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| | From:  steve198329 (Original Message) | Sent: 7/3/2007 1:19 AM |
Here is a link to some studies done with the peroxidation of flax. It seems as though ALA does not oxidize as easily as one would think. What do you think? I cannot ignore the benifits that a get from consuming omega 3. I do not supplement with them and get my omega 3 from eggs. I have read all the articles on your site an find it hard to believe that ALA is so harmful. I have noticed only positive benifits especially in my skin. I have tried consuming high saturated fats from cocnut oil and eliminated most of PUFAs from my diet. However, I did not notice any benifits form doing this. Why wouldn't the benifits happen very quickly just like ALA gives results quickly? I am not trying to offend you or start an argument. I am just trying to understand you point of view on things. All your articles make sense but from my experience ALA seems to be benifical. Fish oil seems to be very bad for my body though no matter how fresh it is, so everytime I eat fish and feel like crap I remeber the articles from your site and it all makes sensse. However, when I eat eggs with omega 3 in them I only get good benifits. |
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Omega 3s can instantly block AA metabolization, whereas if you just eat the kind of diet I suggest, not only will it take around 2 years to see all the benefits, but you will release your AA in the short term, and if your diet is not rich in antioxidants, you could have some minor issues, like minor rashes. I don't know what you mean by "high saturated fats." If you are using lard, for example, that is very bad stuff (only about 40% saturated). Also, you are assuming you had AA in your cells to begin with, but this is not the case with everyone, just a majority of the US population now. Were you raised on a PUFA-rich diet?
Your point about the eggs is interesting, but again, I just don't know enough. For example, are you eating eggs when you didn't eat any before? Are you boiling them now whereas you only boiled them sometimes before.
Dietary ALA is ingested contextually. In other words, it depends upon how you are eating it. If you eat a highly refined oil that is rich in ALA, that is bad news. If you eat a whole raw product, like fresh ground flax seeds, that is different. The raw flax might have more enzyme inhibitors, but it's probably less dangerous in the lipid peroxidation context.
Don't worry about offending me. I can only make an argument and cite the evidence. You can make a counter argument and eat what you like. However, as I said, I'd need to know a lot more about you, your diet, etc., before I could really take some educated guesses here. If you'd like to describe your situation, go ahead, but at this point, that's about all I can say. |
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| An interesting point about flax seeds is that they are still used in oil painting, and the reason is that they dry quicker than other oils. They dry due to lipid peroxidation reactions, so they are good at being unstable, so to speak. You can do your own experiment. Get some flax oil that is supposed to be high quality (it shouldn't have much of a scent to it), and then spread a thin layer out over the center area of a plate used for holding coffee or tea cups. Let is sit there overnight. Keep one plate in a dark place and another in the most well lit place in your home. Test it every 24 hours to see if it is getting "tacky" and hardening up. With oil paints, the drying time varies, depending upon the pigment. Usually, within a few days it is fairly dry. If you rub your finger on it, some of it will come off though. I have used substances that you mix with the paint, and it dries a lot faster, but that is not edible and so is irrelevant. If you do the same thing with fresh coconut oil, it will take a very, very long time to harden up. The amount of lipid peroxidation that occurs in the time it is in your body is very important, so this type of experiment does have health implications. |
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I am currently 24. Growing up I ate a healthy diet of mostly meat and vegtables and did not consume many vegtable oils. Nor did I consume pork but mostly beef. I ate healthier than most until my teen years which consisted of mostly junk food like cake, snacks etc. As a result I suffered from acne really bad. I did some research and found that the best thing to clear acne were the "EFAs". So I started experimenting with flax oil and I had alot of improvement but eventually my acne came back. It took me a while to realize that I needed a balnace between omega 3 and omega 6 oils. So I started to take this supplement caleed Udo's choice oil capsules which has a 2:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3. This helped me enormously and my acne never came back. Any time I didn't take the oil my acne returned probably because I was consuming alot of omega 6 and didn't even know it. Then I came across your site last year. At this time I began starting a very low carb diet and eliminated takeing all PUFA supplements. I also did not consume any vegatbale oils or vegtable foods as well. Mostly just beef (t-bone, sirloin, etc.) So far this diet has helped my health enormously and I am not being biased. I have tried many diets including vegitarian and very low carb seems to be the best. The reason I am sticking with eating beef is because it is very low in polyunsaturated fats and is low in omega 6. Now I do not have any acne at all and I don't need PUFAs to clear my skin. I am still confused about omega 3 being bad for you because it causes lipid peroxidation. I can believe fish oil causes a high amount of lipid peroxidation in the body because I experienced illness whenever taking it. This is most likely due to its high unsaturation. However, I never experienced any illness while taking the falx oil supplement I described (took for about 4 years). Also the diet I am eating now which is high fat mostly from beef provides some omega 3 and I have only noticed benifits in my health. I tried to take alot of coconut oil with my diet for about 6 months but I cannot see how this is natural for your body. My skin got mildly dried out when I consumed coconut oil and did not see any improvement in my health. I have also read, which I think I explained to you in another post, that high levels of insulin and blood glucose can trigger the production of more AA. Insulin and glucose are essential for converting AA into inflammatory messengers such as prostaglandins and leukotrienes. Wouldn't it be easier to just avoid carbs and vegtable oils than to take high amounts of cocnut oil? What do you think? |
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One thing to be concerned about is: "...We have found that feeding rats diets containing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) significantly inhibits hepatic pyruvate kinase enzyme activity... These studies suggest that PUFA may have significant effects on hepatic carbohydrate metabolism by inhibiting the L-PK side of the pyruvate-phosphoenolpyruvate cycle...."
Title: Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids interfere with the insulin/glucose activation of L-type pyruvate kinase gene transcription.
Source: Mol Endocrinol. 1994 Sep;8(9):1147-53.
On the internet: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7838147&dopt=Abstract
What you mention is consistent with such studies as:
"Glucose increases the synthesis of lipoxygenase-mediated metabolites of arachidonic acid in intact rat islets."
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1985 January; 82(1): 198�?02.
On the internet: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=396999
Now as to the lipid peroxidation issue, there is no doubt that a highly unsaturated fatty acid has the potential to contribute to it, but other factors can play a big role. In science, you have to isolate all possibly relevant factors. This is not easy to do with studies of actual diets, and most "nutritional experts" would rather use abstract and misleading terminology (like calling lard a "saturated fat"). You are still quite young and it's not likely you will see any ill effects for years. If your diet is rich in antioxidants and you don't consume a lot of PUFAs, you might not have problems in this context at all. Again, it's quite complicated. However, if you look at what the "experts" are recommending (canola and fish oil), it's easy to do experiments demonstrating that this is not at all healthy (at least on lab animals that you can control totally).
The "drying" quality of coconut oil may be related to people having evolved in warmer, humid places (than New York in the winter). I don't consume that much coconut, but I've seen experienced some milk dryness, and just putting a little coconut oil on the dry spot seems to help. On the other hand, I've seen so many benefits that it's almost too good to be true. I've experimented with diet since high school, trying to find one that would "cure" my various problems, but nothing worked until I did my own research and figured out the connection between AA, inflammation, the immune system, etc. I've also found that I only have to wash my hair once a week (and I only use water), because it just never gets "greasy" any more. And there is almost nothing in the way of "bad breath" and body odor any longer. However, if I wash too much (except for my hands), then the dry spots appear.
There is strong evidence for a connection between acne and AA metabolites, for example: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17425398
I think what is happening in your case is that when you remove the PUFAs, your body starts to release the AA, and this is what is causing the acne flareups. I noticed some weird stuff when I first avoided all major PUFA sources, but it goes away within two years, and there were no major problems. It took a while to figure out how to deal with the dry spots - drinking a bit more than usual seems to help as well. All we can do is to examine the evidence as a whole and try to make sense of it, and I just don't see any other reasonable interpretation here. |
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I would be a bit cautious about beef in the diet. Iron accumulation in the body can be a problem in later years unless blood is donated etc. Hans, what would you consider more harmful, iron accumulation in the absence of AA/PUFAs or having AA in the body without any extra iron? I know avoiding both is the best but we must be practical, it's easier avoiding red meat in the diet than avoiding the "hidden" PUFAs. In a recent post on the sci.med.nutrition forum someone claimed that the body absorbs extra iron only from meat (heme bound).
Also I wonder how much methionine is present in gelatin compared to other protein sources. If it's low it would be the ideal meat-substitute life-extending protein source. About the methionine connection see e.g.:
Biochim Biophys Acta. 2006 May-Jun;1757(5-6):496-508. Epub 2006 Feb 24.
Mitochondrial oxidative stress, aging and caloric restriction: the protein and methionine connection.
Pamplona R, Barja G.
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Lleida, Lleida 25008, Spain.
Caloric restriction (CR) decreases aging rate and mitochondrial ROS (MitROS) production and oxidative stress in rat postmitotic tissues. Low levels of these parameters are also typical traits of long-lived mammals and birds. However, it is not known what dietary components are responsible for these changes during CR. It was recently observed that 40% protein restriction without strong CR also decreases MitROS generation and oxidative stress. This is interesting because protein restriction also increases maximum longevity (although to a lower extent than CR) and is a much more practicable intervention for humans than CR. Moreover, it was recently found that 80% methionine restriction substituting it for l-glutamate in the diet also decreases MitROS generation in rat liver. Thus, methionine restriction seems to be responsible for the decrease in ROS production observed in caloric restriction. This is interesting because it is known that exactly that procedure of methionine restriction also increases maximum longevity. Moreover, recent data show that methionine levels in tissue proteins negatively correlate with maximum longevity in mammals and birds. All these suggest that lowering of methionine levels is involved in the control of mitochondrial oxidative stress and vertebrate longevity by at least two different mechanisms: decreasing the sensitivity of proteins to oxidative damage, and lowering of the rate of ROS generation at mitochondria.
PMID: 16574059 |
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After going to a very low carb diet I do not need any PUFAs. to keep acne away. Currently I do not take any PUFAs other then from the fat in beef which is very low as a percentage of total fat. About iron causing problems. I have read various articles and studies on iron causing damage in the body and that beef should be avoided. However these studies have not been consistint with the results I have been getting from a high red meat diet. Beef and saturated fat only seem to cause problems when carbs are added in the diet. I have read that heme iron can be handled by the body very well. I do not buy into the propaganda that red meat is bad for you. Beef is a natural food that was most likely eaten in high quantities by early human hunters and is probably the most natural food you can eat. Like I said before, I have tried many diets including all fruit and vegtable diets (strict vegitarian) and I think that by far a very low carb diet <20g is the best I have come across. I still continue to learn and keep an open mind though. I enjoy coming to this web site and learning new things. |
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Yes, the heme form is easier to absorb. I think, however, that if one goes off a "typical American diet" and onto a diet low in carbs and rich in beef, there may be at least short-term benefits, or appear to be. I don't think that such a diet is good for the long-term, but if you ate raw, fresh meat from healthy animals, it might not be so bad at all. The question to ask then is, what else would you be eating with it? I prefer to supplement with gelatin while avoiding all meats (cheese being my major high-quality protein source, along with boiled eggs now and then). Gelatin does appear to be low in methionine, but remember that these kinds of studies are contextual. Would the results be the same or different if the control animals were not fed a PUFA-rich diet?
I would be more concerned about a PUFA-rich diet than an iron-rich one. Moroever, you should make sure you are getting enough copper each day, and that will mitigate the effects of iron to some degree. I cited a study somewhere about iron among Asians. The researchers were surprised that the people studied didn't have the "diseases" the researchers thought they should, based upon their iron levels. Since iron enhances lipid peroxidation, this should not have been a surprise - the Asians were probably eating a diet much higher in SFAS (from coconut) and lower in PUFAs than a "typical" American.
I think Steve is keeping the AA in his cells with his beef-rich diet, whereas my type of diet will release the AA, and this could cause the acne and dry skin issues. He is still quite young, and so doesn't seem to have any major health issues at this point. I would be interested in seeing the results of certain tests, such as an MRA (showing the condition of coronary arteries), but this is usually only done on people who already exhibit symptoms of a "disease." However, if you look at a person, you can often tell if there is an underlying chronic inflammation, because they have a "puffy" look about them. Remember that a "bad" diet is healthy if one only compares it to a "very bad" diet. |
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| The "stone age" stuff should be "handled with care." We really don't know enough about what all these peoples during different time periods ate. One anthropology book I have talks about the importance of palm and coconut foods to these early peoples. It's also true that eating meat raw is not a problem form healthy people, so long as it is fresh and the animal is healthy. I would not eat raw meat today, however, unless I actually knew that the animal was healthy and the meat was fresh. It's also not clear that whatever diet a particular "stone age" group of people lived on led to long or healthy lives. I don't really like to speculate, but prefer evidence that can be repeated in experiments. This is the crux of the scientific method, and with diet, there is no reason to speculate, unlike with something like string theory (at least from what I've seen on TV shows about it). Also, are you willing to eat the entire animal, or do you just eat the usual cuts? Different parts of the animals are very different. It's unlikely that early people just ate the "choice cuts." |
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"The "stone age" stuff should be "handled with care." We really don't know enough about what all these peoples during different time periods ate." You are right we don't know the "exact" diet that paneolithic people ate but we do have a basic idea. What we do know is that grains were not part of the early human diet which leaves meat fruit and vegtables. Since most natural fruit is very bitter and available at certain times of the year that only leaves meat and vegtables. Humans could not survive on vegtables alone which means that meat had to be the main source of food and nutrients. As I have said before I have tried many different diets and there is no other one that comes even close to matching the energy I have on an all animal meat diet. If the way I eat is unhealthy then why do I as well has tens of thousands of otheres that I talk to on the internet notice their health only increases on an all meat diet? |
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As I said, bad is better than very bad. If you have some molecular-level evidence you want me to take a look at, I will, but the rest is speculation. My guess is that palm and coconut were huge parts of the diet of early humans, and raw shellfish might have been too. Saying that grains are bad, however, is somewhat specious. What molecules are we talking about? If you eat an organic, unbleached (white) bread, what do you think is so awful about it? It will be converted to simple carb, as is most fruit. Some vegetables, however, can have enzyme inhibitors and other undesirable substances in them. If you look at the roots of the bad Western diet, starting after World War II, what you see is a lack of antioxidant-rich foods, a rise in the consumption of highly unsaturated cooking oils, and a rise in cooked meat consumption (as well as being higher in calories).
Ask yourself a question, how do I explain all the evidence against cooked meat? My explanation makes sense, down to the molecular level. Claims against "saturated fat" clearly are flawed to the point of being laughable. If you were to raise your own animals, keep them healthy, then eat the whole animal raw, I would be much less concerned than if you buy your meat from a store, eat all the same kinds of cuts, and always (or almost always) cook it. Of course, frying it in the PUFA-rich oils (or canola oil) makes it even worse. I have relatives who eat a lot of meat fried in these kinds of oils, and they don't listen to me, no matter how ill they are, so don't worry about offending me - I'm used to people who are more interested in convincing themselves of something rather than having a conversation about what the most reasonable interpretation of the available evidence is. |
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Here's a report about experiments food companies have done. Their results are that soybean with a higher linolenic (omega 3 PUFA) content goes rancid too quickly. This does not mean that freshly-ground organic flax seeds are as bad, because they don't contain the same antioxidants. Moreover, the food companies want to use the oil for frying. In any case, I'm not willing to take the risks, since there is no reason. My diet tastes good, is satisfying, has resulted in many benefits with no "down side," and I came back from the brink of death consuming it.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2007/id20070103_466580_page_2.htm |
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Here is a quotation from that web page I cited above:
QUOTE: ...Hasselo, a 2004 hire with more than 20 years in the fast-food industry, was preparing to take canola oil to a broader test outside KFC's labs when the leadership team unexpectedly rejected it last winter, sending his food scientists immediately back to a new form of soy oil they had considered earlier. The oil had been developed by Monsanto (MON) for packaged-food companies rushing to purge products of trans fats before the FDA's labeling rule took effect. Soybeans typically contain 8% linolenic acid, which tends to degrade relatively fast. Beans from Monsanto's new plant contain less than 3% linolenic acid, making its oil stable enough that it doesn't need hydrogenation to have a long shelf- or fry-life... UNQUOTE. |
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