Trigger warning: This newsletter contains sarcasm and irony. I do not condone hatred of furry animals (or vegans).
Did you know I can see into the future?
It is a blessing and a curse, I can see the future potential good and the potential bad with ease.
It might be something to do with my dopamine genetic tendencies from my polymorphisms on the dopamine receptor DRD2.
Turns out I am also very sensitive to my environment, and thus, if I go to the pub now on a Friday night, I find the noise really quite uncomfortable.
I chose to stop drinking alcohol about 12 years ago, the alcohol might have been the reason why I never noticed it before.
How can anyone go to a nightclub without being under the influence, it is so sodding loud.
These days, if the acoustics are really bad, I will pop a pair of Loop ear plugs in and dampen down the background noise, take the edge off.
https://www.loopearplugs.com/products/engage
These are lifesavers for those people on the autistic spectrum, I have teachers who have an ASD diagnosis that couldn’t work without them.
Once you have been in practice for a good few years, you will see people come and go.
You can see the changes’ in health, the good and the bad.
And so, you can see bad things coming, because you have seen them before and watched as things went wrong and the consequences of it all.
It can be mildly depressing if people do not heed your warnings.
If I have younger people telling me they are turning vegan, it really makes me concerned.
We need a nutrient dense diet, with the food eaten tolerated by the immune system.
And before you tell me about the gut microbiome, hear this:
If you have an inflamed gut from food immune intolerances and foods with health deleterious compounds that you cannot tolerate (oxalates, lectins etc) then your gut microbiome will be trashed.
You can take all the pre/probiotics you want, inflammation is a driver of gut dysbiosis.
It makes the gut leaky, it upsets the mucous lining, it allows too much oxygen in the gut layers which upsets the good bacteria.
And yes, I know dysbiosis can cause gut inflammation, but we have to break the vicious cycle and 95% of the time that will be done with food elimination, not by adding in fibre and supplements.
I have seen many exhausted, depressed and anxious, chronically in pain patients who went vegan a few years before, really improve dramatically when they added back in animal products.
So when I hear them say they might go vegan, I will gently and nicely but firmly suggest that is not a good idea.
Consider the panda.
It is a carnivore, I mean look at those teeth !!
And yet, at some point in time, they went “vegan”.
Now they sit around all day long eating sodding bamboo, and only bamboo, like a child that only wants to eat bread.
From natinalzoo.si.edu
“A giant panda’s digestive system is more similar to that of a carnivore than an herbivore, and so much of what is eaten is passed as waste. To make up for the inefficient digestion, a panda needs to consume a comparatively large amount of food—from 70 to 100 pounds of bamboo each day—to get all its nutrients. To obtain this much food means that a panda must spend 10 to 16 hours a day foraging and eating. The rest of its time is spent mostly sleeping and resting.”
Because their stomachs aren’t evolved to digest plants, pandas get almost no nutrients out of bamboo before they pass through their systems as waste.
So pandas have to eat tons and tons of the plant matter just to stay alive – so much bamboo that we humans have to go out and plant extra bamboo for them to eat.
In the meanwhile, you know what else lives in their habitat? Toads, newts, and frogs; many, many birds far smaller than a bear; field mice, shrews, squirrels, voles, hares, moles, weasels, monkeys, and civets; and snakes, turtles, and fish.
This is not the Hunger Games, grow up pandas.
It is no wonder they are at risk of dying out, they are so malnourished and exhausted they can’t bothered to even have sex.
The females only ovulate once a year, lazy ovaries.
But to be fair, the males, while they are 6 foot long and weight 160 KG, their penis is only 1.2 inches.
Packing a piece that small would make me depressed and want to get onto some carbs ASAP.
They are so bad at making babies, they have even tried making them watch “panda porn”.
I am not making this up.
Look, an actual female panda watching other pandas humping 👇
Didn’t work of course, probably in a hypoglycemicdip & low in testosterone and oestrogen from a lack of good quality fats and co-factors.
The females even fake pregnancies (probably so they can get extra bamboo claiming they are “eating for two”, that old chestnut).
And when they do have sex and breed, it is often with family members.
Maybe Chris Packham has a point?
Harsh but fair.
Anyhoo, given the following data in the USA;
“Among 12- to 21-year-old US females between 2003 and 2020, iron deficiency affected almost 40% and iron-deficiency anemia affected 6%”
In Ireland
“Among screened patients, the prevalence of iron deficiency, B12 and folate deficiency was 37%, 6.3%, and 5.8% respectively.”
And, given that the easy to absorb heme iron is ONLY found in meat, and B12 is only found in animal products, going vegan especially for menstruating females, really is not a good idea.
I could go on about bioavailablity and active vs inactive but I’ll spare you (this time).
Are there some vegans that do well with a really well thought out diet and supplements?
Yes, I am sure there are (a few), but they don’t walk into my clinic.
The vegans I see eat ultra-processed junk food, that is meat free.
Ultra-processed food with or without meat is going to shorten your life and make you miserable along the way.
Eat real, whole food, with an eye on your hunter-gatherer ancestry.
For my one to one auto-immune patients, that means a 2 week reset diet of meat, honey, fruit, saturated fats, a little root veg and some herbs.
I am planning to take on more online clients in the next few months, I will keep you posted on how I can help your clients.