What are the risks / dangers of a change in diet?
As with any diet or form of nutrition, the general change in diet carries the risk of not being carried out properly and can cause a lack of nutrients and vitamins. With regard to social risks, it is of course possible that one’s own diet may meet with incomprehension, criticism or little support in the social environment. People who start a diet sometimes find it difficult to maintain the necessary discipline, the increased effort and a slow effect.
It is also possible that one has to find one’s way through the new spectrum of other foods in order to find out what tastes good or what one likes to prepare. When you start to inform yourself in the area of diets, it is quickly noticeable that everyone claims to be the best and most successful and criticizes the competitors. From a medical point of view, there are actually only a few points of criticism. A change of diet should best be medically or ecotrophologically accompanied, then there are no risks of doing it wrong. Doctors warn above all against one-sidedness of the nutrition and deficiency symptoms.
Medical evaluation of a change in diet
From a medical point of view, a change in diet is in principle always to be welcomed, provided that the patient is overweight without relevant chronic diseases. This is because overweight is accompanied by the clinical picture of “metabolic syndrome“. This is a disease of civilisation in our latitudes, which is characterised by the following four diseases (also known as the “deadly quartet”): tribal obesity (obesity), high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus (“diabetes”) and dyslipoproteinemia (high blood fat levels).
This combined clinical picture is based on an over-calorific diet and lack of exercise. All this can be avoided, improved and theoretically even cured by a change in diet with, for example, the renunciation or reduction of animal proteins, the intake of little sugar and fat. Other diseases are also clearly associated with the Western diet.
For example, it has long been known that the consumption of red, processed meat increases the risk of colon cancer, and many other types of cancer are associated with the consumption of a lot of meat. This does not mean that meat consumption per se triggers cancer, but rather that it may well promote its development. The exact reasons for this are not yet clear.
Gout, for example, could be completely asymptomatic if patients were to do without animal proteins altogether. Most cardiovascular diseases as well as arthrosis and rheumatism can be positively influenced by certain diets. In summary, it can be said that although it must be critically considered which patients should change their diet and for what reasons, a change to a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet has positive effects on health. In order to prevent cardiovascular diseases and cancer in particular, a wholefood diet is suitable.