 It never ceases to amaze me how correct some people think they can be, despite being so far from the truth. In the case of vegans, they try to justify their moral ethical beliefs in the context of nutrition. Unfortunately for these vegans, they aren't too educated on nutrition and therefore don't sound too bright. As it turns out, Ravana has decided to give up veganism, citing small intestine bacterial overgrowth or SIBO issues. SIBO happens when bacteria from the colon are able to get into the small intestine where they don't belong. Ravana has seen a gastroenterologist about this who recommended that she take antibiotics so that she can get rid of the SIBO, the bacterial overgrowth in her small intestine, and she said that she didn't want to do that because it wasn't natural. What she would prefer to do is switch to a diet that includes animal products, and since animal products are fiber-free, theoretically there's less fiber available for those bacteria that have infested her small intestine to feed on, so there will be less production of gas and bacterial growth and such. Guys, guys, go back and watch how many times she cuts the video. It looks like she googled what SIBO was, took notes, and then her vegan brain fog impaired her ability to string more than three sentences together at once. Clearly doesn't look too confident in what she's saying. So certainly including animal products in the diet is one way to mask the symptoms of SIBO, but it's not necessarily addressing the problem. But the ways that we develop SIBO are already quite well known. There's some primary risk factors for developing it, and unfortunately, Ravana has actively participated in many of those risk factors, so Mike the Vegan did a great video going over some of those reasons. He cited the long-term water fasts that Ravana participated in. She did a 25-day water fast with Dr. Doug Graham down in Costa Rica, which is a fasting program that has had problems in the past with bacterial infections. And unless someone is on death's door with cancer or diabetes or high blood pressure, I would never recommend a fast of more than three to five days. I don't like the idea of fasting at all because I have a history of eating disorders and many people with histories of eating disorders like Ravana seem to gravitate towards water fasting because it's like anorexia for health, but specifically in terms of gut health. When you're on an extended fast, there are still bacteria in your gut and they don't have anything to eat. And so a lot of species of this bacteria will actually, you know, turn and start consuming the protective layer of our intestines. That protective mucoid layer is full of sugars and proteins and it's some of the favorite food of bacteria when we're not eating any fiber. And so simply that can cause a huge amount of irritation and inflammation for the gut. And you know, it's why fasting isn't something that we need to be doing unless we're on death's door until the potential benefit outweighs the potential risk of a serious gut infection or serious gut inflammation, water fasting shouldn't happen. For those of you unfamiliar, Ravana is a vegan that was caught eating fish. She lost her period and had to follow a high fat diet for a period of time, likely combining sugar and fat, causing gut imbalances, which can easily lead to SIBO. But this girl here sounds like a child trying to justify her vegan diet. Animal products mask SIBO. You mean animal products cure SIBO. Saying that a 25 day water fast would cause SIBO is literally the complete opposite of what's happening. You aren't giving your body any food to feed the bacteria. So how could it make SIBO worse? It's certainly not anorexia for health. There are very intelligent people who fast for benefits outside of weight loss and appearance. Dr. Jason Fong being an excellent resource on that. To say fasting causes inflammation is literally the stupidest thing I have heard this year. Fasting resets your digestive system and allows your organs to rest. Any input in your body from a food perspective is a negative for inflammation regardless of how good the food is. You could have the highest quality wild caught fish and your body still has to deal with inflammation. The only baseline for inflammation is fasting. That's the only point in time when your body isn't inflamed. This mucoid plaque is more vegan verbiage that they use to scare people. It's actually composed of bacteria. So if anything, the bacteria in your stomach is eating other bacteria, therefore reducing the overall bacterial count in your body. What she is saying is literally the opposite of what's true. Mike did a great job of mentioning that when you're water fasting, you can actually start to have peristaltic contractions that go the wrong direction and that could actually move contents of the colon into the small intestine. The other issue that Mike the vegan addressed that could directly lead to SIBO is the consumption of alkaline water. So Ravana's husband apparently owns an alkaline water bottle company and like I just, ooh. The alkaline water trend is not about health, you guys. It's about making money because when you drink alkaline water, it goes into your stomach and your stomach is a very acidic environment. It needs to be very acidic because when we eat food, oftentimes we're eating a massive amount of bacteria and the vast majority of that bacteria needs to die in the acidic stomach. So if we're drinking alkaline water or, you know, like some people take baking soda and it just blows my mind, like don't alkalize your stomach. Oh, then we're getting a little washed out. When your stomach is not acidic enough, bacteria don't die like they're supposed to and the next stop after your stomach is the small intestine. So for the love of God, stop trying to alkalize yourself unnaturally. Peristaltic contractions. Oh no, I'm so scared of peristaltic contractions. I don't know where these vegans get these things. They just like using medical terminology to scare people. And peristaltic contractions don't move the stomach contents backwards. They actually move them forwards. I have no idea where she got this idea. Blaming alkaline water doesn't make any sense either. She did say that the stomach is supposed to be acidic but the stomach will always try to maintain an acidic pH. And she's saying not to alkalize your stomach, but one reason the vegan diet causes SIBO is because the high food volume that these vegans consume dilutes the stomach and digestive system. The sheer volume of liquid and solid foods is too much. It just dilutes the acidity a crazy extent. The second reason is that this high amount of food that's diluting the stomach and not being digested as a result of the lower acidity is being eaten by the bacteria. It's like a perfect storm for SIBO. She also said that foods contain massive amounts of bacteria when you consume them. That's not true. Unless it's a fermented food, it's not going to have a crazy bacteria count. Of course everything you put in your body has bacteria to some extent, but the high micro count is in your intestine. Which brings us to the next very unnatural act that Ravana was regularly taking part in that has likely directly caused the SIBO infection that she's dealing with. This obsession with colon cleansing. Y'all, our colons are dirty places. They're supposed to be. It's where poop is made. There is so much bacteria inside them and that is exactly how it should be. If we're eating a whole plant food diet that's based on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds, we're getting tons of fiber and that fiber is able to move through the digestive system and take the toxicity, the extra cholesterol, the extra hormones with it out of us. Colon cleansing causes SIBO. Listen, I know vegans like shooting water up their butts, but not every single vegan that has gotten candida or SIBO does colon cleanses and if anything, more of them don't. This is one of those things that people look at for a solution. If anything, colon cleansing reduces the bacterial content of the large intestine. She literally sounds like a salesman for the USDA food pyramid. Tons of fiber and that fiber is able to move through the digestive system and take the toxicity, the extra cholesterol and hormones out of us. There have been clinical trials showing that adding fiber supplements to your diet does not alter cholesterol at all. Also, if you're following a vegan diet, you aren't consuming cholesterol so it's not going to be present in your digestive tract and I'm not sure if she knew that cholesterol was in the bloodstream and what toxicity is she exactly talking about? The toxic putrid, round up filled plant and garbage that you are sucking down like it's the holy grail. Hormones in her colon. This is a joke. This is literally a joke. There's hormones in my colon. I'm losing. There's hormones in my brain right now that are making me lose my mind. There are consequences to our actions. There are consequences to obsessions with trying to be cleansed. There are consequences to doing extremely unnatural things like forcing pressurized water up your ass. Young lady, it's arguable that shooting pressurized water up your ass is more realistic than a vegan diet. In nature, you can't follow a vegan diet but there are various sources here and there such as geysers or fast flowing streams that can achieve the former. But she doesn't want to take antibiotics and so there is a part of me that is extremely frustrated with the frankly stupid decisions that someone has made that has led them to a health crisis. But there is also a part of me that has a huge amount of compassion for someone who likely has unresolved issues with disordered eating. You know, I was stuck in an eating disorder for about 10 years, like I know what it feels like. What's the lesson here boys and girls? Don't take dietary advice from someone who had an eating disorder for 10 years. But we know that judgment of these vegans is fairly impaired so cut her audience some slack please. But as a YouTuber there also needs to be a certain amount of accountability and I think it's incredibly important if you have a moral compass and any sense of integrity to reflect on the ways that our projections influence the precious innocent people who follow us and the way that they are able to take care of their own health. Accountability? Is she gaslighting people? She's doing the exact same thing. She's influencing young girls to follow a starvation diet. The things that have been coming out of the biohacking keto intermittent fasting communities would have been up until this point in history accurately identified as eating disorder like behavior. Okay, okay, this is crazy. She is literally gaslighting her own insecurities onto people. Anyone who isn't vegan has an eating disorder? This is pure dog shit. So again, we have a case of someone starting out on a raw vegan diet very restrictive like fruit based from what I could tell from seeing her what I eat in the day videos. Really no omega 3 precursor fats. Her diet got progressively higher and omega 6 rich fats like tahini. And so when I heard her say in her video about why she's not vegan anymore when she was referencing omega 3 fats, I was like, well, no duh. And it's so frustrating and perhaps I'm being an asshole right now because this is such an easy fix, especially when you're someone who could easily get sponsored by a vegan supplement company. And as someone who clearly has no scruples about advertising whoever reaches out to your channel, you could have gotten a DHAEPA algae based supplement. I've been taking one for about two years and it's not like I was feeling bad. I didn't feel like I really needed it and I was doing such a good job getting my precursor fatty acids, the ALA from things like flax seeds or hemp seeds, mostly flax seeds. But I was like maybe maybe it could be an issue. It's just better safe than sorry. I'll get a supplement. As someone who actually researches nutrition and reads studies, there has never been anything showing that alpha linolenic acid, the plant form of omega 3 fatty acids, can raise blood levels of DHA. Omega 6 fatty acids compete for the 6D saturated enzyme, both at the initial conversion and the end of the conversion into DHA. The problem here is that it is bottlenecked at the start in the context of a high omega 6 diet and due to poor conversion rates on all fronts, a vegan diet is always inherently high in omega 6. Therefore, the plant based sources will not raise your blood levels of DHA unless you are taking some form of algae supplement. And as far as supplementing goes, Elise used to live on the island. We had mutual acquaintances and one of those acquaintances told me that like she's not supplementing with B12, she literally just got the first B12 supplement she's ever taken and this was I guess maybe late 2017, early 2018 and it's just so irresponsible and so easily avoidable and so confusing because clearly she's not against things that can be sold as supplements. So I just I just do not understand how this is Oh, I do. It's very clear. Actually, you are promoting the glitz and glam of the vegan diet just like everyone else. But you forgot to mention if you don't take DHA and vitamin B12, your body is going to crumble apart even quicker. So why I'm no longer vegan video, she says that she got tested and she was deficient in all the nutrients. Like I don't know what kind of test is capable of testing all the nutrients in your body, but whatever. Oh, I don't know a blood test, maybe perhaps a vitamin panel, but she said like basically I was deficient in everything and like no shit, you're not eating. She indicates in that video that she had done like juicing and water fasting as well. And I hope to hell that everyone who is watching this sees a very distinct pattern, restrictive diet, fasting, gross calorie restriction, unbalanced nutrient intake, then getting into the biohacking stuff, then switching to high fat diets and then finally they're going back to animal products. I see a pattern myself. Vegans saying that every single vegan that failed on a vegan diet did it incorrectly. Every single person that is still vegan is supposedly some expert on why the other vegans failed on their diet. And what they're doing is trying to justify their religious cult of a diet. What's even more comical is that Lilacoy Hawaii is saying, you know, she hasn't really watched too many of their videos, but she acts like she knows exactly what she was eating down to the gram. This is pure speculation at best. And I know that you know that your primary demographic are girls from like 12 to 24. We're talking about young, impressionable girls who do not know better than to listen to you and to emulate you and to do what you're doing to try to achieve the same body shape or hairstyle or skin condition that you have. I know that you know that my heart hurts when I think about the demographics of girls who are watching these videos and who just desperately want something and a lot of these girls, YouTubers are big in their lives. Not a hypocrite talking about accountability without having any semblance of understanding of nutrition. Imagine how I feel. This is guys, this is enough for me. I really don't know how these people, it's really unfortunate how they develop followings and have large groups of people. I spend two, three, four, five hours a day reading studies, researching, understanding my diet. And these people don't know basic nutrition. They don't know basic medical terminology. They don't even know you could get a vitamin panel on a blood test. I'm losing my mind. I really am. I'm going crazy. But outside of that, thank you guys for watching. Please like, subscribe, hit the bell icon, share the video if you enjoyed it. Down below guys in the comments is a bunch of stuff. My Amazon shop Patreon is a great way to support me as well as get one-on-one question support. There's also some exclusive videos on my Patreon such as how to cook a healthy pizza. We just started carnivoreform.com as well as the perfected health podcast. All of that stuff is down below in the comments as well guys. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram. If you're on social media, hey, drop me a follow. If you guys do want to reach out for one-on-one consultations in regards to improving your overall health, you can shoot me an email frankatufano.com or contact me through the form on my website below frank-tufano.com. You guys enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video.