Miracles are possible, apparently. I’m now on my third adventure in vegan eating. I did a one month experiment five years ago, a three month experiment four years ago, and am almost six weeks in to my third experiment now.
I normally follow a “vegan-ish” diet, where I allow myself to eat eggs, dairy and meat occasionally, but when I travel I find myself slipping into eating more of these things and less of the vegan fare of veggies, fruits, grains, nuts, starches, etc.
In the last year I’ve been suffering more than normal from injuries from running and tennis (I’ve been running my entire adult life and play tennis regularly), and an overall achiness that made me just feel kind of old.
After trying a bunch of different things to heal up my injuries and aches and pains, with nothing seeming to work very well, I remembered that in my three-month vegan experiment four years ago I had experienced a remarkable improvement in the ability to recover after long workouts and injuries (I was training for a triathlon at the time), so I figured I’d give the strict vegan diet a shot again. (Even though I say “strict” I’m still allowing myself one “cheat” a week, which has been pretty small cheats for me so far, like a bit of cheese on my pasta, or a bite of fish.)
Lo and behold, after about exactly a month of going vegan again I started feeling great, an overall feeling of wellbeing, and the stiffness and hobbling around the house that had been my daily experience in getting up each morning, has gone away. Normally, when I wake up and do a body scan I feel the inflammation in my ankles and hands and when I get out of bed it takes a few minutes of hobbling before the blood flows adequately to allow me to walk normally. That’s now gone and I can walk normally right away, and don’t feel that tingling in my ankles in the morning, even after playing tennis or running the day before. (The hand tingling is still here but that’s a different story).
This improvement does feel like a miracle and I don’t know what it is specifically that I’ve cut out of my diet that has induced this change.
By basic logic, however, it’s clear that my normal diet is effectively poisoning my body and producing serious inflammation and inhibiting healing from injury. I don’t know if this is dairy, eggs, or meat, since I cut all three out in my vegan diet.
My longstanding injuries (achilles issues, knee stiffness, glute and hammy stiffness) aren’t entirely gone yet but the improvement so far is remarkable and I’m hoping that it continues on this upward path to full health before long.
Here’s the article I wrote after my 3-month vegan experiment four years ago, on the science of vegan and vegan-ish diets, and my personal experience. The science seems to support a vegan-ish diet over a vegan diet generally, but I’m personally now far more interested in the vegan diet because of my remarkable personal improvements with this diet.
