This Journal entry wallows in fatty acids…and…a mild form of madness.
A friend registered an inquiry about some fish oil supplements which I had recommended.
Here is part of my response, which lapsed into technical considerations about the essential fats. In addition, other types of fats (lipids) are considered in this reading . I decided to edit the letter into a Journal entry, and register a few points for you readers.
I am sometimes asked what might be the one solitary nutritional supplement that I might recommend, if only one supplement were to be considered. The answer is that the single most important supplement for a citizen of our society is an Omega 3 fatty acid. These fats are essential for all correct cellular communication, and are essential for correct cell membrane construction.
The second most important one supplement may be Vitamin D. Since everyone I measured for Vitamin D was low, I just quit measuring the levels. I can talk to the patient now, figure out that they are low, start a supplement, and then measure levels later. Vitamin D toxicity is a very remote concern. For more information on Vitamin D see the entry “Got Vitamin D?” from last December at https://haelanlifestream.com/wordpress/got-vitamin-d-2/.
Omega fats and Vitamin D are essential for maintaining and improving any health condition or disease state that I know of.
Here is the corpus of the letter I sent to my friend:
“Don’t know why you could not find the OmegAvail Ultra 1000 TG product on the Designs for Health website (www.designsforhealth.com). They have a number of good omega products to choose from, in addition to this one. I suggest just calling them at 800-847-8302. I have heard that ordering from their website results in the supplements reaching you in a longer time frame. The telephone method of ordering takes 2 days by FedEx.
Here goes a short thesis on Omega fats.
I use the OmegAvail Ultra 1000 TG. I also use the OmegAvail HiPo which gives 1000 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA in 2 pills; a very nice dosing. From time to time I also use the XanthOmega Krill Oil. It has 6 mg. of astaxanthin, a carotenoid pigment responsible for the pink color of salmon flesh, and is one of the more powerful antioxidants.
If whales can live off of krill, I figure it can’t hurt me, and since I fill up most of a doorway, I reckon I can handle some assistance from the mighty krill. The combination of high dose astaxanthin and krill oil is formulation cleverism. I alternate these particular Omega formulations.
Astaxanthin is also in egg yolks. I just ate 3 fried duck eggs, over easy, on toast, with almond butter. One can procure duck eggs out here easily enough. They are more nutritious than their chicken cousins. However, in heating the egg yolk, some of the astaxanthin is denatured. Eating eggs raw, or lightly poached, preserves more of the astaxanthin. Most things prepackaged by Nature are very good. I do not consider the cholesterol in eggs to be a big concern. Our total cholesterol levels come from the 90% made in the liver at night, and the 10% which we absorb from the intestinal tract.
Nonetheless, for the sake of health and technical completeness, I should add that reducing one’s serum cholesterol by 10% might be good. DFH has a supplement made from pine bark sterols, called Foresterol, which does just that. It competitively binds the cholesterol intestinal binding site, and prevents absorption.
Blasting serum cholesterol levels into oblivion, as the medical industry routinely does with statin drugs, is not good. We require cholesterol for the production of sex steroid hormones, and also as a component of healthy cell membranes. I see clients with serum cholesterols below 150 often. It is not good.
Furthermore, statins knock out production of CoEnzyme Q10 (CoQ10) in the liver. CoQ10 is essential for healthy everything, like cardiovascular and central nervous system and liver and immune system function. It is a critical element required by our cellular mitochondria to make adenosine tri phosphate (ATP), the molecule of energy in all cells. This is why statin users complain of weakness and muscle cramps.
My wife, known in these writings as Ms. No Nonsense, likes the OmegAvail Lemon Drop Smoothie which is 16 oz bottle delivering 1100 mg EPA and 720 mg DHA per a 2 tsp serving. The container states that there is 43 servings per container. It comes as an orange flavor also, and I like the 2 tastes. She likes smoothie concoctions which contain other ingredients like their Whey Cool protein powder, which is correctly processed for viable potency. Those Smoothie amounts are also nice robust dosings. In the Lemon flavor there are some Omega 6 & 9 fats also. I imagine these might cost more.
I like smoothie concoctions also, and I use the Whey Cool powder, some of their green powders (Paleo Greens and EssentiaGreens) as well as their new MCT Colada, which is very good tasting. MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides, a very healthy saturated fat, which they supply in the formula in the form of coconut oil and palm oil. The MCT get into the mitochondria and literally scrub out the bad fats. Metabolism is enhanced by using coconut products. Coconut oil does not denature when it is heated because all carbon sites are saturated with hydrogen bonds.
DFH also has an Omega product known as OmegAvail Synergy. This is a correct blending of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats, and is important to consider in some cases of depletion type nutritional conditions.
Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids are cell membrane structural fats, not caloric fats. A cell has an outer membrane, and innumerable inner membrane involutions which wind up being intracellular functional structures, like the mitochondria and the nucleus itself.
Omega 3 fats are also required to make prostaglandin E3, a vital microcellular hormone made in all cells for intracellular communication, and intercellular communication.
DHA is decosahexaenoic acid, and is the Omega 3 that is more important for the brain. EPA is eicosapentaenoic acid and is needed everywhere. Both DHA and EPA are essential in the Omega 3 metabolism chain for the production of Prostaglandin E3.
Omega 6 fats are required to make prostaglandin E1, also vital for good cell communication. They also make prostaglandin E2 which is inflammatory. Prostaglandin E2 is a byproduct of arachadonic acid (inflammatory), and gives off leukotrienes ( inflammatory) in the metabolic pathway of Omega 6 fatty acids.
So, while the Omega 6 is needed by the body for Prostaglandin E1 production, it gives off inflammatory chemistry which is not favorable. The ideal ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 should be around 1:1. However the food industry gives us way too much Omega 6 in all of the foods they process and package. The ratio winds up being around 20:1. This is mildly alarming, since it is outright slow poisoning.
All highly processed foods are screwed up with this deleterious amount of Omega 6 fats. Furthermore, in the heating process of these foods, the Omega 6 fats, usually derived from plant based polyunsaturated fats, are modified into trans fats.
Trans fats are polyunsaturated long carbon chains which have twisted open due to the heat break down of some of the carbon double bonds. The normal configuration of these fats is a horseshoe shape 3 dimensional entity, known as the cis configuration, which interlocks with other healthy horseshoe shaped omega cis fats to help form a healthy bilayer lipid cell membrane.
The cell membrane is the brain of the cell, not the nucleus. The cell membrane is the feeling, sensing element of the cell via all of its chemical receptor sites. It is most important that this cellular brain maintain its structural and functional health.
And so, if we consume much trans fat, these opened up and elongated trans fat carbon chains intercalate into the cell membrane structure, and assist in creating a sick cell, a leaky cell, and a cell which is recognized by the immune system as having an abnormal configuration. This may predispose the immune system to generate an autoimmune response to the abnormal cell lines, over time.
It is my observation that the advent of the numerous autoimmune diseases slowly began in the 1950’s, about the time trans fats were the new “food” industry standard. The autoimmune disease phenomenon is now a very common disease category, and the number of autoimmune disease categories increased with each passing decade. Since my parents were physicians, I developed an awareness of health trends early on, in the 1950’s.
This latter point about the amount of Omega 6 fats that the average citizen consumes is a rather important consideration in the ever growing pandemic of creeping misery which is suffered by our population as a result of what I am now convinced is some ill intentioned operation of the Food and Drug Administration to keep us dependent on a “sick care system.” In this context, “sick care system” is contrasted to “health care system.”
The FDA is dedicated to profit, and has the food industry and the drug/medical industry as the implements in its misguided and harmful dictatorial proclamations. I would go so far as to say that the FDA is trying to kill off most of America, but they have actually figured out how to slowly poison us so effectively that we are allowed to live on, and keep spending our money on the rotten food, and then the sick care system in turn.
This is a very reasonable hypothesis, and I continue to observe the workings of the FDA, and its implement industries. The laws created by the FDA serve as a formidable impediment to the health of a human being.
Well now, having come this far, I should also mention that Designs for Health is marching onward to try to mitigate this mild form of madness. The DFH company is one of many companies and legitimate interests who fight, on a daily basis, the workings of Big Pharma and Big Agro and their overlord, the FDA.
The battle is being waged in the trenches of the hallowed halls in Washington, D.C., a birthplace of purgatorial mandates for the economic and militaristic imperialist control of the Globe.This is a widely accepted fact all over the world, and more previously duped Americans are catching on.
The USA is one of the most hated countries on the planet. This is a sad, but true fact. The USA is not the savior of the world and humanity. Why do we have 134 military posts in over 100 countries? You can read The Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, and many other historically accurate works, and derive your own conclusions.
I digress. No, I don’t. Perhaps more Americans will become educated and concerned about our international image. Why is it that Mr. Obama is not being invited to William and Kate’s Royal wedding? The London Daily Telegraph (an article by Alex Singleton, Foreign Relations Editor) reports that he is not liked by any international leader. This is not good.
Well, that last paragraph is far off of the subject of omega fats, isn’t it? What the heck, let’s get back to the diatribe.
Taking my diatribe against the FDA one step further, you might want to look into a current Bill in progress. A significant health freedom victory may be within our reach. The Free Speech about Science Act (FSAS) (HR 1364) would finally allow nutritional supplement makers to tell the truth about the health benefits of their products. A link to this is below.
Currently, nutritional supplement companies cannot make claims about their products’ efficacy based on nutritional, biochemical, and medical information which is published in peer reviewed journals! The number of articles in peer reviewed scientific literature about nutritional chemistry is so large and so profound in volume and quality, that it is verging on “unfathomable,” and rather difficult to keep up with.
The terminology of “tip of the iceberg” might cover what is printed in just medical journals alone, in one year. Of course, do medical doctors and medical students take time to regard this valuable information? They might, but they do not implement the information readily.
Will the FDA perhaps prohibit the public from reading this information? Will they attempt to edit the medical and health journals themselves?
Our help is needed to make the FSAS Act a reality…
Read the report from the Alliance for Natural Health at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/032002_free_speech_nutritional_science.html
Please take action with the petition and send this around to your friends and contacts.
Crestone and Beyond
I hope you enjoyed this cursory, yet somewhat technical explanations of the fats. There is more technical information on the metabolism pathways of the Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, which are also called Essential Fatty Acids (EFA), because the body can’t make them. We have to eat them. Omega 9 fats, which are also important for optimal health, can be made from Omega 3 and 6 fats. The 3 and 6 numbers refer to the first carbon atom on the carbon chain which has the first double bond of carbon to carbon.
The EFA’s actually qualify as a vitamin, a nutrient we need, but cannot make. In fact, EFA’s used to be known as Vitamin F.
The process of taking a polyunsaturated vegetable fat down a number of enzymatic conversions to elongate the carbon chain into the vital Prostaglandins E1 and E3 is an important matter to consider.
The most important point to consider is the first step in the metabolic chain reaction. This first step in both the Omega 3 and 6 lines of metabolism requires the function of an enzyme known as delta 6 desaturase. This enzyme takes flax oil and proceeds to elongate the fatty acid carbon chain in the Omega 3 pathway to ultimately make Prostaglandin E3. This enzyme also takes sunflower oil and proceeds to elongate the fatty acid carbon chain in the Omega 6 pathway ultimately into Prostaglandin E1.
And so, there is a natural intracellular competition for the function of the enzyme between the Omega 3 and the Omega 6 lines of metabolism. The function of this critical enzyme is further weakened by stress, disease states, and pharmaceutical usages.
In consideration of Omega 3 metabolism into Prostaglandin E3, it is best to use a downstream metabolite (EPA and DHA) to optimize production of the PGE3. This is why fish oils are recommended. They are pure EPA and DHA, and thus bypass the rate limiting first step in the Omega 3 and 6 metabolic pathways. As “downstream metabolites” in the chain, EPA and DHA drop right into Prostaglandin 3 synthesis. Presto. No need to worry about the functional status of tired or absent enzyme steps.
Prostaglandins were first discovered in the prostate gland, and hence the name. They were then discovered to be present and necessary in all cells, but the prostaglandin name held on.
I request of all readers of this Journal to please participate in bringing the FSAS Act into reality. Otherwise the FDA and Big Pharma tighten their grip on the sick care industry.
Thank you.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.
Love, and Peace be with You.