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Old Sat, Jan-09-21, 07:36
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And another ...

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‘I tried to improve my health through veganism, but it made my life so much worse’

Like many others, Kate Mulvey adopted a plant-based diet to improve her wellbeing... but she was caught off guard by some worrying outcomes


Many of us are embarking on Veganuary in a desire to be healthier, save the environment or even just to lose weight as we hunker down in lockdown once again. This year a record 500,000 people have signed up to the Veganuary challenge to eat only plant-based foods for a month; double the number who pledged to go vegan in January 2019.

Yet we should be careful what we wish for.

According to a report commissioned by the Health and Food Supplements Information Service (HSIS), an influential group of doctors and nutritionists, many of us are adopting plant-based diets but that could mean a serious lack of vitamins, minerals and omega-3 fats in our diets – with worrying health implications.

I couldn’t agree more. In 2019, I embarked on a strict vegan diet to cure my crippling migraines. After years of throbbing pain, I started to look at alternative remedies. One thing I kept hearing was how certain foods such as meat, chocolate and cheese could trigger migraines.

Those of us who live in a twilight world of low-grade wellness are suckers for anything that offers us a respite from chronic pain. When a nutritionist friend told me to try a plant-based diet – “It will cure your migraines overnight,” she trilled – I immediately turned to Google. Hundreds of sites promising instant cures popped up.

Yet, following a vegan diet, I was not only thin and gaunt but I permanently lost my hearing in one ear (This, however, was not conclusively because of veganism, but a speculative association between a virus I have permanently in my body and the deficiency of several essential nutrients).

Despite the warnings about deficiency in important minerals and vitamins, veganism continues to soar in popularity. Glamourised by slim beautiful health bloggers and sold as an aspirational aesthetic by hip celebrities, we are all rushing to fill our stomachs with nut rissoles and smashed avocado.

A week after deciding to go vegan I emerged from my local Waitrose groaning under armfuls of vegetables and birch juice. I threw out my tins of tuna, walked hastily past the aisles of lamb and sirloin and stocked up on nut butter and chia seeds. At first, I don’t deny that I felt fantastic. My skin glowed and I lost a stone in weeks not months. Problems, however, started to creep in slowly. After less than a month in, I began to experience waves of extreme tiredness. My limbs felt heavy and just going to the shops felt like wading through treacle.

Eventually, I went to see my GP. “It’s probably just the menopause,” she said, as I sat slumped in the chair rattling off all my symptoms. As time went by I felt increasingly worse and continued to lose weight at an alarming speed. My face looked drawn and friends commented on my appearance. “What's happened to you?” one woman asked. “You look anorexic.” Others joined in.

Kate Mulvey's weight loss was causing concern
I was also being affected psychologically. There is hard evidence that the joyful response to food gives rise to better health. Sitting down to a plate of grass when you are a confirmed meat-eater is more like a prison sentence than a pleasurable experience – over the next few months my mood imploded like an egg-free souffle.

I became that awkward guest at dinner parties nibbling on my emergency stash of hemp seeds and rolling my eyes when the meat course is brought out. Finally, after five months I felt so weak I practically fainted on the bus one day.

The doctor sent me for blood tests. Could this be cancer I wondered, my blood running cold? I had read that one symptom is sudden weight loss and by now I looked like a wizened stick.

Thankfully it wasn’t, but the results were shocking nevertheless. I was so low in iron I had become dangerously anaemic and my lymphocytes (killer immune cells) were also on the lowish side. But the clock was ticking on a much bigger health issue that I was unaware of.

A couple of weeks later, as I settled into our annual family summer holiday, I woke up one morning unable to hear in my right ear. “I can’t hear a thing,” I wailed as I handed the phone back to my sister, unable to hear a word my father had been saying.

At first, doctors back in London diagnosed middle ear infections and ear wax with no success. Finally, in September I was sent for an emergency MRI scan. The ENT specialist said it could be an acoustic neuroma – a benign brain tumour that will need surgery if it grows too large.

Two very anxious weeks later, I was so relieved to hear the scan was clean that I hardly registered when the specialist told me I would be permanently deaf in one ear.

Desperate to know I asked if it had been caused by my low level of vitamins and iron.“Unlikely,’ she said. “It's ideopatic [no known cause].”

She did explain however that there was a potential link between certain viruses. especially herpes which could potentially travel up the nerve to ear and cause sudden hearing loss. I have Epstein Barr which lies dormant in my central nervous system and flares up when I am run down. Being so depleted of nutrients due to the vegan diet could potentially have reactivated the virus, she explained.

To learn you are partially deaf for the rest of your life is devastating; to realise that it could have been avoided is even worse. Whilst I know that it was not directly caused by veganism, even a tenuous link is a worry.

Accepting my new silent reality has not been easy and my social life has suffered. When I go out with a group of people, I can only pick up snippets of the conversation and I can't identify where the sound is coming from. I spin round in all directions trying to keep up with what is being said. The only recompense is I have rekindled my love affair with pulled pork and goats cheese salad. My cheeks have filled out, I sleep deeply and my energy has come zinging back.

Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learnt. I believe I have paid a hefty price for changing my diet so drastically and not getting proper medical advice beforehand.

Dr Nisa Aslam, a GP who is one of the authors of the HSIS report, explains: “The HSIS research found that six in 10 do not examine their health needs before switching to plant-based diets. Awareness of nutrient shortfalls is also very low, with fewer than a fifth of plant-based adherents identifying vitamin B12 as an issue, and no-one name-checked vitamin D despite the fact that nearly all major dietary sources of the ‘sunshine vitamin’ are animal or fish-based. Awareness of zinc, iodine and selenium – other nutrients that are hard to obtain on plant-based diets – is almost non-existent. That’s why taking a multivitamin and multimineral supplement is so vital.”

Dr Chris Blatchley, medical director of the London Migraine Clinic, says supplements are essential: “Whenever you are embarking on such a vegan diet, it is imperative to take vitamins and supplements – particularly B12, iron and omega-3 – in order to ensure you don’t get deficient.’

A modest restriction on meat and dairy have been shown to have health benefits, as has an increase in consumption of vegetables and wholefoods, yet the wellness industry is often peddling extreme dietary advice which can be dangerous. Criminalising certain foods (since when did eggs become a nutritional no-no?) and cutting out entire food groups as a route to optimum health, can make us ill.

A spokesperson from the Vegan Society pointed out that just because a food is labelled vegan does not automatically make it healthy: “'A vegan diet is great when done properly, but make sure you don't miss out on essential nutrients. Just because you're vegan that doesn't mean you're 100 per cent healthy, as there are vegan versions of almost every type of junk food you can think of.”

Nowadays I am glad to say I am back to eating tasty lamb chops and mozzarella salad. I realise the benefit of introducing more plant-based foods, and lentils and beans are now a staple. I have even learnt to love tempeh (fermented soya).

Hopefully one day the tide will turn and we will stop to think before we throw that tasty pack of Cumberland sausages into the dustbin.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-...liftigniter-rhr


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