Plant based diets and your health – good or bad?

Plant based diets are vegan diets. It means a person who is stricter in their eating principles than a vegetarian. It is not just a person who does not eat any animal flesh. A vegan also avoids eating any dairy, eggs, and any other ingredients that come from animals.  There is huge debate whether plant based diets are healthy or not. Some reports say they are, others not. Some people do well on a vegan, plant based diet while others not so well. Your gut health and genetics play a big part in the reasons why.

Plant based diets and gut microbiome

Gut microbiome are the organisms that live in your colon. They give nutrient synthesis to fibre, fermentation to toxin neutralization and a whole range of other things to help keep your gut healthy. Your gut microbiome changes and the bacteria change in response to your diet, age, and environment. These form when you are young or are inherited.

Babies that are born via a normal birth through the birth canal can have a higher level of Bifidobacteria to babies born via caesarean section. Trauma to the microbiome also plays a role in how these organism’s function. Trauma comes when healthy bacteria are wiped out by antibiotics, chemotherapy, or certain illnesses. This can cause permanent changes to a once-healthy gut bacteria.

Vegans have a different gut microbiome which comes into play as to how they respond to different foods and synthesize some nutrients. Some microbial communities are more veg friendly than others. This is because certain gut bacteria are needed for synthesizing vitamin K2. This is a nutrient with great benefits for skeletal health, insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular health, and prostate and liver cancer prevention.

K2 comes from certain Bacteroides species, Prevotella species, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella pneumoniae, as well as some gram-positive, anaerobic, non-sporing microbes. Animal foods contain Vitamin K2. Full-spectrum antibiotic usage can dramatically lower levels of vitamin K2 in your body by killing off the bacteria responsible for K2 synthesis. So, if your microbiome is short on vitamin-K2-producing bacteria, and animal foods are removed from your diet, your vitamin K2 levels can sink drastically. While if you have a lot of K2-synthesizing microbiome you will have more success on a plant based diet.

Amylase and starch tolerance in vegans

Your saliva contains alpha-amylase, an enzyme that divides starch molecules into simple sugars via hydrolysis. Depending on how many copies of the amylase-coding gene you carry, along with lifestyle factors like stress and circadian rhythms, amylase levels can range from extremely low to 50% of the total protein in your saliva. In general, people that have a high starch diet tend to have higher levels of salivary amylase than those from populations that historically relied more on fat and protein. Amylase production strongly influences how you metabolise starchy foods. It determines whether those foods send your blood sugar plummeting or dropping slowly. If you consume starch and you have low amylase, you will experience steeper, longer rises in in blood sugar compared to people with naturally high amylase levels.

Plant-based diets focussed on grains and legumes are likely to bring any hidden intolerance to carbohydrates out into the open. If you produce low amylase increasing your diet in starches very quickly could have a horrible effect. It could lead to bad blood sugar balance, the inability to feel a sense of fullness when eating (low satiation) and weight gain.

Vitamin A conversion in plant based diets

Vitamin A is essential to keeping you healthy. Plant foods don’t contain proper vitamin A. They contain vitamin A precursors such as beta carotene. Beta carotene converts to vitamin A in your intestine and liver.  This let’s your body make retinol from plant foods like carrots and sweet potatoes. Animal foods supply vitamin A in the form of retinoids, which don’t require as much conversion to become vitamin A. Certain gene mutations can hinder this conversion which makes plant foods inadequate for vitamin A. Also, such issues as low thyroid function, poorly functioning gut health, alcoholism, liver disease, and zinc deficiency can all cause you to not convert your vitamin A properly.

What about choline production on a plant based diet?

Further to this Choline is an essential but often overlooked nutrient involved in having a good metabolism. It affects your brain health, neurotransmitters, lipids and methylation. Choline deficiency is a big part of issues in fatty liver disease, neurological conditions, heart disease, and developmental problems in children.

The most choline-abundant foods are animal products, but there is a wide variety of plant foods which do contain low levels of choline. Your body can also produce choline.  In most cases, the small amounts of choline offered by plant foods, combined with something called the choline synthesized through the Phosphatidylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PEMT) pathway, can be enough to give your body enough choline. If it doesn’t you could be in trouble because PEMT modulates something called levels of blood plasma homocysteine. These secrete or convert to methionine or cysteine. High levels of homocysteine have been linked to cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease which is prevalent in our society. People’s individual requirements for choline do vary so it is easy sometimes to have a deficiency and this makes plant based low choline diets an issue.

On a plant based diet if you have normal choline levels and good genes you may be ok. But if you are pregnant, male, post-menopausal with low oestrogen, have genetic mutations then your need for choline is much higher. This means plant based diets may not meet your needs. It could increase your risk of muscle damage, cognitive problems, heart disease and increased fatty liver. Learn more about what is right for your health on https://www.stressfreehealthmanagement.com/diet-nutrition

So what do I do?

Given all of the above it becomes important to leave major decisions for your diet to the experts. Naturopaths and nutritionists can help you determine your needs. They will analyse what you eat and your lifestyle. Check out some further information on toxic eating and your cravings on https://www.wellbeing.com.au/body/nutrition/toxic-eating-and-your-cravings-the-fast-food-drug.html. It’s important to be informed. So if you are thinking of going plant based talk with your naturopath and get all the facts first. (Pic thanks to Freepik)