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Transcript

Kevin: And welcome back to Nutrition for Noobs, I'm Kevin. Welcome everyone. And how are you doing, Michelle?

Michelle: Oh, you know, Kevin, I'm doing a little bit better today, but I've had a very off week. Actually, I'm in a weird place because I finished my contract, as you know, and I absolutely loved that job working with primary care providers. That was amazing. And for the first time in an extremely long time, I have no job to go to for a little bit. You have time for yourself. Yeah. And it's amazing. It's amazing how fast you can fill up that time with other stuff. And of course, all the things that I have been putting off, you know, I'm going to finishing some some training updates on nutrition stuff that I put aside. But then oddly, this week, I've been feeling like really kind of under the weather. And I wouldn't say I'm exactly sick, but I just haven't been feeling fully well. And so, of course, me being who I am, that sends me into another bit of a spiral is to well, OK, what dietary insufficiencies might I, you know, be having? I've been going for lunch a lot with friends and catching up with people that I haven't seen in a long time. So I don't know. Is it something that I ate? I've also been going back to the gym. So like, am I having a healing reaction? Have I been moving my lymph more? Am I detoxifying? Is that why? Have I just got more stuff circulating in my bloodstream trying to find its way out? You know, it's always a dance, right? Like when when you're trying to be health conscious and do all the right things and all the right behaviors, it doesn't mean you're not going to get under the weather.

Kevin: Exactly. There's no guarantee the healthiest person in the world can still get a virus and still get sick. Good.

Michelle: Yeah. And that's that's not what any of this is about. This isn't about like not ever, you know, catching a cold or anything ever again. It's about decreasing your likelihood. But then when you do have one of those events that you weather it much better. Exactly. And get get over it much more faster, much greater resiliency. I try not to overanalyze myself and just, you know, that's good.

Kevin: You shouldn't.

Michelle: You know, the kinds of things that I do in that case is if I don't feel like eating a lot, then I don't, because I'm I'm a huge believer that if your body is telling you that your appetite is suppressed, then it probably wants to prioritize. And it probably says, don't give me a whole bunch of food for me now, have to expend all of my energy and resources on digesting, assimilating for you. Just let me let my immune cells work on fighting this virus or whatever it is.

Kevin: Sure. Exactly. Listen to your body.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think you're right. I think listening to your body is the whole thing. And but also making sure that you're getting nourishment. So I've been trying to do that. I got a whole bunch of tea here. I'm feeling a lot better today. It was really it's not like I felt sick. It was just really, really low energy. And then the other thing my mind goes to is this menopause. Like, maybe I don't know. I don't know. We're always constantly a puzzle. And on one hand, I'm completely turned on by that challenge of trying to figure it out. And on the other hand, I'm just I'm just a person like everybody else who, you know, who's just like, why is this happening?

Kevin: You're just feeling listless. Yeah. So basically what you're saying is what's bad for your health is amazing for the podcast. This gives us a podcast episode. So I feel bad that you're not feeling it 100 percent. But I'm also sort of happy because we're going to get an episode out of this. So thank you.

Michelle: Nothing pumps adrenaline through my veins more than being able to dive into something that interests me.

Kevin: You and your rabbit holes.

Michelle: The first thing that I went to is, you know, I haven't been in my normal routines. So I haven't been getting up and doing everything that I normally do during the day and planning my lunches and everything else. So, you know, have I slid into a bit of dietary insufficiency? So and I I think to some extent I was in some areas. So, you know, I opened up the cupboard, made sure I was taking my B12, make sure that I'm getting my vitamin D, make sure I'm getting my steps and moving. But, you know, it reminded me of this fascinating lecture that I saw by Dr. Michael Clapper about when vegans fail to thrive. And I think it's a really awesome topic for us to cover because that can be failure to thrive like in the micro or in the macro with some people, because we've all seen those news items where some celebrity who was a prolific, you know, vegan advocate all of a sudden, you know, went back to eating meat or whatever or that person in our experience.

Kevin: We've we've all heard them. Yeah.

Michelle: And it begs that question. Like, was there truly something, you know, insufficient, inherently insufficient in a vegan diet or a plant based diet? Or was there something that that person failed to do to in order to have a well-planned diet or what are the reasons? Or is it is it truly because we're all very unique and this isn't for everyone? Right. So I think I think those are the questions that people have. Those are the questions that I continue to have, because I do believe with everything that I've learned and studied and the different ways that I've tried to look at the angles by learning from different doctors, different courses, I do believe there is one ideal diet for humans. And it is the diet that keeps us closest to our planet, to to live, natural and good quality where we ever plant exclusive. I don't think so. But where we plant predominant, where those animal foods were a minority in our diet. Yes, I think they were. But should we be able to thrive on a on a fully whole food plant based diet? Well, the data overwhelmingly, when you look it up at Oxford, you look at the blue zones, you look at nurses health study like other studies, it's like there are clearly populations that do thrive on exclusively a whole food plant based diet and they have the best outcomes, the lowest instances of chronic disease. They live to the longest ages with great ability and quality years at the end of life. So why does this happen to people? Like, why do we see this so often? And I and, you know, I'm willing to have my mind changed. OK, so I went back into like, you know, hearkening what I'd learned and what I frankly lectured on and went and dove back into literature to see, you know, what's new? What's what's happened here lately?

Kevin: Sure, because it's always changing.

Michelle: Yeah. So I think the last time I I heard Dr. Clapper lecture on that, it was based on his experiences. When I first encountered him, he was one of the main treating physicians at True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California. And he was lecturing from that perspective. And his job there was literally working with patients with serious chronic diseases or obesity or, you know, even just things like chronic high blood pressure, other things. They were in the Santa Rosa True North Clinic because they wanted to reverse that condition. So he is a disease reversal doctor or was at that point working with hundreds of patients specifically on this goal of changing their trajectory, converting their diet to more whole food, plant based eating, monitoring all of their blood work, etc., to make sure that they were doing so safely.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: And getting optimal intake. Right. And, you know, the stories at a true note are phenomenal. And it's one of those places that, you know, numerous documentaries that you can watch about disease reversal and a whole food, plant based eating, you can see, you know, them featured all the time. But since the last time I saw him lectured, I noticed that he had actually done a study when he was with the Institute of Nutrition Education Research, which is a nonprofit. And they did a study on over twelve hundred people from 2002 and tracked them through to 2007. So they did this for sort of five years, focusing on people who ate a completely plant based vegan diet and particularly those who felt that they were failing to thrive. And failure to thrive would mean they were often underweight or reporting very, very low energy levels or both.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: And those people, you know, they conducted online surveys about their eating habits and their lifestyle activities. And of those twelve hundred people, forty five of those participants underwent a complete series of blood tests measuring their organ function, their nutrient levels, including things like their essential fatty acids, nutrient related minerals, amino acid profiles, et cetera. And what he found on doing this study, and this was this was cool because this is the kind of study that we needed that was never done.

Kevin: Right. And it's over five years. So it's a good long term study. It's not just a snapshot of two weeks or something. It gives you a better time frame for looking at how your body changes and adapts over time.

Michelle: Exactly. Because people can often do any dietary change, like name your dietary change. Right. And then they'll say over a month or two months or three months, they have these incredible results.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: And it can like let like a classic example is that people will move from a standard American diet to a carnivore, paleo, keto type diet. And yes, they will be suddenly consuming a lot more animal based foods. And they'll say, oh, look at how much better I'm doing. But it's not really the fact that they were focusing on animal based foods. It was the fact that they cut out all of the ultra processed foods at the same time. That's that's really responsible for those heightened results. But if you were to measure those people over a five year period compared to somebody that moved to a plant based or a plant forward style of eating, cut out those same ultra processed foods, they at that five year mark would have incredibly different blood work and outcomes. And that's and that's not my opinion. That's what countless data has shown us. Right. Because because we know that people on those animal based food diets, when they're animal based food predominant, tend to live about 10 years less than than vegans and plant based, which is huge.

Kevin: Like 10 years is a lot like that's that's a massive, massive decrease.

Michelle: Exactly. So so that's great that you feel so much better and you're having great results in this moment. But where do you want to be like where what is the puck that you're skating to if we kind of use a Wayne Gretzky analogy? Right.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: So anyway, what he found was that many of these vegans who failed to thrive had these common characteristics. OK, they showed low levels of two essential fats, the two omega three fatty acids, DHA and EPA. And they are important for brain function, nerve function and skin oils. So another another thing that vegans who fail to thrive often get is very, very dry skin.

Kevin: Really? OK, I've never heard that.

Michelle: Yeah. Dry, dry skin, dry lips, things like that. OK, then they also may be commonly deficient in three main essential minerals and essential means our body can't produce them. We have to get them from diet. Right. So zinc, which is an earth element needed to maintain health of one's immune system, their skin and for carbohydrate metabolism, which is important because our fuel comes from carbs. Right.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: Yeah. Magnesium, which magnesium is so important. It's it's an essential mineral that's responsible for over 300 different chemical reactions in the body related to nerve and muscle function, as well as immune system and keeping your your bone health.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: You know, there were a handful of other mineral deficiencies that he observed. Manganese. I always love this micronutrient because it's always so hard to say. Molybdenum, molybdenum, molybdenum, molybdenum.

Kevin: Never heard of that ever.

Michelle: And one or more branched chain amino acids, valine, leucine, isoleucine, again, related to muscle function and growth. You often see bodybuilders supplementing with branched chain amino acids, right? Because it's important for muscle muscle growth. One key antioxidant they were often commonly deficient in, which is Coke. It's called CoQ10. And it's important for energy production and immune health. OK. OK. So when I look at that list, Kevin, and I think these vegans are commonly deficient in these things, why would that be? Why would that be? You might ask, why can't they get these from their food?

Kevin: Michelle, why can't they get these from their food?

Michelle: Well, Kevin, I'm glad you asked that question. Because they should be getting this from their food. So the question would be, what are they not eating?

Kevin: Yeah. What are the sources of some of these nutrients that you've mentioned from plant based sources where they can buffer up these these deficiencies that they have?

Michelle: Right. And I want to correct what I just said. What are they not eating or what are they not absorbing?

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: That's really the key question. Right. So the omega-3s in that dietary transition, I can see that there often is for people something to do here because the major food sources of omega-3 fatty acids that are readily absorbed are nori, wakame, kelp and dulse if you're not going to eat oily fish. Right.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: Right. And the the non-fish sources would be flaxseed, chia seed, walnuts, even canola oil is rich in ALA, which is the precursor to EPA. OK.

Kevin: Which is the precursor to ABC.

Michelle: Right. But it has to it has to be able to convert. And, you know, especially sometimes that conversion is not efficient in all people. So, yes, we can if we have like lots and lots of chia and flax in our diet, then, you know, we're getting fiber for one thing, which is fantastic. And we are getting some omega-3, but it's not from the omega-3 perspective. It's not quite as efficient in terms of skin oil and like the lubricating things that we need. It's still going to be fantastically anti-inflammatory. Like for some people, they might need to be getting that sea vegetable component, which, you know, you can have, you know, great sushi wraps and having nori as a snack. I love having nori as a snack.

Kevin: It's delicious. I love it. Yes.

Michelle: I know. But some people really don't like that. I also with my kids, I would often hide it in soups and salads and stews and things like that.

Kevin: My son just eats it as a snack. He loves it.

Michelle: Oh, I absolutely love it. But, you know, so it's it's incredibly reasonable. And it's a very common recommendation for people to supplement with an LJ derived omega-3, particularly as we age or, you know, through stages of development. Anyway, I digress. So the three essential minerals, zinc, magnesium, chromium, zinc is very abundantly achieved through diet from whole grains. OK, so like go back to our last episode on whole grains, right? All of those, you know, wheats and rice and bulgur, amaranth, all those things that we talked about. Right. It's also very readily absorbed from legumes, chickpeas, lentils, beans. It's also from nuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, other seeds. It's abundantly absorbed from leafy green vegetables like spinach and, you know, all kinds of leafy greens, kale, you know, name your name, your dark, dark, leafy greens.

Kevin: So forgive me for for maybe stating the obvious, but it seems that there's a disconnect then for me in my mind, because what you're naming grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, leafy green vegetables, those would be staples, I would presume, of a vegan diet. So then how in scientific studies or why would vegans be deficient in zinc? I'm not understanding that. I'm not making that connection.

Michelle: You're absolutely right. Those would be staples in a well-planned whole food plant-based diet, but not necessarily a vegan diet.

Kevin: Oh, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, gotcha.

Michelle: Right. OK. And this this is the big distinction because we'll get on to the other minerals in a second. But you've you've already skipped to the obvious.

Kevin: Oh, that's me, Captain Obvious.

Michelle: Which is fantastic because obviously if they're not getting enough zinc, like you're going to see me give you a similar story with chromium and with magnesium. OK, if you were eating a plant-forward diet and you were actually eating the plants, this shouldn't be an issue.

Kevin: Yeah, because based on what you were listing, it seemed like a no-brainer. People would get more than enough zinc because you're going to have your whole grains. You're going to have your legumes to replace the protein that you're not eating, like the meat.

Michelle: But maybe you're not. Maybe you're unwrapping a just egg and putting it on an English muffin.

Kevin: No, that's true. I didn't think about that. Yeah, yeah. A processed English muffin. OK, so sorry. I totally I totally derailed this.

Michelle: So that's awesome. No, this is a conversation. It's not a lecture.

Kevin: So I am interested in chromium and magnesium. Chromium just makes me think of the Avengers. Isn't that crazy metal from Captain America's shield? Chromium? No, that's titanium. Anyways. So sources of chromium and magnesium.

Michelle: So so I'll do magnesium next because magnesium is one outside of veganism or plant-based diets. It's often a supplement recommendation for people to have at night to help their body naturally relax and wind down for sleep or if they suffer from a lot of anxiety and things like that, because, you know, minerals are sort of nature's natural muscle relaxers.

Kevin: All I know about magnesium is that it burns really, really, really bright from science class. Oh, that's all I know about magnesium.

Michelle: What I remember about magnesium is my mom, when we had an upset tummy, always giving us milk of magnesia. Do you remember that?

Kevin: Oh, and is that magnesium?

Michelle: Oh, I think so.

Kevin: Of course.

Michelle: To settle us down, to calm us down.

Kevin: Oh, of course.

Michelle: So I don't know what I I'll be honest with you. I have no idea what milk of magnesia is.

Kevin: It's just cream. It's like cream of mushroom soup for magnesium.

Michelle: So I think of it as an as an element, like as a mineral. So where it got milked, I don't know.

Kevin: They have teeny tiny udders on the magnesium pellets. And it's a very long process to get a teaspoon of milk of magnesium.

Michelle: But muscle and nerve function, right? So magnesium foods, similarly, nuts, legumes, whole grains, leafy vegetables, most notably spinach. Magnesium is the central ion in chlorophyll. So leafy green vegetables in particular are a very, very rich source of magnesium. And then the cereal grains, brown rice, millet, et cetera, and tubers, white potatoes, have significant amounts of magnesium tubers, tubers.

Kevin: So, again, shouldn't be a challenge to get enough magnesium is what I'm hearing.

Michelle: Shouldn't be if you were eating a sufficient diet.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: And chromium, the reason a chromium is important is required for our metabolism of carbohydrates and fats. So another thing, the person on the vegan diet who's like, I can't, you know, I'm supposed to lose all this weight on a on a plant-based diet and I'm not losing weight. It might be one of the aspects might be related to the chromium deficiency. Chromium comes from whole grains, a variety of different vegetables, including onions, garlic, bok choy, radish and celery.

Kevin: All the good ones, except celery. Celery is boring, but everything else is delicious.

Michelle: Yeah, exactly.

Kevin: All the flavorful veggies.

Michelle: And and then the other ones that we mentioned, the manganese, the molybdenum and other micronutrient deficiencies that are not of the essential ones come from vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, fruits. The branch chain amino acids come from things like beans, lima beans, lentils, brown rice, soybeans, whole wheat, corn, nuts. CoQ10 food sources are broccoli, spinach, soybeans, cauliflower. And so it would tell me that there is not just a deficiency in these nutrients. There's a deficiency in their dietary intake and what they're eating in the first place.

Kevin: Right. Because there's an overlap of all of these. Like it's interesting that since again, mainly zinc, magnesium and chromium are going together, that you've listed the same foods over and over and over again. So obviously they're not eating legumes and green leafy vegetables and nuts and seeds sufficiently to get all of these different nutrients together, like at the same time. Right. Interesting.

Michelle: The other clue in this study, Kevin, was that it was noted that these studies also had elevated levels of pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. So omega-6s are the ones that contrary to the omega-3s that are associated with inflammatory reactions in the body. And they are largely ingested through large amounts of vegetable oils in diet and processed foods. Ah, OK. Yeah.

Kevin: So not eating enough whole foods and eating too much fried food or processed food.

Michelle: Right. Pre-packaged foods or slathering a lot of vegetable oil on your salads or in your cooking, doing lots of deep frying and things like that.

Kevin: Interesting.

Michelle: So, you know, because remember, the omega-6s are an essential fatty acid, but they're no longer that essential because it's prevalent in the North American diet. So it's more about you don't need to worry about your intake of omega-6s. You have to usually worry on cutting back on your omega-6s, raising your omega-3s because the profile should be like one to one.

Kevin: Yeah. I remember you mentioning that the proportion of three to six is what's off in our diet generally.

Michelle: Yeah. It should be one to one, one to two. And it's much, much higher than that. Yeah. Six is way too high. It's one to a much higher number. I can't remember what it is, but I remember at one point that in North America, there was one study that said it was as high in some areas as one to thirty six.

Kevin: Wow. That's crazy.

Michelle: Yeah. So it's often in order to boost people's omega-3, it's sometimes more just about minimizing their omega-6s to bring their omega-3 that they're already eating more into line, which is another, which is why I'm always like, yes, I think that an omega-3 supplementation is very, very reasonable, but it's only reasonable in the context of, are you also looking at the omega-6 number? What are you doing to bring that down? Right. Bring that down.

Kevin: Right. Makes sense.

Michelle: And you should intuitively know that if you tracked your eating, your food diary, it would be fairly obvious if you go, oh, you know what? Like, I didn't think I was, but now that I've written it down, I've actually had a fair amount of processed food, right, in my diet. Right. Because it's not always obvious to us. I have yet ever in the history of my time as a nutritionist had a client sit in front of me who says, I eat a terrible diet.

Kevin: Well, no one wants to admit it.

Michelle: Well, and I think, you know, I think we rationalize or we remember the good things that we ate because we did it so consciously. But we don't think about all of the context of the whole day and the whole diet of the things that we unconsciously ate.

Kevin: Right. Right. And I think there's also we are sometimes willingly blinded, I think. So if we go back to our last episode, when you unpacked the McVeggie burger, that's a so-called healthy alternative in air quotes. People might not think of that as in the same category as hyper processed food is like a, you know, a deep fried hamburger from the same restaurant or whatever. They think it's a healthy alternative, but it's still ultra processed. And if you haven't heard that episode, I do encourage you to go back and listen to that because it's really telling a bit of the same story.

Michelle: Yeah, because if you just looked at at the composition of that burger and the and the good ingredients that are in it, it sounds amazing. You might be inclined, for example, if you were filling out a food diary to say, oh, I had these four vegetables.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly.

Michelle: And if you didn't know that the delivery mechanism of that was a McVeggie, you would go, oh, good for you. Like you had all these vegetables, not understanding that it was deep fried in all these oils and accompanied with all these other fats and oils from these other sauces and condiments.

Kevin: And the very fact that the patty was pre-processed, so the patty would have had preservatives and then all sorts of...

Michelle: All the other hidden things.

Kevin: It was a long way from having a fresh carrot anywhere near it.

Michelle: Exactly. And then now it's worth mentioning, the one that we very commonly already know, I don't think it's mentioned in the study because it's B12, because B12 is incredibly important, but it's already well known and mainstream knowledge that when you move away from animal-based foods to a plant-exclusive or a plant-predominant diet, that you must supplement with B12.

Kevin: I have heard that, yes.

Michelle: B12 is really important for a whole host of things, but really brain health is the main thing. So when I'm in front of people, I've even had students when I was still teaching at CSNN, I had students that were very proud of the fact that, well, I eat a vegan diet and I do absolutely fine. I don't need to supplement with B12. And I'd be like, do not mess with your brain, people. The reason people fall into a trap of thinking they don't need that is because they will convert to the diet and they will thrive and do well, particularly younger people who haven't had the same legacy of bad behavior to undo. I think these failure to thrive can often happen either if you had heavily, heavily processed diets all along, even as a young person, or if you're an older person like myself who's eaten this way for literally decades. And now you're doing something good, but you also are going to have the consequences of the decades of stuff that you'd done before. It's not going to switch overnight.

Kevin: Of course, yeah. It's going to take a while to unravel all of that.

Michelle: Right, but B12 is one of those nutrients we're very good at storing as well, typically for most people, there are exceptions. So you can go a while before B12 deficiency kicks in and becomes a problem. But, but the thing it's, it's not, I mean, it's, it's so common knowledge, like primary care providers are well-versed on this when they, when they find out the patient sitting in front of them is following a vegan diet or a plant-based diet and they will have a quick conversation about it. They will check their B12 status as part of their routine blood work and counsel patients who self-identify to make sure that they're getting adequate intake.

Kevin: It's interesting that I just recently, just in the last week or two, my old man blood work done because I'm at that age where they want to do blood work every couple of years. I hate getting old and I've never identified to my doctor, like he's never asked my diet or anything. So I've never self-identified to him at all, but B12 was just included in the standard set of, of blood work that he did on me. So even, you know, I think it's, it's recognized as that important that even people who don't self-identify just everyone should get a B12 test just to make sure, because obviously, you know, it's recognized as being super, super important.

Michelle: Most people know to take their B12 and they either may have missed the memo or they choose not to because they just are maybe, maybe too lazy to go and buy the supplement, reluctant to pay for a supplement, but B12 is really inexpensive.

Kevin: Yeah. And also, as you said, I think there also might be a bit of a mental blockage that if someone is switching to a vegan or plant-based diet thinking I'm going to be super healthy, there's a bit of a stigma against supplements, like supplements are bad somehow. So even a necessary one like B12 might have a bit of a negative connotation for some people, depending on why they're switching. And so they just, they don't want to have that sign of weakness or that, that idea that a supplement's automatically bad for you.

Michelle: Right. And, and, and, you know, that's a good point, Kevin, because vegans and plant-based eaters are often criticized on the B12 topic of, well, C, your diet's so insufficient because you can't get it from your food. And me as a person who eats meat, I don't have, you know, I don't have a problem getting B12. Well, there's a couple of reasons why that's not true. One of them I'm going to hang on to and I'm going to bring up later, but the main thing is animals don't get B12 either. They, they, they have to get it the same way that we used to get it. So B12 doesn't come from food. B12 is produced by bacteria in soil.

Kevin: Oh, really?

Michelle: So the reason we used to not have an issue at being plant-predominant is because we were much closer to our food. We were growing our food in our gardens. We were in the dirt and we, we would, we would eat our, our vegetables out of, out of the garden, closer to the dirt. And we wouldn't necessarily have fully washed it. So like we would maybe have residue on our vegetables. We also would drink natural water out of streams and wells. Right, right. And where, you know, that, that by-product of the bacteria in soil would be present in our water, but now our water is rightfully sanitized and filtered and, and there's...

Kevin: So it kills the bacteria.

Michelle: Chlorinated would definitely kill it. Right. And, and, you know, even in, in our soil, we also have deficient soil now compared to hundreds of years ago.

Kevin: Right. Through, through monoculture field crops, monocrop farming and such like that.

Michelle: Over-farming and agrochemical predominant farming. There would have been much more of B12 and other trace minerals in the environment because you would have fertilized with that, like more naturally derived fecal manner from, from your animals that were grazing.

Kevin: Right, right. So the soil was overall richer. And plus you said earlier that our bodies are really good at storing B12. So you mentioned long, long, long ago in sort of the, the episode we did on sort of what humans were historically, like herbivores or carnivores, you know, historically, you know, humans might've had a meat feast after a kill, you know, once a month or something like that. And so then also if historic humans could have saved that B12 in between those feasts, then this is more of a modern issue. If you are completely 100% removing any animal products from, from your diet.

Michelle: Yeah, I never thought about that. That certainly could contribute to the abundance of it in diet.

Kevin: Yeah. So, so long story short, there's no shame to needing a B12 supplement.

Michelle: No, none at all. Okay. So just another quick little fun fact. One of the other ways they suspect that humans would have gotten some B12 would have been from insects.

Kevin: Makes sense. Yeah.

Michelle: If you, if you eat insects, you're going to get more B12.

Kevin: Sure.

Michelle: Okay.

Kevin: I'll go chow down on some cricket meal and I'll get my B12.

Michelle: Yeah. And then, and then, like you said, if you do consume occasional or small amounts of animal products in a plant predominant diet, then you will get some B12 from things like eggs or, or dairy or shellfish, right?

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

Michelle: The other thing that's worth mentioning, though, even if you aren't getting B12 from a supplement and you aren't getting it from animal foods, we have a lot of fortified foods now with B12 in things like plant milks, fortified breakfast cereals. Oh, nutritional yeast has B12 in it as well. So you can slather. Although I would not, I would not recommend choosing nutritional yeast that you sprinkle on things as your main source of B12. I would make sure that you're getting out. You know what? It's important enough to your, your brain and your nerve function that I would, I would just, just take the supplement every three or four days or whatever, right?

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. Take the damn supplement, people.

Michelle: Yeah. You don't, you don't need very much. Daily doses are like 50 to 100 micrograms are effective for prevention while higher doses, according to the literature, 250 micrograms daily or 500 micrograms several times a week are commonly used and have shown to maintain adequate status in healthy vegans. It is important to note that continuous supplementation is necessary for vegans and as cessation will lead to a rapid decline in B12 biomarkers, which will increase homocysteine, which is something we produce related to inflammation. And this is exactly why your doctor knows to monitor it, right? Like it's very, very important. Okay. Now there's, there's one other nutrient for us to watch on a, on a vegan diet. You know, Dr. Clapper does mention this, although it wasn't highlighted in the study, but he frequently mentions it. And he even acknowledges, although our study did not test for iodine, it's a mineral necessary for normal thyroid function. I have since come to suspect since doing the study that iodine deficiency resulting in low thyroid function may play a in some vegans who are failing to thrive. And consequently, he now recommends to all of his patients who are vegan, ensure adequate iodine intake through sea vegetables and adding them to things like soups and salads. I think what's really important to acknowledge here is that Dr. Clapper's recommendation on that is not to go get an iodine supplement, but to incorporate iodine sources into your food, somehow. Nori, wakame, kelp, dulse, by the way, the exact same sea vegetables that are going to help with your omega-3 status.

Kevin: Right. Right.

Michelle: I'm not a doctor. I just want to make sure everybody always remains clear on this. So I, I, I cannot diagnose, treat, recommend nor would I ever, I like to stay in my lane.

Kevin: Right. Right.

Michelle: But I'm, I'm aware iodine is a very tricky nutrient that often people will assume that they're iodine deficient or that their thyroid has something to do with their issues with weight. And you might be wrong about that. And depending upon the diagnosis that could be at root issue supplement or having too much iodine could contraindicate your problem. So I wouldn't, I, I mean, I think whenever you have something as a dietary source, our body knows what to do with it. It, it, it generally knows how to secrete things in the proper amounts of the proper time and how to utilize our food. When you're supplementing, you don't have that benefit of timing and amount. You're just injecting the body with a whole bunch and kind of using a bit of a shotgun approach. If you suspect that that's an issue, are you worried that that's an issue? Have a conversation with your primary care provider before jumping to supplementation.

Kevin: Don't self-diagnose and don't mess around with your health.

Michelle: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it could very well be an issue.

Kevin: No, but, and we also talked about that in our salt episode, because we got into the entire iodine deficiency and salt and everything else. So people can also go back and listen to that.

Michelle: And yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: Iodized salt solves the whole problem.

Kevin: Well, exactly. You know, now again, from, from that episode, I do remember we need to differentiate between added salt in canned and processed food that may or may not be iodized versus the iodized table salt that you add at the table. And also be careful of sea salt and that. Go back and listen to that episode. We're having so many callbacks today. I love it.

Michelle: I know it's all coming together, right?

Kevin: But salt is an easy way to, to increase your iodine. But again, don't self-diagnose, don't guess for something as important as your thyroid. Just talk to a doctor, test and then start. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Michelle: And your health in general, right? Like, yeah, that this is why, you know, making sure that you're having your primary care status done is a really good idea for everybody. Like just know your numbers. Anyway. Okay. Now, Kevin, I would be remiss in not mentioning vitamin D because it affects almost everyone, especially here in Canada. Right. At the latitude that we're at, it's very unlikely that the average Canadian is going to get sufficient vitamin D from sunlight, even in the summertime. And, you know, except for the rare person that's outside all the time with bare skin. But, you know, vitamin D should be supplemented, particularly in winter. And dietary intake is often inadequate of vitamin D, although there is vitamin D fortified foods, right?

Kevin: Right. But that's just for everyone, plant-based and non-plant-based. I mean, everyone needs to be aware of vitamin D intake.

Michelle: Now, to round this whole thing out.

Kevin: Round it out for us, Michelle, round it out.

Michelle: There's something really interesting and important to raise here. Okay. And it's that these deficiencies that we've just mentioned, according to other research, is not unique to vegans.

Kevin: Which is sort of what we've been touching upon and for some of them, certainly.

Michelle: Yeah. Food sources are only part of the issue, which is why there's a common phrase in the nutrition status that it's not what we eat, it's what we absorb, as I said later, right? Because you can be eating whatever, but if your body's not absorbing it, it doesn't really matter what you're eating. So, for example, there was a recent review published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And this is recent. This is like March 2025.

Kevin: Oh, wow.

Michelle: That the same nutritional deficiencies were commonly observed in both vegans and omnivores and carnivores across North America. And those common deficiencies included particularly vitamin B12 deficiency, particularly in adults and those with malabsorption conditions. So malabsorption would probably be related to gut issues, right? Like gut dysbiosis or gastrointestinal issues, as well as deficiencies in vitamin D, iron and iodine. So this is really important. Like B12, for example, is not limited only to vegans. It's also prevalent among omnivores. And some of that, this is related to age-related decline, because as we age, our hydrochloric acid levels decrease in our stomach or our stomach acids ability, which we need that stomach acid to break food down, but also for the assimilation of nutrients. And if you don't have enough hydrochloric acid being produced in your gut, then you're not going to absorb as much.

Kevin: Oh, OK. So it helps to be a sour puss.

Michelle: I guess. I'm not really sure how you got there. Do you want to explain?

Kevin: I don't know. Well, a sour, like if you've got a sour attitude, then you've got like more acid in your stomach, more acidic personality. I don't know. It's a bit of a stretch, admittedly.

Michelle: I wasn't following that one.

Kevin: But it made sense in my head. Like, we'll leave it at that. OK.

Michelle: So it makes sense. So it's not only the elderly that have, you know, naturally as we age, we produce less hydrochloric acid. But if you do have gastrointestinal disorders, or even if you are an omnivore and a carnivore, you have limited intake of animal source foods just because you aren't eating enough. It can result in issues.

Kevin: Which again, takes me back to, I guess that is why then everyone automatically gets tested for B12 as part of their regular blood test.

Michelle: Because it is for everyone.

Kevin: And just for the record, my B12 was like very healthy. It was on the higher side of normal, but well within the normal range, but on the higher side of normal.

Michelle: That's because you're such a high achiever, Kev.

Kevin: But not too high. I'm just highly average.

Michelle: And vitamin D deficiency is widespread across all of these dietary patterns due to limited sun exposure. Again, of everyone, we spend too much time inside and not enough time in the outdoors and low intake of vitamin D fortified foods. Iron deficiency is particularly common in premenopausal women, regardless of the dietary status, according to this study. And iodine deficiency, which we mentioned, can occur in populations with low use of iodized salt or limited intake of seafood and dairy. So these deficiencies are influenced by age, the body's ability to absorb, as well as their dietary habits. These are not problems exclusively related to the exclusion of animal products from diet. It's not about how much animal food am I not eating problem. It's an overall diet quality and age-related problem.

Kevin: Okay, so I would like to make an effort at wrapping all of this up, because you've given us a ton of information. And let me see if I can wrap up the key takeaways. This is like a test. I feel the pressure's on. Don't look at me like that.

Michelle: You have me on the edge of my seat.

Kevin: I hope you don't fall off your seat because I'm totally wrong. So it sounds like if you are someone who is transitioning or has transitioned to a vegan or plant-forward diet and you maybe aren't feeling that it's working for you, or you aren't feeling, you've been giving it a shot for a while, and you're just not feeling it, basically.

Michelle: Or you crescendoed up that you were feeling great, and now doing the same behaviors, you're starting to decline.

Kevin: And now you're starting to plateau, right. You should, first and foremost, talk to your primary care practitioner and make sure you talk to your doctor and make sure that there's no issues. You should also look at the amount of processed food that you eat, whether it's vegan processed food or regular processed food, and look at how much you actually eat and cut that out. You should look at the amount of fresh plant-based whole foods like legumes and leafy greens and whole grains and all that. And again, bump those up. And then you should also look at a few of these niche nutrients and vitamins that you've mentioned throughout and make sure things like iodine and vitamin D and vitamin B12, I'm calling them niche just because they are harder to find and maybe harder to get into your system rather than some of the chromium and zinc were super easy, it seems. Some of these niche ones are harder. And take a look at those sources and make sure that you're getting enough, but not too much of those and don't give up. How was that for like an overall summary?

Michelle: I think that's a good list. I would put the look, like have an honest look at your diet quality as the number one thing because you might be able to correct how you feel immediately by self-recognizing.

Kevin: Oh yeah, those weren't in order. Those were just as they popped into my mind.

Michelle: No, no, no, for sure.

Kevin: No, don't run to your doctor the very first thing. That's not your first line of defense. Doctor, doctor, no, no, no.

Michelle: Chances are you won't get in for a few weeks anyway and you want to feel better sooner than that.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly.

Michelle: Because you know, like make the food first place. A couple of things I want to put in the show notes for everyone is we're going to put in a link to this study of Dr. Clappers and we're going to put in an on-demand video that he has. There's a small fee if people want to get the digital download and it's called Thriving on a Plant-Based Diet and it's a hundred minutes of him giving you all of this science and evidence and coaching.

Kevin: Okay, so yeah, we'll put those in the show notes. I'm sure you've already seen them. If you're listening to this, you've probably already seen the show notes. So now that explains what the heck all those links are. Excellent. Okay, well, thank you, Michelle, for a very fleshy, meaty episode. So it's time for our dad joke. A duck walks into a pharmacy and says, give me some chopstick and put it on my bill.

Michelle: Oh my gosh, I love that joke so much.

Kevin: I knew you would. I knew you would.

Michelle: Ducks that walk into the bar are my favorite thing.

Kevin: Exactly. So drugstore bar, same difference. So what did the father buffalo say to his little boy when he dropped him off at school?

Michelle: Have a good day, Bill. I don't know.

Kevin: Oh, no, that's less. Oh, that's a groaner. Oh, no, we have a groaner, folks. I made Michelle groan. I'm sorry. I should have stopped at the first one.

Michelle: Oh, no, you nailed it with the first one. That made me so happy.

Kevin: I know your sense of humor. Okay, well, thank you for joining us for another episode. And you can get in touch with us by emailing us at n, the number four, n-o-o-b-s at gmail.com or connect with us at Facebook at facebook.com slash Nutrition for Noobs. And because we love to engage with you and hear your questions for Michelle. Michelle loves getting questions because then she can go down more rabbit holes. So encourage her, please. And until next time, eat your greens.

Michelle: And be real, everyone.

Kevin: This has been Nutrition for Noobs. We hope you're a bit more enlightened about how your fantastic and complicated body works with the food you put into it. If you have a question or a topic you'd like Michelle to discuss, drop us a line at n4noobs at gmail.com. That's the letter N, the number four, n-o-o-b-s at gmail.com. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever your favorite platform might be. Also, please consider leaving a review or telling your friends. That's the best way to spread the word. We'll see you next time with another interesting topic. The views and opinions expressed on Nutrition for Noobs are those of the hosts. It is not intended to be a substitute for medical, nutritional, or health advice. Listeners should seek a personal consultation with a qualified practitioner if they have any concerns or before commencing any actions mentioned in the podcast.