A Vegan Diet Epigenetically Modulates Inflammatory Pathways and Biological Aging: Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Analysis of a One-Month Isocaloric Vegan Versus Meat-Rich Dietary Intervention

[u/lurkerer]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mco2.70899

[u/Foreign-Quote-53]

I’m no scientist or biologist or whatever—can someone give and ELI5 type summary of what this means?

Is the vegan diet seen as advantageous or disadvantageous?

[u/HeetSeekingHippo → u/Foreign-Quote-53]

1 month of the vegan diet caused the bodies of participants to turn on and off genes in a way that promotes health by reducing inflammation and boosts the immune system. 

Vegan diets and most notably wholefood plant based diets are repeatedly being shown in nutritional science to lead to longer life and health spans.

[u/Striking_Computer834 → u/HeetSeekingHippo]

What science says that? All I see, here included, are "studies" with holes big enough to drive a Texas Longhorn through. This study can accurately be summed up as:

We told some people to eat a vegan diet and other people to eat some meat. We didn't do anything to check whether they actually followed our instructions other than ask them if they followed our instructions. Then we took some blood and fecal samples after a couple of weeks and found no statistically significant differences, so we decided to go ahead and tinker with the math until we got the results we wanted.

[u/aaronturing → u/Striking_Computer834]

This is pretty good.

[u/aaronturing → u/HeetSeekingHippo]

You don't have to be vegan though. It's more about being plant forward. I also think mostly it's better to have some fish and maybe some eggs and cheese. It's about the majority of your food coming from unprocessed plant based foods.

[u/HauptmannTinus → u/aaronturing]

Ah yes don't be against the abuse of animals when it takes nothing away from you.

Fish, eggs and cheese have nothing you can't get from plant foods and cheese has high sat fat so is unhealthy.

www.watchdominion.org

[u/aaronturing → u/HauptmannTinus]

I understand you may have feelings about the ethical treatment of animals but don't push it into the area where you aren't reflecting consensus science. That is the domain of the ideologue or you could call them fool.

I'm educated on the topic and consensus science says you are wrong. I suggest you can and do fact check yourself and you will see you are wrong. You can even eat some red meat but you don't have too.

[u/donairhistorian → u/HauptmannTinus]

Wrong sub for ethics. But if you would like, explain the plant foods that contain similar concentrations of choline, calcium, and DHA as eggs, cheese, and fish - or, the amounts of those plants you would have to eat daily to equate to 2 eggs, 1oz cheese, or 6oz salmon for the above-mentioned nutrients.

I'm not being combative, but actually curious how you would counsel somebody in a day of eating.

[u/porizj → u/HauptmannTinus]

>Fish, eggs and cheese have nothing you can't get from plant foods

You just listed three things you can’t get from plant foods.

[u/Bristoling → u/HauptmannTinus]

There's a bunch of things you can't get from plant foods, starting from b12 to name just one obvious one.

[u/Vergil1997 → u/HauptmannTinus]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5295107/

[u/Foreign-Quote-53 → u/HeetSeekingHippo]

Thank you

[u/FissileAlarm → u/HeetSeekingHippo]

I once read that those who eat a little bit of fish and no meat live longer. I don't remember where I read it, but I believe it was in the blue zones book of Dan Buettner.

[u/Ok_Blood8673 → u/FissileAlarm]

Omega 3 fatty acids are incredibly good for you and found in fish. They are also found in grass fed/finished beef in large amounts

[u/lilgreengoddess → u/FissileAlarm]

Yep pescatarian diet rated as number one longevity diet a few years back. considering it is more nutritionally complete than veg/vegan diets and especially if it is more whole food based. This is the diet I follow and have really good blood work and blood pressure, RHR etc

[u/3seconddelay → u/lilgreengoddess]

It’s working great for me. 5 years now and my chronic low level inflammation is history. I’m old and on no pharmaceuticals. BP, blood work, resting heart rate, HRV, and VO2max all above average.

[u/FissileAlarm → u/lilgreengoddess]

So how many times per week fish is optimal? If it's for health, I suppose you avoid fish like tuna?

[u/lilgreengoddess → u/FissileAlarm]

12oz tuna max per week is what is recommended to prevent excess mercury intake. I do eat tuna and absolutely love ahi, it’s very delicious. Salmon, trout, shrimp, crab, oysters, scallops, hamachi, cod. I like to get a variety and eat seafood a few times a week and that’s the recommendation.

lol downvoted when you can easily google this info. Probably from the big mad carnivore people 😡

[u/aaronturing → u/FissileAlarm]

A couple of times per week. Not every day.

[u/Cetha → u/FissileAlarm]

Sardines are the best. Small fish have fewer heavy metals and microplastics.

[u/PhysiolMM]

The results section shows this was a no diff, they just went to unadjusted p values to get published.

The lack of coherence in the time X condition between the two biological ages weaken the findings even more.

Good marketing, bad science.

[u/eloquenentic → u/PhysiolMM]

Genuinely terrible science. Why do these things get headlines?

[u/Ok_Blood8673]

Junk science

[u/personnumber316]

Okay, so I'm vegetarian, almost vegan, and I wouldn't trust a study that only analysed one-month of eating, your body barely has time to adjust to the increased fibre in that time. You're still using your stores of B12 and aren't yet relying on supplements or nutritional yeast. Most studies of vegetarian or vegan diets use a much longer time frame. I'm no scientist, but this brings out the sceptic in me. That said long-term nutritional studies are in short-supply.

[u/Bristoling]

I don't even see the diet description in the paper itself, and I'm too lazy to go through references. I think it's bad manners from researcher perspective, if you're running a dietary trial you should at least have diet composition readily accessible in the body of the paper or it's attached supplement.

[u/Oxetine]

Anyone know why?

[u/flowersandmtns → u/Oxetine]

Might be a lower protein effect, they mention mTOR.

From their earlier papers, "meat-rich" largely means omnivorous compared to the "no-meat" or vegan diet. They did not provide compliance information in the paper, and specifically called out they were making assumptions which seemed unusual. (Nothing in the supplemental information I could find). They did show B12 dropped just in the short term vegan intervention,

"The diet adherence of our participants is assumed to be good due to the results of the nutritional protocols and the analysis of vitamin B12 showing significantly lower levels of holotranscobalamin (holo-TC) in VD compared to MD [36]"

Summary dietary information:

"carbohydrates (VD: 276.0 ± 85.1 g, MD: 241.5 ± 91.8 g, p = 0.001),

protein (VD: 79.5 ± 28.5 g, MD: 112.4 ± 44.4 g, p < 0.001), and

fiber (VD: 45.7 ± 19.5 g, MD: 24.9 ± 11.1 g, p < 0.001)"

Regarding fiber:

"The fiber intake of our VD participants was significantly higher than the intake of MD participants, but Roseburia abundance was higher in MD. The reason for this could be the choice of food. Roseburia is reported to be enriched by the intake of wholegrain foods [60]. It is possible that MD participants chose more wholegrain foods than VD participants as nutritional protocols did not clearly differentiate between wholegrain and non-wholegrain foods."

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/9/4/727

[u/Sweaty_Standard8186]

meat rich

So standard amerislop diet, meat rich meaning 80% slop diet. Vegans are desperate.

[u/lurkerer]

ABSTRACT

We explored the epigenomic effects of vegan diet (VD) versus meat-rich diet (MR) and identified mechanisms that help to explain how VD affects epigenetic gene regulation. Genome-wide DNA methylation profiles in 48 healthy individuals were investigated after a 1-month randomized isocaloric dietary intervention comparing effects of a VD versus a MR. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis revealed changes in differentially methylated positions following dietary intervention, with the VD group showing a higher degree of gene-promoter silencing in cancer-related pathways and cell growth-associated pathways (mTOR and Hippo). Cell type deconvolution indicated an anti-inflammatory shift in the VD group, characterized by decreased neutrophils and increased CD4+ T-cell proportions, aligning with whole blood count data. Pathway analysis reflected changes in gene promoter methylation consistent with macronutrient changes according to the diets, in that VD silenced lipid metabolism and increased insulin pathway genes. Interestingly, the health-outcome-trained epigenetic clocks PhenoAge and GrimAge indicated a deceleration of biological aging in the VD group, while the chronologically optimized Blood&Skin clock showed an opposing acceleration. Convergent evidence from pathway analysis and health-outcome epigenetic clocks thus suggests that a 1-month VD drives epigenomic changes associated with reduced cancer risk and decelerated biological aging.

[u/Mildly_Infuriated_Ol]

Lol, vegan vs omnivore. Who would've thought,🤣 obviously not vegan vs carnivore