Posted by Mark (Newton Abbot, Devon, UK) on 01/31/2013
★☆☆☆☆WARNING!
Be very careful on a vegan / vegetarian diet they may appear to be healthy and the answer to all health problems but a sinister reality lurks below the surface, my wife has been a strict healthy eating vegetarian for 20 years and a vegan for 10 she would not eat anything processed or non-organic , although she still manages to weight train and exercises daily she is now very poorly, she has been diagnosed with a vitamin B12 deficiency that almost crippled her, she still suffers badly with very painful burning hands, feet and face, her energy is often non-existent, her cognitive function is impaired slightly and she has joint and muscle pains throughout her body, for the past year or so she has been supplementing with high strength B12 tabs that have increased her B12 levels but it seems the damage done is severe (nerve damage) and may take many years to rectify, if it ever does, she has tried to eat meat again but after so long without it she can no longer tolerate more than a small forkful a day, any more makes her nauseous, probably due to a lack of enzymes and specific bacteria to digest it.
Mine and her advice now would be to try to eat some meat every now and then or supplement permanently with a good B12, once the damage is done it's not easy to repair it, as a long term non meat eater her bodily B12 stores finally ran low and now this is the result, B 12 is only found in animal sources and is vital for life, the body cannot produce its own supply, surely this is enough evidence to determine that we are supposed to be eating some meat now and then, put another way all vegans and vegetarians would be seriously ill or dead before 50 if manufactures did not fortify various grain and cereals or manufacture a B12 supplement, we humans even have some meat eating teeth just to prove the point. Whatever you do make sure to get plenty of B12 by any means possible otherwise you will run out of B12 eventually.
