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Omega SIx The Devils Fat
Sample text
1
Introduction
1.1 I want to scream – I want to scream this. It is for me inescapably obvious. But how do I explain it to you? How do I get you to spend precious time, in a hectic world, to understand a simple truth? We block our fat conversion pathways with excess Omega Six. We consume;
Far too much Omega 6 mother fat LA
Far too little Omega 3 mother fat ALA,
Too little long chain Omega 3 EPA and DHA.
A few thought provoking quotes;
“The increases in world LA consumption over the past century may be considered a very large uncontrolled experiment that may have contributed to increased societal burdens of aggression, depression, and cardiovascular mortality. 1”
“A large body of evidence suggests that there is a significant under consumption of omega – 3, long-chain, polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) and that this is the cause of multiple chronic diseases and developmental aberrations. 2”
“According to the World Health Organisation, there are more than one billion overweight adults globally and at least 300 million of them are obese”
“In the UK, recent figures from the Department of Health based on the Health Survey for England 2003 predict that by 2010, one in three adults will be obese, whilst 27 per cent of girls (11–15 years old) will be obese approaching child-bearing age (Department of Health, 2006). 3”
ABBREVIATIONS
To save using the long names of the fats in this book, the abbreviations are used. You will need these as you read this book.
LA Linoleic acid Omega Six mother 18:2 n6
ALA Linolenic Acid Omega Three mother 18:3 n3
AA Arachidonic acid Omega Six 20:4 n6
EPA Eicosapentaenoic Omega Three 20:5 n3
AD Adrenic acid Omega Six 22:4 n6
DPA Docosapentaenoic Omega Six 22:5 n6
DPA Docosapentaenoic Omega Three 22:5 n3
DHA Docosahexaenoic Acid Omega Three 22:6 n3
THE SHAPES
It is important to grasp what saturated, monosaturated, and polyunsaturated means in terms of structure. I know this sounds silly but hold your arm out straight in front of you. Wiggle your hand about 5 – 10 degrees. Your straight arm with little movement or ability to change shape is a saturated fat.
Now imagine straight-armed hugs, or baby holding. (Please do not try with real babies or strangers on the tube/subway). It is not possible to hold a baby, or have a proper hug if you cannot bend your arm. Saturated fats cannot get close and personal with other chemicals, but are good for making structures rigid.
Bend your elbow and imagine the joint will do a Meryl Streep 360 – degree unrestricted head turn. Your arm is now a monosaturate. This gives you more ability to hug.
You can now flex your arm AND wrist. Your arm is now a polyunsaturate. If you were DHA, you would have 12 points of rotation creating ‘bends’ [30.10]. Unlike your arm, the angles are relatively fixed. These bonds it is suggested have 360-degree rotation. Imagine the shapes you could make with your arm and finger joints if you could rotate them all through 360 degrees.
For fats, meeting the right mate is like life, keep on moving, and sooner or later, you may bump into someone suitable. Fats are always in motion, a cross between molecular disco dancers and Billy Whizz, looking for their place in life.
These shapes allow the fats to get up close and personal, and react in tight spaces only they can fit in – super hugs. The more shapes you can make the more chance there is of fitting in. Straight arms do not hug as well as bent arms. A straight arm can’t replace an arm that bends – and vice versa – so it is with fats.
Double bonds are less chemically stable than single bonds. Using different pairs of strings [bonds] makes different shapes. The combination of shape, position, and contact points between double bonds allows chemical reaction.
A carbon atom makes four bonds. For a carbon atom, imagine a tennis ball with four evenly distributed elastic strings attached. The strings, known as bonds, are attachment points for other chemicals. An attachment can have one or more strings. A one string attachment is a single bond. A two string attachment is a double bond. One string bonds are much more stable than two string bonds. The stretched “strings” of a double bond are more likely to unknot.
One bond, a single string, can rotate. Double bonds of two strings resist rotation, and so help determine the shape [30.10]. Different chemicals have different number of strings (bonds). Hydrogen has one and oxygen two.
Just like in the intimacies of life, if the right bits are not in contact with the right places, you are not going to get a reaction. A double bond out of contact with its opposite number will produce no reaction. So the chemical interaction of fats is about shape, fit, and close contact of reactive bits.
1.2 Gunk in the frying pan – RESPECT! These fats Omega Three and Omega Six fats are the very essence of life.
1.3 Dumber and sicker – We are becoming dumber, sicker, more aggressive impulsive selfish humans, because of excess of mother Omega 6, and lack of mother Omega 3 and long Omega 3s. Dumber, sicker, more aggressive impulsive selfish humans, are more likely to extinguish themselves as a species.
In this complex resource-pressured world, we need as much intelligence, goodwill, reserve and tolerance as we can access. Omega Six brings out our acquisitive behaviour, linked to sex, aggression, and territorial breeding rights. Omega Six is a mind altering “drug”.
How do we judge if the whole of society is changing? We are seeing higher rates of a huge range of ‘western’ disease particularly in the young, including previously unseen trends like rising ADHD, higher levels of depression, suicide, diabetes 1 and 2, asthma, and the list goes on.
We are all different but there are inescapable facts. FACT: STRAIGHT FORWARD SIMPLE AND INESCAPABLE = Brains and eyes, testes and women’s reproductive systems, do not function properly without adequate DHA.
If you want a part of the explanation for a more dysfunctional sicker society, it is excess Omega Six and lack of Omega Three. If you want a part of the explanation for falling intelligence and fertility, it is excess of Omega 6 and lack of 3.
If you want a part of the explanation for educational deficits in the poorest sector with the most vegetable oil dependent nutrition, it is maybe at least in part excess of Omega 6 and lack of Omega 3.
Trials have shown lack of Omega Three connects to crime, violence, aggression, paedophilia, and behavioural disorders. The U.S.A. spends 15 per cent of their economy on health care. The Japanese spend half the amount spent in the USA per capita on health care.
So the Japanese have more money to spend on other things. Based on IQ tests, the Japanese are one of the brightest nations. The Japanese have greater intake of fish and Omega 3. The Chinese are the world’s biggest fish farmers.
1.4 The Devil’s Fat? The seven deadly sins – Is Omega Six LA linoleic acid 18:2 n6 the Devil’s Fat? Certainly it has plenty of 6s, and Omega 6 pushes us unknowingly towards the seven deadly sins, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, envy, pride, and sloth.
Trials suggest that aggression, impulsiveness, criminal behaviour, depression, suicide, and illness, all are increased by higher levels of Omega 6. So maybe excess Omega 6 is the Devil’s work.
Excess Omega Six increases testosterone, and reduces serotonin, which induces aggression, impulsiveness and criminal behaviour. Tendencies toward acquisitiveness aggression and impulsiveness, would be consistent with territorial defence for breeding.
We have responsibility for our excess consumption of Omega Six. It is a choice we make. In its correct proportion, Omega Six allows us to breed. It activates our reproductive pathways. At natural Omega Six dosages, we can balance the relationship survival seesaw.
But in excess, Omega Six tips us to aggression, selfishness, impulsiveness, less cooperative spirit, lower intelligence, smaller brains, and illnesses (all magnified in the absence of adequate Omega Three).
The Devil (Real or construct, I leave to you) has found a really neat subversive mechanism here. Unobtrusive, seemingly beneficial, simple, freely chosen, and yet with scarcely imaginable negative consequences.
Increasing aggression, acquisitiveness, selfishness, and loss of female virtues, are consequences of Omega Six, which could subtly lead to our destruction.
Vegetable oils generally have a very high Omega 6 content. Vegetarian, Kosher, Halal and related diets, all over the world, are prone to excess Omega Six intake, due to the substitution of high levels of vegetable oils for other fats.
Omega Six in body fat in the middle east, where figures are available, is reported as around 25 per cent, compared with national averages of 16 per cent in the U.S.A. and 10 per cent in Europe.
Clearly such things are complex and dependent on very many factors, but it is an unavoidable fact that the general biology of all of us humans is similar. Could diets high in Omega 6, and low in Omega 3, subtly contribute to the potential for a more conflicted world?
1.5 Lord of the Fats – Omega Six is ‘Environmental Master’ of us all. Arguably, Omega Six is the “Lord of the Fats”. Misused Omega Six is a disaster.
Omega Six intake controls breeding patterns, breeding behaviour, and our fertility. Somebody joked, if the title was changed to ‘Omega Sex’, the book would sell better.
For a moment I seriously considered ‘Omega Sex’ as title. After all, Omega Six is the ultimate controller of the sex hormones. Omega Six is a gauge in all of us, of food in the environment. When our Omega Six was low, there were insufficient food resources available for us to breed.
Omega Six intake controls sexual drive, reproduction, protection of family, and acquisition of breeding rights. Omega Six is the mechanism by which nature controls our behaviour for our own good. Nature turns off our breeding capability to improve our survival chances when food is short.
The problem is we have managed to break nature’s links and rules – but without knowing it.
1.6 Mistress of the Fats – Humans start life as ‘brain female’. Brains are turned male towards the end of pregnancy [See 24.29]. Omega Three underlies the feminine virtues of nurture, caring, sharing, cooperation, women’s neural function, as well as “intelligence” (more neurons in less brain space).
If Omega Six is the Devil’s Fat, then Omega Three is arguably God’s response. DHA, an Omega Three, increases serotonin, and reduces male behaviour, including aggression and impulsiveness. Omega Three moderates and cools the Omega Six chemical products, and reduces production of them. Omega Three reduces depression and psychiatric disorders.
L.C. Reis and J.R. Hibbeln, well respected and prolific lipid researchers, produced a thesis on the cultural importance and symbolism of fish. Fish is important as a moderator of mental function, and wellbeing. Treatment of illness with food, has a long recorded history, in many cultures including the Chinese, Ancient Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Sumerians, and Babylonians.
Fish is accorded religious recognition in many cultures. It is logical that the special regard in which fish is held, was due to recognition over many thousands of years of its dietary importance, and impact on wellbeing and society.
Fish is sacred in Christianity, forms part of the iconographic symbolism, was talked about in parables, and traditionally was part of the Christian diet.
Fish is sacred or features prominently in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, and ancient Middle Eastern Religions. Reis and Hibbeln said fish is “yin” in Chinese culture, and associated with peace and calm. Aggression is Yang.
“Peace, order, and the reduction of impulsive aggression tend to knit societies together”, and “fish as a food calms aggression, reduces distressful emotions and promotes peacefulness in conscious and unconscious associations”.
1.7 Way outside our design parameters – Your excess consumption of Omega Six has tremendous consequences for you, your family, and arguably the survival of the species. We are “breaking down”.
You are unknowingly participating in a huge dietary experiment. This experiment is making us sicker, more depressed, more stupid, less fertile, fatter, and more aggressive. The impact is magnified in children. There are sufficient trials on the Omega Three to make this conclusion almost unavoidable. Far less work has been done on excess Six, but there have been a number of trials and there are experts who write on the subject.
The actions of fats in the body are very complex. Prevention research is not very sexy or rewarding in financial profit terms. I am hoping to convince you that reducing your Omega Six intake makes strong sense and NOW.
This could be like smoking. It could take 30 years for it to be accepted that excess Omega Six is harmful at best, and deadly at worst. So, get ahead of the game, read on, and make up your own mind.
1.8 Not lords of the environment – By design, creation or evolution, animals have an intimate relationship with their environment. We are no different. We are coming to think that we are above our environment. The reality is that our environment forged our design parameters.
We are programmed to acquire, fight when we needed to, and protect a patch of land that provides good berries. We are not free to do as we wish. We require oxygen. We require water. We require certain nutrients.
We have evolved, or been designed, to nutrients being available within certain tolerance. Omega 3 and 6 are building blocks, fuel, chemicals raw materials, and hormones controllers. They are fundamental to function.
If we do not get Omega 3 and 6 in the right fuel mix, we do not function properly. Put the wrong fuel in a car, and it will breakdown. Put the wrong utensils in a microwave, and it will break.
We humans are breaking down. ADHD, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, digestive problems, depression, aggression, intelligence, and many more conditions all link to lack of Omega Three and excess Omega Six.
1.9 Omega Six and obesity – OK, you are more interested in the getting rid of the love handles and spare tyre.
Omega Six instructs the body to store fat. It tells the body to make bigger and more fat cells available. Omega Six historically comes with fruit sugar. The body is instructed to store fructose as fat too. Omega Six switches down the metabolism.
Excess Omega Six fat sets the body in an inflammatory mode. Too much Omega Six, and your hormones and steroids may be out of balance. Omega Six is a key raw material, and a consequential controller of hormones and steroids.
Omega Six says get ready to breed! Whoopee time. Save Omega Six and accompanying sugars, put on some weight for reserves, and go and reproduce. The fat switch is set to on.
You can turn the store fat switch off with Omega 3. You can rebalance your hormones with Omega Three. You can switch down inflammatory tendencies. Omega Threes encourage the body to burn fat and make small fat cells.
Increasing your long chain Omega Threes, and heavily cutting down your Omega Six intake, will switch off the “store fat” button. Your body will be pushed towards burn and not store. It will help you lose weight.
Omega Three will improve your hair, eyes, skin, nails, and possibly fertility and sex life. It will help reduce the risk of PCOS and hirsuteness. It will help sort out your kids’ ADHD, improve sleep, delay puberty, and reduce their long term risk of osteoporosis, arthritis, asthma, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, and depression, to name but a few (see back cover) – Or just an easy way to assist tip the balance in weight loss – Now are you more interested?
1.10 Fundamental to function at every level – There are lots of environmental factors we respond to, like light, minerals, vitamins, etc… But arguably there are none to which we are so sensitive as Omega Six. Excess of Omega Six has far reaching consequences.
WHY? Because these fats are fundamental parts of the structure of the body. These fats are fundamental to function at every level. The structure of your brain is 60 per cent fat. Your cell membranes are made in significant part of fat. Fats are the source of hormones and steroids.
Fats have a part in controlling sex hormones. Fats are cellular messengers. Fats are energy sources. Fats are your fuel depot. Fats are the raw materials for massive families of very influential chemicals.
1.11 Divorced from nature – We have divorced our diet from nature. We have broken our link with nature. We now operate outside our design parameters. Omega Six was always a scarce, seasonal, and precious resource. Now Omega Six comes by the bottle and fryer full. Independence from nature is not all bad, as long as we understand our actions, the link to nature, and the consequences of breaking those links.
1.12 Excess Omega Six intake – Trials link excessive Omega Six and lack of Omega Three to lower intelligence, higher aggressiveness, impulsiveness, obesity, and sex hormones. The list goes on. Evolutionary design seeks to achieve survival advantage within nature’s supply levels of raw materials. We have broken the supply rules and do not know it. We oversupply our body with Omega 6, upsetting a long held fundamental dietary parameter, with dire consequences.
1.13 Global emotional balance – Yin and Yang – A balance of generosity of spirit, cooperation, reserve, intelligence, aggression, selfishness, and impulsiveness, by design or evolution, is fundamental to our survival.
These are the most fundamental human characteristics. Yin (Omega Three, passive feminine and responds to the night) and Yang (Omega Six, active masculine and corresponds to day) are surprisingly applicable to Omega Three and Omega Six, as will become evident through this book.
A seesaw of opposites. What is the consequence if the ’emotional balance‘ of the species is changed? If our leaders and we become more selfish, more aggressive, and less intelligent, what will be the outcome? If we lose the more feminine virtues, and tip the balance to the more male characteristics, what is our future?
Are we already seeing a glimpse of the future, in our changing behaviour patterns, and those of our children? Are we seeing the first consequences of excess Omega Six, the Devil’s Fat, in our current world? I think we may be.
Society is becoming more self-centred and acquisitive. It is strongly arguable that Omega Six is a part of this. Are we becoming the ultimate selfish territorial settlers and consumers? What will be the consequences when the resources run short?
1.14 Cigarettes – a changed perspective – You are probably thinking this is a bit far fetched. Tarry a while, I beg. Cigarettes, and more recently trans fats, were originally promised and promoted as healthy.
1.15 You cannot make mother Omega Six – Ultimately, Omega Six can only be got from diet. We cannot make it. We can upgrade it to varying extents to make longer chains fats of the same family. However clever we are, our bodies cannot naturally make Omega Six (or Three) mother fats.
1.16 Seasonal mating and food availability – Timing of sexual mating and behaviour in mammals is very often seasonal. Breeding is timed and triggered by availability of food, which itself reflects the seasons.
Food reflects the earth’s fecundity. If flowers are setting seed, conditions are productive. The food chain including prey will be plentiful. Water will be available. Seeds and nuts are the key source of Omega 6. It is an agent external to the body. Omega 6 links us to nature. It controls our hormone production. Without it, or when it is in short supply, we cannot breed.
1.17 Ultimate hormone controller – The body makes testosterone and oestrogen indirectly via Omega Six. The level of Omega Six available in the body stores and diet, controls the sex hormone levels. Excess body fat = excess hormone levels (both oestrogen and testosterone). Hormones are made in the fat tissue as well as the reproductive organs. Omega Six is essential to manufacture of hormones at all locations.
Oestrogen pushes up DHA production. Oestrogen, with DHA, endows the female characteristics of nurture, sharing, restraint, smaller size, and greater neuron density. AA, through testosterone, endows the male characteristics of aggression, acquisitiveness, and impulsiveness.
Omega Three and Omega Six act out a push-me pull-you hormone dance. By ingesting too much Omega Six, and too little Three, and we are operating outside design limits.
Excess Omega Six increases levels of all hormones, and disturbs the hormone cycle. Increased levels of DHA reduce the long chain Omega 6 hormone and steroid production. To make DHA you need sufficient Omega 3 in the diet. Often DHA in the diet is insufficient.
We are tampering with our fertility. We are risking our health. Increased hormones levels, due to increased Omega Six in the fat reserves, higher Omega Six chemicals, and lack of DHA give rise to hormonal disturbance and changes, which are leading to a rise in fertility related conditions.
1.18 Conflict and the fertility cycle – Omega 3 and 6 conduct a dance that controls sex hormones and steroids levels. Steroids include cortisol, and corticosterone [23.11.b]. Hormones and steroids, are made from cholesterol.
They are all made in the same chemical tree, that starts with cholesterol, as its exclusive raw material. The chemicals pass through a number of enzyme production lines, as they are made into steroids and hormones. [Fig 23.11 b]
There is competition for these production lines. So there is a constant powerplay for dominance between various hormones and steroids. The whole cholesterol, sex hormone, and steroid product range, looks as if it may have a monthly cycle in women. Hormones and steroids are in constant competition for raw materials, so if hormones cycle, steroids are likely to as well.
It is observed hormones, and steroids, do have seasonal, monthly, and daily cycles. The adrenal gland products including aldosterone have been observed to follow the monthly cycle.
PGE2, a product of Omega Six, has significant control over the activity, of at least a number of the enzyme production lines, for steroids and hormones.
[PGE2 can only be made from the Omega 6 product AA through the COX2 enzyme. COX2 follows the monthly cycle, and is highest mid cycle.
Omega Six and Omega Three are truly external agents, only available through diet. They link us to the fecundity of the environment. They are ultimately the hormone controllers.
Omega Six, through the products of its chemical pathway via PGE2, is essential to hormone and steroid production, and fertility [See 23.11]. Both DHA and AA have been shown in animals to down regulate progesterone.
It is complex and multifaceted, but Omega Three and Omega Six are the key external variables. Excess of Omega Six, leads to excess of testosterone and oestrogen, through higher PGE2. Testosterone may push the body to make more long chain Omega Six, AA, and so PGE2, thus self-fuelling.
Higher oestrogen in women is the catalyst for women to make long chain Omega Three, DHA, and Omega Six, AA. (Women convert 10% of ALA the mother Omega 3 to long chain DHA. Men convert under 1 per cent.) So DHA and AA production will both follow and control oestrogen levels through the cycle.
DHA blocks the body making the AA, and so PGE2, thus turning down both oestrogen and testosterone. A foetus requires high levels of DHA to grow. The utilisation of DHA for growth by the baby, stops an excess of DHA developing. DHA is also likely to be required to build the additional cells to thicken the lining of the uterus. It could be in the monthly cycle, that the commencement of the thickening of the uterus, uses up the available DHA and most of the AA.
The cessation of thickening of the uterus walls and egg development, would allow a sudden increase of DHA levels. Excess DHA would turn down the production of AA. Reduced AA would result in falling hormone production reducing oestrogen, and bringing the monthly cycle to a end.
High AA equates to high sex hormone levels. If the egg is fertilised, rising DHA levels are used by the baby. AA production likely exceeds usage by the baby allowing the growing placenta to utilise the AA to keep hormone levels rising.
Rising oestrogen promotes greater fat conversion to DHA and AA . The DHA is used to grow the placenta and baby so creating a self fuelling cycle. This, I suggest, may be the foundation of the female fertility and birth cycle.]
Omega Three – Six imbalance leads to a whole host of reproductive problems. Large amounts of body fat in the West, generally equals large reserves of Omega Six. Low intake of Omega Three, combined with low storage by the body, equals a lack of DHA.
If adequate DHA is not available, because of supply shortage or conversion blockage, then the body will be unable to balance, and fully modulate, the monthly sex hormone and steroid cycle.
In the absence of DHA, the natural hormone balances and cycles are disturbed, leading to fertility problems, uterine conditions, PCOS, hirsuteness, osteoporosis, an increased risk of a host of illnesses and of certain cancers.
1.19 Aggressive inflammatory chemicals–[Fig 1.19 See following pages] From Omega Six, the body makes a huge family of very sophisticated chemicals, that control a vast range of body functions, including the fundamental ability to carry babies internally.
Omega 6 is the exclusive raw material of Arachidonic Acid [referred to in this book as AA]. From AA exclusively the body makes a huge array of chemicals.
To give an idea of the complexity and extent of the chemical cascades made from AA a chart [Fig.1.19] follows by kind permission of Cayman Chemical.
The detail is beyond this book and me. The point is to graphically illustrate how far reaching and influential the fats are.
Similar cascades will exist for the Omega 3s. This family of 20 long carbon chain chemicals are called the eicosanoids. These chemicals are involved in inflammatory reaction, tissue destruction and creation, repair, and the immune system, etc.
These chemicals interlink with probably all body functions in one way or another. The ability to manufacture these chemicals is based on the available supply of raw material to the cell membranes.
Supply of the raw material, Omega Six, to the cell membrane is based on dietary intake, and stored Omega Six. Cell membrane content is biased towards Omega Six, rather than Omega Three, by a number of factors.
We eat far more Omega Six than Omega Three. The body has instructions to burn Omega Three, in preference to Omega Six. The body has instructions to store Omega Six, and does so.
Omega 6 LA in body fat was in single figures in the 60s and 70s, and now ranges between about 10 per cent and 25 per cent. Stored Omega Three is often very low and rises to about two per cent, but is generally very much lower.
1.20 Deflammatory chemicals – Omega Three counterbalances Omega Six. More Omega Threes, and particularly DHA and EPA, stop the inflammatory Omega Six chemical products being produced. Omega Threes are essentially anti-inflammatory by a number of mechanisms.
More Omega Three raw material means more protective Omega Three chemicals. So, it is a double positive, less bad Omega Six products and more good Omega Three products [Because they need to be in balance].
More Omega Three and less Six in the cell membranes, will moderate inflammatory conditions in the body. This fact is fundamental to a huge range of processes.
DHA has been reported as being a more powerful Cox blocker than many drugs. Omega Three produces protective products called protectins and resolvins. Fish oil reduces the production of Omega Six inflammatory chemicals such as prostaglandin E2 and thromboxane A2.
Omega Three or Six chemical production is in a sense self-fuelling. DHA produces higher levels of oxidation in the mitochondria than Omega Six. Higher availability of DHA and more consequent oxidation, allows more Omega Three products to be made. More Omega Three raw material is available including the DHA, so the products will be Omega Three based, which will damp down inflammation.
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