Veganism Has been Linked With Injury's Inability To Heal

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Travis Barker, Blink-182 drummer was involved in a plane crash on September 19, 2008. He was a vegan at the time and suffered second- and third-degree burns over his torso and lower body. Barker was taken to the Joseph M. Still burn center in Augusta, Georgia.

He explained during an interview several weeks later that he had to eat 6,000 calories a day in order to speed his recovery.

"Obviously, they did not have a vegan chef for me," Barker said that so he had to eat whatever and ended up eating a lot of beef jerky.

Giving up veganism, in barker's case, came with an added health benefit as reports claimed that his doctors had trouble getting his skin grafts to take, early in his hospital stay, which Barker said was due to his low levels of protein, but they had more success after a while on his new high-calorie diet.

Was Barker's vegan regimen really to blame?

Whether or not a vegan diet hinders the body to healing is debatable, but some studies seem to suggest that it does.

One 2013 review in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, discovered that milk protein is better able to support muscle protein synthesis after exercise than soy protein. The study authors speculated that it may be because milk protein contains more of the 20 amino acids that the humans need, according to CNN.

However, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington University and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Neal Barnard beliefs the argument is really old-fashioned thinking.

He acknowledged the importance of protein to recovery, but added that the amount of protein found in vegetables, beans and grains is more than enough, citing animals like bulls, stallions, elephants, and giraffes which are vegans and are able build their massive bodies and repair them entirely from plant-based foods.

Plant-based diet may actually be optimal during healing process as it helps the body regulate the levels of inflammation caused by the enlargement of blood vessels, leaking of blood into tissues and the release of antibodies that occur after injury, Barnard noted.

Although, inflammation may be designed to protect the body, it can easily get out of control. Veganism may help to keep it in check, the closer you get to no animal products at all, the better off you will be, Barnard added. Some studies however, contradict this conclusion as other research suggests that foods rich in carbohydrates may quicken the healing process.

The anti-inflammatory benefits of a plant-based diet may be counteracted by the fact that vegans do have to be more vigilant about getting enough protein, which research suggests may play a key role in speedy injury recovery, according to NYmag.

A 1998 study published in the Journal of Burn Care and Research found that increased protein intake helped burn patients increase their body weight and muscle strength. Another study published 2006 in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, monitored the recovery of adult male rats with bone fractures for five weeks after injury. Rats with the highest protein diets had the greatest body mass, muscle mass, and bone mineral density.

However, the director of vascular surgery research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, Charles Keith Ozaki noted that more research is needed to fully understand the long term relationship between what we eat and how we heal.