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This Popular Diet Made Me Sick

Who knew a diet could cause debilitating pain, in addition to hair loss, fatigue, and more.

Keto, Plant-based, Atkins, South Beach, etc.

There seems to be at least one new diet every year that promises to be the answer to achieving permanent weight loss, optimum health, and more.

As a health coach and trainer, I’ve studied many of them. I’ve even experimented with some, as long as they had some decent data backing them up.

But, I was surprised that this popular diet that is backed up by science made me sick. And, it was recommended by a doctor.

What diet was it?! Vegan.

Throughout my life, I’ve tried to cut out or at least decrease my consumption of meat several times. Each time was prompted by a study that came out supporting a vegan lifestyle.

I never lasted more than a month.

My gut, no pun intended, would tell me I needed meat. So, I’d start eating it again.

But, this last time was different.

Four years ago, my husband ended up in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and then a blood infection. It was a very scary time.

The hospital he was being treated at was horrible. We had to enlist the help of my brother, who is a doctor, to be his advocate and get him the care he needed.

Once he got my husband’s care situated, my brother pulled me aside with some concern.

My brother told me that my husband’s cardiac numbers were alarming. As a cardiologist, he said that he’d put him on a vegan diet ASAP if he were his official patient.

He said that I had no control over what my husband ate outside of the home, but that he could improve his cardiac numbers significantly with just a vegan diet at home.

I started immediately.

I was not entirely surprised that a vegan diet could improve heart health. I had read about it several times before, which is why I tried a vegan diet in the past.

My main concern with a vegan diet was making sure he got enough protein, B vitamins, zinc, vitamin D, iron, and omega-3s. So, I added in supplements and got some high-quality protein powders.

I decided to eat vegan at home as well so that I did not spend my life at the grocery store and in the kitchen preparing multiple meals.

I was pleasantly surprised at how great I felt.

Within the first week of eating vegan, my bowels were more regular. Gut issues cleared up. My skin looked amazing. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. Even my workouts improved. I was baffled.

I drank the Kool-Aid. I jumped into a vegan lifestyle with both feet. And my husband was right there with me.

I think the difference going vegan this time was my mentality. I was determined to improve my husband’s health. And, the fact that a trusted cardiologist recommended it gave it a little more strength in my mind.

We were at about a year of being vegan when problems started popping up.

But, if any of you have been vegan, you know it comes with some crazy sort of loyalty to it. It becomes a lifestyle. A movement. I dare to say, a cult.

I was in too deep at that point to admit that the vegan diet could be anything else but good for me.

I could write a whole article on my experience and thoughts around how being a vegan changes your personality, your relationships and perspective. And not in a good way. It becomes an identity.

Our identities should never be tied to a way of eating. That’s how eating disorders start.

But, for this article, I will stop there.

The first issue I experienced was pain. Migratory pain. I blamed it on decades of competitive sports, age, an old car accident.

I did physical therapy.

The pain did not go away.

The next symptom was with my thyroid. I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism years before and had gotten it under control. But, all of a sudden my labs were showing the numbers being off.

Then, shit hit the fan. I was exhausted all of the time. Hair loss started. Gut issues started again. I was starving all of the time. No matter what I ate, I’d be hungry again an hour later.

My husband had similar issues. But mostly, he just felt tired and hungry.

I decided that I needed to see a doctor. I went to my functional medicine doctor. Do you want to know what the first thing she asked was? You probably guessed it. Was I vegan?

She mentioned that she saw huge deficiencies in multiple areas with every vegan patient. Sure, they’d feel great for anywhere between a week to a year. But, eventually, their bodies needed nutrients that only meat products could provide.

My resistance held tight. It took several labs and tests to convince me that my vegan lifestyle was making me sick. Also, the pain was not giving me a choice. My body was letting me know something was wrong.

Labs showed that my iron was shockingly low. I was deficient in vitamin d. I had developed an intestinal infection because of a low functioning immune system.

What shocked me most was something I was completely unfamiliar with, oxalates. Many people have never heard of oxalates. I hope for your sake that this is the only time you do.

Because of the vegan diet, I developed oxalate sensitivity. This is what was causing the majority of the pain.

Oxalates are naturally occurring in many plants. It’s the plant’s way of protecting itself from pests and predators. It’s like how animals have teeth. It’s a chemical that protects them from us, predators.

Oxalate sensitivity occurs when you eat too many plants that have oxalates. That sensitivity causes symptoms such as pain, urinary issues, kidney issues, and more. The plants with the highest amount of oxalates are spinach, beets, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, beans, tofu, and berries. I ate all of those regularly.

The other thing that a vegan diet did was rob me of collagen. The body makes collagen. But, as we age, it becomes less efficient at it. We need to get it in our diet.

The best sources of collagen come from animal protein such as bone broth, chicken, eggs, and fish. Some plants help increase collagen production. But, for me, they just weren’t efficient enough. This contributed to the pain, hair loss, wrinkles, gut issues, and immune deficiency.

So, I was convinced. I decided to start incorporating some meat products. I started slowly. I added in high-quality bone broth and a little bit of collagen powder.

If I wasn’t convinced already, I was after just one week of adding in bone broth and collagen. The pain got better. I had more energy. My gut felt better. I felt more grounded. I didn’t even realize how much anxiety I had until I added meat back in.

It’s been seven months since I started eating meat again. I feel better every day.

I’m not going to lie. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self to not give up meat. But, that’s not very helpful.

In school, they taught us about bio-individuality. There is no universal diet that works for everyone. Everyone has different needs and those needs evolve.

Vegan may have been ok for me for a short period, but not long-term. And, maybe it’s ok for some people long-term.

The most important thing is to be in touch with your body and let it tell you what it needs. And, consistently check in. Your body’s needs will change.

Moderation is important. Too much of anything is not good. Even veggies. Too much spinach caused oxalate sensitivity.

Being vegan gave me a good foundation of knowledge and skills to be able to make great meals out of plants. I still feel that the majority of our food should be plant-based. I just throw a little meat in too.

My functional medicine doctor taught me that meat is not bad if it’s high quality. It’s the hormones, antibiotics, and corn it’s fed that make it bad for us. We eat those toxins with the meat.

General guidelines are the following:

You may be wondering where my husband is in all of this. Well, his labs came back with an estrogen level that was crazy high. That scared him enough to start eating meat.

I think his main concern was that he’d grow boobs.

Yes, his cardiac numbers got better.

Cutting out toxic meat, eating more fiber and plants, and being more mindful of what he ate were what helped those numbers.

Now he eats high-quality meat sparingly and focuses on eating mostly plant-based. This is still heart-healthy.

For those of you out there thinking about becoming 100% vegan, I hope this makes you think a little harder about it first.

I advocate for an 80/20 diet of 80% plant-based and 20% meat.

My advice:

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