• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Meat causes rapid depression

xena

xena

Senior Member
Messages
241
Hi all- do you know why eating meat might cause me to feel depressed within about an hour? It seems to persist the next day.

I have been eating plant based (99%) for the last 15 months but every few months experiment with a little chicken or fish and pretty much always feel awful. Organ meats seem to not have this effect so much but I don't feel great after those either.

I was really craving some meat yesterday so i just ate a little. (2 oz?).

I suspect I'm low in IRON. I just readded b12 and vitamin A supplements a few weeks ago and they have helped, so I suspect I'm low on certain nutrients most easily found in animal foods.

However, my health has overall improved significantly on a diet of mostly fruit and vegetables, largely raw and some ancient grains so I'm not really looking to re-add animal products.
 
Rebecca under the papyrus

Rebecca under the papyrus

Senior Member
Messages
181
Possibly the disruption of your microbiome through food that you're not used to anymore, and this causing a spike in inflammation which yields in depression. And meat being generally more inflammatory than plants... In our inflamed states that might be all it takes. Get better soon!
 
W

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,963
Location
Alberta
There are far more possibilities than hormones or antibiotics in meat. The fats, proteins, and other nutrients and other chemicals can all affect body chemistry. For a time, I had to give up meat because the fatty acids made my ME worse. Supplemental carnitine, which is necessary for transporting fatty acids across cell membranes, solved that. I can't remember the time frame for the symptoms to increase, but I think it was much more than one hour.

Presently I have to avoid most meats because of the proline content. For whatever reason, I've become really sensitive to that amino acid, and it's fairly high in almost all foods with significant protein content. :( CLAs (conjugated linoleic acids) found in ruminant meats and dairy slightly counters the sensitivity, so I can tolerate some beef or lamb if it is fairly fatty. This response to proline takes much longer than an hour, so it's probably not that for xena. However, these are two examples of how meats, or other foods, can cause significant symptoms.

@xena , if you want to try to figure it out, experiment with high-protein non-meat food to see whether it's a protein issue. You could also try some animal fat (the meat section manager gave me a chunk of beef fat for free when I explained it). Lard works for an experiment too. A big chunk of fat or lard for din-din. :yum: Actually, the beef fat wasn't that bad fried, and the lard went into pancakes.

Rebecca's suggestion that it might be microbiome related is also a good possibility. If you've been eating meat very infrequently, you probably don't have the bacterial ratios for properly digesting it. A meal of meat probably makes drastic changes in bacterial populations and the various chemicals they produce which in turn affects your body. It's possible that you can gradually rebuild a tolerance for meat.
 
Learner1

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
xena said:
Hi all- do you know why eating meat might cause me to feel depressed within about an hour? It seems to persist the next day.

I have been eating plant based (99%) for the last 15 months but every few months experiment with a little chicken or fish and pretty much always feel awful. Organ meats seem to not have this effect so much but I don't feel great after those either.

I was really craving some meat yesterday so i just ate a little. (2 oz?).

I suspect I'm low in IRON. I just readded b12 and vitamin A supplements a few weeks ago and they have helped, so I suspect I'm low on certain nutrients most easily found in animal foods.

However, my health has overall improved significantly on a diet of mostly fruit and vegetables, largely raw and some ancient grains so I'm not really looking to re-add animal products.
Click to expand...
Anyone on a restrictive duet for a long period of time should have comprehensive nutrient testing, like a Genova Diagnostics NutrEval test done to find nutrient deficiencies or imbalances.

In research, ME/CFS patients have been found to be short of B vitamins, lipids and several amino acids. A vegan diet is short of all these things too, so it might be possible that you could inadvertently be causing a worse situation. And, you could be short of minerals that are more plentiful in animal products than vegetable products, like iron and zinc.

As mentioned previously, your microbiome might be altered by your current diet, so that digesting animal protein might be more difficult and make you feel bad. Doing a test like Viome and following the suggestions may help your microbiome improve. And you may need digestive enzymes as suggested above.

Depression is known to be caused by nutrient deficiencies and microbiome alteration, so doing the testing might point out what is driving it.
 
BrightCandle

BrightCandle

Senior Member
Messages
1,197
Booble said:
Interesting. I get the reverse. If I eat a nice steak, which I only do rarely, I have a brief period of feeling energetic and terrific. Too bad it doesn't last that long.
Click to expand...

Likewise. I have found the trialed BCAA's give me a similar somewhat longer lasting effect so I actually think they may be onto something there. The main eplaination underpinning that would be some sort of liver damage or dysfunction, giving it materials it needs could very well improve functioning for a bit.

I want to give up meat but I clearly function a lot better on it than without.
 
W

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,963
Location
Alberta
Judee said:
I have to buy all antibiotic free which would seem contradictory because as I said recently on another thread recently, taking antibiotics actually helps me. ??
Click to expand...

Maybe it's not the antibiotic residue in the meat, but the changes in the meat from antibiotic action. General antibiotics will kill off good bacteria too. I suppose it might inhibit the usual breakdown of meat after death, or it might increase it, since there might be fewer natural controls on those bacteria. It's a lot more complex than 'just some residual antibiotics in the meat.'
 
B

Booble

Senior Member
Messages
1,465
Judee, I wonder if it's the fact that your antibiotic free meat is also added hormone-free as well that is what helps you?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back