On the www.raypeat.com there is an excellent essay on fish oil. Below is an excerpt from it:
QUOTE: ...The "prion" diseases, CJD and TSE/BSE (mad cow disease) have many features in common with Alzheimer's disease, and several studies have shown that the "prion" protein produces its damage by activating the lipases that release polyunsaturated fatty acids and produce lipid peroxides (Bate, et al., 2004, Stewart, et al., 2001). Acrolein reacts with DNA, causing "genetic" damage, and also reacts with the lysine in proteins, for example contributing to the toxicity of oxidized low density lipoproteins (LDL), the proteins that carry cholesterol and that became famous because of their involvement in the development of atherosclerosis that was supposedly caused by eating saturated fats.
My newsletter on mad cow disease discussed the evidence incriminating the use of fish meal in animal feed, as a cause of the degenerative brain diseases, and earlier newsletters (glycemia, and glycation) discussed the reasons for thinking that inappropriate glycation of lysine groups in proteins, as a result of a lack of protective carbon dioxide/carbamino groups, produces the amyloid (or "prion") proteins that characterize the dementias. Acrolein, produced from the decomposing "fish oils" in the brain, is probably the most reactive product of lipid peroxidation in the brain, and so would be likely to cause the glycation of lysine in the plaque-forming proteins. These toxic effects of acrolein in the brain are analogous to the multitude of toxic effects of the omega-3 fatty acids and their breakdown products in all of the other organs and tissues of the body. Cancer cells are unusual in their degree of resistance to the lethal actions of the lipid peroxides, but the inflammatory effects of the highly unsaturated fatty acids are now widely recognized to be essentially involved in the process of cancerization (my newsletters on cancer and leakiness discuss some of the ways the fats are involved in tumor development). The fats that we synthesize from sugar, or coconut oil, or oleic acid, the omega-9 series, are protective against the inflammatory PUFA, in some cases more effective even than vitamin E... UNQUOTE.
Source: http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml |