Blood Panel for Vegan and Vegetarian Diets

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If you follow a vegetarian or vegan/plant-based diet, you will naturally ask yourself whether your body is receiving adequate nourishment. Depending on the type of diet, it is indeed necessary to pay attention to a sufficient intake of certain nutrients and to monitor these through blood tests where appropriate. If food choices are suboptimal, a deficiency in the following values could easily arise.

Unfortunately, vitamin B12 does not occur in plants in a form that is usable by humans, and is therefore one of the critical nutrients in a vegan diet. It is therefore recommended to supplement vitamin B12 if you follow a vegan diet and avoid animal-based foods. Blood vitamin B12 levels provide an indication of your vitamin B12 status. Holo-transcobalamin is the active form of vitamin B12 — the form that is actually effective in the body. This value is therefore a sensitive indicator of your current vitamin B12 supply.

By avoiding animal products, the body loses an "easy" source of iron. Since it is harder for the body to absorb iron from plant sources, vegetarians and vegans may develop iron deficiency if their diet is not sufficiently balanced. Using a full blood count, serum iron, and ferritin, we can build a picture of your iron status.

Our bodies can produce vitamin D themselves when sufficient sunlight reaches our skin. During the winter months, vitamin D production may be reduced, meaning your body may also need to rely on "external" supply.

Dietary vitamin D intake is in fact lower in vegans and vegetarians than in people who follow an omnivorous diet. However, since there are actually only a few vitamin D-rich foods (e.g. fatty fish such as salmon, eel, and herring), these differences play a somewhat subordinate role in determining vitamin D status. The decisive factors for vitamin D levels are therefore not dietary habits, but primarily the latitude at which you live, your daily routine (time spent in sunlight), skin colour, and whether or not you use supplements. The blood value 25-OH-D (25-hydroxyvitamin D serum concentration) provides information about your supply status.

With an unbalanced selection of purely plant-based foods, deficiencies in vitamin B2, folic acid, iodine, zinc, and selenium may also occur. In individual cases, it would be discussed whether monitoring is necessary.

Do you feel lethargic, tired, and underperforming, and see a connection with your diet? Are you unsure whether you are getting sufficient quantities of the relevant nutrients through your diet? Please feel free to discuss this with our medical team. We provide nutritional medicine recommendations and plan relevant laboratory tests to identify possible nutritional deficiencies.

Good to know: Currently, laboratory tests are only covered by statutory health insurers when there is a specific medical indication, and not preventively — for example, for a vegan or vegetarian diet in the absence of symptoms.