Vegetarians? Read this!

[hiswaywardgirl]

I've been a vegetarian for 6 1/2 years, and had panic attacks both before and after I stopped eating meat. Recently, I've had horrible symptoms including dizziness, numbness, seemingly random heart palpitations, vision problems, muscle weakness, difficulty standing/doing physical work... a laundry list of anxiety symptoms. And I've always been told it was anxiety. But last week, the stress and symptoms were so horrible that I finally did something I never thought I'd do... I started eating meat again. Organic, grass-fed meat from the health food store. I had chicken and fish. For the first day in a while, I felt completely fine and only had a minor panic attack driving in my car. After that -- zero. No anxiety. No symptoms. I've felt AMAZING. The worst thing that has happened is that I feel very stiff and tense from all these months of stress.

Pretty sure the anxiety was related to a vitamin deficiency, despite the fact that I took 5 different supplements and was very aware of my protein. I took B vitamins religiously until recently, when they started making me paranoid and overly sensitive to light/sound. That's when I felt like I had no choice but to eat meat.

Anyway... I just wanted to let you guys know that if you are a vegetarian and having anxiety, you may be experiencing the same issue. I think the panic attacks I had before becoming a vegetarian were genuinely related to anxiety, and some of my later issues probably were, too. But the fact that my symptoms lasted for months and then went away at the drop of a hat makes me think the diet was the culprit.

I'm beginning to believe you can't be healthy without eating meat for an extended period of time (months, years). To meat-eaters, that might seem obvious, but if you are/have ever been a vegetarian/vegan, you might understand where I'm coming from.

Nutritional issues are no joke. :\

[jessed03]

That's interesting.

Maybe it was amino acids? I know they're harder to get when you don't eat meat.

It's good you're feeling better, whatever the reason for the improvement is.

I don't eat gluten, I know that's a little different to meat, but I get how hard it is to try and get everything you need whilst cutting out a food group. It's always hard to know whether your specialist diet is healthy, especially when there's limited evidence about the effectiveness of supplements.

I hope it lasts for you

Do you feel weird now that you're eating meat?

[acetone]

Keep us updated if it lasts.

[Enduronman]

Interesting..

I was ORDERED to become a vegetarian last February, so considering my Doc is a genious, I obeyed the command and refrained from going Full Tazmanian. It was the best thing that I had ever done (health wise) but man I must look and appear just like what any dog does when they see someone eating. LMAO!! Watching, looking, observing..hoping that they'll drop a tiny crumb, so I can lunge into retrieval mode! I didn't just become a vegetarian, I became a vegan. This was the first time that I had ever recognized that food ingestion and digestion plays a major role in, a persons level of anxiety and in my case, increased joint pain and inflammation.

In my case, the foods that I eat allow my internal systems to work much less harder, which in turn makes my core body temperatures cooler, which lessens the liklihood of anxiety/panic attacks. And I have tested and introduced many different foods, just to see what happens.

Yes, being a vegan is dangerous in itself as J03 has mentioned above because I don't get all of the essential amino acids but I supplement those and also the vitamins that can't be obtained through eating strictly grass, sticks, and twigs. I also became hypoglycemic during this time, but that was quickly corrected with something as simple as orange juice and not that nasty concentrated stuff either.

The less work your internal system must do to digest foods, the calmer the internal systems remain.

So HWWG, you're unique and lucky too!!! Eat away, eat away...

[tailspin]

Props to you for going vegan, E-Man! I'm vegan too. Have been for 15 years. My husband has been vegan for 28 years! He is in excellent health and great shape. I'm physically fit. Mentally/emotionally.....not so much!! But in my case hormones are playing a big role. I'm approaching menopause and I'm on a hormonal roller coaster, which is wreaking havoc emotionally.

I feel really good about my diet though. I eat so many delicious foods and it's so easy to supplement B12 and Vitamin D. And flaxseed oil is awesome for the fatty acids. I know I'm not deficient in any vitamins because I've had my blood tested.

Going vegan is one of the best things I ever did. Not just for me, but for the animals and the planet!!! Vegans rock!!! Glad to meet another one here on the forum! We sure are in the minority.

Which kinds of begs the question: how can eating meat be a cure for anxiety if the overwhelming majority of people already eat meat? So to the OP, I have to say that, no, personally, I don't understand where you're coming from. And, honestly, I wouldn't eat meat, eggs or dairy again if I was paid. But that's just me........

[Enduronman]

Thanks TS!

I still don't have the enthusiasm about it that you do, yet, but it does keep me in much better shape both physically and mentally too. It is also veeerryyyyyy easy to become deficient in certain nutrients however and if one isn't prepared to learn what those are, then you feel it. The body will tell you that something is very wrong but not specify what that actually is. Especially, the amino acids that us vegans can't get in our diets. Vitamin supplements can even be tricky if one doesn't understand that certain vitamins are water soluable, and certain others are fat soluable. So they wake up, take a multi, and forget to eat some fats, which renders the fat soluable vitamins, useless..

Hormones WERE my most major problem, and also a major cause of my mood and personality disorders too. Once I ordered to have myself tested to see where I was deficient, and then the appropriate adjustments made, my intense anxiety began to ease very, very quickly too.

Considering you say that you have mood/personality/mental disorders galore, and are nearing menopause, then your best bet to stop this madness is a simple blood test to see how screwed up your hormones are, then get them adjusted accordingly.

I can't take high power B vitamins, they give me an internal energy that make me really tense, anxious, aggressive. I take tiny doses of them. I cut them into 1/4ths. Perfect.

IMHO: One MAJOR cause of all of these auto-immune diseases is from the foods that we eat in civilized developed countries. Third world countries don't have these odd diseases. Their food supply is minimally processed and refined. Our's is prepped for advertisement and taste, of which, our bodies don't know what the hell 75% of those chemicals even are and we can't pronounce them verbally either. I will ALWAYS remain a vegan, for life!

(even though I would really like to eat turkey, on Thanksgiving)....

Anxiety: You get out of life, from what you put into the body. Simple.
Hormones: They can and normally do, wreck the internal functions of a disrupted internal system=ANXIETY.

Go see your Doc TS!!!

[hiswaywardgirl]

jessed03 - Yeah, I think it was probably amino acids/protein, and maybe some essential vitamins. It definitely is hard to maintain a healthy diet when you eliminate major food groups... it takes a lot more concentrated effort to get everything your body needs, and it's easy to slip up without realizing it. I feel REALLY weird eating meat, lol... I have a huge guilt factor going on, plus I don't really like the way it tastes/feels/smells... but it has made a world of difference.

acetone - I will! It's only been a week so far, and hopefully things will keep improving.

Enduronman -- That's interesting! I've never heard of a doctor ordering someone to eliminate meat from their diet. Good digestion is extremely important, and it's good to hear that you're doing better now. I wanted to mention that I had issues with hypoglycemia for the past few months (had to eat something every few hours or I'd feel weak/faint, craved carbs all the time) , and my doctor said it might have been related to protein deficiency. Your body needs protein to keep your blood sugar stabilized for longer periods of time. And I know you didn't ask for my advice, but if you need a pick-me-up for your blood sugar, have the orange juice with protein to keep your blood sugar from crashing again and stay stabilized longer!

Tailspin - I wish I could say I was still veggie! I've always been on your side, and wanted to eventually go vegan. I was taking a vitamin B complex, vitamin D, and flaxseed oil every day, as well as a multivitamin most of the time, so that definitely wasn't my issue. My problem was not anxiety at all, it was a deficiency disguised as anxiety. So no, I'm not trying to say that animal products will cure anxiety. Not unless you're deficient, which I did not realize I was until my health deteriorated. I never thought I would eat meat, either. But I thought this topic would be helpful for vegans/vegetarians, because I personally have been very strongly anti-meat for a long time, and had no idea it could destroy my health (despite all the naysaying meat-eaters who told me it would... neither side can really hear the other because we're so set in our ways).

Also, I completely agree Enduronman about the foods we have nowadays... so many bizarre and artificial ingredients with everything, and meat is terrifying to me still because of factory farming, antibiotics, etc... then you have GMO fruits/veggies... agh!!

[hiswaywardgirl]

Wanted to update this thread! It's been 2 1/2 weeks since I started eating meat, and I'm still symptom-free. No dizziness, heart palpitations, sensitivity to light/noise, or numbness. I wouldn't say my anxiety has completely disappeared, because I still am stressed from school and am constantly checking to see if I AM feeling those old symptoms... but for the most part, I feel physically calm, relaxed, and NORMAL.

I had bloodwork done about 1 1/2 weeks after I started eating meat, and everything came out fine except my iron levels, which showed a high TIBC and high ferritin. I may have been anemic for a period of time, which can reflect low iron and low B12, and would explain a lot of my symptoms.

Today, I went through 5 separate job interviews in the space of 5 hours (a school district sent me all over to interview for teaching positions), then went to counseling, and despite all the chaos/pressure/driving/social interaction, I came home and was calm. Tired, but calm! I can't even tell you how stressed I used to get from just sitting in a car traveling from one place to another, let alone interviewing for multiple jobs back to back.

I've been making sure to have protein at every meal, and meat at least once a day. I still feel sad about it, and am really conflicted about not being able to call myself a vegetarian. Oddly enough, I started seeing a new counselor today, and when I told her about my meat-eating issue, she said she had been a vegetarian for 12-13 years and developed pernicious anemia. She now takes B12 shots weekly and learned that she absorbs nutrients best from red meat. Granted, she's an older lady, and was probably at risk for B12 deficiency due to age alone.

[Enduronman]

Excellent update..

I wanna eat a whole slab too!!..(sigh)

Congratulations on all of today's successes too!!

E-Man.

[NixonRulz]

Not eating meat will make you........ Well, ..dumb

Get yourself a slab!