Should We All Go 'Plant-Based'? Changing Diets Using LBA
The term “plant-based” is everywhere! It is very much in vogue due to the environmental impacts of meat production and the growing vegetarian/vegan movement.
Most nutritionists and those of us interested in regaining health know that increasing the amount of vegetables, fruits and wholefoods in the diet will inevitably lead to some improvement in health.
It really is a “no-brainer”. Right?
What is “plant-based”?
A plant-based diet means eating a diet that is derived either wholly or mostly from plants - specifically vegetables, fruits, pulses, legumes, nuts, seeds and wholegrains.
Doing so ensures you are consuming a huge variety of nutrients, all-important fibre, prebiotics (essential food encouraging a healthy microbiome) as well as a myriad of micro nutrients yet to be discovered.
In many ways it is eating as nature intended. However, eating a plant-based diet doesn’t always lead to good health.
Can a plant-based diet make health worse not better?
Short answer – yes, but how?
The plant-based movement is a huge emerging market and there are plenty of food producers looking to supply the demand. Growing plants and processing them into convenience foods in the cheapest way possible is the drive behind many of the new plant-based products that are filling the supermarket shelves.
These foods may be convenient and plant based but that does not mean that they are healthy. It is important that this distinction is understood.
Meatless meat products
Quorn is made from fermenting a strain of the soil mould Fusarium venenatum, then adding glucose, fixed nitrogen, vitamins and minerals, and heat-treating it to remove certain toxins. It is a highly processed food, low in protein, higher in fat than lentils, for example, and is high in sodium.
This product is far from a health food. It has been responsible for allergic reactions, contains few essential nutrients and in fact is not vegan.
Textured vegetable protein – another plant based meat substitute that is also highly processed. It is made from defatted soya protein which creates a denatured protein, providing very little usable protein for the body.
There are also pea protein-based meat products which are often loaded with fillers, additives, flavouring and preservatives.
For some people consuming these products can provide very little nutrition - you do not consume the amount of protein you need if you rely on meatless meat substitutes and can become deficient or malnourished.
Also your body may not be able to digest and eliminate the denatured, highly processed proteins/fats/by-products which can lead to health issues or exacerbate current symptoms.
Removing meat and dairy but adding more processed foods
Another pitfall of becoming more plant-based is that people remove the meat and replace it with unhealthy refined carbohydrate products that are often loaded with sugar and damaged fats.
Refined and processed convenience foods can increase the possibility of blood sugar issues and obesity. Processed and chemically altered plant fats, known as trans fats, are damaging to health and have been banned because they are known to promote systemic inflammation and increase your risk of heart disease.
In many ways meat, fish and dairy are convenience foods. Eating a healthy plant-based diet takes time – sourcing, shopping and preparing foods – and it is NOT convenient and this is the reason that most people will fall into the trap of using plant-based convenience foods. This can cause nutrient deficiencies over time, however, and for some could make existing health issues worse or even bring about symptoms that they previously did not suffer from.
How do you go “plant-based” healthily?
I have worked with hundreds of clients with a huge variety of health issues and dietary habits. One aspect that most of my clients have in common when they first come to me is that they consume a diet of few plant wholefoods but with many processed convenience foods.
Before blindly advocating a plant-based diet change, or offering any dietary changes, I use Live and Dry Blood Analysis to screen my clients’ blood for signs of imbalances and clues to the root causes of their symptoms.
It is vital to get a clear picture of current nutrient status – deficiencies of nutrients such as iron, B12 or folate, as well as an understanding of any disruption to the body’s many biological systems responsible for health – such as the digestive system, eliminatory system or the circulatory system. If they are already deficient in certain nutrients like B12 or they aren’t digesting protein efficiently, then a plant-based diet may make things worse.
The most common issues amongst my plant-based diet clients are signs of B12 deficiency, protein digestion issues and cell membrane weakness. Why?
B12 is such a vital nutrient for the health of our bodies and it is more or less absent in a plant-based diet.
Blood cells require B12 in order to develop normally and so the body has a store of it in the liver. But over time this store is depleted, even one night of binge drinking (alcohol) will eliminate a years’ worth of B12. If this is not replenished, through diet and a healthy digestive process, you can soon become B12 deficient.
Symptoms of B12 deficiency often do not appear until the body is quite depleted and normal cell reproduction has been affected for some time. I have written about B12 extensively in this blog post.
Live blood analysis can clearly show if B12 is lacking by the presence and quantity of abnormal cells:
Macrocytes
Hypersegmented Neutrophils
PROTEIN is another vital nutrient for the health of our body. The quality of protein as well as our ability to digest and metabolise it determines whether we are giving our body what it needs.
You can definitely consume plenty of healthy protein in a plant-based diet (see this blog post I wrote about vegan protein). However, digesting protein and breaking it down into the amino acid building blocks that our body relies on depends on not only diet but the health of the digestive tract.
It is vital to get the digestive tract healthy and functioning efficiently, especially if animal protein is off the menu.
Here are some examples of issues of protein digestion as seen in Live and Dry Blood Analysis:
Weak Fibrin Web
Protein Linkage
CELL MEMBRANES are made up mostly of lipids or fats. Essential fats such as Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids are vital for healthy membrane and are hugely important to health. We need to consume them in our diet as the body does not synthesize them.
Plant-based fats are predominantly Omega 6 fats which are known to increase the possibility of inflammatory diseases, autoimmune conditions and incidence or severity of allergic reactions.
Additionally the Omega 3 fats available in plant-based foods are actually very hard for the body to metabolise. It involves a complex enzyme pathway that is easily disrupted, causing a lack of the EPA/DHA that the cell membranes are so desperate for. It is estimated that over 90% of the Omega 3 oil consumed in a plant based diet is lost via the digestive process.
Trans fats are fats that have been damaged or denatured and are used in plant-based foods such as margarines, baked/fried/cooked goods and dairy-like food replacements. They are extremely bad for health because they replace the healthy lipids of the cell membranes, especially in the brain, and will disrupt cellular communication and proper normal functioning of the cell.
They also increase levels of “bad” cholesterol and because they are hard to metabolise they end up being pocketed by the body, where they cause damage to tissues and processes.
Live Blood Analysis can assess the health of the cell membranes as well as screen for fat metabolism issues by checking for fat aggregations in the blood’s plasma:
Lysed RBCs
Crystals
Potential pitfalls of a plant based diet are -
Lack of quality protein
Reduction of B12 intake
Increase of trans fats
Imbalance between omega 3 and omega 6 essential fatty acids
Top tips for ensuring a healthy transition to plant-based diet.
Get the blood analysed to screen for deficiencies and imbalances before cutting out food groups.
Tone up the digestive tract and ensure good stomach acid production.
Make sure the routes of elimination are open – to be able to process the additional vegetable and fruit fibre as well as eliminate the toxin release.
Do it gradually and plan the diet. Make shopping lists, print off recipes, ensure adequate nutrients especially protein and fats and don’t rely on vegan plant-based meat substitutes or processed convenience foods!
If you would like to know more about Live and Dry Blood Analysis Training so that you can use it to assess your clients’ health then please follow this link.
You are also invited to join our Facebook Group ‘Learning Live Blood Analysis’ - a private group of students, qualified analysts and anyone interested in learning.
If you have any questions about this topic or LDBA in general please email Shirah directly at info@naturecureacademy.com or add a comment below!
