Love your guts

Bacteria... This most maligned of species deserves an entire post (and several books and more) to itself. Our race has travelled long distances, been lost in various diseases, only to discover that the answer to every problem and the cause of every other problem is ... bacteria.

Lowering the drama a bit: I have been shocked and awed at the role that microbes (change of word) play in the human intestine. We have a gastro-intestinal (GI) tract with the surface area of a football field covered entirely (in a healthy human gut) by numerous species of beneficial and some not so good micro-organisms, all of which make up our gut wall providing selective permeability for what passes through.

It is known that a child in the womb has a sterile gut which gets populated through vaginal birth, breast feeding, and then through environmental interactions. The intestine is also the seat of our immune system. In short, bacterial imbalance = poor digestion = perhaps leaky intestine = brain sees stuff it should not see AND immune dysfunction = who knows what syndrome. Bad bacteria take over, yeast takes over, metabolizes sugars into alcohols, your gut barrier allows partially digested food to be absorbed into the blood, your brain (and immune system) sees stuff it never would have normally - and the brain fog begins.

It is amazing that gastroenterologists and neuro-physicians either do not know or will not tell you about the close link between microbial health and gut health, and between gut health and immune health, and between gut health and brain health.

My son has Autism. I didn't know this for the longest time, all symptoms being swept under the all-encompassing rug of Down Syndrome. But he has had all his vaccines, several courses of anti biotics, and every other onslaught on his immune system and gut flora that I could manage. Had I known that 10% of children with DS develop Autism, and had I known the gut-brain connection, things might have been different.

{You are probably wondering about the vaccine connection. The much-maligned Dr. Wakefield's research has now been confirmed by several independent studies (look at Dr. Bob Sears' "the Vaccine Book" for details: children with Autism do have inflammation in their intestines. And there does seem to be a correlation between some vaccines and this inflammation. In a child whose gut flora has already been compromised - read: immune system has been weakened - a further onslaught of a vaccine may prove to be the proverbial last straw that broke the camel's back}.

So Eat Fermented Food, made at home preferably. Stop over sanitizing yourself and your surroundings. How many under-sanitized third world countries do you know that have the overwhelming number of allergies that this country does? Educate yourself about vaccines, check your child's gut health before you vaccinate anyway. Use ear oil for ear infections, or see a chiropractor. Re-think the antibiotics. Why kill more of the good stuff yourself? Embrace the dust. Next time you are in India, remember how you lived as a child, dirty and disease-free. Symbiosis exists in our own body - love your bacteria. 

Ayurveda, Vegetarianism and the Weston Price/GAPS diet

Ever since I decided to take my son on the GAPS diet to heal Autism, I have been torn by the apparent conflict with Ayurvedic principles.  The GAPS diet calls for animal fat to be the basis of healing – including lard, ghee, butter, and fatty portions of meat. The GAPS book by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (Dr. NCM henceforth) goes to the extent of claiming that vegetarian diets are dangerous. While this statement alone should have pushed me off the book given that I come from a lineage that has eaten a lacto vegetarian diet for several hundred years (at a minimum), I stuck to it because the rest of the book made so much sense.

There are several arguments associated with the Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF) reasoning against a vegetarian diet. Some of them are based on Dr. Price’s tour of the world visiting native cultures and determining that all healthy cultures were those that consumed a traditional diet. However WAPF completely ignores the completely vegetarian populations of India, spanning several regions, each with its own flavor of vegetarianism [1].

There are several blog posts both for and against WAPF’s reasoning. My aim here is to simply present the points that strike me as WAPF’s biggest arsenal against vegetarian diets being healthy.

Low fat

The primary term associated with vegetarian diets is “low-fat”. In the GAPS community, this is almost a swear word. The concept of “low-fat” vegetarian diets might have originated with Dr. Dean Ornish [2] but this was likely in response to a increasingly processed way of eating which did rely on a lot of animal foods (processed again). There are no traditional vegetarian diets in India that try to be low-fat. Oil is used liberally in “tadkas”, where mustard (and other seeds and spices) are burst open in oil at its smoking point to release trace essential oils.

Vegetable Oils

Also the American vegetarian diet (a response to the factory-farmed processed meat industry) relies extensively on processed food. Most people aren’t familiar with a traditional way of cooking vegetables only without meat, and it is easier for them to eat out. Now processed foods will use cheap oils such as solvent extracted canola oil, soy oil made from GMO soy beans, etc. which contain primarily polyunsaturated fats that are not stable at high heats but are used at high temperatures anyway.

Traditional Indian vegetarian diets rely on ghee, sesame, coconut, or mustard oil, depending on the local crop. These oils are stable at relatively high temperatures, and were of course traditionally cold-pressed.

Protein, Iron and Vitamin deficiencies

Any diet that has survived a millennium cannot be anything but balanced. A population that is chronically deficient will by trial and error eventually switch to a balanced diet. Having said that, vegetarian sources of protein iron and B-vitamins are well known and we are not even talking about SOY here. Protein intake is very dependent on climatic and soil conditions and on the nature of local vegetation available. In that context, a traditional vegetarian diet usually evolves to include all essential nutrients in some form or other.

However there are no exclusive vegetarian diets in the Himalayan regions on India where vegetables are scarce in winter, and even the Kashmiri Brahmins eat meat (there are among the only Brahmins in India to do so, though some other Brahmins will eat fish – also rare).

Fermentation is a known source of probiotics and B-vitamins, and most regions in India eat some sort of fermented food in moderation. Lentils are eaten in abundance, typically with a ghee “tadka” to reduce the gassiness or Vata. In fact meat when eaten is eaten usually once a week, either as a treat or as a medicine.

Vegetarian diets today

Most of the comparison in the GAPS or Weston Price community seems to rely on a traditional meat eating diet versus a processed vegetarian diet (3). Some of  it sparingly refers to high heart disease among vegetarian Indians (3) without accounting for the onslaught of pesticides, hormones, and processing in current Indian food (courtesy the Green and White revolutions). This is inherently unfair.

Is a processed vegetarian diet better than a processed meat diet? Probably, because meat can bio-accumulate toxins. This also accounts for the popularity of the Ornish and MacDougall Diets.

Is a traditional diet better than a processed diet (whether veg or non-veg)? Of course!

Is a traditional vegetarian diet better than a traditional non-vegetarian diet? The answer is I don’t know. Physically, perhaps there is no difference. This is where I lean on Ayurveda, literally “the science of life”, the oldest system of traditional medicine. Meat is only considered a medicine, and that too only by some Vaidyas. Meat is said to increase Rajas and Tamas (or passion and inertia, as opposed to a calm, collected, intuitive stable nature or Sattva). This is now the realm of the mind, which eventually becomes the realm of the body. Yes, the body has to be addressed before the mind. But once there is health, per Ayurvedic principles, a wholesome traditional fresh vegetarian diet is most suitable for everybody.

Is a traditional vegetarian calmer than a traditional non-vegetarian? We really have very little data, except that historically India has not invaded any other country (though there have been internal invasions between kingdoms), and that India has always amalgamated all intruders to form a well-mixed accepting society, perhaps among the most truly secular in the world.  All I can say that you have to experiment on yourself to see if you are calmer when you don’t eat meat (but eat a balanced traditional vegetarian meal).

We know that every revered (or enlightened) saint (Buddhist or Hindu or Jain) has espoused vegetarianism and the doctrine of non-violence. And in eastern religions, it is generally believed that spiritual progress is difficult through a meat-eating diet.

I think there is some meat to the Sattvic theory (pun intended) and the doctrine of non-violence. But a vegetarian diet that is primarily non-organic, sourced from distant lands, based on processed foods and refined oils has violence embedded in the damage done to the ecosystem and to oneself.

And I will stick to the GAPS diet to see if it heals my son mostly because I haven't found a compelling alternative diet for Autism. But I will also attempt to go back to a sattvic vegetarian diet once he heals.

References:

1. An article by John Robbins: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/reflections-on-the-weston-a-price-foundation.html
2. “The 3 Season Diet” by John Douillard.
   http://www.amazon.com/The-3-Season-Diet-Intended-Cravings/dp/0609805436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331703428&sr=8-1
3. http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/myths-of-vegetarianism#7