Thursday, July 20, 2017

Dr Garth Davis explains (re What the Health documentary)

For the love of GOD, I am about to lose it. It is just getting so friggin ridiculous out there. I don't know why I don't just give up and treat the typical western diseases and stop trying to educate. The stupidity that is out there is just beyond me and not sure how I can show people the facts when they are so inundated with nonsense from biased and inexperienced pseudo experts!
Nina Teicholz is a journalist, and yet she has the friggin nerve to have a website called Diet Doctor. She has ZERO experience with scientific research and yet acts like she is the Queen and all actual nutritional scientists have no idea what they are talking about. She also is a frequent speaker for the different animal industries.
She made a post that the What The Health has no evidence. I happen to have a book with hundreds of studies backing every statement in the movie (except the thyroid cancer anecdotal cure). Just because she hasn't read the studies doesn't mean they don't exist!!
Lets look at her ridiculous conclusions!!!
1) No human population has ever lived on a vegan diet. She must have missed the Seventh Day Adventist vegans:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434797
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3046303
http://jamanetwork.com/…/jamainternalme…/fullarticle/1710093
The Seventh Day Adventists have one of the longest life spans recorded on average and also have one of the largest populations of vegetarians and vegans, many life long.
Also, Huang et al did an excellent meta analysis of studies on vegetarians, albeit of various duration, which showed vegetarians had lower incidence of heart disease and cancer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22677895
Now if you deep dive into Adventist Health Studies you will see that vegans tend to weigh less, have less cancer, and less heart disease than vegetarians. SO saying that there are no vegan populations is not entirely true, and the implication that because there are no vegan populations, it must be bad for you, is just plain false.
2) She claims that a vegan diet is nutritionally insufficient. She must have missed these studies that vegetarian diets tend to have the best nutrient profiles.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967195/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21616194
And, while not looking at vegan diets, studies have shown that when comparing low carb vs high carb, more nutrients are found in high carb diet.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12074255
These facts have lead Kaiser to instruct their doctors to recommend plant based diets:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12074255, and has lead the ADA to say that a vegetarian diet can be nutritionally complete.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
Now she draws attention to the only real deficiency which is B12. Now, she seems to miss the fact that even meat eaters have B12 deficiencies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10648266
B12 comes from bacteria. Eat food from dirt and you should get B12 but these days that can be dangerous.
That being said, I don't see some wide spread vegan epidemic of B12 related diseases. Take a small supplement once a week. Easy
The MOST ridiculous claim she makes is that vegans are deficient of heme iron. I damn well hope so!!!!! Heme iron is toxic and can cause damage to vessels and pancreatic islet cells. A recent review found meat to be associated with all cause mortality and specifically found heme iron to be an independent risk factor.
http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1957
In fact, high iron stores have been associated with diabetes
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/…/10…/1741-7015-10-119
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/198182, and many more
Heme iron is also directly associated with heart disease
There are many studies but this is a great review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4033158/
3) A vegan diet causes HDL to drop and triglycerides to rise so therefore vegans should have more heart disease. BUT THEY DON'T. In fact they have less!!!!!!!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22677895
HDL is a carrier protein and if you eat less fat and cholesterol you get less HDL with no untoward effect. In fact, the lowering of HDL, seen clearly with vegan diet, is the primary indicator of reduction in heart disease.http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b92,
http://heart.bmj.com/content/98/10/780
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22607825 I can go on and on with HDL
As far as the triglycerides, it is a transient rise after eating and as mentioned before, has no effect in heat disease in vegans, who continuously show lower heart disease rates.
4)Finally, she pulls the tired old, weak argument that there are vegetarians in India and they stick have western diseases. This population has been studied over and over. There are actually studies showing the vegetarians have LESS heart disease.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…
Very important to note that these "vegetarians" eat very unhealthy processed food diets. They have exceptionally high butter and saturated fat intake. HUGE. They also eat lots of sweets, and little actual vegetables. They are also very poor and get very little health care.
What a ridiculous group to use as an example.
In conclusion, Nina does not know the science behind a plant based diet. She has made a career pushing for fat and would do so regardless of what studies contradict her narrow world view. She is not an expert, she has never treated a single patient, and her arguments are intellectually and factually barren.
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