Sounds like you went from hypogonadism ( which is associated with all of your listed issues) to something healthier.
Quite impressive if diet solved it, although it might be the calories, not the content.
If anything I am eating less calories now. I was heavier then as well. It was causing a multitude of deficiencies. B6, Zinc I know for sure because my doctor tested them.
But it is interesting you bring up hypogonadism, not that I had it, but I was born with a cryptorchidism and had to have the testicle removed when I was three. This is a known effect of zinc deficiency which is one reason they tested me.
http://www.ivsajournals.com/article_3146_21dc13f2fb1df514b89...
If you were a "good" vegan, as you mentioned, I cannot imagine what kind of foods you ate to have more calories compared to fat (calorie) rich foods like fish, mussels or meat.
500 grams of raw beans is 2000kcal (very little for an avg 45 year old man), contains about 120g of protein, but is around 1.5kg of beanwater sludge when cooked. Impossible to eat in a day for most people. Adding rice, pasta, or other sources of calories still does not help a lot. It takes a lot of food to get to 2500-3000kcal.
Many vegans lack calories in their diet. Older and sedentary vegans that are starting to develop protein resistance (due to age or sedentary lifestyle) also consume way too little protein. A perfect recipe for various metabolic issues and aging related diseases.
Stop assuming you know anything about my life to fit your paradigm. I was always starving when I was vegan so I ate more. I know how many calories I eat it is is way less.
It is NOT just about food, it is also about genetics.
Is the cellular mechanism for this known? I seem to have trouble processing long chain triglycerides and I do better with animal fats, like butter and bacon.
Any resources you could link to or thoughts you might share on this detail would be potentially of value to me for better understanding my genetic disorder and practical approaches to managing it with diet.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S16738...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
We know the genome changes so much of us, from our eye color to height to susceptibility to ideas. Why would it not also determine what foods we should eat?
But yes, very will known. There are thee enzymes, FADS1, FADS2, and EVOL5 that turn the short chain fatty acids like ALA in flax seed into the DHA you find in fish. The FADS genes are the most studied and polymorphisms in the genes have been linked to different cultures and therefor the reliance on certain fatty acids.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Dietary-sources-and-meta...
You said it yourself that you were always starving as a vegan. Given that you were a "good" vegan, living on low calorie foods, I cannot see how you think you ate more calories, but were starving.
If you told me you had a 150kg squat, 200kg deadlift and did 6+ hours of hiking every week, but still had issues with weight and always felt hungry, I would be quite surprised, because there's no way you could maintain maximal force production with low calories. All of that muscle would also not be there with low calories.
Vegan food is rich in carbs, so saying you cannot metabolize short chain fatty acids is irrelevant when most of your calories came from carbs. Your body can turn these carbs to fatty acids that your genes can deal with (to create hormones, if you had enough protein too). If we think about essential fatty acids, then your hypothesis is testable, either by taking a long essential fatty acid supplement (EPA + DHA), or by measuring your EPA/DHA plasma levels after consuming ALA rich plant oils like flexseed (not olive oil, and most definitely not sunflower oil). Still, no way deficiency of ALA metabolites is going to put you in a weird starvation mode. It's the starvation that is causing your metabolism to shutdown. Of course you will have trouble metabolising ALA if you are starving.
Yes, it's not about food, it's about calories. Individuals that want to function well need to eat enough. If your issue was short fatty acids, then it's quite impressive that your diet fixed it. Long fatty acids are not essential, and to function you need to be able to create metabolites from short fatty acids, because not all long fatty acids required for human hormones and metabolism are present in your food.
I meant I was starving in that I always felt hungry, not that I was starving my self. I was never satiated so I over ate.
Capice?
If you ate 500 grams of raw beans (cooked), having 1.5kg of excrement going through your bowels will leave you quite satiated.
On my plant-only days, whenever I eat that much volume of food to get to 3500kcal (I weigh 220lbs and eat 4000kcal+ on regular days), I am basically satiated after first 2000kcal for the whole day and have to force myself to eat more. This is whole plants, no oils.
Of course, the massive poop next morning makes it worth the trouble :D