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When I was younger, I was convinced that my vegan diet was best in every way. Everything I read in the "mainstream media" seemed to validate this, and there was nothing I saw that contradicted it in any way. I simply could not imagine that there was anything major wrong with that diet. Now that I understand a great deal about various health and medical issues, I realize how "closed" my mind was, though it was due to ignorance. With the internet, I was able to take a look at "alternative" notions, and I felt that I had no choice when my doctors could not help me. When I encountered some things written by people like Ray Peat and Mary Enig, I did not dismiss their ideas out of hand, because I was trained (in graduate school) not to do this, especially when reading work by people with relevant credentials.
Unfortunately, I often encounter people today who are seem to be emotionally disturbed by the possibility that something they've taken for granted for years might not be correct. In social science, this is called "cognitive dissonance." There seems to no good vaccine against it. Indeed, this kind of thing is what Enlightenment "philosophes" feared greatly. With all the scientific evidence that already exists (and is generally very good), it's likely that most of our scientists should take some time to read the works of people like Voltaire rather than continuing to do largely irrelevant "studies" and make promises that never come to pass. However, because there are no incentives to doing this, they will likely do "more of the same."
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Hans-
Many people who follow vegan and vegetarian diets claim that they subjectively feel much better then they did before following their current diet. Is this all just psychological or is there any real basis to this?
Off the top of my head I can think of many reasons why a person following a vegan or vegetarian diet may feel better then they felt before following this particular diet.
- Possibly, depending on what one eats, a much lower consumption of PUFAs. There would be no fish, which means no fish oils, although some of them do take ALA and other crap like that.
- Much lower intake of tryptophan. Tryptophan is the precursor to serotonin. Serotonin is an excitatory neurotransmitter. People who take SSRI's, 5-HTP supplements, and L-Tryptophan supplements usually experience a large increase in mental anxiety. Decreasing your intake of the amino acid, Tryptophan, will likely result in a calmer mental state.
- Much lower intake of Iron.
Clearly these are "advantages" of a vegan or vegetarian diet, but then again the person is likely to become malnourished due to inadequate and poorly absorbed forms of protein such as beans, other legumes, and soy products. |
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Well, that's what happened to me !
I had all kinds of "irritable bowel" type problems since I was young, and the vegan diet helped this, but I lost a lot of weight. Now I'm up to a weight that is considered much closer to "normal." Also, when I went on a gluten-free diet, I felt very good for a couple of weeks. It seems that some of the feelings of wellness are related to the removal of a metabolic burden. |
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One group of people that it seems one needs to be very wary of are the "public health experts." With all the promises unfulfilled and failures of the "HIV/AIDS experts" and "researchers," one would think that our "public health experts" would be concerned, and perhaps questions exactly why there is no "cure" yet. Instead, such people seem more interested in attacking those who would dare to question the scientific claims supposedly supporting the "HIV/AIDS" notion, which, of course, is exactly what is supposed to occur in science. There is a vicious, circular logic that appears to have gripped such "experts," and they seem totally unaware that they possess it. They tell us that nobody should question the "HIV/AIDS" notion because it might drive hords of people to do something that will somehow lead to their untimely deaths, yet if the "HIV/AIDS" notion is in fact wrong and worse, misleading, millions of people are being driven to their untimely deaths by doing things like taking toxic "medicines" and not changing their lifestyles.
Thus, the only possible explanation for their position is that if a small number of scientists make a claim, everyone should act as if it is some sort of religious dogma. We should all be like "good Catholics" and not question what our infallible Pope tells us. Of course, this is ludicrous, because scientists are making claims all the time, and these claims are often contradictory. What makes the claims presented by the Gallo and Montaigner teams so much more credible than any other scientist's claims? The answer is supposed to be found in the evidence they present, and not in their interpretations of the evidence, yet with "HIV/AIDS," the exact opposite is the case. We are not supposed to look at the evidence, unless, perhaps, we are going to agree with the "HIV/AIDS experts" regardless of what the evidence is. Again, this may be fine for some religions, perhaps one can regard it as something of an apotheosis in that context, but it is the nadir for science. |
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| People learn too many things by rote and do not arrive at knowledge by rational, step by step mental processes. This leaves them in no-one's land when they try to construct new beliefs. |
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