Studies Of Effects Of Natural PUFA's Vs. Vegetable Oils?

Cirion

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Have there been studies done to show the effect of natural PUFA's (let's say nuts and other such things) vs. the vegetable oils?

I now believe what is especially harmful are oils and not so much natural foods. But is there scientific literature to support this theory or does it say all PUFA are bad?

Also, I now personally believe that non-animal based PUFA are the least harmful, so if there are studies to this effect, are there any that look exclusively to non-animal non-vegetable oil PUFA's like nuts and others?

Not to sound like a typical Vegan (because I'm eating mostly Vegan now but I cheat so I can't even really call myself a vegan, like I have gelatin, since the literature on glycine seems convincing) but I wonder if plant based pufa's are superior to animal based pufa's like fish and dairy fats?

I was watching some lectures from the vegan Dr. Nick Delgado and he shows clearly how straight oil can be dangerous, but the fats naturally contained in (plant) foods seem safe enough. From what I recall he says oils immediately cause a reduction in white blood cell count and wreak havoc on the system.
 

lampofred

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Most natural sources of PUFA come with lots of Vitamin E.
 

Peater Piper

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Nuts almost always come out looking good in health studies. How reliable are the studies? I don't know. I like macadamia nuts and almonds. I used to eat a lot of walnuts, but stopped once I learned about PUFA. Can't say cutting them out of my diet improved anything, though.
 
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Cirion

Cirion

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Most natural sources of PUFA come with lots of Vitamin E.

Yes and this is why I am curious to know if we need to drop PUFA's down really low if we happen to eat nuts here and there? I don't personally like the taste of nuts all that much, so I kinda doubt I'm eating much of them either way.

When I say plant based pufa I don't mean the vegetable oils just in case that wasn't clear. I realized it might have sounded that way.
 
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Cirion

Cirion

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I CAN say for a fact that fish and me do not mix. So I do think at least animal based PUFA's are not good. I feel potent anti-thyroid effects from fish.
 

Peater Piper

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I CAN say for a fact that fish and me do not mix. So I do think at least animal based PUFA's are not good. I feel potent anti-thyroid effects from fish.
Any specific types of fish? Our fish supply is contaminated with all kinds of heavy metals and dioxins.
 
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Cirion

Cirion

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Most natural sources of PUFA come with lots of Vitamin E.

I keep asking myself this question in my head--

Do we need vitamin E if we eat a low PUFA diet or only if there are PUFA's in the diet? Since I no longer take supplements, the only way for me to easily get VE is via nuts, but I don't particularly wish to increase my PUFA intake to do so.

Somewhat on the side... but Sometimes I wonder if we don't need as many vitamins and minerals as we think we do. What if we looked at foods holistically. For example - nuts naturally are balanced by the E with the pufa. Fruit sugar is naturally balanced by potassium and fiber (and water!). What gets us into trouble is when we start eating things that aren't whole foods and are not balanced with the nutrients required to digest it. AT the end of the day, what matters is you digest your food and properly assimilate its energy right?
 
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Cirion

Cirion

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Any specific types of fish? Our fish supply is contaminated with all kinds of heavy metals and dioxins.

I was playing around with salmon after being briefly led astray by a certain man called Dr. Jack Kruse... a mistake I shall not make again.
 

tankasnowgod

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Shouldn't you be the the one searching out pubmed for those types of studies? It's your belief, afterall. If you haven't researched it, what exactly are you basing it on?

The vast majority of pufa in the diet comes from plant sources, and tends to be high in Omega 6, which is highly inflammatory. Are you suggesting that a lot of inflammation is good?

Also, dairy fat tends to be highly saturated, it wouldn't be grouped into a pufa category.
 

olive

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I keep asking myself this question in my head--

Do we need vitamin E if we eat a low PUFA diet or only if there are PUFA's in the diet? Since I no longer take supplements, the only way for me to easily get VE is via nuts, but I don't particularly wish to increase my PUFA intake to do so.

Somewhat on the side... but Sometimes I wonder if we don't need as many vitamins and minerals as we think we do. What if we looked at foods holistically. For example - nuts naturally are balanced by the E with the pufa. Fruit sugar is naturally balanced by potassium and fiber (and water!). What gets us into trouble is when we start eating things that aren't whole foods and are not balanced with the nutrients required to digest it. AT the end of the day, what matters is you digest your food and properly assimilate its energy right?
Vitamin E is needed for many functions, not just to counteract the toxicity of PUFA. Cranberry juice is a good source.
 

Dobbler

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Nuts are like the hardest thing for humans to digest, and they are full of lectins and phytic acid, and also the PUFA. Except for coconut which i think is a fruit thou.
 

GAF

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I read somewhere that natural sources may come with the enzyme lipase included so less/no harm done.
 

Kartoffel

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Vitamin E is needed for many functions, not just to counteract the toxicity of PUFA. Cranberry juice is a good source.

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schultz

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Vitamin E is needed for many functions, not just to counteract the toxicity of PUFA. Cranberry juice is a good source.

Had to look it up to believe it. 20% Vit E for 1 cup and some vitamin K. That's very peculiar.
 
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Cirion

Cirion

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Shouldn't you be the the one searching out pubmed for those types of studies? It's your belief, afterall. If you haven't researched it, what exactly are you basing it on?

The vast majority of pufa in the diet comes from plant sources, and tends to be high in Omega 6, which is highly inflammatory. Are you suggesting that a lot of inflammation is good?

Also, dairy fat tends to be highly saturated, it wouldn't be grouped into a pufa category.

I just have passing interest not enough to do a ton of searching on it. Just thought I'd ask here in case someone already knew the answer. No need for the snarky reply. I know about O6, even so, sometimes things aren't quite so simple. As for dairy all I know is that dairy fat is highly inflammatory for me. And for a lot of people on these forums for that matter.

What I am trying to say then basically is that SFA can be inflammatory and PUFA can be anti-inflammatory given the right circumstances. I just like to challenge the status quo. I am often proven wrong. That's okay. It is a learning experience to challenge things.

Interesting notes about cranberry juice. I did not know that! Cranberry juice also has some iodine if I recall right.
 

nad

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For example - nuts naturally are balanced by the E with the pufa. Fruit sugar is naturally balanced by potassium and fiber (and water!). What gets us into trouble is when we start eating things that aren't whole foods and are not balanced with the nutrients required to digest it. AT the end of the day, what matters is you digest your food and properly assimilate its energy right?

Fruits are food, nuts = seeds, Ray said contain enzymes to prevent digestion so it can reproduce itself. Soaking can help.
Cirion also said: I was watching some lectures from the vegan Dr. Nick Delgado and he shows clearly how straight oil can be dangerous, but the fats naturally contained in (plant) foods seem safe enough. From what I recall he says oils immediately cause a reduction in white blood cell count and wreak havoc on the system.[/QUOTE]

I used to eat tons of nuts and seeds, stop completely because of pufa, like Peater Piper said Can't say cutting them out of my diet improved anything, though. Also a lot of sunflower's oil, which I loved, used a Lot and still miss after 4 years of not use. And what funny, my WBC since that time always little too low.
 

tankasnowgod

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I just have passing interest not enough to do a ton of searching on it. Just thought I'd ask here in case someone already knew the answer. No need for the snarky reply. I know about O6, even so, sometimes things aren't quite so simple. As for dairy all I know is that dairy fat is highly inflammatory for me. And for a lot of people on these forums for that matter.

What I am trying to say then basically is that SFA can be inflammatory and PUFA can be anti-inflammatory given the right circumstances. I just like to challenge the status quo. I am often proven wrong. That's okay. It is a learning experience to challenge things.

Interesting notes about cranberry juice. I did not know that! Cranberry juice also has some iodine if I recall right.

Sometimes, I wonder if you've read any of Ray Peat's articles. If you read this article, Ray discusses the effects from the very first studies in the Burr's lab, and the effects were seen only when all PUFA was removed from the diet- Glucose and sucrose for diabetes.

Those studies include the rat studies, and William Brown, a man in Burr's lab who ate the fat free diet similar to the rats.

So, as to your original point, if you consume the same amount of PUFA, it's going to have the same effects on the body, so if you consume 10g of PUFA from 20 grams of Walnut oil or 500 grams of Walnuts (whatever the proper comparison is), then it's going to have the same effects, be they good or bad. The issue being the oils make it a lot easier to add significant amounts of PUFA to the diet, and whole foods will contain a host of other micro and macronutrients, that could be beneficial, despite the levels of PUFA.

If you are interested in Ray's ideas, and his sources, you might also want to check out these articles-

Unsaturated Vegetable Oils: Toxic

Ray Peat
 

Peater Piper

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So, as to your original point, if you consume the same amount of PUFA, it's going to have the same effects on the body, so if you consume 10g of PUFA from 20 grams of Walnut oil or 500 grams of Walnuts (whatever the proper comparison is), then it's going to have the same effects, be they good or bad.
This is probably true if absorption is the same (although the vitamin e in the nuts should help), but the majority of the fat in nuts simply gets excreted in the stool. It lends some credence to the idea that they're not a great food source since we can't digest them. Still, there's some evidence that consuming nuts over the course of decades is at the very least relatively benign, and may be beneficial, but the benefits are probably not due to (or are in spite of?) the PUFA content.
 

ilikecats

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@Cirion the omega 6 fatty acids are actually the precursors to the prostaglandins - it's hard to get more inflammatory then that. Not only do they cause and promote inflammation via multiple mechanisms- they are inflammation (basically).

But the effects of PUFA do damage far outside just causing inflammation.
1. They lower androgens and increase estrogen:

“Some of the interesting enzymes affected specifically by polyunsaturated fatty acids are those involved in hormone production. While they inhibit the formation of progesterone and androgens, they activate the synthesis of estrogen, which in turn activates the release of more free polyunsaturated fatty acids from the tissues, in a positive feedback pattern.”

2. They’re carcinogenic

“The equivalent of just about a teaspoonful of unsaturated fat per day is enough to show a threshold increase in the incidence of cancer. “

3. They’re immunosuppressive (omega 3s are actually more immunosuppressive then omega 6s and that’s the way omega 3s lower inflammation- via immunosuppression)

“The proteolytic enzymes are an essential part of innate immunity, and the highly unsaturated fatty acid, EPA, which is the most immunosuppressive of the fats, strongly inhibits proteolysis in some cells. The natural killer (NK) cells and phagocytic cells are two types of cell that are suppressed by PUFA, and they are involved in many kinds of physiological events, not just the killing of tumor cells and virus infected cells.

The immunosuppressive effects of PUFA are very general. Many metabolites that are known to have harmful effects on the immune system are increased by the PUFA (histamine [Masini, et al., 1990], serotonin, lactate, nitric oxide [Omura, et al., 2001]). These substances are also involved in tumor development.”

4. They’re prone to Lipid peroxidation - basically they go rancid inside your body. Yeah no fun.

5. They inhibit mitochondrial respiration:
“The suppressive effects of unsaturated fats on mitochondrial energy production have been widely investigated, since it is that effect that makes animal fattening with PUFA so economical. Rather than interpreting that as a toxic effect, using the innate structure and function of the mitochondrion as a point of reference from which to evaluate dietary components, the consumption of "good" oils is being used as the reference point from which to evaluate the meaning of metabolism ("efficiency is good," "low oxygen consumption is good")

6. They inhibit detoxification processes

“The inhibition of detoxification enzymes by PUFA (Tsoutsikos, et al., 2004) affects many processes, such as the elimination of estrogen, contributing to the positive feedback between estrogen and the oils. The meaning of this tends to be lost, because of the estrogen industry's effective campaigns.

7. They’re essential to the development of lipofuscin (age pigment- age spots)

8. They’re heptatotoxic (liver toxic)

9. They inhibit the formation of the protective Mead Acid (that’s the accurate way to see it in my opinion. I think its misrepresntitive to say that Mead Acid “fills in” for a lack of PUFA in the diet.)

10. They lower the ability to properly oxidize glucose.

“The most highly unsaturated fats found in fish oil break down into chemicals that block the use of glucose and oxygen.“

11. Lowers thyroid hormone production and blocks the effect of thyroid hormone.

“The unsaturation of vitamin A and of thyroxin allow them to bind firmly with transthyretin and certain other proteins, but the unsaturated fatty acids are able to displace them, with an efficiency that increases with the number of double bonds, from linoleic (with two double bonds) through DHA (with six double bonds). “

“While the competition by PUFA for protein binding sites blocks the effects of thyroid hormone and vitamin A, the action of PUFA on the sex steroid binding protein (SBP, or SSBG, for sex steroid binding globulin) increases the activity of estrogen.”

And I know I’m missing some other damaging effects of PUFA
(All quotes by ray peat)



One for the road:

“The food-derived polyunsaturated fatty acids play important roles in the development of all of the problems associated with aging--reduced immunity, insomnia, decreased learning ability, substitution of fat for muscle, susceptibility to tissue peroxidation and inflammation, growth of tumors, etc., and are probably involved in most other health problems, even in children. If research hadn't been guided by the economic interests of the seed oil industry, many of those problems would have been solved by now.“

Besides the ones @tankasnowgod referenced these are good too:

Fats, functions and malfunctions.

Suitable Fats, Unsuitable Fats: Issues in Nutrition

And Broda B from downtown with the game point:

“Everyone should have the privilege of playing Russian Roulette if desired, but it is only fair to have the warning that with the use of polyunsaturated fats the gun probably contains live ammunition.” - Dr Broda Barnes, MD
 
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