omega 6

pboy

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Im gonna go out on a complete limb here, but I've been researching Arachadonic acid recently...and am beginning to wonder. Almost everything about Peats suggestions fit like pieces of a puzzle that all fit when everything is included. The one exception to this is his stance on Arachadonic Acid (Omega 6). Consider if breastmilk from a healthy mother was a good referance point for general nutritional requirements (this is what I've relied on most of the time, from everything from nutrient ratios to macronutrient ratios, and ideal osmotic fluid pressure) Literally almost everything Peat recommends pan out to near ideal ratios and meet all the nutrient requirements if you translated breastmilk out to your daily calorie consumption (even to the reduced iron content, calcium to phosphorus ratios, ect)...and just say Omega 3 fats were in fact necessary...surprisingly a Peat based diet would provide enough! The one exception to this is Omega 6, of which a Peat diet unless you ate a lot of eggs or certain meats, there would be no way to even get close to what's present in breastmilk (you might get half). Basically, I'll try to sum this up and keep it short...but the one thing against Omega 6 fats is that they 'can promote inflammation', but after doing research, it turns out they have multiple pathway options and in fact can be anti-inflammatory under the right conditions, are present in almost every cell, are necessary to produce anandamide in the brain (just like THC or in chocolate...clearly something that is not inflammatory) and are necessary to rebuild muscle tissue....so I'm thinking, what if its like cholesterol...in the sense that the messenger gets blamed for the problem just because its at the scene of the crime. If you needed to fight an infection or break down and resynthesize a cell in the case of a damaged or worn out cell, you would need at least a slight inflammation...it might be uncomfortable, but it is probably in fact necessary for the healing process, and by taking out the Arachadonic Acid you're body wouldn't be able to produce the necessary inflammation to fight the infection or heal so the pain and swelling would go down, but the issue would remain....I realize this is totally anti Peat but to me it makes sense and I just don't see why breastmilk would contain the quantity of Arachadonic Acid that it does, regardless of where the mother lives or eats (so long as they are not sick). Naturally, Omega 6 would be harder to come by and therefore probably more valuable than omega 3, and I wonder why the entire eastern half of the world has always relied on sesame seeds and sesame oil, to this day, and have always considered them anabolic healing foods (as in Ayurveda)

(runs and hides)

Im sorta hoping to get thrashed and debunked so I can at least clear my mind
 

charlie

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This should be fun. :mrgreen:

All kidding aside I definitely look forward to this being discussed. Thanks for bringing it up, pboy.
 

Mittir

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RP mentioned in interviews that excess estrogen and serotonin directs omega 6 into inflammatory prostaglandins pathway.
If one uses PUFA as energy without storing in tissues there is not much harm. Arachidonic acid content of breast milk is around
0.5 %. by wt. (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/6/1457.full).Wikipedia value shows much smaller number for PUFA.
RP is not convinced that omega 6 and omega 3 are essential fatty acids. He argues that our body can make it's own PUFA
as mead acid and do the supposed job of omega 6 and 3. Wikipedia has a good description of mead acid.
 

4peatssake

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What a mother eat's greatly affects the content of her breast milk. So saying something is good because it's in breast milk is faulty.
That's my best argument at present. ;)
I agree that this is an interesting discussion!
 

Jenn

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4peatssake said:
What a mother eat's greatly affects the content of her breast milk. So saying something is good because it's in breast milk is faulty.
That's my best argument at present. ;)
I agree that this is an interesting discussion!

Pretty much what I was going to say.

They came up with the idea of "essential" fats by investigating residuals in farm animal brains. Getting a critter fat fast as possible is not the same thing as healthy and long lived. How would you be able to tell if an animal had Alzheimer's?
 
OP
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pboy

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indeed, I often wonder how scientists measure everything they do with such precision...and come to the conclusions that they do. I see I see, I can say I don't really crave any omega6 rich foods except sunflower seeds and peanut butter occasionaly, and sometimes the avocado in the sushi rolls looks good...but that could be related to other vitamin/minerals. Being that almost every food with omega6 has accompanying vitamin E and other buffering minerals, I suspect they probably aren't harmful when eaten with their counterpart nutrients....but as isolated oils they could be problematic, especially when heated and reused throughout the day like restaurants do....and soy has its own goitrogen / legume gas problems. Peat seems really insistent though on the idea that they are nothing but metabolically inefficient
 

Gabriel

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Brain weight newborn human: 350-400g
Brain weight adult human: 1300-1400g
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/Rac ... luth.shtml

--> The fatty acid composition of breast milk may be due to a different developmental requirement of unsaturated fatty acids during brain development. It is hard to draw predictions from breast milk to the requirements of adults. Also goes in line what mittir posted above.

A study analysed post-mortem fatty acid composition of human brains of different ages (38 weeks to 82yrs). They found that omega-6 PUFAs are high in young brains and tended to decrease with age, while omega-3 PUFAs tended to increase with age.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4302302

--> There may be a temporally different requirement for o3 and o6 PUFAs. Maybe o6 PUFAs are important in early brain development, o3 PUFAs gain importance in the aged brain. That may explain the high AA:DHA ratio in breast milk.
 
J

j.

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Gabriel said:
That may explain the high AA:DHA ratio in breast milk.

Did those women consume less than 4g. of PUFA per day for years?
 

Mittir

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Gabriel said:
A study analysed post-mortem fatty acid composition of human brains of different ages (38 weeks to 82yrs). They found that omega-6 PUFAs are high in young brains and tended to decrease with age, while omega-3 PUFAs tended to increase with age.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4302302

--> There may be a temporally different requirement for o3 and o6 PUFAs. Maybe o6 PUFAs are important in early brain development, o3 PUFAs gain importance in the aged brain. That may explain the high AA:DHA ratio in breast milk.

I think they are comparing apples and oranges. Consumption of Vegetable oil sharply increased over last several decades.This surely altered the omega6: omega 3 ratio over time. A 82 year person probably never seen any soybean oil. I think before 2nd world war no one used soybean oil in their food. USDA has data on vegetable oil consumption over time. This study can simply claim that people from different decades have different pufa distribution in their brains.
 

Gabriel

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The paper is from 1967 and was made in sweden. I'm not sure if at that time diet in sweden was already so industrialized like the US.

But you are right, in the US PUFAs from Maragines started to increase in 1930s/40s parallel to a fall in butter. The real sharp rise in PUFA oils and shortening didnt occur until the end 1960s, which would be after the publication of that paper.

Maybe someone can dig some more papers on that question.
 

Gabriel

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j. said:
Did those women consume less than 4g. of PUFA per day for years?

They dont say

11 brains were analyzed (Table 1). The brains of a 12 wk
old fetus (FB 11 3) from a legal abortion for medico-social
reasons, a 35 wk old premature fetus (FB 108) which died
after cesarean section, and a full-term (FB 112) infant
with unknown cause of death were used without microscopical
examination. All other brain material was from
subjects who showed no signs of malnutrition, had normal
neurological and mental states prior to death, and had
normal microscopical findings of the brain for the age.
The ages and causes of death for these additional subjects
were as follows: 1 month old female (CB 110)
pyloric stenosis operata; 7 month old male (CB 111)
hydrocephalus operata and pneumonia; 4 yr old female
(CB 113) fire accident; 16 yr old male (AB 102)
traffic accident; 26 yr old female (AB 112) acute
pneumonia; 52 yr old female (AB 113) myoma uteri
operata; 81 yr old male (AB 114) traffic accident; 82
y-r old male (AB 11 5) myocardial infarction.
 

Mittir

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3106740
This study shows how omega 6 alters fatty acid composition in a baby's brain and liver.
There are other studies that showed our fatty tissue reflects ratio of our dietary fatty acid composition, it takes about 3-4 years.

I got some info on use of butter and margarine in sweden. They had their first margarine plant in 1884. It is possible that 82 year guy ate some soybean oil. This site has tons of info on soybean.
http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/margarine1.php

"Shortly after World War I consumption of margarine, which was increasing rapidly throughout Europe, began to pass that of butter in several countries. It probably happened first in Norway in the early 1920s, then in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and Germany. "

"Note in 1968, the last year for which we have data for all leading countries, the large margarine consumption in the Scandinavian countries compared with that in the US. In Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden margarine consumption was at least twice that of butter, and total per capita consumption of the two spreads exceeded 50 lb (22.7 kg) per person, compared with 16.1 lb (7.3 kg) in the US. In France, however, butter outsold margarine by a ratio of 3:1."
It is interesting that french held on to butter.
 

Gabriel

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Great dig mittir! Will look into the issue next week, exams are approaching..

Yeah the french were wise, so were the cretans who continued to consume great amounts of milk after WWII. Wonder when they began labeling the Mediterranean diet a "eat more olive oil diet"...
 

repeat

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Just wanted to add this, as it relates to mothers nutrition...





Children with high proportions of poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in cord blood at birth are more likely to develop respiratory and skin allergies in their early teens, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Malin Barman and colleagues from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

The researchers followed nearly 800 children born in 1996-97 for diagnosis of allergies at age 13, and studied a subset of 44 who were diagnosed with respiratory allergies, 37 with chronic skin rashes and 48 who did not suffer allergies. Cord blood samples taken at birth from these participants revealed that individuals who suffered allergies later in life had higher proportions of unsaturated fatty acids.
Children with allergies at age 13 had higher proportions of omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs in cord blood samples taken at birth. Compared to healthy children, allergy sufferers also had lower levels of mono-unsaturated fats in their cord blood. The risk of respiratory allergies in children with higher PUFA levels was equally significant in children with allergic and non-allergic mothers. The study says, "The mechanism by which these lipids affect allergy development is unknown, but may involve dampening of the immune activation in infancy needed for proper maturation of the infant's immune system."
Explore further: 1997 to 2011 saw increase in allergies among US children
More information: Barman M, Johansson S, Hesselmar B, Wold AE, Sandberg A-S, et al. (2013) High Levels of Both n-3 and n-6 Long-Chain Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Cord Serum Phospholipids Predict Allergy Development. PLOS ONE 8(7): e67920. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067920
 

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