Nutrition and Diet

The first study in history on the incidence of stroke in vegetarians and vegans suggests they may be at higher risk. “When ranked in order of importance, among the interventions available to prevent stroke, the three most important are probably diet, smoking cessation, and blood pressure control.” Most of us these days are doing pretty […] More

The cholesterol-lowering statin drug Lipitor has become the best-selling drug of all time, generating more than $140 billion in global sales. This class of drugs garnered so much enthusiasm in the medical community that some U.S. health authorities facetiously proposed they be added to the public water supply like fluoride is. One cardiology journal even […] More

What are the consequences of having to make your creatine rather than relying on dietary sources? “Almost universally, research findings show a poor vitamin B12 status among vegetarians” because they aren’t taking vitamin B12 supplements like they should, which results in an elevation in homocysteine levels. This may explain why vegetarians were recently found to […] More

Many doctors mistakenly rely on serum B12 levels in the blood to test for vitamin B12 deficiency. There were two cases of young, strictly vegetarian individuals with no known vascular risk factors. One suffered a stroke, and the other had multiple strokes. Why? Most probably because they weren’t taking vitamin B12 supplements, which leads to […] More

Could the apparent increased stroke risk in vegetarians be reverse causation? And what about vegetarians versus vegans?  In the “Risks of Ischaemic Heart Disease and Stroke in Meat Eaters, Fish Eaters, and Vegetarians Over 18 Years of Follow-Up” EPIC-Oxford study, not surprisingly, vegetarian diets were associated with less heart disease—10 fewer cases per 1,000 people […] More

Does eating fish or taking fish oil supplements reduce stroke risk?  In my last video, we started to explore what might explain the higher stroke risk in vegetarians found in the EPIC-Oxford study. As you can see below and at 0:25 in my video Vegetarians and Stroke Risk Factors: Omega-3s?, vegetarians have a lower risk […] More

Not taking vitamin B12 supplements or regularly eating B12-fortified foods may explain the higher stroke risk found among vegetarians. Leonardo da Vinci had a stroke. Might his vegetarian diet have been to blame? “His stroke…may have been related to an increase in homocysteine level because of the long duration of his vegetarian diet.” A suboptimal […] More

Just because you’re eating a vegetarian or vegan diet doesn’t mean you’re eating healthfully. “Plant-Based Diets Are Associated with a Lower Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease, Cardiovascular Disease Mortality, and All-Cause Mortality in a General Population of Middle-Aged Adults”: This study of a diverse sample of 12,000 Americans found that “progressively increasing the intake of […] More

How can we explain the drop in stroke risk as the Japanese diet became westernized with more meat and dairy? As Japan westernized, the country’s stroke rate plummeted, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:15 in my video Vegetarians and Stroke Risk Factors: Saturated Fat?.  Stroke had been a leading cause […] More