Did my diet do this?

[JojoR]

I am curious if anyone knows anything about vegan diets and POTS. I was raised in a super hippie family. We were raised vegan and my parents didn't put much stock in traditional medicine. I'm a little surprised I ever even got vaccinated, tbh. I'm glad I did though!

I started developing POTS symptoms at around 13 years old. My sister had similar symptoms. My parents never took it seriously. My symptoms got increasingly worse as I got older until at the age of 19 I took action for myself and saw a doctor. I was diagnosed with POTS and my doctor said that there was a good chance my diet was exacerbating my symptoms. I was taking vitamin supplements and my blood work did not come out with any deficiencies but I slowly started to incorporate dairy, eggs, and eventually even white meat into my diet anyway. Sure enough, my POTS symptoms improved greatly. They never fully went away but I function way better than I used to. I tried to transition back into veganism at one point and quickly felt my symptoms spiraling. My sister followed my lead and quit her vegan diet and she also improved drastically. So it seems like a pretty solid connection from our perspectives. 

I've been going over this in my head a lot lately and wondering about it. I've researched a bit but found almost nothing connecting vegan diets to POTS. Yet, the difference in my symptoms was striking. I just keep wondering if maybe I did this to myself/my parents did this to me by raising me on a vegan diet. 

[vepa]

I was quasi-vegan for about ten years (I ate eggs and cheese, but no other dairy and no meat). I definitely noticed that my dysautonomia symptoms got better when I added fish and dairy to my diet. 

My theory is that veganism does not cause dysautonomia, but if you already have it, a strict diet like that can make it worse. Being vegan is rough on the body. It's very hard to get all of the nutrients you need naturally, and your body does not absorb those nutrients as efficiently when it comes from a supplement. 

[MomtoGiuliana]

I have never heard about any link to veganism.  I am a vegetarian. 

However, some of us do best with a higher protein and lower glycemic index diet.  Maybe on a vegan diet you were eating less protein and more carbs?  Just a thought.

I think in general the typical American diet can be low on nutrients.  Including animal products may or may to result in a more nutrient-rich diet.  However I do know of kids who are vegetarian who eat a lot of pasta and really do not get enough protein probably, or other nutrients.  It is definitely more work to be vegan and make sure you are getting a balanced diet. 

[JojoR]

19 hours ago, vepa said:

I was quasi-vegan for about ten years (I ate eggs and cheese, but no other dairy and no meat). I definitely noticed that my dysautonomia symptoms got better when I added fish and dairy to my diet. 

My theory is that veganism does not cause dysautonomia, but if you already have it, a strict diet like that can make it worse. Being vegan is rough on the body. It's very hard to get all of the nutrients you need naturally, and your body does not absorb those nutrients as efficiently when it comes from a supplement. 

This makes sense, thank you! I just don't want to think that this could have been prevented and its somehow my or my parents' fault. 

 

 

4 hours ago, MomtoGiuliana said:

I have never heard about any link to veganism.  I am a vegetarian. 

However, some of us do best with a higher protein and lower glycemic index diet.  Maybe on a vegan diet you were eating less protein and more carbs?  Just a thought.

I think in general the typical American diet can be low on nutrients.  Including animal products may or may to result in a more nutrient-rich diet.  However I do know of kids who are vegetarian who eat a lot of pasta and really do not get enough protein probably, or other nutrients.  It is definitely more work to be vegan and make sure you are getting a balanced diet. 

I was raised on a pretty natural diet. No processed foods or artificial ingredients or added sugars. A lot of fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds and beans. My family even grew a lot of our own veggies via a community garden and made our own homemade almond milk. I'd say the most carb-heavy thing we ate would be rice. We didn't really eat a lot of pasta or bread. It felt very healthy growing up but as an adult who eats dairy and meat I feel as though I wasn't getting everything I needed. 

[firewatcher]

Your diet can influence your symptoms, otherwise the knowledgable POTS doctors would not suggest some of us increase our salt intake. Vegan, vegetarian, low-carb, raw or paleo diets each have people that do well on them. Other than nutrients and vitamins and minerals, you also have to look at your own "microbiome" or gut bacteria. Apparently new studies are showing that there are several different types of microbiome and that one gut bacteria type may not be healthy in other populations. The consumption of meat or not can effect your gut critters positively or negatively and that can effect serotonin and all the neurotransmitters, most of which are in the gut. Probiotics can help, but they have to make it all the way to the gut. Fecal transplants are finally a thing, but they are creating mixed results. 

I don't think there is enough real information about what is healthy for "everyone," look at how the recommendations for eating eggs has changed during our lifetime. I'd probably suggest that you eat what makes you feel the best and has does the least damage to the rest of you!

BTW, I've been vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous over 45+ years. My POTS is better if I avoid high histamine foods though.

 

[Julia Panther]

Interesting... it occurred to me that you might want to look at whether the things you weren't eating as a vegan (e.g. dairy, eggs) were important sources of magnesium, either because they had high levels of it in, or because the form the magnesium was in made it easily digestible...  Just an idea... perhaps you could still eat vegan if you included enough avocados etc to keep your magnesium levels high??

[RecipeForDisaster]

I have been vegetarian since 1989. I did have deficiencies in B12, iron, and D as I wasn't taking those (as a woman I think I would have needed iron supplements anyway no matter how much meat I ate). I eat a varied and very healthy diet, if anything, including -too many- nuts. I eat mostly vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. The extremely low B12 could have caused nerve damage and led me to dysautonomia... otherwise, I don't think my diet plays a role.

[Lily]

On 11/3/2017 at 6:26 PM, JojoR said:

I was raised on a pretty natural diet. No processed foods or artificial ingredients or added sugars. A lot of fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds and beans. My family even grew a lot of our own veggies via a community garden and made our own homemade almond milk. I'd say the most carb-heavy thing we ate would be rice. We didn't really eat a lot of pasta or bread. It felt very healthy growing up but as an adult who eats dairy and meat I feel as though I wasn't getting everything I needed. 

It looks like you had an excellent childhood diet (other than no meat), which was much better than what most people in USA eat.  Assuming your parents knew how to do veganism the correct way (which requires planning and forethought), you may not have been deficient enough in anything to cause disease.  Maybe your vegan diet was very low in salt?  I wouldn't ruminate on it any more if I were you.  Focus on the present, because that is where you live.  

The only universal dietary recommendation that makes sense to me as being truly universal is to eat Real Food and avoid processed food.  Second is to drastically reduce added and refined sugars, but avoiding processed foods goes a long way to accomplishing that.  Humans can thrive on a wide variety of diets and macronutrient ratios, so beyond that one simple rule you eat how you like.

Maybe you would benefit from a Whole 30 or other elimination diet, or just experimenting with adding or subtracting different types of foods to see if your health improves after eliminating something.  I did this with dairy once even though I knew I did not have a dairy problem, and I found out otherwise.  I was accepting as normal symptoms that were not.  Maybe there is something in your vegan diet that was exacerbating your symptoms, something that you normally don't eat when being ominivorous? 

[yogini]

Maybe you weren't getting enough salt, which kept your blood pressure low.  A vegan diet would probably be lower in salt.

[KNF]

While diet can either help manage, or in reverse can trigger certain symptoms, dysautonomia is probably not caused by anything you did or didn't do. As far as I know Primary POTS is auto immune or genetic, secondary is triggered . Of course if you increase salt and water it will help symptoms, but don't beat yourself up or run through what you did before your diagnosis and try to find a reason why. I did the same and my doctor told me exactly that. Hope you're all doing well!

[andy]

Consider that the vast majority of people with POTS do not eat a vegetarian/vegan diet, and also some people spontaneously recover from POTS. I know I have much less POTS-y symptoms since going vegetarian and then vegan, but the things that obviously make me worse are processed, high-glycemic foods. If you eat a completely whole food, plant-based diet with no processed foods, including minimal cooking of foods, I can't imagine that you would feel worse.

Food allergies might also play into it. It's important to be sensitive to how you react to specific foods.