raw diets are superior to other whole foods,
plant-based diets. In fact, the published evidence
that does exist is fairly disappointing. The only dietary survey I’m aware of
found raw food diets deficient in energy, protein, vitamins B12 and D,
calcium, selenium, and zinc. There are a number of
seriously flawed myths that circulate within the
raw foods community— like the belief that we have only a
limited amount of enzymes in our body that somehow get used up,
and so we need to consume live plant enzymes,
which are deactivated by cooking.

Well, they’re deactivated
by our stomach acid too, but even if they weren’t,
specific enzymes catalyze specific reactions
within our body. And since we’re not plants,
we have no need for plant enzymes. Our body makes all the enzymes we
need to function from the protein we eat, and cooking actually renders
proteins more digestible. So, I advocate eating a combination
of cooked and raw foods. Having said that, we should all be
eating huge salads every day.

We could easily polish off five cups
of spinach in one sitting, and that’s how we
have to think of greens— not as some little
overcooked side servings. If, for whatever reason,
you want to eat 100% raw, first, of course you
have to take a B12 supplement. Second, a diet based
on modern cultivated fruits is not nutritionally adequate. They’re a pale shadow of the
wild fruits eaten by our ape ancestors. To improve the nutritional content,
one would have to add at least a half-kilo a day of dark green leafies—
5 to 10 cups— and at least 50 grams a day
of nuts and seeds—about half a cup. And third, I explicitly recommend against
raw food diets for young children, as they just don’t have
the stomach capacity. Although an all-raw food diet
can be healthy, there is no reliable evidence
to suggest that it’s more healthy than a diet of whole plant foods—
cooked or not.

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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How to Reverse Heart Failure with Diet

The issue included your typical
heart disease reversal cases: a 77-year old woman with heart disease
so bad she couldn't walk more than a half-block or go up a single flight
of stairs, severe blockages in all three of her main arteries, and referred
to open heart surgery for a bypass. She chose, however, instead to
adopt a whole-food plant-based diet, which included all vegetables, fruits,
whole grains, potatoes, beans, legumes, and nuts. Even though she said she
was trying to eat pretty healthy before, within a single month of going plant-
based her symptoms had nearly resolved.

Decided to take control of his health
destiny and switched to a whole food plant-based diet from his "healthy" diet
of skinless chicken, fish, low-fat dairy that had been choking off his heart. And within a few weeks, the same
amazing transformation. From not being able to exercise
at all, to walking a mile, to then being able to jog more than
four miles, completely asymptomatic, off all drugs, no surgery,
off to live happily ever after. Now, of course, case reports are
just really glorified anecdotes. I mean, what we need is a randomized
controlled trial to prove heart disease can be reversed with lifestyle
changes alone.

And guess what? There was one, published literally
30 years ago, proving angiographic reversal of heart disease
in 82% of the patients, opening up arteries without
drugs, without surgery. So these case reports are just to
remind us that hundreds of thousands of Americans continue
to needlessly die every year from what was proven to be a
reversible condition decades ago. The conventional use of case reports,
though, is to present some novel results in hopes of inspiring trials
to put it to the test. For example, a case report on a plant-
based diet for congestive heart failure. So not just coronary artery disease, but
the heart muscle itself was so weakened it couldn't efficiently pump blood, only
able to eject about 35% of the blood in the main heart chamber with every
beat, whereas normally the heart can pump out at least half; which is
exactly what his heart was able to do just six weeks after switching to
a whole-food plant-based diet, instead of choosing to get
his chest cracked open.

The first report of an improvement
in heart failure following adoption of a plant-based diet, but not the last.
A 54-year-old woman, obese, type 2 diabetic, presenting with
swelling ankles due to her heart failure. She switched from her chicken
and fish to whole plant foods. She started out eating healthier and lost
50 pounds, reversed her diabetes— meaning normal blood sugars on
a normal diet without the use of diabetes medications—and
her heart function normalized, from an abysmal ejection fraction
of just 25% up to normal. Now since it's not a
randomized controlled trial, all we can say is
that her improvements coincided with her adoption of
a whole food plant-based diet. But given the burden of heart failure
as a leading cause of death, how it usually just gets progressively
worse, and the overall evidence to date, a plant-based diet should be
considered as part of heart failure care. And look, we already know it can
reverse her coronary artery disease, and so any heart failure
benefits would just be a bonus.

Now, we just need good strategies
for healthcare practitioners to support patients in plant-based eating. Here are some excellent suggestions
to pause and reflect on. For example, doctors can
use the Plantrician Project's prescription pads and
prescribe a good website or two. While it is certainly true that
many people would be resistant to fundamental dietary changes, look, it is equally true that
millions of intelligent people motivated to preserve their health
are now taking half-way measures that may provide only modest benefit—
choosing leaner cuts of meat, using reduced-fat dairy products.
Most of these people have neither the time nor the training to actually see
what the science shows themselves. Don't they deserve honest, forthright
advice when their lives are at stake? Those who wish to ignore that advice,
or implement it only partially, are certainly at liberty to do so. I mean, you want to go smoke
cigarettes, go bungie jumping? It's your body, your choice.
It's up to each of us to make our own decisions as to
what to eat and how to live.

But we should make these choices
consciously, educating ourselves about the predictable
consequences of our actions..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Do Vegetarians Really Have Higher Stroke Risk?

"Do Vegetarians Really
Have Higher Stroke Risk?" When ranked in order of importance,
among the interventions available to prevent stroke, the three
most important are probably diet, smoking cessation, and
blood pressure control. Most of us are doing pretty
good on smoking these days, less than half of us are exercising
enough, but according to the American Heart Association only 1
in a thousand Americans are eating a healthy diet, and fewer than 1 in 10
are even eating a moderately healthy diet. Why does it matter? Because diet is an important
part of stroke prevention. Reducing sodium intake, avoiding egg
yolks, limiting the intake of meat, and increasing the intake of whole grains,
fruits, vegetables and lentils. Like the sugar industry, the meat
and egg industries spend hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda,
unfortunately with great success. I was excited to check out Box number 1,
and was then honored, when I did. The strongest evidence for stroke
protection is for increasing fruit and vegetable intake, with
more uncertainty regarding the role of whole grains, animal products, and
dietary patterns such as vegetarian diets.

I mean one would expect they’d do great. Meta-analyses have found that
vegetarian diets lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and enhance
weight loss, and blood sugar control, and vegan diets may work even better.
So, all the key biomarkers are going in the right direction, but
you may be surprised to learn that there hadn’t ever been any
studies on the incidence of stroke in vegetarians and vegans… until, now. And if you think that's surprising,
wait until you hear the results. The risks of heart disease
and stroke in meat eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians
over 18 years of follow-up.

Yes, less heart disease
among vegetarians (by which they mean vegetarians and vegans combined) no surprise—been there, done
that, but more stroke. An understandable knee-jerk
reaction might be “Wait a second, who did this study?” But this is EPIC-Oxford, world-class
researchers whose conflicts of interest may be more likely to read “I was
a member of the Vegan Society.” What about overadjustment? If you crunch the numbers
over a ten-year-period they found 15 strokes for every thousand
meat-eaters compared to only 9 strokes for every thousand
vegetarians and vegans.

Wait, so how can they say there
were more strokes in the vegetarians? This was after adjusting
for a variety of factors. For example, the vegetarians
were less likely to smoke; so, you want to cancel that
out by adjusting for smoking, so that you can effectively
compare the stroke risk of nonsmoking vegetarians
to nonsmoking meat-eaters. If you want to know how a vegetarian
diet itself affects stroke rates, you want to cancel out these
non-diet-related factors. Sometimes, though, you can overadjust. The sugar industry does it all the time. This is how it works. Imagine you just got a grant
from the soda industry to study the effect of soda on
the childhood obesity epidemic.

What could you possibly do after
putting all the studies together to arrive at the conclusion that
there was near zero effect of sugary beverage consumption
on body weight? Well, since you know that
drinking liquid candy can lead to excess calories that can lead
to obesity, if you control for calories, if you control for a factor
that’s in the causal chain, effectively only comparing soda
drinkers who take in the same number of calories as non-soda-drinkers
then you could undermine the soda-to-obesity effect, and
that’s exactly what they did. That introduces overadjustment bias. Instead of just controlling
for some unrelated factor, you control for an intermediate
variable on the cause-and-effect pathway
between exposure and outcome. Overadjustment is how meat-and-
dairy industry funded researchers have been accused of obscuring
the true association between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. We know that saturated
fat increases cholesterol which increases heart disease risk. Therefore, if you control for
cholesterol, effectively only comparing saturated fat eaters with the
same cholesterol levels as non-saturated-fat eaters,
you see how you could undermine the saturated fat-to-heart disease effect.

Now let’s get back to this. Since vegetarian eating
lowers blood pressure, and a lowered blood pressure
leads to less stroke, controlling for blood pressure would be an
overadjustment, effectively only comparing vegetarians to meat-eaters
with the same low blood pressure. That’s not fair, since that’s one
of the benefits of vegetarian eating, not some unrelated factor like smoking; and so, it would undermine
the afforded protection. So, did they do that? No. They only adjusted for unrelated factors, like education, and socioeconomic class,
and smoking, and exercise, and alcohol. That’s what you want. You want to tease out the effects of a vegetarian diet on stroke risk…
you want to try to equalize everything else to tease out the
effects of just the dietary choice.

And since, for example, meat eaters
in the study were on average 10 years older than the vegetarians,
you can totally see how when you adjust for that
vegetarians could come out worse. Since stroke risk can increase
exponentially with age, you can see how having 9 strokes among
a thousand vegetarians in their 40s could be worse than 15 strokes among
a thousand meat-eaters in their 50s. The fact that vegetarians had
greater stroke risk despite their lower blood pressure suggests
there’s something about meat-free diets that so increases stroke risk it’s enough
to cancel out the blood pressure benefits, but even if that’s true you
still would want to eat that way. Stroke is our 5th leading cause of
death, whereas heart disease is #1. So, yes, in this study there
were this many more cases of stroke in vegetarians, but there were this many
fewer cases of heart disease, but if there is something increasing
stroke risk in vegetarians it would be nice to know what
it is in hopes of figuring out how to get the best of both worlds.

This is the question we'll turn to, next..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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Easy, Healthy Red Lentil Wraps 🥙

Friends, this might be the best way to eat lentils yet! I am absolutely mind-blown at how easy these red lentil wraps are and how well they worked. I kept seeing these wraps popping up on my feed, and if you know my love for legumes you know I had to give it a go.

This is literally a game-changer and is going to be heavily featured on my lunch rotation going forward. I’m always looking for some easy lunches to meal-prep and this is it.
You can make a few at a time, roast a bunch of veggies, store them all in the fridge, and serve them later with a bit of hummus, some baby spinach and a bit of sauerkraut for some fermented food. And that’s it. Absolutely brilliant. You could also flavour them with some spices, the possibilities are endless.

I made 4 large wraps out of 1 cup of lentils. Each wrap gets you 11.5g of protein and only costs around 19 cents to make.
How awesome is that? As you can tell I am very excited about this new trend. Will you give it a go?

/// Recipe 📝
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