Omega 3 Fatty Acids

Most commercial vegetable oils contain very little omega-3 linolenic acid and large amounts of the omega-6 linoleic acid. In addition, modern agricultural and industrial practices have reduced the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in commercially available vegetables, eggs, fish and meat. For example, organic eggs from hens allowed to feed on insects and green plants can contain omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in the beneficial ratio of approximately one-to-one; but commercial supermarket eggs can contain as much as nineteen times more omega-6 than omega-3!37

37. Simopoulos, A P, and Norman Salem, Am J Clin Nutr, 1992, 55:411-4

From: _http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/skinny.html#37

The above is from the Weston A. Price folks - firm believers in the Science behind cod liver oil, fats of grass-fed animals, raw milk dairy.  They are the best I have found in traditional diet knowledge backed with the best of the science.

I combine a good Omega 3 with an Omega 6 and keep it stored in the fridge for a quick sip whenever.  I'm also experimenting with combining ascorbal palmitate (Oil soluble) with the oil and consuming the mixture.  The water-soluble mineral ascorbates have a half-life in the blood of about 30 min.  Consuming the oil-soluble version should make it available much longer as the oils make their way to the cells to support oxygen delivery/transport.

I highly recommend a look at westonaprice.org
 
Laura said:
Breaking the yolks causes something in there to oxidize and changes its chemical nature, as I understand it.

Here are some more data about this process :

When cooking an egg, the cholesterol in the yolk is altered when simultaneously heated and exposed to air. Therefore, eggs should be cooked without breaking the yolks (i.e. poached, boiled, over easy, etc.), instead of scrambled or made into omelets. A raw blended egg should be drunk fairly quickly, or refrigerated, because leaving it out at room temperature will start cholesterol oxidation, albeit more slowly than by cooking.
{Health Scientist Panelist, Allan Spreen, MD, on e-Alert, April 3, 2003}
 
Egg education

Thank you for this as just moments ago I was reading food ‘Posts’ while cooking farm eggs and became distracted by the information contained (just prior to the Egg issue). Upon remembering my duties to the kitchen, I jumped up only to realize I had committed the cardinal sin of causing the eggs to overcook and break.

Then I read this ‘Egg Post’; gee whiz, strange synchronicity.

Regards

Tim
 
Burning eyes

This last while my eyes started burning, and I thought it was maybe because of the heater drying the air or insufficient sleep. It got so bad that I would sometimes just sit back and close my eyes for some relief. Just reading a few paragraphs on my computer screen was a story. I mentioned it a couple of days ago to a friend at the office, and she said she also experienced it at one stage. She mentioned it to her optometrist, and said it feels as if there's not enough liquid in her eyes. He said Omega 3 will fix it, which it did.

So I started taking it yesterday morning (2 capsules containing Omega 3, 6 & 9 three times a day), and alls well again, after weeks of burning eyes. ;D

On the bottle it says:

Omega 3:6:9 Vegecaps

A balanced blend of organic cold-pressed extra-virgin oils rich in all essential fatty acids.

Cold-pressed flax, pumpkin, cranberry, sesame, sunflower and evening primrose oils with natural Vitamin E specially blended in a 2:1:1 (Omega 3:6:9) ratio.
 
E said:
Burning eyes

This last while my eyes started burning, and I thought it was maybe because of the heater drying the air or insufficient sleep. It got so bad that I would sometimes just sit back and close my eyes for some relief. Just reading a few paragraphs on my computer screen was a story. I mentioned it a couple of days ago to a friend at the office, and she said she also experienced it at one stage. She mentioned it to her optometrist, and said it feels as if there's not enough liquid in her eyes. He said Omega 3 will fix it, which it did.

It works very good, from that I have increased the intake of Omega 3 I haven´t needed more eyes drops!

I wonder if primrose oil contains so much Omega 6 why not excluded it from the detox diet.?
 
So, what about Tahini as far as seeds go. It's a paste made from sesame seeds. I really like it. I use it in Hummus and even drizzle it over Brown rice. However, I am taking about 3.5 grams of fish oil a day and thinking about increasing that.
 
Galaxia2002 said:
I wonder if primrose oil contains so much Omega 6 why not excluded it from the detox diet.?

The following info from whfoods.org helps to clarify this:

Is it possible to avoid all omega-6 fats in a diet?

Yes, it would be possible to avoid all omega-6 fatty acids in a diet, but it would also leave you stuck with an extremely unhealthy and illness-producing diet. Linoleic acid (LA) is the starting point for production of all omega-6 fatty acids in the body, and our bodies cannot make LA. For this reason, it is well established as an essential fatty acid that cannot be omitted from the diet without dramatic and unwanted health consequences.

In addition to LA, there is a second omega-6 fatty acid that has been shown to have important health benefits, and that fatty acid is gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). GLA clearly belongs in the anti-inflammatory category of fatty acids, and it plays a critical role in our health, particularly with respect to our immune and nervous systems. GLA also appears to be especially important for our health when we are still infants, and we can obtain it through breastfeeding.

In contrast to our clear need for LA as an essential omega-6 fatty acid, and for GLA as an anti-inflammatory omega-6, is our relatively high intake of other omega-6 fatty acids, especially in comparison to our intake of omega-3s. In the average U.S. diet, for example, we are taking in four times as much arachidonic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid designed to help increase inflammation) as EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid designed to help decrease inflammation). We are also taking in twice as much arachidonic acid as DHA (docosahexaenoic acid, another omega-3 that is not only anti-inflammatory but critical for optimal cell membrane and nervous system function).

When I look at the most recent data from the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), what I see is an average U.S. diet that is consuming very close to the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) guideline for LA (the most essential omega-6 fat). The DRI range for the omega-6 fatty acid is approximately 12-17 grams, and the U.S. average intake is approximately 15 grams. Based on this information, I cannot recommend a cutback on our intake of this omega-6 fatty acid. But I also see an average U.S. diet that is extremely lopsided with respect to total fat and total saturated fat intake, and one that seems very low in omega-3s. From my point of view, our best bet in this kind of situation is to keep our intake of LA (the most essential omega-6) fairly steady and to focus instead on reduction of total fat intake and especially saturated fat intake. I also think there is much room for us to improve our omega-6 and omega-3 balance.

Evening primrose oil is a source of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA).
 
This article caught my eye. Seems to be a spurious attack on Omega 3 fatty acids by a mainstream journalist. I guess because it doesn't cure ADD it isn't useful at all. :rolleyes: Their were a lot of embedded links in the article, so if you want to dig further check out the source.

Fish oil in the Observer: the return of a $2bn friend
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 5 June 2010

“Fish oil helps schoolchildren to concentrate” was the headline in the Observer. Regular readers will remember the omega-3 fish oil pill issue, as the entire British news media has been claiming for several years now that there are trials showing it improves school performance and behaviour in mainstream children, despite the fact that no such trial has ever been published. There is something very attractive about the idea that solutions to complex problems in education can be found in a pill.

So have things changed? The Observer’s health correspondent, Denis Campbell, is on the case, and it certainly sounds like they have. “Boys aged eight to 11 who were given doses once or twice a day of docosahexaenoic acid, an essential fatty acid known as DHA, showed big improvements in their performance during tasks involving attention.” Great. “The researchers gave 33 US schoolboys 400mg or 1,200mg doses of DHA or a placebo every day for eight weeks. Those who had received the high doses did much better in mental tasks involving mathematical challenges.” Brilliant news.

Is it true? After some effort, I have tracked down the academic paper. The first thing to note is that this study was not a trial of whether fish oil pills improve childrens’ performance, it was a brain imaging study. They took 33 kids, divided them into 3 groups (of 10, 10 and 13 children) and then gave them either: no omega-3, a small dose, or a big dose. Then the children performed some attention tasks in a brain scanner, to see if bits of their brains lit up differently.

Why am I saying “omega-3”? Because it wasn’t a study of fish oil, as the Observer says, but of omega-3 fatty acids derived from algae. Small print.

If this had been a trial to detect whether omega-3 improves performance, it would be laughably small: a dozen children in each group. While small studies aren’t entirely useless, as amateurs often claim, you do have a very small number of observations to work from, so your study is much more prone to error from the simple play of chance. A study with 11 children in each arm could conceivably detect an effect, but only if the fish oil caused a gigantic and unambiguous improvement in all the children who got it, and none on placebo improved.

This paper showed no difference in performance at all. Since it was a brain imaging study, not a trial, they only report the results of children’s actual performance on the attention task in passing, in a single paragraph, but they are clear: “there were no significant group differences in percentage correct, commission errors, discriminability, or reaction time”.

So this is all looking pretty wrong. Are we even talking about the same academic paper? I’ve a long-standing campaign to get mainstream media to link to original academic papers when they write about them, at least online, with some limited success on the BBC website. I asked Denis Campbell which academic paper he was referring to, but he declined to answer, and passed me on the Stephen Pritchard, the Readers Editor for the Observer, who answered a couple of days later to say he didn’t understand why he was being involved. Eventually Denis confirmed, but through Stephen Pritchard, that it was indeed this paper(http://qurl.com/denis) from the April edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

If we are very generous, is it informative, in any sense, that a brain area lights up differently in a scanner after some pills? Intellectually, it may be. But doctors get very accustomed to drug company sales reps and enthusiastic researchers who approach them with an excitingtheoretical reason why one treatment should be better than another (or better than life as usual without the miracle treatment): maybe their intervention works selectively on only one kind of receptor molecule, for example, so it should therefore have fewer side effects. Similarly, drug reps and researchers will often announce that their intervention has some kind of effect on some kind of elaborate measure of some kind of surrogate outcome: maybe a molecule in the blood goes up in concentration, or down, in a way that suggests the intervention might be effective.

This is all very well. But it’s not the same as showing that something really does actually work, back here in the real world, and medicine is overflowing with unfulfilled promises from this kind of early theoretical research. It’s not even in the same ballpark as showing that something works.

And oddly enough, someone has finally now conducted a proper trial of fish oils pills in mainstream children, to see if they work: a well-conducted, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, in 450 children aged 8–10 years old from a mainstream school population. It was published in full this year (http://qurl.com/fish), and they found no improvement. Show me the news headlines about that paper.

Meanwhile Euromonitor estimate global sales for fish oil pills at $2bn, having doubled in 5 years, with sales projected to reach $2.5bn by 2012, and they are now the single best selling product in the UK food supplement market. This has only been possible with the kind assistance of the British media, and their eagerness for stories about the magic intelligence pill.

Stuff:

You might also enjoy this takedown of the Observer piece by Dorothy Bishop, professor of neuropsychology in Oxford, and this at HolfordWatch. I should say, it makes me admire the Guardian even more that they publish a column like this about one of our own news articles. Although I do think the headline they used (“Omega-3 lesson, not so much brain boost as fishy research“) is wrong, as it wasn’t the research that was problematic, it was the reporting of it.
 
Hi all,

I just wanted to make sure that is it fine to take Flax seed oil and fish oil together in on day? Or should I stop taking one of the two? I did some research and didn't see any problems with it, but just wanted to make sure here with the forum.
 
Infiniteness said:
Hi all,

I just wanted to make sure that is it fine to take Flax seed oil and fish oil together in on day? Or should I stop taking one of the two? I did some research and didn't see any problems with it, but just wanted to make sure here with the forum.

To my knowledge, there's no problem doing that - I've often done it and I'm still here!
 
Laura, I am surprised you take 15 grams of Fish Oil per day as the recommended dose seems to be about 1-4 grams per day. I have never considered taking more than the bottle's suggestion of 2.4 grams per day, but am now curious what might happen to the inflammation in my arthritic joints if I try a much higher dose. Thanks for arousing my interest!

Infiniteness said:
Hi all,

I just wanted to make sure that is it fine to take Flax seed oil and fish oil together in on day? Or should I stop taking one of the two? I did some research and didn't see any problems with it, but just wanted to make sure here with the forum.

Infiniteness, I took both every day for almost two years and never had a problem. :)
 
I read this article a while back on SOTT:

_http://www.sott.net/articles/show/210828-PCBs-Found-in-10-Fish-Oil-Supplements said:
A California lawsuit is accusing several fish oil supplement manufacturers of selling fish oils that contain unsafe levels of polychlorinated biphenyl compounds, also known as PCBs. The state's Proposition 65 requires products that may contain toxic ingredients above safe levels to have warning labels for consumer safety.

Five supplement companies, CVS and Rite Aid drug stores, and Omega Protein, Inc., the world's largest producer of omega-3 fish oil, are all named in the suit, which the plaintiffs hope will bring light to fish oil contamination problems. They also hope to see more accurate labeling of fish oils that includes specifics about contaminants like PCBs; that way, consumers will be able to make better decisions about which kinds are safe to buy.

The PCB chemical family consists of 209 different chemical compounds, all of which were tested for in the lawsuit by a California lab. That same lab also tested each of the product samples for 12 of the most toxic PCB compounds. It then evaluated each sample in terms of daily exposure to PCBs overall, and daily exposure to PCBs in terms of toxicity.

The brands tested included Nature Made, Twinlab, Now Foods, Solgar and GNC. Each brand included various types of fish oil, including cod liver, shark liver and salmon. Those that tested the lowest for PCBs contained one-70th the amount of those with the highest levels, indicating a significant difference in contamination among various brands, and types, of fish oil.

According to David Roe, the man who filed the lawsuit in San Francisco's Superior Court, the oils that tested highest exceed California's daily limit for PCBs by a factor of ten in terms of cancer risk. On the same token, some of the oils tested very low, and are not of particular concern to consumers.

Both Nature Made and Twinlab issued immediate responses to the lawsuit in defense of their respective brands' safety. Erin Hlasney from the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), a supplement industry trade group, also came to the defense of fish oils in general, explaining that they have been used safely for decades.

But the plaintiffs contend that it is not enough to simply say that a product meets guidelines; consumers have a right to know how a product actually tests for contaminants once it arrives on store shelves. Many brands claim that their fish oils have been purified and treated to reduce or remove contaminants, but few actually explain to what extent these toxins have been removed.

For complete details about the case and to view the fish oil test results, please visit www.fishoilsafety.com.

I have been taking TwinLabs Cod Liver oil since last fall; it is listed as having some of the lowest levels of PCBs.

Laura said:
I can attest to the pain amelioration of the "Liberation Diet." And I really notice a difference taking the fish oil. I take about 15 grams a day!

I was considering adding fish oil to up my intake of Omega 3s. How can I find out if a source is safe?

Thanks!
Seamas
 
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