Do all vegans have deficiencies? vitamins and minerals

[Cocolove]

I am thinking about going vegan, and am for sure cutting out all animal products where the animals weren't raised great, so I will be eating less animal products at the least.

I know that some vegans can be stupid about it and end up with deficiencies in things like DHA and B12. I have also heard some criticisms that vegans can't avoid some kind of deficiencies. Where can I find more information? Does veganism always lead to some deficiencies or can it be done right?

[Michael569]

It can absolutely be done right and if you took 100 vegans from the streets and 100 omnivores, vegans would probably be several times healthier on average as most people suffer from basic deficiencies such as vitamin C, folate, most B-vitamins, zinc, magnesium and many other. That being said, there are few potential deficiencies especially zinc, calcium, retinol (active vitamin A), sometimes selenium and often full spectrum of essential amino acids. 

If you track your nutrition, balance it well and add few necessary supplements (B12, D and DHA) you can be perfectly healthy.

It is also important to manage stress and excessive exercise. Because vegan diet is devoid of cholesterol, all the endogenous production of steroid hormones is reliant on liver production. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone is made of cholesterol and so is testosterone and oestrogen. If you get excessively stressed, your cortisol pathway will start "stealing" building blocks for your sex hormones production and you may end up with low libido, hair loss etc.. So it is important to keep an eye on that

Edited January 7, 2020 by Michael569

[Homo Lucens]

Can confirm out of experience what is said above. Transitioning to veganism made me feel weak for a long time, but noticed a massive shift in my wellbeing after I started supplementing DHA, B-Complex Forte, D3 and (Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc). I dislike swallowing a set of pills every morning, but it is absolutely worth it. I feel more energized, and stronger. I have felt a lacking hormone production in my body, so last week I ordered Pine Pollen which supposedly is one of the greater natural testosteron boosters out there. Very curious to see if there will be any changes. Good luck!

[Calcifer]

"Do all vegans have deficiencies?" --> Definitely because almost everybody has nutrient deficiencies due to the changes of the natural environment and ecosystems. We altered forests, meadows and fields and with that we altered the systems that cycle nutrients, ultimately this alteration led to a shift in the availibilty of nutrients for plants. And if plants have nutrient deficiencis all subjects in the food chain above will aswell.

Today it is almost impossible to gain the full spectrum of nutrients that you need if you do not supplement.

Also consider that you have basically 2 nutritional needs:
The first need is based on the perspective "What nutrients do you need if the human body is in ideal shape and in the ideal environment." So in other words what would your body need if you are not injured, if all your organs work on maximum efficiency, if you are relaxed all the time, if you work out regularly, if air pollution doesn´t exist and so on.
The second need precisley deals with the problem if your body doesn´t have the ideal conditions to thrive due to mental, physical or environmental issues. This concept is extremely crucial for proper nutrition. Let´s assume somebody has thyriod problems, it is intuitively obvious that this man needs different ratios of certain nutrients than somebody with severe liver issues. It becomes less obvious and is therefore often overlooked if you compare the different growing location of the same food types. Let´s say you want to go vegan because you have seen people in asia do it and they are very healthy and energetic, so you follow their exact same diet plan, but instead of feeling healthy and energetic you feel exhausted and ill. This is easily explained if you know that the nutrients of the soil in your location and in the location of your role models can greatly differ, this doesn´t necessarily mean that this diet is bad, it just means that you have to add certain nutrients in your diet due to these differences in the soil quality.

In a nutshell the first need discribes your fundamental requirements of nutrients and the second describes that different scenarios put different variations of nutrients on top of the fundamental requirements.

Here are some great resources if you want to research this topic further. Even so they focus on a raw vegan diet the concepts and problems still apply to a standard vegan diet if not more.

Don Bennett is a great resource and perspective on nutrition in general. His articles on his website give you a detailed and well researched view on several important nutrients as well as vegan issues in general.

Heal Yourself 101 by Markus Rothkanz
http://files.zelenepotraviny1.webnode.cz/200000358-5ad865cccc/HealYourself.pdf

 

 

Also in my personal experiences it is almost a necessity to have a juicer for greens, otherwise you will definitely run into nutritional deficiencies. With  a juicer it becomes fairly easy to drink the juice from 3-4 kg of vegetables, which would be a problem if you had to eat 3-4 kg of vegetables every day to make sure you get enough of rare nutrients. The Green Star Elite GSE-5000 Juicer is the one that I´ve been using for the last 2 to 3 years and it works really well.

 

[DivineSoda]

It can be done right but it takes proper foresight and knowledge. Supplementation helps, methyl B12 at a minimum. Buy high quality, organic, non processed, high variety, get your calories in, continue to exercise, hydrate well, sleep well, and yes juicing can be highly beneficial as someone else recommended. Listen to your body as well. It's not for everyone.

[Pell]

I recommend the book "How Not To Die" 

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

Not yet!

[Cocolove]

Thank you all so much. I am so grateful.

On 1/7/2020 at 4:26 AM, Michael569 said:

It can absolutely be done right and if you took 100 vegans from the streets and 100 omnivores, vegans would probably be several times healthier on average as most people suffer from basic deficiencies such as vitamin C, folate, most B-vitamins, zinc, magnesium and many other. That being said, there are few potential deficiencies especially zinc, calcium, retinol (active vitamin A), sometimes selenium and often full spectrum of essential amino acids. 

If you track your nutrition, balance it well and add few necessary supplements (B12, D and DHA) you can be perfectly healthy.

 

I am supplementing those 3 currently!  Also magnesium and zinc. Would you recommend bloodwork for those other deficiency possibilities? I could get it done easily. Personallabs.com is 115 dollars for comprehensive bloodwork.

@Calcifer THank you greatly. I will watch all those videos. Funnily enough I am interested in understanding raw veganism too so thanks.

On 1/7/2020 at 9:46 PM, Pell said:

I recommend the book "How Not To Die" 

Looks good, added to my prospective reads list.

 

On 1/7/2020 at 10:16 PM, Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj said:

Not yet!

What!

[Calcifer]

@Cocolove  Prepare yourself for being totally mindfucked several times, if you decide to go down this rabbit hole. Your perspecitve on health, living and diseases will change completely. Her is e a little teaser:

But be careful not to become too idealistic, it will harm you greatly, because I fell in that trap myself. The raw vegan diet is in my opinion the superior diet of all but in order to fully commit to a raw vegan diet you need to have the infrastructure to do it. You need systems in place that provide you with very nutritious food. For this you need either a high income to buy high quality food or you need to grow it yourself in a garden or in your home with microgreens, otherwise you will fail definitely.
I tried to force this step without the proper logistics and eventually hit a brick wall, where I was draining my body because I didn´t have high quality food, not the appropriate tools and insufficient knowledge. For now I went back to cooking my food and eating raw eggs for my protein demand, but I´m still eating a great portion raw. The difference now is that I´m intelligently maneuvering through this process, instead of forcing my way through. I go periodically out of my comfort zone to deliberately search for walls, so I can strategize how to systematically set up the logistics that I need to overcome this wall and by that I´m able to step my way up to a cleaner diet.

It is important to seek out people who failed at a vegan & raw vegan diet, so you can destill the principles that these people ignored.
It is crucial to know the traps along the way in order to avoid them.
 

The core principle here is: Good Better Best
This principle should be your guide through this process. Here´s a little example:
I´m currently eating whole grains like buckwheat on a daily basis . It is way better than eating Junk food but eating mostly raw is still much better. But just because I´m not able to reach the ideal diet that I´m picturing in my mind, I´m not dropping all my progress and my good eating habits to start eating junk food once again, just because I cannot reach the ideal anyway.
This seems very obvious but cleaning up your diet is a very emotional process, especially if you´re fighting a disease. If you become very emotionally invested, you become idealistic as well. And then it is easy to think that dropping everything just because you can´t reach the ideal at the moment, becomes a very reasonable train of thought to you.

I hope I didn´t scare you too much haha I just want to point out the traps that I didn´t see coming.

Happy research

[TheUniverseIsLove]

@Cocolove

I have been vegan for about 6+ months. Make sure to take B12 and algea omega supplements. 

I had my bloodwork done recently and all were in normal ranges. 

 

[Michael569]

On 12/01/2020 at 0:55 AM, Cocolove said:

am supplementing those 3 currently!  Also magnesium and zinc. Would you recommend bloodwork for those other deficiency possibilities? I could get it done easily. Personallabs.com is 115 dollars for comprehensive bloodwork.

If you can, why not. Your doctor should be able to do a full blood count including ferritin and B12. Go to them and see you have become vegan but feel tired all the time. Otherwise they won't do it. 

[Cocolove]

@Calcifer Thanks for sharing! Have you considered anything like this? This youtube channel has been very helpful for me.

 

On 1/12/2020 at 2:04 PM, TheUniverseIsLove said:

@Cocolove

I have been vegan for about 6+ months. Make sure to take B12 and algea omega supplements. 

I had my bloodwork done recently and all were in normal ranges. 

 

Already am taking those. I think I will get bloodwork soon and then after 6 months or something, to compare, although I do eat very healthy right now and have animal products only a few times in the past 2 weeks.

 

12 hours ago, Michael569 said:

If you can, why not. Your doctor should be able to do a full blood count including ferritin and B12. Go to them and see you have become vegan but feel tired all the time. Otherwise they won't do it. 

I didn't plan on going to the doctor for it. I'd rather do it on my own. As of 2014 you can get your bloodwork done on your own, such as through personal labs. Maybe I should go to the doctor for it though.

[Michael569]

@Cocolove ofcourse but a personal lab will charge you. I don't know where you live but here in UK for example you don't pay for doctor tests. Ofcourse there is medical deductible from salary but that is non-negotiable. 

[Calcifer]

On 13.1.2020 at 11:10 PM, Cocolove said:

Have you considered anything like this?

@Cocolove Wow that is ingenious! I played with that idea in my head that it is very likely that such communities exist, but I never did the research on this part. I´ll definitely put that on my research to do list (as if it  wasn´t crowded enough hahah). Now that I´m seeing this I think I´ll definitly try out some of these communities in the future maybe 3-4 years down the road, since at one point I´d love to see the world. I have such inner sense for a while now, but for now I can´t do it due to my studies in university.
I´m very grateful for this if you still have some more golden nuggets. I´m here I don´t mind a second Christmas Eve haha

[Cocolove]

@Calcifer I've used ecovillage.org a lot to research places like that one. There are plenty. With WWOOF you can volunteer at farms in exchange for housing and food. Some cool opportunities for traveling there.

[DrewNows]

some amazing hacks for anyone looking to better clean up their diet or is transitioning toward vegan 

[Cocolove]

1 hour ago, DrewNows said:

some amazing hacks for anyone looking to better clean up their diet or is transitioning toward vegan 

haha i just found that video the other day and added it to my watch later

[Scholar]

On 7.1.2020 at 11:26 AM, Michael569 said:

It is also important to manage stress and excessive exercise. Because vegan diet is devoid of cholesterol, all the endogenous production of steroid hormones is reliant on liver production. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone is made of cholesterol and so is testosterone and oestrogen. If you get excessively stressed, your cortisol pathway will start "stealing" building blocks for your sex hormones production and you may end up with low libido, hair loss etc.. So it is important to keep an eye on that

Can you provide a source on that?

[SgtPepper]

If you want to hear the anti-vegan message, look up Bobby's perspective, Sv3rige and ex-vegan videos. 

I think it's possible to maintain life on a vegan diet but you will have to supplement and be vigilant of your zinc and iron levels.

I personally do not think there is enough evidence that it is a safe diet in the long-term. Scientifically speaking, the Mediterranean and the Japanese people practices the healthiest diets. Both of these cultures eat fish, eggs, and some meat. 

[Jonac]

If you go vegan mostly for animal compassion you're gonna suffer vitamin deficit.