Full Text Transcript
Dr. Shayna Peter here with Well Ahead Chicago, holistic doctor here in the Chicago area. I wanted to take a few minutes today to walk you through what we're doing in our office to help people who are following a vegan diet. So I'm doing this video as a sequel to a video that I did before on the vegan diet with some really important information that you should know if you are vegan or you're thinking about becoming vegan. So I put the link below in the comments. So if you didn't get a chance to see that video, you can check that out. So after that video, lot of you guys were contacting us asking what you can do. So I put this video together to talk more in depth about nutritional deficiencies that can develop for following a vegan diet. So I'm sure you've heard this before. If you're thinking about going vegan or making any sort of radical change in your diet, that you should have some guidance from a professional so you can make sure that you're doing it in a healthy way.
So let's jump in. So these are some of the vitamins and minerals that you can be prone to developing deficiencies too, if you're following a vegan diet. So vitamin B12, if you're deficient, you can develop a condition called pernicious anemia where your body is not able to properly oxygenate your tissues. Um, Choline is considered what's called a lipotrope. So it's involved with metabolizing fat, um, and liver function. So it actually protects your liver from developing fatty liver disease. Zinc has a lot of different functions. It's antioxidant, it supports the immune system. Um, now vitamin D is anti-inflammatory, it supports your immune system, and it plays a very big role in regulating blood sugar. So this can be one of the reasons why a lot of times people that are vegan have issues with their blood sugar. They may have a high or low blood sugar, and that's one of the reasons why.
So I get a lot of questions from people about, you know, how can I find out where I stand, how can I find out where my levels are? And there's actually blood testing available that can help you to find out where your levels are for all of those different nutrients and many more. And so what I actually want to do is show you a few test results of people that had been vegan so that you can get a much better understanding and understand why it's really intelligent to take a test like this.
Okay. So I want to just go through this quickly with you guys and show you some real results, some real examples of people who have done this thorough blood testing of their vitamin and mineral status and these who are people who have been vegan. So I'm going to skip to some of these pages so that you can get, um, more of the visual representation here. So, uh, we're, we're looking here at here at the top is their B Vitamins. So obviously they've got some other things going on, but I just want to point out here some of the vitamins and minerals that we talked about that are correlated with, um, following your Vegan diet. So, as you can see here, this circle, um, under B12 is close to the middle. So what this means is that their level is close to being borderline.
What we want to see it was optimal would be, um, higher, further into the green. And so this person is close to being borderline with their B12 level. Um, and uh, it's something that has to be treated because in the coming months it could turn into a deficiency and we wouldn't want that. Um, so if you look at this next line, so we talked about Choline. So their Choline level is actually fine in this particular person. If you look at the next line, their vitamin D is close to being borderline again. So this circle should be up higher, further into the green. Zinc is close to being borderline. You see that? Um, here on this page, they're chromium. So I didn't mention chromium. Chromium is another mineral that plays a really big role with blood sugar regulation. So this, um, and you'll see this again in some of the other of course that I'll show you.
So this one is, um, important as well as vitamin D and maintaining healthy blood sugar. So just wanted to show you guys that there, so, and scroll down and show you some of these deficiencies. So this person is very, a lot more deficient in B12. They're in the borderline range. So we definitely have to correct that because we don't want it to become a deficiency. But even in the borderline, um, range, people can start to have symptoms because their level is not optimal. So keep that in mind. So just because you're not deficient doesn't mean that you won't start to have symptoms.
So this person, they're Choline is close to being borderline. So again, if that's not treated, it can become a deficiency. A few months down the road, look at this line, their vitamin D is close to being borderline as well as their zinc. So a lot of the same pattern here. Um, and their chromium is borderline. So again, chromium is another mineral that's really important with blood sugar regulation. It helps insulin to function properly. So I hope that that gives you guys more insight in a little bit better understanding of why it's really important to have a test like this done so that you can know where you stand. Everyone is not the same and you could think that you're doing what's healthy, but your results will really tell the story. The test results don't lie. So the obvious question is what are the longterm effects of being depleted of a lot of these nutrients?
And the thing is you may not feel them right now you may feel great, but in the meantime your body is being depleted of these nutrients. So you could end up passing out one day; you could notice that you're becoming injured more easily and you're used to working out a lot. You can start to notice hair loss. You could start to notice that you're getting sick more often with Colds and infections. So those are just some examples with a lot of these things. It takes time for the effect to catch up with you. So there's, you know, these deficiencies that are on the horizon and the effects just haven't caught up with you yet. So that's why it's really important to know where you stand. Um, people have a lot of different reasons for becoming vegan. They can be against commercial farming practices, they can be against the animal cruelty, it could be religious reasons, or they could just want to make a radical change in their health.
Regardless of what category you fall into, this is what we do in our office. We do a complete wellness profile. We check your vitamin and mineral status as well as some other really important markers of inflammation and a lifetime health. And this is why we're different and this is why we get such great results. And I'm gonna put a link below in the comments so you can read more about the markers of lifetime health. But this is our approach. Um, and we have resources available for people that fall into either category. Some people may just want to know what they can do to be healthier, where other people may have more serious health problems and they want to get to the root of it. Um, no matter where you fall, we have resources available that can help you. So if you've been out there struggling without the right guidance, I want to be there to help you.
I've helped so many people in your shoes. So if you're struggling, you can call our office and set up an appointment. I'd be happy to sit down and go through your specific case with you and see how I could help you. I do. So I just wanted to make this video for you. I hope that you found it valuable. If you did find value in this video, please don't hesitate to share it with someone who you feel could benefit. There's so many people out there searching for this information and don't know where to find it. So share it with someone, tag someone who you feel could benefit because you could absolutely be changing your life for the better. So again, thanks for watching this video. I'm Dr. Shayna Peter and I'll see you next time.
