Veganism/Vegetarianism Causes Mental Health Issues?

[Red]

So I was checking my Twitter messages a few minutes ago, and my friend, Chris Brown (Not the Chris Brown, but Chris Brown), who is, while a good friend of mind, is kind of uninformed when it comes to Veganism. Remember a while back when I said that someone represented the "animal gelatin in electronics" argument? That was him. I'm pretty sure it's just his attempts to put me down and feel inferior. Nevertheless he has shown me this article right here and said "Well this explains a lot."

Here: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/1 ... less-diet/

I went through a scan of the article, and the main examples listed were depression and anxiety. Now a part of me feels as though this study wasn't conducted legitimately, as in it was a forced study with particular diets. But I can't say that with certainty, so we can just treat that as a baseless assertion. Anyway, as I go through my vegan life, I don't recall ever having depression or anxiety. Maybe nervous about things like tests and what have you, but not trivial things. And who is to say that the vegan/vegetarian diet had anything to do with it? For all we know, the test subjects could have had mental issues. But that's also a baseless assertion. Anyway, I was going to respond with something like "Well I don't know any vegans (at least in real life) that have mental troubles. Don't believe everything you read on the internet, ass.", but then that would be backing myself into a corner. Anyway, do you think that this article is nothing but lies or legit? How should I respond to my friend? Do any of you suffer mental issues? Even then, it doesn't prove anything, considering cancer is a far less desirable alternative. I think I'll show him an article about that..

[brimstoneSalad]

This is an article reporting on another article, which is reporting on a study.

I can tell you it's bullshit.

Even the pros find the stats confounding in a chicken-or-egg way. "We don't know if a vegetarian diet causes depression and anxiety, or if people who are predisposed to those mental conditions gravitate toward vegetarianism," says Emily Deans, M.D., a Boston psychiatrist who studies the link between food and mood.

This was just mentioned once in the article, but it's the main point.
This is a study on correlation, which is NOT causation.

People who have anxiety about the future (reasonably) and are concerned or anxious about their health are more likely to go vegetarian or vegan.
People who don't care about the future, and are indifferent about their health, are more likely to just keep eating junk.

This is largely an issue of "ignorance is bliss". Of course, we're talking about a very minor short term gain in a false peace of mind, exchanged from long term health problems from heart disease to cancer.

It is healthy to be a little concerned for your health, and will likely promote better eating.

There's also a problem that many anorexics (who are malnourished) tend to go vegan for additional weight loss (not for ethical reasons, but to become skeletons), and follow very bad diets.

Some vegetarians inadvertently dig themselves in deeper by filling up on white bread, rice, and pasta; sugar-laden cereals; and cookies. This so-called carbitarian diet is free of meat but rich in problems, says internist Vincent Pedre, M.D., author of Happy Gut. "The resulting seesaw of blood sugar and hormone levels may lead to even more irritability, depression, and anxiety."

This may also be true (and does not at all apply to vegetarians and vegans with good diets, following legitimate health advice), but it also misses the bigger issue, that these "carbitarian" diets are just low on nutrition in general. Malnutrition (like having low lysine, low minerals) can be associated with poor mood states.

This all comes down to the bad advice of the high carb gurus like McDougall and Graham.

Follow more advice from Greger, Fuhrman, PCRM, and practical vegan dietitians like Jack Norris and Ginny Messina. You will not suffer these problems of malnutrition on a properly planned vegan diet which is rich in beans and veggies, and B-12 supplements.

Yet anthropological evidence shows that, long before we could choose to subsist on cashew cheese and tofu, animal flesh provided the energy-dense calories necessary to fuel evolving cerebellums. Without meat, we'd never have matured beyond the mental capacity of herbivores like gorillas.

That sounds like expensive tissue hypothesis bullshit.

See Humane Hominid's article on this:
http://paleovegan.blogspot.com/2011/11/ ... issue.html

Meat is not brain food.

Then there's tryptophan, an essential amino acid found almost exclusively in poultry.

And that's just outright false. A statement of profound ignorance, like saying Vitamin C is only in oranges.

Check cronometer.
Even 1200 calories of white rice has 100% of your daily requirement of tryptophan. Same with strawberries.

You'd have to live on super sugary fruits like apples, bananas, pears, etc. to not get enough.
Fuck, even 2000 calories of Oreo Cookies have enough tryptophan in them (although almost nothing else).

That's one of the only nutrients that you don't have to worry about.

Jill Waldbieser is just another unethical shock journalist who wants to stir up controversy and can't be bothered to do even basic fact checking. She'd apparently rather do harm with bad information than spend a precious minute on Google.
Ray Boyd is not much better, for just re-posting and promoting that bullshit without checking into it.

These people are what's wrong with the world. How can people make good choices when they're so misinformed with pseudoscientific bullshit from every angle?
Journalists are supposed to be calling out bullshit, not generating it.

[knot]

I wonder if journalism was always this bad, or if it's just now starting to die now

[Dream Sphere]

Do any of you suffer mental issues?

To provide a personal anecdote, as you seemed curious about this. I can answer yes to having been diagnosed with mental illnesses, but as you'll see when I go on about it that the issues had been present long before I became Vegan.

It seems that as far back as when I was three years of age my parents had noticed a particular obsessive behavior which concerned them. It had to do with me feeling that my feet were "sticky" and obsessively wiping them with tissue paper. That went to a point where they actually took me to a psychologist if I remember correctly, but who said I was too young to be properly diagnosed. Around the age of seven or eight was when I went to see a psychologist or maybe a psychiatrist, (I know that psychiatrists deal with meds as well, but I am pretty sure either one would be qualified to diagnose it) who diagnosed me with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and an anxiety disorder.

During that time I was eating a pretty average Carnist diet, one actually that would probably have been considered to be a 'healthier' Carnist diet compared to other ones by Carnists, as my parents (paraphrased, of course) "wanted to start me off right, on healthy foods."

From seven years of age onwards my anxiety and OCD generally got worse. Around that age and especially by my 'tweens' and early teens I had been eating more of what is universally considered to be junk food.

For my very early teens I started eating a bit more "healthy" Carnist food than I had prior (when I was thirteen), but then later in my early teens (fourteen) I had cut out most meat products from my diet as I was becoming gradually more aware of the animal agriculture industries practices and gaining concern for the animals' welfare.

In my early teens I had probably hit one of my worst points with anxiety, but also around that time was when I initially started to get substantially better on dealing with some of my issues. I made a good bit of progress around that stuff as I went into my mid teens, and then around fifteen years old was when I initially went Vegan. When I first went Vegan I hadn't much of a clue on how to eat a healthy Vegan diet, so I mostly ate just white rice and other very unhealthy stuff like Vegan pizzas and french fries. (I actually wasn't following any specific diet advice, but in my time initially getting into Veganism I remember having felt bombarded with many, many contradictory and confusing diet/health viewpoints, so I had kinda kept my diet to whatever I liked to eat taste-wise.) This certainly didn't help, although I don't recall a noticeable degradation in my mental health, behaviours, or performance at tasks.

I had receded from Veganism back to lacto-ovo Vegetarianism when I was sixteen, but my issues pretty much persisted at the same level of severity as they had since my early teens (I was making progress in some regards, but still falling quite short with other things.) Then, when I was seventeen back in mid-2014 I got back into Veganism with help from The Vegan Atheist's videos. I think that when I initially got back into Veganism that I would have pretty much continued as I had on my initial time around with the diet if it wasn't for this forum, actually.

I think that the forum here helped quite a lot in exposing me to substantiated/evidence based nutrition info, although I wasn't very quick to change my poor Vegan diet to the significantly better one I've been building on for about six months now and which about two months ago was when I feel that I had started really consistently eating a lot better (although I certainly see some areas for improvement, still.)

In the past month I think I would have to say that my overall mood has improved a good noticeable bit, (I'm making a larger amount of progress with issues of mine around anxiety and achieving my goals than I ever had before, and my major OCD compulsions are under good control, although I still feel compelled to do cleaning/comforting "rituals", I get over the feeling and rarely give in, in which case if I do give in then I catch myself and stop it) and my energy is a whole lot better. To recall the most recent time that I felt this energized on a consistent basis, I think that I would have to say that I feel like I'm nine or ten again, haha.



So, seeing as how I actually think that I'm in a better place now with my issues than I've been in for a long time (in regards to energy,) or better than I've ever been before (in regards to my mental health,) after having been eating a pretty good Vegan diet for some time, I personally am happy to continue with what I've been doing diet-wise.

Also, I've got to agree with what brimstoneSalad said earlier in that while it may be true that there are more people with anxiety and such who are Vegan, that it makes sense for that to have been a correlative deal with how their personality and lifestyle/environment may make it more likely for them to look into, become aware of, and be concerned with the things which would likely lead them to become Vegan.

[garrethdsouza]

http://www.theveganrd.com/2012/09/ten-tips-for-staying-happy-and-healthy-on-a-vegan-diet.html