Primer On Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs)

Fatty acids are the molecular components of fats and oils. They differ in their number of carbon atoms and the placement and nature of their molecular bonds. There are three categories of fatty acids; saturated, monosaturated, and polyunsaturated. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are further divided into omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

These two, omega-3s and omega-6s are the EFAs or “essential fatty acids” and are necessary for normal growth and development and cannot be manufactured by your body. The difference between the two groups is that the omega-3 oils are more polyunsaturated than the omega-6s. This results in the omega-3s being more liquid than the omega-6 oils at a given temperature. As you would expect, plants grown in colder climates, and fish caught in colder waters contain more omega-3s than their warmer counterparts. Nature uses the special properties of omega-3s to help keep cell membranes fluid, permitting the membranes to function instead of freezing and fracturing.

Unfortunately, ocean pollution, diminishing populations of cold-water fish rich in omega-3s, and the advent of industrialized mass food production and refining of supermarket food has affected the delicate polyunsaturated omega-3s, such that they are either destroyed, transformed to potentially toxic compounds, or deliberately removed to avoid spoilage and improve shelf-life.

Omega-6 fatty acids are most abundant in common vegetable oils such as corn, safflower, cottonseed, and sunflower oils.  The most common sources of omega-3 fatty acids are cold-water fish, such as salmon, herring, mackeral and sardines, green leafy vegetables, canola oil, flax seeds, and walnuts.  Flaxseed and the other vegetable sources provide alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), while the cold-water fish provide two other kinds, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docasahexaenoic acid (DHA). While the ALA in flaxseed can be converted into EPA and DHA, some people’s bodies have difficulty in making this transition.  Also, you would have to eat the equivalent of up to 20 grams of ALA for your body to convert it into 1 gram of EPA.

Your body functions best when you eat a balanced ratio of EFAs, yet a typical Western diet contains approximately fourteen to twenty times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s. The omega-3 fatty acid family includes alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) as the parent EFA, Your body converts ALA into EPA which is then converted to DHA.

The omega-6 fatty acid family includes linoleic acid (LA) as the parent fatty acid, which your body converts into gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), which your body then converts into arachidonic acid (AA), (also found in red meat and egg yolks).

Besides occurring in every cell membrane throughout your body, omega-3s and omega-6s are converted by your body into short-lived hormone like substances called “eicosanoids’, (eye-Koss-uh-noids).  Eicosanoids can have a profound influence on your health.  The eicosanoids produced by the omega-3 fatty acid, EPA are considered the “good” eicosanoids in that they help to decrease inflammation, reduce pain, enhance the immune system, dilate the blood vessels, and improve brain function.

Conversely, the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid, (AA) produces eicosanoids which have the opposite effect, and are considered the “bad” eicosanoids, in that they promote blood clots, cause your blood vessels to constrict, increase inflammation, increase pain, depress the immune system, and depress brain function. 

If you take a look at the changes that have taken place in our eating habits over the past century, you will notice an increase in red meat, and an increase in the consumption of cereal, bread, pasta, crackers, pastries, cakes, and cookies.  All of these foods contain an abundance of omega-6 fatty acids which your body then uses to produce too many “bad” eicosanoids, which increase inflammation and contribute to all the diseases which result, including: heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s disease, lupus, colitis, and fibromyalgia to name a few.

The bottom line is that are bodies are genetically programmed to thrive on a diet similar to that of the Paleolithic era. Compared to the modern diet, this diet contained more meat and fish, more greens and fruit, virtually no milk products or grains, less saturated fat, less than 2 percent trans-fatty acids—the artificial fats resulting from hydrogenation, fewer omega-6 fatty acids, and more omega-3 fatty acids. The ration of omega-6s to omega-3s in the Paleolithic diet is believed to have been approximately 1 to 1. Our current ratio has been estimated to be from 14 to 1 to 20 to 1.

During the agricultural revolution of approximately 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, people began eating more grains, which increased their intake of omega-6 fatty acids. In addition, they domesticated animals and fed them an artificial diet of grains, resulting in meat and eggs that have more omega-6 and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat from wild game.

The industrial revolution made it practical for people to eat large quantities of omega-6 vegetable oils, further upsetting the omega-6 to omega-3 balance. The campaign to lower cholesterol has also led to an excessive consumption of omega-6 oils. The widespread fear of fat has further stripped omega-3 fatty acids from our diet.

Given all these changes in our diets as compared to the Paleolithic era, it is not surprising that we are witnessing a virtual epidemic in diseases associated with an elevated production of bad eicosanoids.  Below are some steps we can take immediately to reverse this trend and recover our health.

• Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables and fewer processed foods that contain oils high in omega-6s.
• Consume wild-caught cold-water fish from unpolluted waters 2 to 3 times per week.
• Use more olive and canola oil in our sautéing and baking and consume less corn, safflower, sunflower, and soy oils.
• Purchase eggs from chickens that have had flaxseed added to their feed to produce eggs higher in omega-3s.
• Purchase red meat which has been naturally raised in pastureland rather than grain-fed beef from steers injected with steroids and antibiotics.
• Consume more wild game that is naturally higher in omega-3s than their commercially raised counterparts.
• Use fresh ground flaxseed meal in baking and on your cereal in the morning.
• Supplement your diet with phamaceutical-grade fish oil.

Pharmaceutical-grade fish oil is a relatively new development. Only recently has the technology been available to produce such high quality fish oil. What are the standards for pharmaceutical fish oil? There are three criteria that have to be met. Unfortunately, these criteria aren’t required to be listed on the label of the fish oil product. This means you have to rely on the integrity of the brand, and such reliance is always risky in the health food business. The criteria for what constitutes a pharmaceutical-grade product is as follows:

• The total long-chain omega-3 fatty acids have to represent 60 percent of the total fatty acid content.
• The AA/EPA ratio must be less than .04
• PCBs/gram oil must be less than 10 ppb

By supplementing your diet with pharmaceutical-grade fish oil, and by eliminating many of the foods that are high in omega-6 fatty acids your ratio of AA/EPA will decline which will allow your body to maintain the optimum ratio of good to bad eicosanoids.

The potential health benefits of fish oil can be truly amazing. On page 11 of his book The Omega Rx Zone, Dr. Barry Sears tell this story:

“ . . . I have had the opportunity to use high-dose fish oil in a number of seemingly hopeless situations, and each time I have been amazed at the results. There are patients with dementia who returned from the living dead. There are cancer patients who now look forward to a much longer life than they ever expected. There are young children with severe attention deficient disorder who had a complete reversal of behavior within three weeks. There is a patient who was scheduled to have both feet amputated because of nonhealing diabetic ulcers—yet after four months of using high-dose fish oil, the wounds healed completely and the amputations were never done. There was a housebound woman with chronic pain who was on oxygen twenty-four hours a day because of obstructive pulmonary disease; within four weeks of starting to take high-dose fish oil, she was off oxygen, walking and pain-free. There was a woman who had such severe fibromyalgia that she rarely got out of bed, but within twenty-four hours of using high-dose fish oil, she was able to resume a normal life.”

References:

Omega-3 Oils, A Practical Guide by Donald Rudin, M.D. and Clara Felix

The Omega-3 Miracle by Garry Gordon, M.D., D.O., M.D.(H.) and Herb Joiner-Berg, N.D.

The Omega Rx Zone by Dr. Barry Sears

The Omega Diet by Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., and Jo Robinson