To Vegan, or Not to Vegan?

Recently I experienced a bizarre health complication that has helped me re-evaluate my current position in life. After some on and off again numbness in my lower limbs, I woke up one day completely numb from the waist down. I couldn't feel my feet or legs for that matter, and it made it extremely difficult to walk or even stand on my own because it affected my ability to keep my balance. After visiting my primary doctor, eventually my mother and I decided that I would have to check myself into the local ER.

During the course of the following week, tests and studies were done on me which only caused confusion to my doctors because they couldn't understand why this occurred to me, only what it could be. They found in my MRI's inflammation in my spine, which was causing some kind of signal block from my brain to my legs. You see, my legs independently were alright. The nerve connections were all working and thus my legs worked just fine. I could move them (though with some difficulty in coordination), and even stand and walk with assistance. However, if they were to touch my legs, I couldn't feel their skin or texture, just the pressure of something against me. For example, I wasn't able to tell you how many fingers were against my knee just that something was pressing against it.

They eventually decided to run a spinal tap to collect more information. While waiting for the results, they notified me that they found a precursor to multiple sclerosis (MS) in my neck. It's like telling someone they are pre-diabetic, you're not diabetic, but you only need a push in the wrong direction to actually have the disease. For those that are unfamiliar with MS, it is a type of auto immune disease that attacks the nerves in your body, causing numbness in your limbs. Due to this fact, it is a degenerative disease over time. Again, I didn't have it, but I have the potential to. It didn't cause this episode, but they were worried this episode might have some kind of ripple effect and "activate" this precursor.

Of course, this was unsettling. MS doesn't have a cure, but my mother quickly made me focus on the fact that we will cross that bridge if we even reach it. For now, we need to just do our research, reach out to an expert in the field to confirm if I even have the disease, and start making changes no matter what that answer might be. My family has an abundant supply of health issues that, thankfully, are not hereditary. Therefore, that means I can prevent nearly all of them from appearing in my body. After doing some research, it didn't take long before I came across many studies that state how an all plant-based diet provides the best results for reversing health issues, especially in preventing them from happening in the first place.

Now, this post isn't to try to convince anyone to give up their meat and go vegan, but I will say, do your research. Putting aside the animal cruelty campaign, there are many valid reasons why going vegan is a good idea.

- Removing animal products from your diets has nearly immediate benefits to your body and overall health. These foods are nearly all processed, and processed meats are chock full of hormones, antibiotics, toxins, and even carcinogens.

- You strongly reduce your carbon footprint in the process. By not consuming meat, you are not adding to the supply and demand for animal slaughter. Raising animals for slaughter has shown to be one of the larger contributors to green house emissions in our country.

- You will have way easier digestion and feel more energized. People have the misconception that you need meat to get protein. There are so many ways to get protein from plants such as beans, quinoa, chickpeas, nuts, lentils, and even potatoes to name a few. All protein in meat comes from plants anyway. Plants are the only living things that can produce protein, after that it can only transfer up the food-chain as it's consumed by animals such as cows and other livestock. Might as well get it straight from the source.

- It has been proven to prevent and even reverse many diseases. Haven't you ever wondered why doctors rather give you pills to prevent you from getting sick instead of sending you to a nutritionist to change your diet? Or rather prescribe pills to deal with symptoms than to try to heal you so you won't need said pills anymore? It's a pharma business. There's too much money being made off sick people to make them healthy and thus lose that income.

But before you start to claim conspiracy theory, I suggest you do your own research. Look up all of those "health" organizations such as the "American Heart Association", "American Cancer Society", or even "Breast Cancer Research Foundation". Find out who their sponsors are and then see if the things those companies sell connect in any ways. Conflict of interest is a term that comes to mind. If red meat is bad to consume for your heart, why do you have beef recipes in your healthy meals page? Oh? You're being sponsored and receiving money from meat companies? Interesting...

All I know, at the end of the day, if all I can really control is what I put into my body, and what I do to my body, then I want to make sure that I do what is best for my body and in turn my future. I know I can’t just become a vegan overnight, but I can start cutting out things from my diet until I reach that point. I've started with most meats, and relabeled myself as a pescatarian, aka only fish and seafood as my source of meats along with my veggies and fruits. Eventually the plan is to cut even that out of my diet and transition into lacto-ovo vegetarianism. The next step after that will be to cut out dairy, then eggs and then finally reach veganism.

This could easily take years, but I know it’s for my own health and worth the change. I already feel the difference in my energy levels and even weight loss has been noticed since I cut out meat from my diet. Once I'm back on my feet fully, with physical therapy and my own exercises at the gym on the days in between, I'll lose weight even faster as a result. I plan to share my experience as I make these life changes and hopefully in the process I can inspire others to change with me. My whole family is making this change with me, and that level of support is priceless and surely will affect my success as I move forward with this.

Plus, there are so many delicious foods out there for me to try, why leave them waiting?! Yum Yum!