Omega-3

[mona]

Fred just posted on pp about the addition of uridine to the omega 3's for synapse repair. I googled it and there do seem to be some encouraging studies ongoing.

[Iggy131313]

problem is though that you cant get a suppliment of uridine, only food sources and there dont seem to be that many foods with it in....beer, liver, other offel, broccoli. not very good...

[Iggy131313]

here is the study that was posted on PP

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19262950

[Sheila]

mona -- That’s interesting about the uridine and thank you for mentioning the study!

I really don’t know for sure, but I still feel it’s safer and more effective to use a sort of “whole” factor like Vit. C or Omega-3 (ie in the form it occurs in nature) than something that is a part that never occurs by itself naturally like uridine, which is a component of RNA.

For example, Vitamin C really consists of several components which occur together in nature. The synthetic Vit. C that most of us take, including me, is really only one of the components, which is not as beneficial as taking the whole complex. (I take a few whole food Vit. C capsules, and, when I have more money, I will switch entirely.)

WHOLE FOOD VITAMINS: Ascorbic Acid is Not Vitamin C
http://www.whale.to/a/shea1.html

Likewise I wouldn’t take DHA alone. I would take a combo that occurs in naure.

In the study cited by FJ929 (Fred) on pp -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19262950

I would like to see a control group given some blend of EPA and DHA, with no uridine, and compare the results.

Alternately, they could use foods high in RNA –

http://www.livestrong.com/article/52...onucleic-acid/

Although, I don’t really understand this. I thought everything living has RNA? But look at their list – ha ha! – the first two items are green algae and sardines – primary and secondary sources of Omega-3!

It seems the best way to think of it might be in terms of providing support for the body to heal itself, rather than manipulating, tricking, or coercing the body to do something.

[grandmaD]

I notice you advise people to updose omega 3 slowly. I went from (sorry, never did measure it) a small mouthful to a big mouthful. Was that too much? I wonder if that was the cause of all those headches when we went away last trip??? I have gone back down to 10mls now (measuring it).

[Sheila]

gD – did you see this post I prepared for you?

http://antidepressantwithdrawal.info...ll=1#post19097

[Sheila]

Book –

“The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them” by Susan Allport, 2008.

Allport is a science writer and she tells the story of how Omega-3 was discovered, and how it was slowly realized how important it is and how out of whack our modern, Western diet is.

There’s a chapter on “Where have all the Omega-3s gone?” which discusses the Western food and agricultural industries’ investment in corn and soy (for animal feed and in processed foods) and the hydrogenation of oils in everything. This has not just lowered our Omega-3 intake, but *raised* our Omega-6 intake.

[Sheila]

Susan Allport’s experiment in raising her *Omega-6*


This is an essay in a Word document about her one month experiment going *up on Omega-6* --

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...0qRJBxrGD5cu2A


She started healthy, and she spent one month trying to increase her *Omega-6* intake to see if it would make her less healthy. She did *not* go out to McDonald’s every day. She continued to eat what looked like a very healthy balanced diet, but it had subtle changes, like she used different oil in her salad dressing, and she ate eggs and milk from the usual chickens and cows who were fed on a *grain* diet instead of a *grass* diet. (See p. 3)

At the end of one month, she had not gained any weight, but she had a huge amount of fat around her middle, her metabolic rate had slowed, her arteries were stiffer, she became short of breath, her smell changed, she had some GI problems. This is someone who was healthy, who ate a *healthy, reasonable* Omega-6 diet for one month! She even ate fish twice a week. I was really shocked.

This shows who critical the Omega-6:Omega-3 ratio is.



[Stan – this is particularly important for you. Look at page 3 and see how aware you have to be about where Omega-6 is hidden, even in seemingly healthy food.]

[Sheila]

“Over the last century most western countries have undergone a dramatic shift in the composition of their diets in which the omega-3 fatty acids that are essential to the brain have been flooded out by competing omega-6 fatty acids, mainly from industrial oils such as soya, corn, and sunflower. In the US, for example, soya oil accounted for only 0.02% of all calories available in 1909, but by 2000 it accounted for 20%. Americans have gone from eating a fraction of an ounce of soya oil a year to downing 25lbs (11.3kg) per person per year in that period. In the UK, omega-6 fats from oils such as soya, corn, and sunflower accounted for 1% of energy supply in the early 1960s, but by 2000 they were nearly 5%. These omega-6 fatty acids come mainly from industrial frying for takeaways, ready meals and snack foods such as crisps, chips, biscuits, ice-creams and from margarine.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...bation.ukcrime

In a 38-country study – the higher the Omega-6, the higher the rate of homicide….

[Sheila]

Omega-6 : Omega-3 ratio and length of w/d

I was so shocked by Susan Allport’s experiment of mildly raising her Omega-6 [sic] intake for one month, and how much negative impact that made on a healthy person (see post #148 above).

It makes me wonder if one of the main variables in why some people recover from w/d faster is that they have a better Omega-6 : Omega-3 ratio to start with than those who take longer to recover.

This can’t be the only variable, of course, but it may be one of the main ones, which we have not known about until now.