A Vegan Health Article from All-Creatures.org

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Whole Foods Plant Based Diet as Part of An Integrative Approach to the Assessment and Treatment of Stress and Pain

From Dr. Thomas Johnson, NCSP, CPQ, IP
October 2024

The well-trained psychologist and/or other health care provider can serve as practitioners and as health care educators

Vegan salad plate. Image from Pixabay

Over the last few decades our psychological services group (Johnson Associates) has been providing a full range of psychological services. These services have included psychotherapy, consultations, education, and psychological assessments or evaluations. The recipients of our services have included individuals, couples, families, teachers, counselors, special needs students, and health care providers. The ages of our clients/patients ranged from 5 to 80 plus.

If the service involves conducting a psychological assessment, we usually start out by telling our clients that we all have strengths and weaknesses and we will go over the results of the assessment illustrating their strengths and weaknesses before disclosing results to the referral sources, usually physicians, nurse practitioners and/or educators. We require written permission or permission from parents if the client is a child before the report is released.

Our psychological evaluations include assessment of personality functioning (both normal and abnormal personality functioning), psychological type/learning preferences, stress indicators checklist, pain symptoms and cognitive functioning.

Cognitive functioning includes short term auditory memory skills, short term visual memory skills, long term memory skills, attention skills, verbal skills, spatial intelligence and executive functioning. Our evaluations are often done in conjunction with medical assessments. The focus is on thoroughness and deep respect with an emphasis on empathy, positive regard and genuineness for the person being evaluated.

Once the psychometric portion of the assessment has been completed, we then do a comprehensive analysis of the data and conduct any relevant research that needs to be considered as part of the follow-up consultations and recommendations.

Typically, most of our patients/clients have stress and or pain related issues which we address in the recommendations section of the report. We use the Harvard Medical School's Stress Control/Management Model as a reference point for follow up. The four major components include well balanced plant based nutrition, exercise, meditation/sleep and counseling, cognitive restructuring and/or person-centered counseling (for a review see my article listed in the online edition of the April 2003 edition of the Communique, A Review of Stress Control: Techniques for Preventing and Easing Stress and/or my web site thomasjohnson.academia.edu).

I provide handouts of my article for all clients when I go over the report and recommendations. The current updated online edition of the Harvard model can be obtained by going to health.harvard.edu. The Harvard model is largely plant based but because the data on health and longevity is so supportive of a whole foods plant based/vegan diet the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine's Vegan diet is discussed with clients. We offer PCRM's excellent Vegan Starter Kit. It is made available for all clients who are receptive to reading it. It can be confusing to some clients because they are often unaware of health psychologists who are trained in nutritional health care. It usually makes sense to most clients once the rationale is explained, and they understand how critical nutrition is to treating problems of living that are based in what we eat and drink. An up-to-date evidence-based health care library is maintained to explain the foundations of this practice including a variety of articles published by the NASP Communique and All-Creatures.org written by the author of this paper [Review of Eating Our Way to Extinction].

PCRM has many vegan based scientific articles involving the treatment of distress and pain posted on their web site-PCRM.ORG and in their quarterly publication GOOD MEDICINE. For example, see the following:

A vegan diet may lower your stress and anxiety levels, according to a study published online in Nutritional Neuroscience. Researchers surveyed 620 vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores about mood. Increased fruit and vegetable intake resulted in lower anxiety scores for male vegan participants, compared with nonvegans. Female vegan participants experienced reduced stress levels because of their animal-free diets as well as their lower intakes of sweets.

References

1. Beezhold B, Radnitz C, Rinnie A, DiMatteo J. Vegans report less stress and anxiety than omnivores. Nutr Neuroscir. Published online on November 21, 2014.

An example of how a vegan diet can reduce pain is the following:

Vegan diets improve joint pain and other symptoms from rheumatoid arthritis, according to a study published by Physicians Committee researchers in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Forty-four participants diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis followed a vegan diet or took a placebo with no diet change for 16 weeks, then switched places after a four-week washout phase. The diet group also eliminated common pain-trigger foods and reintroduced those foods one-by-one over the next nine weeks to assess participants’ reactions. Joint pain, the number of painful joints, and pain severity improved more in the diet group than in the placebo group. These results support similar findings between plant-based diets and improved arthritis symptoms.

References

Barnard ND, Levin S, Crosby L, Flores R, Holubkov R, Kahleova H. A randomize, crossover trial of a nutritional intervention for rheumatoid arthritis. Am J Lifestyle Med. Published online April 3, 2022. doi:10.1177/15598276221081819

Another example of how a vegan diet can alleviate pain is provided at the Cleveland Clinic web site- health.clevelandclinic

One of their physicians Dr. Wiillam Welches points out that:

Inflammation is the body’s immune response to toxins as it works to “purify” itself. The resulting inflammation not only causes pain in the body. Over time, it also can trigger chronic diseases, such as heart disease and strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and even depression.

Dr. Welches goes on to state:

There are a numerous ways to treat and manage chronic pain. One of the most exciting approaches, however — because it is all natural — is adopting an anti-inflammatory diet. The other options for pain don’t always work. Many patients don’t benefit from neural (nerve) blocks, and medication therapy often leads to undesired side effects.

In addition to the above reference the author of this article also makes available recent articles he has authored that have been posted on the All-Creatures.org web site such as There is Only One Blue Zone left (July 2024) and Review of "Eating Our Way to Extinction" (June 2023). One finding that stands out that is particularly relevant here- from the Blue Zone article is that the healthiest and longest living group in the world is the vegan Seventh Day Adventists. On average they live 10 or more years longer than those eating and drinking the Standard American Diet (SAD). Also, they have less cancer and fewer heart attacks than the rest of the nation.

Beets are just one example of a vegetable that is particularly powerful in promoting health benefits . Many benefits are reported on the Verywellhealth.com/benefits-of-beets web site. "Beets have been demonstrated to reduce pain by reducing inflammation, lower blood pressure, and supporting brain health via the nitrates which dilate and relax blood vessels lowering blood pressure and help increase blood circulation and oxygen transport to the brain."

While I consider a whole food plant-based diet (veganism) to be the foundation of an integrative approach to stress and pain control, meditation is also extremely important in the process. Numerous studies are referenced in the highly regarded reference work You Are Not your Pain: Using Mindfulness to relieve stress and restore well being by Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman. Both authors have struggled with severe pain following serious injuries. They are using their studies and experience to teach and coach others suffering back pain, arthritis, celiac disease, chemotherapy etc.

Many of our referral clients acknowledge using alcohol as a dysfunctional way of easing stress and/or pain. In looking at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism web site we can see that the most recent statistics available indicate that over 85% of the US population over 18 reports that they drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime and over 25% admitted that they engaged in binge drinking in the past month. Unfortunately, there is a myth and common belief that light drinking ( 2 alcohol drinks a day for men and 1 for women) can be heart healthy. Recent research reported on Health Canada web site indicates that no amount alcohol is healthy. My impression is that this fact is not widely known, so as health educators we believe that it is important for our clients to know this fact and to be educated to the fact that regular meditation can ease distress and pain in healthy ways with typically no adverse side effects. Of course, it is easier said than done but we can easily develop treatment plans to replace alcohol dependence or any other addictive substance such as tobacco, cocaine etc. with meditation and/or the other stress management strategies as discussed above.

In summary and conclusion, this paper reviewed an approach to the assessment and treatment of stress and pain used in our practice as health and consulting psychologists. I have focused on the nutrition component of the Harvard Medical School's Stress Control model. I have modified the nutrition component in a way that reflects recent studies emphasizing a whole foods plant based or vegan diet. In effect, the well-trained psychologist and/or other health care provider can serve as practitioners and health care educators. Over the years as our knowledge base has increased, we have incorporated this knowledge into our practices so that all of our clients and consultees can benefit. Many of our clients have been looking for non-drug-based treatments that are evidence based without the adverse side effects often associated with symptom-oriented drug treatments. It is very satisfying to see how our clients and students can benefit from the approach discussed in this article.

Biographical Notes

Thomas Johnson completed his graduate studies as a US Public Fellow at Brown University in social psychiatry and medical sociology. He earned his master's degree from Harvard University in counseling psychology and doctors' degree in counseling psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He completed his doctoral internship at Duke University. He has had faculty positions at Rutgers University, the University of Southern Maine and Bates College. He is the founder and first president of the Maine Division of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. Dr. Johnson is currently limiting his practice to research and consulting psychology. 

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: November 1, 2024
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We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.