Vegans
IQ of Vegetarian Children
"IQ of Vegetarian Children" Okay, so the bronze goes to
hormonal genital meat malformation. The silver goes to a study
on IQ and vegetarianism. First, let me share
a little background. We’ve known for
nearly 30 years that vegetarian children
test smarter than omnivorous kids. First shown in a
1980 study by Tufts University, the IQ of vegetarian children was found
to be about 16 points above average. And their “mental age” was a year
ahead of the rest of their classmates. Of all the veg kids,
the vegan kids appeared the smartest. The pediatricians and psychologists
knew the veg kids were bright, but the researchers noted
that they were puzzled that they were
so much superior. Which came first, though?
The chicken or the egg? Well, for the vegan kids,
neither, perhaps. But were they smart
because they were vegetarians, and therefore getting
all that good nutrition— or did they become vegetarian
because they were so smart? Well, the mystery has
finally been solved—I guess. Those fantastic Brits followed
8,000 kids for 30 years. Measured their IQ at age 10,
then came back 20 years later and asked which of them had
become vegetarian during that time. Their findings? Higher scores for IQ
in childhood are associated with an increased likelihood
of being a vegetarian as an adult.
Smart people
evidently eat vegetarian. They even quote Benjamin Franklin
saying vegetarian diets result in “greater clearness of head
and quicker comprehension.”.
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube
How Not to Die from Kidney Disease
"How Not to Die from Kidney Disease" Kidney failure may be both prevented
and treated with a plant-based diet, and no wonder; kidneys are
highly vascular organs. Harvard researchers found three
significant dietary risk factors for declining kidney function: animal
protein, animal fat, and cholesterol. Animal fat can alter the actual structure
of our kidneys, based on studies like this, showing plugs of fat literally clogging up
the works in autopsied human kidneys. And the animal protein can
have a profound effect on normal kidney function,
inducing what's called hyperfiltration, increasing the workload of
the kidney; but not plant protein.
Eat a meal of tuna fish and you can see
the increased pressure on the kidneys go up within 1, 2, 3 hours after the meal,
in both nondiabetics and diabetics. So we're not talking adverse
effects decades down the road, but literally within hours
of it going into our mouth. Now, if instead of having a tuna
salad sandwich, though, you had a tofu salad sandwich, with the exact same amount
of protein, what happens? No effect. Dealing with plant protein
is no problem. Why does animal protein cause the
overload reaction, but not plant protein? It appears to be due to
the inflammation triggered by the consumption
of animal products. How do we know that? Because, if you give a powerful,
anti-inflammatory drug along with that tuna fish, you
can abolish the hyperfiltration, protein leakage response
to meat ingestion.
Then, there's the acid load. Animal foods—meat, eggs, and dairy—
induce the formation of acid within the kidneys, which
may lead to tubular toxicity, damage to the tiny, delicate,
urine-making tubes in the kidney. Animal foods tend to be acid forming—
especially fish, which is the worst— then pork and poultry, whereas plant foods tend
to be relatively neutral, or actually alkaline, base-forming
to counteract the acid. So the key to halting the progression
of chronic kidney disease might be in the produce market,
rather than the pharmacy.
No wonder plant-based diets have been
used to treat kidney disease for decades. Here's protein leakage on the
conventional low sodium diet, which is what physicians
would typically put someone with declining
kidney function on. Switched to a supplemented vegan
diet, then back to conventional, plant-based, conventional,
plant-based; turning on and off kidney dysfunction
like a light switch, based on what was
going into their mouths..
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube
Plant-Based Bodybuilding
"Plant-Based Bodybuilding" We know excess cellular growth isn’t
so good when we’re fully grown adults, since budding tumors may end up being
the main beneficiaries of higher levels of circulating growth hormones. But in some circumstances, a little
extra growth is sought after, particularly for men in this
culture — though not exclusively. The growth hormone IGF-1 is the
reason some dogs look like this, and others like this. What about those who strive
to be the big dog? Yes, lower circulating levels of IGF-1
in vegans lowers cancer risk, but might that interfere with their
accumulation of muscle mass? There certainly are lots of
plant-based body builders, but maybe they’re the exception.
To look like this, does one
have to risk looking like this? True or false: Lower IGF-1 levels
in vegans likely interferes with muscle accumulation. Is this fact, or is this fiction? Well, there’s a couple ways
you attack that question. For example, what’s the skeletal
muscle mass like in acromegaly? People afflicted with giantism — where
they have an IGF overload in the body. If IGF bulks up muscle, you’d think
they’d be musclebound; but no, they don’t have any more muscle,
on average, than anyone else. What if you inject people with IGF-1? They injected women for a year, and
found no increase in lean body mass or grip, bench or leg press strength. What about men? Basically, same thing. They had about a dozen 22-year-olds
flex for 15 weeks under different hormonal milieus, and concluded that
elevations in ostensibly anabolic hormones, like IGF-1,
with resistance exercise, enhances neither training-induced
muscle bulk, nor strength. "Thus it seems that outside of
[genetically engineered mice or a cell culture dish or other
animal models] that the search for the true role of the growth
potential for IGF-1 in adult muscle hypertrophy is a vain one." So, although it’s never been
directly tested, probably fiction.
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube
Plant-based Atkins diet
“Plant-Based Atkins Diet” This was a pretty dramatic case report,
but it was just one person. Recently, researchers at Harvard
decided to look at 100,000 people: “Low-Carb Diets and All-Cause
and Cause-Specific Mortality.” They found that low-carb diets
were associated with higher all-cause mortality,
higher cardiovascular disease mortality, and higher cancer mortality. The final nail in Atkins’ coffin. Men and women on low-carb diets
lead significantly shorter lives; more cancer deaths, more heart attacks. Sure, you may lose some weight,
but the only way we may be able to enjoy it is with a skinnier casket.
But wait! In 2009, some enterprising researchers
came up with a plant-based, low-carb diet; the so-called “Eco-Atkins” diet. They figured that maybe the problem with
the Atkins diet wasn’t that it was high-fat, high-protein, but that it was
high-animal fat, -animal protein. So they constructed a
vegan version of the Atkins diet. How is that possible? Well, lots of mock meats, seitan,
soy burgers, veggie bacon, veggie cold cuts, veggie sausage,
tofu, lot of nuts, avocado, etc. How did they do? Pretty good, actually. Instead of their bad cholesterol going up,
like it does on a meat-based Atkins, after just two weeks on the
plant-based, low-carb diet, their LDL was down more than 20%.
Now the whole study only
lasted a month, though, so you couldn’t really
make any generalizations. But it was intriguing enough that
when the data was run at Harvard, they picked out the people
eating plant-based, low-carb diets to see if they suffered
the same low-carb fate. That’s the nice thing about doing dietary
studies on 100,000 people at a time: you can find people eating
just about anything. What do you think they found? This line represents the
mortality rate of the typical diet. And this is what they found
for people following more of an Atkins-style low-carb diet:
significantly higher risk of death. But what do you think they found
for those following a plant-based, low-carb diet? Do they suffer the same crazy
mortality as the Atkins people? Or maybe they didn’t do that bad, but still had more mortality
than those eating regular diets? Or did they have the same,
or lower mortality? They had lower mortality. They concluded: “A low-carbohydrate diet
based on animal sources was associated with higher all-cause mortality
in both men and women, whereas a vegetable-based
low-carbohydrate diet was associated with lower all-cause and
cardiovascular disease mortality rates.” So it appears, what matters really isn’t
the ratio of fat to carbs to protein, but rather, the source— whether they’re coming
from plants or animals.
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube
Treating Asthma and Eczema With Plant-Based Diets
"Treating Asthma and Eczema With Plant-Based Diets" Twenty patients with allergic eczema were placed
on a vegetarian diet for two months, and their disease scores, covering both
subjective and objective signs and symptoms were cut in half, similar to what you see
using one of our most powerful drugs. The drug worked quicker, within about two weeks, but since side effects may include kidney failure
and cancer the drug is considered a class 1 carcinogen,
the dietary option may be preferable.
But this was no ordinary vegetarian diet. This was an in-patient study using
an extremely calorically restricted diet. They were practically half fasting, so we don't know
which component was responsible for the therapeutic effect. What about using a more conventional plant-based
diet against a different allergic disease, asthma? In Sweden, there was an active health movement that
claimed that a vegan diet could improve or cure asthma. Bold claim. So in order to test this, a skeptical
group of orthopedic surgeons at the University Hospital followed a series of patients who were
treated with a vegan regimen for one year.
Patients, participants had to be
willing to go completely plant-based and they had to have physician-verified asthma of
at least a year's duration that wasn't getting better, or even getting worse despite
the best medical therapies available. They found quite a sick group to follow. Thirty-five patients with long-established hospital-verified
bronchial asthma for an average duration of a dozen years. Of the 35 patients, 20 had been admitted to the hospital
for acute asthmatic attacks during the last two years. Of these, one patient had received acute infusion therapy a total
of 23 times during the period, which is like an emergency intravenous.
And another patient claimed he had been brought
to the hospital 100 times during his disease and
on every occasion had evidently required such treatments. One patient even had a cardiac arrest during an asthma
attack and had been brought back to life on a ventilator,
so we're talking some pretty serious cases. They were on up to eight different
asthma medications when they started. They were each on an average of 4.5 drugs
and still not getting better.
Twenty of the 35 were constantly using cortisone, which
is one of our most powerful steroids used in severe cases. So basically fairly advanced cases of the disease,
more severe than the vegan practitioners were used to. Still, how'd they do? Eleven could not stick to the diet for a year. But of the 24 that did, 71% reported improvement
at four months and 92% at one year, and these were folks that had not improved at all
over the previous year before changing their diet. Concurrently with this improvement, the patients
greatly reduced their consumption of medicine. Four had completely given up their medication altogether,
and only two weren't able to at least drop their dose.
They went from 4.5 drugs down to 1.2,
and some were able to get off cortisone. Some said that their improvement was so considerable
that they felt like ”they had a new life.” One nurse had difficulty at work because
most of her co-workers were smokers, but after the year she could withstand the secondhand smoke
without getting an attack, as well as tolerating other asthma triggers. Others reported the same thing. Whereas previously they could only live in a clean environment
and felt more or less isolated in their homes, they could now stay out without getting asthma attacks. And it wasn't just subjective improvements. There was a significant improvement in a number of clinical variables, including most importantly, measures of lung function, vital capacity,
forced expiratory volume, as well as physical working capacity, as well as a significant drop in sed rate,
and IgE, which are allergy associated antibodies.
Bottom line, they started out with 35 patients who had
suffered from severe asthma for an average of 12 years, all receiving long-term medication, 20 including cortisone, were subjected to vegan food for a year, and in almost all cases medication was withdrawn or drastically reduced,
and there was a significant decrease in asthma symptoms. Despite the improved lung function tests and lab values, the placebo effect obviously can't be discounted
since there is no blinded control group, but the nice thing about a healthy diet
is that there are only good side effects.
Their cholesterol significantly improved, their
blood pressures got better, they lost 18 pounds, so from a medical standpoint, I figure why not give it a try?.
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube
Preventing Asthma with Fruits and Vegetables
"Preventing Asthma With Fruits and Vegetables" Asthma is the most common
chronic disease in children, and the prevalence is
increasing around the world. Despite this, most research dollars
are spent on adult chronic diseases. One might ask whether this is because
our politicians and senior administrators feel themselves to be more
likely to suffer from the latter, and ignore allergic diseases
because they have their major impact on children and young
adults who don't vote. Imagine how much more effort
would be put into elucidating causes of a disorder
that increased at the same escalated rate in
the middle aged and elderly. Well, finally, an international study
of asthma and allergies in childhood, studying more than a million children
in nearly a hundred countries, making it the most comprehensive survey
of these diseases ever undertaken. What did they find? They found a wide variability
in the prevalence and severity of asthma, allergies,
and eczema. We're talking 20-fold
to 60-fold difference in prevalence of symptoms of
asthma, allergic runny nose, and atopic eczema
around the world. Striking worldwide variations in
the prevalence of allergic symptoms.
What does it
all mean? Well, the large variability
suggests a crucial role of some kind of local characteristics
determining the differences in prevalence between
one place and another. What kind of environmental factors? Like, why does the prevalence
of itchy eyes and runny nose range anywhere from 1% in India, for
example, up to 45% of kids elsewhere? There were some associations with
regional air pollution and smoking rates, but the most significant
associations were with diet. Adolescents showed a
consistent pattern of decreases in symptoms of wheeze
(current and severe), allergic rhinoconjunctivitis
and atopic eczema, associated with increased
consumption of plants. The more their calories and
protein came from plant sources, the less allergies
they seemed to have. In general, there seems
to be an association between an increase
in asthma prevalence and decreased consumption of
fresh fruits, green vegetables, and other dietary
sources of antioxidants, helping to explain why the prevalence
of asthma and respiratory symptoms is lower in populations with high
intake of foods of plant origin. Intakes of high fat and sodium,
and low fiber and carbohydrates are linked with asthma, while traditional and vegetarian diets
are associated with lower rates.
For example, if you
look closer within India, in a study of more
than 100,000 people, those who consumed meat, for example,
daily or even occasionally, were more likely to report asthma than
those who were strictly vegetarian, which meant also
avoiding eggs. Eggs have been associated,
along with soda, with an increased risk of respiratory
symptoms and asthma in schoolchildren, whereas consumptions
of soy foods and fruits were associated with reduced
risk of respiratory symptoms. In fact, removing eggs from
the diet, along with dairy, may improve lung function
in asthmatic children in as little
as eight weeks. So maybe it's a combination of eating
less animal foods and more plants.
High vegetable intake, for example,
has been found protective in children, cutting the odds of
allergic asthma in half. And fruit showed a consistent
protective association for current and severe wheeze and
runny nose in adolescents, and for current and severe asthma,
allergies, and eczema for children. But why? I've talk about the endocrine-
disrupting industrial pollutants building up in the meat supply that may
increase the risk of allergic diseases, but the increase in asthma
may be a combination of both a more toxic environment
and a more susceptible population. "The dietary changes which have
occurred over recent years may have led to a reduction in
these natural antioxidant defenses, resulting in a shift of the antioxidant
status of the whole population and leading to increased susceptibility
to oxidant attack and airway inflammation." In adults, for example, the risk
of airway hyper-reactivity may increase seven-fold
among those with the lowest intake of
vitamin C from plants foods, while the lowest intake of saturated
fats gave a 10-fold protection, presumably because of saturated fats
have a role in triggering inflammation.
“The protective effect of plant-based
food may also be mediated through effects on
intestinal microflora." It turns out the differences in
the indigenous intestinal flora might affect the development and priming
of the immune system in early childhood. Kids with allergies,
for example, tend to be less likely to
harbor lactobacilli, the good bacteria that's
found in fermented foods and also just naturally
on fruits and vegetables. And lactobacillus probiotics may
actually help with childhood asthma, which may all help
explain why children raised on largely
organic vegetarian diets may have lower prevalence
of allergic reactions. Infants raised in this way tend
to have more good lactobacilli in their guts compared
to controls, though they were also more likely
to have been born naturally, breastfed longer, and not
given as many antibiotics, so you really can't tell if it's the
diet until you put it to the test… which we'll
explore next..
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube