Do Whole Food Plant Based Eaters Need To Worry About Deficiencies Such As Protein, Iron, Iodine, B12

someone leaves this conference and says I’m gonna eat a whole food plant-based diet um do they have to worry about deficiencies such as protein iron iodine b12 DHA vitamin D DHA I am taurine vanadium chromium or anything else that meat-eaters don’t have and how do you solve for all of these

I start just because the protein issue is something that very sensitive just because I have a family member my mom will kill me if I use her name oh but just it sorry okay who actually is a raw vegan but raw vegan nothing wrong with being raw nothing wrong with being vegan of course but if you are very restricted in what you’re eating and eating just a handful of things you better check the amino acid content of what you’re eating and so she ended up deficient in lysine cysteine and Metheny and that made her protein deficient

that if you don’t if you’re generally protein deficient you could get into some major trouble so she ended up with five lobes of pulmonary embolism because she had deep vein thrombosis why because one of the proteins are too the proteins that you make are natural anticoagulants protein c and protein s without them you will cry it was hard to explain to this very intelligent educated woman what was going on because there’s another protein RB AP 48 that if you don’t make it you can and you don’t have it in your hippocampus you can’t encode new memories

so every 15 minutes she would ask me why she’s in the hospital say nothing about the albumin and the prealbumin sore legs are swollen etc so everyone says that on a vegan diet you can’t get protein deficient if you do it really really wrong you actually can now the reason to talk about that is because it’s so unique no one should be doing that everyone should be eating a variety of grains of a variety of nuts and she still is a raw vegan and all I did was increase from almonds to almonds cashews walnuts pecans and all of a sudden her proteins perfectly normal

so there is a little bit of a warning there and I’d love to hear what the rest of the panel has to say but I just want to point out one other thing the thing that does get the can get deficient if you don’t eat dirt it is b12 and most people know that they’ve heard it before they’re taking b12 supplements and I just want to make sure that everybody saw the publication that said that if you are male ex-smoker you can actually increase your lung cancer rate similar to the vitamin A studies years ago if you’re eating too much b12

and how much b12 supplementation ZAR not eating but how much b12 does it take they said about 55 micrograms most of our pills are like a thousand so it’s stored well enough if you’re gonna take a thousand chop it into pieces or something like that and take a little bit every now and then and that that should do it other than that you know I don’t have a lot of advice that we have to get people except that business that I always say about rearranging your your retirement funds because you’re going to live longer

well I would say definitely there are some things you need to be conscious of and and I couldn’t agree more about the protein there’s a real myth that we don’t ever have to worry about protein if you eat enough calories it’s it’s just not an issue but if you eat you know you’re eating more oil more sugar you may not get enough protein if you’re eating a mainly fruit you may not get enough protein

and and I think the other thing is if you’re a senior your ability to assimilate – you need a certain amount of of acid in your stomach to be able to break down proteins your digestibility is reduced as you get older and so some countries actually have separate recommendations for people 70 plus for protein and it’s about 25% higher than for younger people

and the issue here is very simple as you get older you need fewer calories right and so you need more nutrients because you’re not absorbing as well and yet you need fewer calories which means the the whole point of nutritional excellence is is magnified you can’t afford to be eating a lot of foods that don’t provide nutritional value so I think that’s something to consider

and then the other things b12 was mentioned we absolutely have to have b12 vitamin D if you’re living in an area where you don’t have adequate exposure to warm sunshine you would need some vitamin D especially during those months and then for some people iodine and especially in the countries where the soil iodine is low and you’re not using you know foods that may be where the processed foods tend to have more so because they’re using ayodhya salt sometimes or if you’re not using iodized salt not eating seaweed and living in an area with low iodine iodine could be an issue

so and then of course iron and zinc if you’re not eating a lot you know you’re not eating legumes and you’re not eating nuts and seeds so there are a number of issues so the bottom line really is you want to have variety and you want to be including a wide range of within sort of each food group so that you meet your nutritional requirements and then of course EP and age oh well essential fatty acids and it can be an issue as well that was great

and taking it a little further that that the idea that were you know when a person gets over the age of 75 their protein ability to digest and make protein bioavailable goes down but keep in mind they won’t on a healthy diet of nutritional excellence it’s slowing aging of a new titanium diet that you’re not going to develop that protein lower absorption at the age of 75 that may happen till I can be 85 so yeah you’re aging slowly and digestive capacity stays good as you age compared to an average American who’s aging 10 or 20 years earlier than we’re aging you know

so furthermore it is an issue though because igf-1 is an issue of whether it gets too high can promote disease but it also with a lower protein bioavailability with aging can get too low and accelerate disease so there’s no one-size-fits-all and some of these low-fat macrobiotic you know potato based vegan diets are not good for toddlers and young children because they’re low in protein and fat and not good for the elderly because they’re too low in protein fat

they might be okay for middle aged but they’re really but by using heme seeds and beans and Mediterranean pine nuts and more green vegetables and broccoli and things like that and Weill our diet were designing a diet to be more protein adequate as you get older and making sure that we’re maintaining people with enough igf-1 so it doesn’t drop too low so where the diet is more carefully designed than and as a vegan we want to make sure that we’re not just assuming any vegan diet is okay for everybody and we’re making sure it’s okay for people

the other issue is that that we didn’t the only thing we didn’t mention I think was zinc that is absorbed about 20% over plant foods compared to 80 percent from animal products and the ability to absorb zinc goes down with aging and if you’re not going to die of a heart attack or a stroke or cancer own leading cause of death 200 years ago might be pneumonia or infection

and that so it may be true it’s hard to have enough data but it may be true that lower bio ability of zinc on a vegan diet with aging could have a permitted an infection that that occurred that didn’t have to occur if the person had optimal levels of zinc so we might be prolonging lifespan and vegans by giving them some zinc as they aged and though sure zinc adequacy wouldn’t without the consumption of animal products

I’d like to add a few things to that the first assumption is a mediator is getting more nutrition than a vegan I don’t think that’s true at all okay both meat eaters and in the studies maybe 40% of meat-eaters are b12 deficient maybe 80% of vegans you bother b12 deficient and that’s only at 200 nanograms at 450 nanograms which is optimal b12 you’re looking at a much higher percentage of meat-eaters and vegans

so I strongly recommend people take a human act of b12 without a synthetic b12 because this is different frequency so everybody needs that some research shown that of the 96 percent of the u.s. population 70% of the world population is deficient in iodine that’s a huge one

I 9 is the highest concentration of iodine isn’t in the thyroid it’s in the skin but you need iodine and thyroid and meat iodine for brain people who are low in iodine have lower IQs mothers who had occur iodine their children are born with 13 point higher IQ they did a study in Indonesia where they gave grammar school kids iodine in in three months their IQs jumped eight points and they were doing better academic

so everyone most everyone is low in iodine okay in particular in this country particularly also since they stopped making iodized salt for whatever reason they don’t know what they were thinking so I announce another division 85% of the population as far as I can tell in the u.s. is vitamin D deficient though minimum is 30 but I like to see people around 80 but the percentages are 85% being lower than 30

and I see a lot of people come in with that again vegan meat eater I don’t think there’s a big difference here and in terms of what I see so most everyone needs it what you do need is a vitamin D blood test though you know to monitor how you’re doing because you do not want to go above a hundred kind of interested and I think what you said about vitamin D little bit earlier that in excess could be a problem yes and it’s each one oh it was beets well I’m sorry wait a min Dean excess is a problem too yeah I know I got that yeah but I thought there were some of those

but yeah you have to keep your vitamin D you want it not above 100 okay period and if you’re going to do vitamin E which you should most people you need to take via and seven which works with it so that the calcium from the stimulate calcitonin it goes into the bones and not into your tissues okay now meat-eaters the meat has less B 3 and B 6 so they’re more likely they have those levels of deficiencies so meters gonna have more deficiencies in some area but the point I’m making is they’re not so different than vegans

we tend to think all we’re vegans were going to be deficient that just isn’t the case I pretty much will say most vegans I see are deficient in some of these things so that’s why I say b12 and you know is one vitamin D is another that we just need to give attention I also be with Joe about zinc I’ve been noticing that also with people a little bit older that there is a zinc deficiency pretty consistently not a good thing because of your immune system and so forth so those are just some kind of overview type things

now the issue of protein is interesting there study and not that one study is the answer but for people in the middle aged men and they think we’re out of that mTOR pathway excess protein they double the rate of mortality and quadrupled the rate of cancer now they didn’t say what that level was but excess protein is really what we’re talking about

now when people hit 60 65 then that changes and people need more protein within 65 was that was not true the the first group was between the age of 50 and 8 and 65 when they started the study they followed them for 18 years so the average so the person the second group was 65 to 85 and they followed them for 18 years so that would say they averaged around 77 compared to an average around 62 so I’m saying that you’re it was a little older age than in that study

maybe if that we’re talking about the same study because it was a little vague er than that it didn’t have those statistics I’m not going to disagree I think the problem is the trend is what the trend is and I found out for myself at age around 70 and I was doing pull-ups in and I wasn’t going beyond 25 twice a day when I was doing it and I added one tablespoon 1 tablespoon of blue-green algae and I went up that was all the protein I needed

and I went up to in a few weeks up to 50 of making it up to 100 but the the point I’m making is one little bit made a huge difference in my protein balance okay so at 75 76 where I am now and we can we can get really good health you know up I know not that many people do a lot of pull-ups you can do 50 calls I didn’t say 15 I said it’s it’s 5050 well actually how about 80 but incredible but six hundred percent okay

but the point is the point is that little bit of protein pushed me from 25 all the way up to really I hit a hundred at one point so it does make a difference these these little shifts make a real difference so we do need to pay attention to those shifts with a and so we have to look at nutrition as you were hitting in a life cycle kind of way so you know kids before puberty they need a certain nutrition and then you know puberty to middle age and then you’re certain nutrition and then above maybe 60 we go over that

I don’t know what study you’re referring to but I need to find it yeah because I had a kind of less detailed study it’s 50/50 or 65 year olds for 18 years in the highest third tersh I love protein consumption had four times the risk of cancer seventy-five percent increase over mortality in the that was older than that that’s 50 to 65 we’re talking about at 65 to 85 or 18 years those groups in the higher range in the lower range of protein had increased mortality lower range of protein increased mortality that’s very higher age gotta go to more protein

and for 18 years except for diabetes ten times and they had more which the diabetes study yes yes that was the study in 2014 that’s great correct good but also have women and also that the iron issue is that women absorb iron at very different rates from one woman to another so there’s no cookbook approach because like in the medical profession we give the iron in a prenatal vitamin to all women but if you look at the studies in more detail you find that some women do better with iron and some women do better without iron

because they’re ferret ins are adequate their iron level stores are good and they should have been better not taking extra iron so we’re talking about individual not cookbook medicine but individualizing it to people’s individual differences is what we do is nutritional specialist a little bit more literally a little bit better than most doctors would do