Balance Omega Fats to Save Your Life

Michael Colgan

Balance Omega Fats to Save Your Life
Dr Michael Colgan 27 August 2013

 Most medical scientists now accept that chronic inflammation is the root cause of cardiovascular disease.(1,2) But, largely for commercial reasons, health policies last century cast saturated fats and cholesterol as the villains, and aimed to get rid of them.

 A wise old politician friend of mine, now retired..., puts it this way,
“With surging mass production driving the economy, and manufacturers screaming for shelf life, we convinced ourselves it couldn’t be that bad for health to switch to vegetable oils, and it was certainly good for business.”

Consequently, food manufacturers replaced saturated fats in cooking with polyunsaturated vegetable oils, hydrogenated for stability, which created multiple toxins, including trans fats. In turn, these toxins have caused massive increases in inflammation and massive increases in the very diseases they were meant to reduce.

 Manufacturers now cook most baked goods and processed, packeted foods, and almost all crackers, chips, and fries and fast foods with high-omega-6 oils such as soybean, safflower, corn, and canola. For business, it yields much longer shelf life. Once you break the seal, however, oxygen gets in and the oil goes rancid. Rancid vegetable oil is that “enticing” smell of the multiplex.
But rancidity is not the biggest problem, nor even the trans fats. The worst result of adoption of vegetable oils for manufacturing the pseudo-foods that now fill your supermarket is the huge increase in omega-6 fats in our food supply.

 Omega-6 is an essential part of every cell membrane. But to maintain good health it has to be there in the right balance with omega-3. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane pours out chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.(3)

 Prior to use of these vegetable oils, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the diet was about 2:1, the same as in the ancestral diet upon which we evolved.(4) That’s the average level our cells are designed to work with. Today, the American diet contains an extreme imbalance of 15:1, which produces huge amounts of inflammatory cytokines.(5)

 One tablespoon of corn or soybean oil contains approximately 7,000 mg of highly processed omega-6 fat. In contrast, the average American intake of omega-3 has fallen to only 30-60 mg a day. Inflammation rampant !

 Our current epidemic of obesity from overeating pseudo-foods makes the problem worse. The overloaded fat cells also pour out large quantities of inflammatory cytokines, that compound the inflammatory injury caused by the very food that overloaded them.(6)

 From both the fat used to cook them, and the fat they deposit on your belly, that lunchtime bag of chips trips the inflammation trigger every day. Over time it creates a vicious cycle of overweight, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes,
It‘s even worse for the brain, in which the omega -3 balance is critical for normal function. (7) We know now that Alzheimer’s disease is largely a slow accumulation of chronic inflammation.(8) Uncommon in the 1950s, Alzheimer’s disease, is now the 6th leading cause of death in North America.

 Simple to restore the omega-6 to omega-3 balance, slash your risk of chronic inflammation, and save your brain. First, take a good omega-3 supplement. Then buy your food from the perimeter of the supermarket. Stop your cart before you enter pseudo-food country in the middle isles. Observe the folk in there for a bit. It might be just enough to turn you around.  

1. Tabas I, Glass CK. Anti-inflammatory therapy in chronic disease: challenges and opportunities. Science. 2013 Jan 11;339(6116):166-72.

 2. Roifman I, et al. Chronic inflammatory diseases and cardiovascular risk: a systematic review. Can J Cardiol. 2011 Mar-Apr;27(2):174-82.

 3. Simopoulos AP. The Importance of the Ratio of Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. 2002; 56(8): 365-79.

 4. Cordain L, et al. Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005; 81:341-54.

 5. Carrera-Bastos P, et al. The Western Diet and Lifestyle and Diseases of Civilization. Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology. 2011; 2: 15-35.

6. Hardwick JP Eicosanoids in metabolic syndrome. Adv Pharmacol. 2013;66:157-266.

7. Bazan NG, et al. Docosahexaenoic acid signalolipidomics in nutrition: significance in aging, neuroinflammation, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. Annu Rev Nutr. 2011 August 21; 31: 321–351.

8. Meraz-Ríos MA, et al. Inflammatory process in Alzheimer's Disease. Front Integr Neurosci. 2013 Aug 13;7:59.