What I think Vegans have right - Nitric Oxide & micronutrients

food
long-covid

#21

Protein isn’t a problem for anyone who focus on it (athletes should really focus on it but they fortunately tend to need more calories as well and that helps), it never would be a problem for me (I don’t eat little. I can’t eat little even ignoring the carbs. it helps a lot), lots of plants have so much protein if we don’t focus on low-protein carb sources (and eat enough)… But most vegans do just that for some reason, at least most vegan recipes I saw were like that. And all those carbs aren’t good for probably most people…
Newbies probably get charmed by all those sweets too and those are filled with starches and sugar and sometimes I wonder (especially if someone is a young dieting woman with a tiny calorie limit) that when they eat something remotely normal food if they eat fruit with oats all day? (I saw 1200 kcals split into 5 meals and 3 of them contained desserts on a popular page for dieters with a focus on vegans.) And possibly some oil as poor cakes need something that makes them borderline edible (sorry, I am biased), some dieters are willing to eat some added fat…
Proper longer term (or smarter) vegans are hopefully better than that…

But indeed, many people are skilled at avoiding protein. Honestly, I don’t know how they do that. If I tried very, very hard on a plant-based diet, I might go down to my lower adequate level and that’s it.
The worst is when they think they shouldn’t go over 30-40g protein. I saw that from vegans. How would they eat enough protein if they do their best NOT to?

So… I find misinformation the biggest problem. Many people THINK they eat as they should while eating horribly. I saw the mentioned low protein, 0.8g/kg as an UPPER limit. I was shocked. It’s one thing it’s dangerous nonsense but how they do that? I couldn’t even touch most plants as they are too protein rich for that, most animal products would be completely out of question as well, I would fail on the first days if that would be a short term challenge… Very basic common sense says it can’t be even remotely right and I don’t even need to think of some very natural food like eggs and meat. People are scary sometimes. And they totally write their nonsense as advice for others…


#22

Raw vegan survival required a LOT of tropical fruit. Which isn’t the most sustainable diet but…ya know.

I wanted to live a gentle life with no killing.

I know now how naive that was. Annual grains, mono crops, fruit plantations destroy entire ecosystems. The loss of animal and plant life is incalculable.

My abstaining from animal flesh was well meant but pointless.


(Ross) #23

Yup. The ethics are a real mess. Even if we did stop eating meat, all the farm animals would be culled since they would no longer have any potential for profit. It would result in the catastrophic loss of unique genetics and even the likely destruction of at least one species since cows no longer exist in the wild.
In a way, Vegan success would be an animal “genocide”, but that’s neither here nor there WRT Nitric Oxide.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #24

And elevated serum insulin also inhibits the production of NO

I wouldn’t push this one too far. Factory workers not being able to get out in the sunlight was a problem beginning in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. It’s why, to this day, milk for commercial sale in the U.S. must by law be fortified with vitamin D.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

And yet, it is the nitrates and nitrites in meat that are suppose to make meat carcinogenic. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #26

And one last thought: We really need to get over the notion that obesity is in and of itself a disease. While it is true that obesity often accompanies metabolic dysfunction, much of the time it does not. There is a reason that doctors have coined the terms “MHO” (metabolically healthy obese) and “TOFI” (thin on the outside, fat on the inside).

And interestingly, there are more people in the U.S. who have a BMI under thirty and who are metabolically dysfunctional, than there are people with a BMI of 30 or over who are likewise metabolically deranged.

Dr. Robert Lustig explains this in the following video, beginning around the 7 min 45 sec mark:


(Ross) #27

Nitrate salts are different than dietary nitrates in fresh vegetables. No dissonance.


(Ross) #28

Sort of…high sugar levels and oxidative stress make endothelial cells less prone to produce NO. Elevated insulin levels try and keep eNOS running all the time, which causes problems, they misfire and produce highly reactive peroxynitrite. Looks like it creates a bit of a vicious cycle! The more IR you are, the more IR you become. That’s why these other secondary pathways (dietary nitrates and sun exposure) other than eNOS might be very important to us.


(Ross) #29

Agreed. The real problem is IR.

Obesity, T2DM, heart disease, etc… are all likely just expressions of IR. Obesity is just the most obvious in a social context. It’s easy to see if someone is fat.

The real question is if there is reason to think that vegans enjoy improved insulin sensitivity via the higher intake of dietary nitrates? The answer appears to be YES. A vegan diet is correlated with an improvement in IR and the biochemical reason for this, at least in part, is higher NO levels from dietary nitrates in fresh vegetables in conjunction with improved micronutrient intake that support NO along with carotenoids that support insulin clearing from the blood.

As keto people, I think we tend to get triggered by anything vegan (vegans can be damn annoying) BUT, in this case, I really think there’s something we can learn from them in terms of reducing IR.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #30

Well, I know that too much insulin interferes with the production of NO, but I haven’t heard that more NO reduces insulin resistance. That’s a new one on me.


(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #31

What can we do with what we learn?

It doesn’t inspire me to adapt a vegan way of eating.


(Ross) #32

It was a new one on me too, which is why I posted it here! :nerd_face:

Regulation of obesity and insulin resistance by nitric oxide


(Ross) #33

Again, I’m not promoting veganism in the least.

What I’m saying is, the trend in Keto / Banting circles for the past several years seems to have been toward eliminating ever more plant material from the diet as a way to reduce carbs and stay in ketosis.

It’s possible that is not optimal if our goal is to improve insulin sensitivity / reduce insulin resistance. Fresh vegetables like spinach, kale, arugula, amaranth (red spinach- supposedly no oxalates), and even beet root (higher carb but comes in fermented forms to remove carbs), could be an important tool to that end, and wouldn’t require eating vegan.

There is ample biochemical evidence as well as some studies to support this which has not be widely reported within the keto community for some reason which I find rather shocking.

This also may explain why Angelo Coppola’s diet (of Humans are not Broken fame) worked so well for him.


(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #34

Rom the study:

From these studies, it is apparent that NO is one of the most critical features regulating metabolism, body composition, and insulin sensitivity. Harnessing its beneficial metabolic actions is an exciting prospect for combatting metabolic disease.

Just another case of addressing the symptom ( obesity ) with some kind of ( drug ) therapy, rather than addressing the cause - poor dietary practices.

Sure, if eating more plants will help you lose weight, and you enjoy eating them, great. The fact is, eating no plants works even better.

There is a reason all those plants like spinach, kale, arugula, amaran are bitter without extensive processing or adulteration with sauces and dressings - they contain toxins, which limit the bio-availability of all those wonderful nutrients they supposedly contain.

A problem that animal sourced foods do not have.


(Edith) #35

In a brief info gathering session on the web, and I mean brief, I found that the body synthesizes NO from the amino acid L-arginine by means of the enzyme nitric acid synthase. Sources of L-arginine include turkey, chicken, pork, beef, pumpkin seeds and various legumes/vegetables that one would have to eat somewhat large amounts of to get a good amount of that amino acid.

It seems to me, that if one is eating a heavy animal based diet, the nitrogen that comes from vegetables is unimportant. The animal foods will not only provide nitrogen but L-arginine as well.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #36

Finally! Thank you @VirginiaEdie. It makes evolutionary sense that during the 3+ million years our ancestors ate primarily what they hunted and scavenged that hominids evolved to derive whatever nutrients are essential from meat and fat. Plants of the Pleistocene were nothing like what we have now in nutrient content. They were mostly cellulose with very little usable nutrients. So it’s extremely unlikely that we evolved to extract any essential nutrient(s) by eating plants. Once our ancestors gave up the big guts of our plant eating primate relatives, plants were off the menu.


(Ross) #37

Great question!

Problem there is that pathway is damaged from SAD and also degenerates with age, sharply after age 40 from what I’ve read.

Also, research into boosting the amino acid content it the diet as a means to increase NO is mixed at best. There’s some indication that it does not work…which makes sense. Boosting the substrate on with endothelial cells shouldn’t increase the amount of NO they can make unless there was a shortage to begin with. You wouldn’t think it should trigger more production since it is not what signals NO to be created.

Also, boosting L-arginine to higher levels is known to have a side effect of reactivating latent viruses in the human body, so a specific risk.

FROM THE MAYO CLINIC

Safety and side effects

Using L-arginine orally or topically is generally considered safe.

Oral use of L-arginine might cause:

Nausea
Diarrhea
Abdominal pain
Bloating
Gout
Allergic response
Airway inflammation or worsening of asthma symptoms

L-arginine isn’t recommended after a heart attack due to concerns that the supplement might increase the risk of death.

L-arginine can worsen allergies or asthma. Use the supplement with caution if you have these conditions.

Be careful about taking L-arginine if you’ve had cold sores or genital herpes. Too much L-arginine in your system can potentially trigger the virus that causes those conditions.**


(Ross) #38

Spinach , kale and beats are not drugs.

Viagra is however! Turns out, it enhances NO production to make wood and make up for long term damage from SAD.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to eat. That’s a very personal choice.

While Carnivore does work & is valid, it does so by working around IR by eliminating the need for micronutrients and primarily/only using ketosis for energy other than very limited GNG. Your goals, as a C, are not restoring metabolic flexibility, so this topic likely has very little interest/application for you.


(Edith) #39

Not talking about L-arginine via supplementation, only through the foods we are eating. I was just pointing out that the ingredients for NO production occur in animal foods without needing vegetables.
Unless, maybe one doesn’t produces enough nitric oxide synthase for some reason. But then vegetables won’t help with that either.


(Ross) #40

See what I said about degradation / damage of the endothelial pathway.

The dietary nitrates from vegetables use a different pathway and do help.