vegans and physical extremes

[robert99]

Is it more difficult for vegans to push themselves to physical extremes? - BBC News
Mount Everest: Altitude sickness claims third death in three days - BBC News
Is it more difficult for vegans to push themselves to physical extremes?
The 34-year-old, a South Africa-born lecturer at a business school in Melbourne, was determined to climb the world's highest mountain with her husband - and to set an example.

In an interview published on her university's website in March, Ms Strydom said she and her husband Robert, both vegans, hoped to show the way by ascending Everest and the highest mountains on other continents.

"It seems that people have this warped idea of vegans being malnourished and weak," she said. "By climbing the seven summits we want to prove that vegans can do anything and more."

Sadly, Maria did not make it to the summit. She was one of three people to die on Everest over the past three days.

All the signs are that she died from the effects of altitude sickness before she was able to reach the summit on Saturday. Robert reportedly also fell ill, but survived.

Many of the headlines since then have inevitably focused on the couple's lifestyle, However, there is no suggestion it played a part in what happened on Everest.

 

[Dedalus]

Many of the headlines since then have inevitably focused on the couple's lifestyle, However, there is no suggestion it played a part in what happened on Everest

Indeed. Distasteful reporting to put that spin on the story. After all - look at the stats for how many non-vegans also perish.

 

[robert99]

If she had not mentioned it herself, no one in the media would have known.

 

[Second Summer]

Opinion piece by Elena Orde, the editor of The Vegan magazine*:

Far from dying of any kind of nutrient deficiency, Maria succumbed to altitude sickness. This is caused by ascent to high altitude, where the oxygen in the air becomes thinner, resulting in hyperventilation, nausea and exhaustion. Altitude sickness can befall anyone, and surprisingly can’t be prevented by someone including bacon or butter in their diet.

More: The death of the vegan climber was a tragedy, but her diet was irrelevant (24. May 2016)

* The Vegan is the Vegan Society's charity magazine which is distributed to all its members.

 

[robert99]

Maybe nutrient deficiency only effects vegans after they've climbed a few mountains around the Globe,
"Dr Strydom, who over the past eight years has climbed Denali in Alaska, Aconcagua in Argentina, Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, and Kilimanjaro in her continent of birth, Africa, among other peaks."

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Sad to hear about these deaths. Although, on some level, they were privileged people that knew the risks and this is arguably less of a tragedy than the greater number of people being killed in car accidents, wars etc every day.

When you climb at altitude, there is a delay in getting altitude sickness sometimes - the effects may come some hours after the exposure. A fit, macho type that bounds ahead and climbs higher faster could be more likely to succumb to altitude sickness. Whereas in theory an unfit person struggling to ascend might be doing the right thing from an acclimatization standpoint.

This complicates the issue, since it may reduce or remove any correlation between fitness and success rate.

There are also too many other questions like mountains climbs failing because of poor equipment, a poor guide, bad weather on a given day, just too many other variables.

Hard to read anything into this, either way. You'd have to hear that the vegan success rate was far above or far below the rest for it to be in any way meaningful.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

I think I know how to design an experiment that could tell us about the effects of a vegan diet on physical fitness. However, the more I think about it the more complicated it gets.

You take a (statistically valid) sample of people and have them run and cycle around a track, racing for 400m and 1500m and 10km runs. You then repeat these runs once a week, timing the results. You train at a low level so fitness doesn't improve but stays constant.

You then have everyone suddenly change their diet to a vegan diet - perhaps in the space of one week. Consider eliminating from the trial people with very erratic results. Repeat, compare results.

One problem you would have would be measuring the vegan placebo effect. In proper scientific terms you would need a control group that thinks they are on a vegan diet, but actually isn't. (Perhaps break into their houses each week and secretly lacing their vegan foods with fat and cholesterol and vitamin B12 would do the trick!)

Another problem would be that some people might react to a change of diet rather than the diet, whether that be an initial boost in performance that falls off, or an initial decline as the body adjusts then recovers. To remove a systematic bias you might have to find some vegans willing to go back to a meat eating diet so you have some people doing meat first, then vegan and others vegan first, then meat. Although with vegans being so few, and so many of them having become so opposed to meat, it's going to be quite a challenge to get those volunteers! Probably not realistic. So, you'd perhaps want to run the experiment for a very long time (a couple of years?? six months) and just assume that that would be longer than any adjustment time.

You could have a proportion of the volunteers transition back to meat at some point while others continue on the vegan diet and measure that effect.

 

[Naturebound1]

I keep thinking about Scott Jurek and Fiona Oakes and all the ultra marathons they have run all over the world, in extreme places like the desert and the arctic. And they have both done it over decades of being vegan. And that's evidence enough for me that vegans are perfectly capable of extreme exertion.

 

[Andy_T]

There are testimonies (anecdotal evidence) from athletes that after going vegan, their performance actually increased.

My personal (totally unscientific, founded on no scientific evidence) impression on that is that the exercise those athletes put in and their basic disposition likely account for 95 % of their performance, and nutrition possibly for the last 5 %

 

[Danielle]

Why wouldn't it be?
I personally wouldn't try it, though

 

[ledboots]

More: Yes, Vegans Can Climb Mt. Everest

Thank you for this, I outed myself as a vegan on an unrelated forum today because they were all "PROTEIN" and etc about the woman who died on Mt Everest.

 

[Andy_T]

More: Yes, Vegans Can Climb Mt. Everest

Very good article, thank you!

The truth is that a vegan diet is safe. Climbing Mt. Everest is dangerous.

This!

 

[Jamie in Chile]

After 5 months on a vegan diet, I went running today, and it was only the third time I've been running all year, the previous two last month which were shorter but I didn't time them or measure the distance. I haven't done any sports this year or hardly anything fitness related.

I did 10k at just over 7mph (I timed it and measured the distance on google pedometer), and only stopped because I was developing a blister rather than too tired to continue. That's the first time for three years I've ran anywhere near that distance.

It was actually slightly easier and faster than in the past considering how little I've run. I wouldn't have run 10k at 7mph on my third run in the past after a prolonged period of not running, it would have been a shorter distance, or a slower speed. In 2013 I ran a 10k and ran it 5% faster than today but that was a competitive race, I pushed myself a bit harder, and I'd done more than 10 training runs in the few months before, including one other competitive 10k.

When I started to run 8 years ago I was really unfit and managed to run 2 miles from work to my house at the third attempt, and it was extremely hard to do, much harder than today.

Not bad considering I'm 36 years old and ought to be in decline athletically. Will be interested to see how performance develops from here.

It may not be the vegan diet as such however, it may be simply weight. I seem to have lost more weight off my stomach than anywhere rather than legs muscle which must help. I weigh about 10% less than a few years ago and maybe 20% less than 8 years ago. Then again, most of the 10% weight I lost while on a vegan diet. Then again, I was trying to lose weight anyway and might have lost it anyway...

The other factor is at the same time as going to a vegan diet, I've also increased intake of whole plant foods somewhat, and reduced somewhat junk/processed food.

It's difficult to draw any definite conclusions from this, other than perhaps to say my vegan diet has either slightly helped or not affected my athletic performance, but certainly isn't making it worse.

 

[Andy_T]

Congratulations, Jamie, and do keep it up!

I am really looking forward to starting running again once I am back in Germany. Just too hot and humid where I live now....