 There are two primary issues with a vegan diet that dramatically increase your chance of stroke. The first is elevated omega-6 consumption, specifically through linoleic acid. This linoleic acid oxidizes cholesterol, causes plaque buildup in arteries, eventually leading to heart disease. The second issue is the lack of vitamin B12 reducing the body's ability to turn homocysteine into methionine. High homocysteine levels in the blood also cause oxidative stress, just as the omega-6 fatty acids do. This also ties into the MTHFR, the methylene tetrahydrofolate gene mutation, which actually occurs in up to 50% of the population, 10 to 15% in Caucasians, over 25% in Latinos, and a majority of Asians have this gene mutation where they need to obtain their vitamin B12 from preformed sources. Let's start with why omega-6 fatty acids are dangerous, specifically linoleic acid. Linoleic acid occurs predominantly in seed oils, aka vegetable oils. These vegetable oils that are in margarine, processed foods, originated as a byproduct of manufacturing. They used to use these oils to lubricate machinery, and they figured, oh, why not sell it to people? I don't know what sort of twisted person thought this, but when you consume large amounts of these linoleic acids, the lipids in your body literally turn into linoleic acid. Your cholesterol, your fat, your adipose tissue is literally becoming composed of linoleic acid. In this finished study, adherence to a high omega-6 fat diet was measured by taking adipose tissue samples. Levels of linoleic acid in the experimental group were 10 times higher than that of the control group. It has been demonstrated that patients who consume food items such as margarine enriched with plant sterols, aka plant fats, have increased plant sterile concentration in serum and aortic valve tissue. Findings in that study demonstrated that patients who had consumed a diet supplemented with plant sterols over a time period of up to four years, compared to those who had not, had six-fold higher concentration of plant sterols in a aortic valve tissue, indicating that there were plant fats deposited in their arteries. These findings, however, could not be verified in a smaller study with a shorter time period of plant sterile diet supplementation. This indicates that short-term, there is not an effect that can be measured. This means if you start consuming high omega-6 fatty acids, it takes a couple years for your body to actually change its composition. There are demonstrations in correlation between plant sterols in serum and in atherosclerotic lesions, showing that higher levels of plant fats in the blood mean higher levels of plant fats in the actual artery wall. Another evidence that functional foods supplemented with phytosterols are effective in the prevention of heart disease is unavailable and individual studies have shown it may be harmful. To put this simply, plant fats get deposited in your arteries and cause them to get clogged. But let's understand why. So you've been consuming all of this linoleic acid, these plant-based fats, and now your cholesterol is made up of this linoleic acid. As a normal body mechanism, this cholesterol will enter and leave the arterial wall. But if the LDL particle contains linoleic acid, it will oxidize when it enters the arterial wall. This is because human umbilical vein endothelial cells convert linoleic acid to HODE, which are oxidation products of linoleic acid. This oxidized 9 HODE product was 30 to 100 times higher in heart disease patients compared to healthy individuals. The oxidized LDL is no longer recognized by the LDL receptors on the liver, but by scavenger receptors on white blood cells, causing the white blood cells to pick up the oxidized cholesterol. This white blood cell gets stuck in the arterial wall, turning into a foam cell, what we know as clogged arteries. Here's another study demonstrating the mechanism. The uptake of endothelial cells, artery cells, because of the increase of LOX1. LOX1 is an LDL cholesterol receptor for binding oxidized cholesterol. This is solely due to expression by linoleic acid. This other study explains that oxidized LDL can be produced in a variety of ways and leads to foam cell formation, atherosclerosis, the main factor in heart disease. That study also showed that they were able to induce oxidation of LDL with soybean oil. To me, this is very scary. High omega 6 intake from linoleic acid literally makes it so your body doesn't recognize the LDL cholesterol anymore and attacks it. This causes massive, massive oxidative stress. It seems like this mechanism is a guarantee for heart disease and stroke. Now let's touch on actual outcome data. In this cohort, substituting dietary linoleic acid in place of saturated fats increased the rates of death from all causes, coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease. This study shows replacing saturated fats with plant-based oils increased death risk by 22% for each 30 milligram reduction in serum cholesterol. Total evidence shows replacement of saturated fat in the diet lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Increased intake of high linoleic vegetable oils and reducing that of animal fats significantly increased cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality. Repeatedly heated oil has been shown to increase blood pressure and total cholesterol, causing vascular inflammation as well as vascular changes which predispose to atherosclerosis. This explains why heart disease is so prevalent in the United States. Just about every single restaurant fries their food in soybean oil or vegetable oil. It's crazy that you put the word vegetable in front of oil and people think it's good. Onto the second issue, a vegan diet is deficient in B12. Low vitamin B12 levels cause high levels of homocysteine which causes high levels of oxidative stress in the body and from what we saw earlier with plant fats causing incredible amounts of oxidative stress enough to cause heart disease on their own, this is an alarming combination. Elevated homocysteine levels promoted inflammation or clogged arteries. This study shows that Seventh Day Adventists, a vegetarian group due to religious beliefs has the same rates of heart disease as everyone else. Not only that, their stroke rate is more than double the average, around 11% where the normal stroke rate is approximately 4%. The risk factor here seems to be predominantly in the woman. Stroke patients from high homocysteine were 41.4% vegetarian. Vegetarian subjects presented significantly higher homocysteine levels. Higher prevalence of hyperhomocystinemia and lower serum B12 than controls. There was a 29% frequency of hyperhomocystinemia in vegans and vegetarians versus 5% in omnivores. Vegetarians had a 26% deficiency rate of B12 and vegans had a 78% deficiency rate. Vegetarians are prone to develop hyperhomocystinemia so they are at high risk to develop cardiovascular disease. Serum levels of B12 do not exclude low tissue levels. Functional cobalamin deficiency can occur at any serum level. Homocysteine levels are still higher in vegans despite them using B vitamins. So let's take a look at the mechanisms in the body and actually see what's happening. This study explains the mechanism behind what's actually happening. Homocysteine suppresses nitric oxide production which is an antioxidant. This obviously increases oxidation in the body. It also inhibits glutathione, another primary antioxidant in the body. This stimulates the growth of more endothelial cells resulting in essentially more oxidized cells. Homocysteine also inhibits enzymes that are involved in maintenance of protein in cells. This results in massive cell oxidation and death. Not consuming vitamin B12 resulting in high homocysteine levels is a guarantee to oxidize cholesterol as well as oxidize the protein cells that are picking up the cholesterol such as white blood cells. Here is a study demonstrating the mechanism of homocysteine oxidizing these protein cells and this study demonstrates that homocysteine makes cholesterol more prone to oxidizing. Helping in it clogging the arteries more frequently. Outcome data. High homocysteine has a very high association with increased all cause mortality. Not to mention it's associated with dementia. I'm sure high homocysteine levels can be linked to a variety of diseases. So why haven't trials been done on this? Because it's unethical. There haven't even been trials on any diet long term. Not alone a vegan diet, a keto diet, a carnivore diet and in these studies they looked at vegetarians so we can assume that vegans might be even worse off in regards to homocysteine. So these two things. High omega-6 intake causing LDL cholesterol to be oxidized that clogs your arteries and the high homocysteine oxidizing more cholesterol and causing protein cells and cholesterol cells to die and burst. It really seems like the perfect storm. But even though we demonstrate this in studies and it lines up with the outcome data, how come these vegans and vegetarians aren't dropping dead on the spot? And the answer for this is that the health of the general population is so poor. One in four people are dying of heart disease so what's the big deal if vegans just die a few years later? Stroke rates are 4%. Okay so if double to triple the amount of vegans and vegetarians die of stroke, there's probably other confounding factors in their lifestyle that are reducing their risk of other mortality. If these two things won't scare someone into removing linoleic acid from their diet and increasing their B12 intake through high quality animal foods even if you're vegan eating things like oysters that are non-sentient, if this didn't do it then nothing will. Big shout out to Ivor Cummins and Tucker Goodrich. They did a podcast I think a week or two ago on this idea that plant sterols, linoleic acid cause oxidized LDL which leads to heart disease. That idea was solely from Tucker Goodrich, although all of the research and the studies I did accumulate on my own. The B12 homocysteine thing was something I came up with when essentially googling stroke luperi vegan trying to find that association there and eventually I pieced it together. So thank you guys for watching, please like, subscribe, hit that bell icon and share the video. If you guys would like to support the channel there is a bunch of stuff you can check out down in the comments below. Outside of that you guys enjoy the rest of your week. Might the vegan I noticed your neck was a little bit pasty. I think the lack of fat soluble vitamins in your diet are causing you to burn like a fried egg when you look out the window. So you need any tips in regards to increasing the nutrient density of your diet, feel free to reach out.