Devolve Your Health: What a Caveman Can Teach You About How to Live Well: Another SIde Effect of the Standard American Diet

In this blog, I spend a lot of time talking about the major health problems that go along with the standard American diet. There is no doubt that a western diet leads to multiple chronic health problems, obesity, and early death. I have seen it with my own eyes, both in myself and in my patients, many of whom suffer from hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and various forms of cancer.

Today I was thinking about some of the other side effects of the western diet, mostly due to my daughter. Yesterday, she went to a small carnival at her elementary school, with a friend of hers. Christy and I were not there with her. She was with the parent of her friend.

Although our children are not completely vegan, only a tiny percent of their daily calories come from animal products. In general, they eat a diet of whole, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. At the little carnival, as you might imagine, the foods available were not the kinds we would usually feed her. She ate a couple of hot dogs, as well as several dessert foods made with processed sugar and flour.

Later that night, my daughter complained of abdominal pain. She had crampy abdominal pain, as well as several episodes of diarrhea. This lasted most of the night, and went away after about 12 hours or so. By morning she was all better.

I know what you are thinking: little kid ate too much and got a tummy ache. I was thinking the same thing, until I remembered that I used to get the same symptoms. Before I switched to a vegan diet, when I was very overweight, I used to get abdominal cramps and diarrhea so frequently that I had diagnosed myself with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Until today I had never thought about it, but those symptoms stopped immediately after I switched to a whole foods vegan diet.

Apparently Irritable Bowel Syndrome is yet another side dish served with the standard american diet. If you have IBS, and don't believe what I am writing, I challenge you to switch to a whole foods vegan diet, and prove me wrong.