Why you Should be Taking Fish Oil - Part 1

(This is the Costco Brand I recommend. It's about $25 a bottle)

I wish someone would have explained the importance of fish oil to me. I was always skeptical about taking it, in this series of posts I hope to convince you that it sometime crucial to your diet. I will keep the Star Wars theme going to help with some concepts and spice it up but it will still be a long post. Brew an Americano and dig in, this is worth your time to read. (References and further readings will be at the bottom).

Essential Fatty Acids (EFA), were once thought to be nothing more than a stored form of caloric energy. But they exercise a powerful influence on overall health because of their pivotal role in how cell membranes function. Let's think of them as Droids in Star Wars, it would be hard to imagine those guys functioning withought Droids. The exception is, people that live out in the "boonies"; ones who hunt and live off the land. Which is interesting because old hunter gatheres did not have to worry about supplement EFA because of they good balance it had.

So what do they do? Remember in my previous post when I talked about hormones? Well, EFA's are tranformed by the body into local hormones called eicosanoids. These local hormones regulate CRUCIAL process's in our body which I will go into more detail in Part 2. Think of eicosanoids as Star Wars droids that are built by other Droids. Some Droids are built for helping people and some are built for war and fighting. You want a good balance and ratio between the droids, too many "bad" droids will result in a lot of war. The same is for EFA, two crucial EFA are Omega-6 and Omega-3, you have probably heard of these before? Omega-3 or n-3 are the "good" ones and Omega-6 or n-6 are "bad" but both are required by the body, and as long as a good ratio is kept we are good. The ideal dietary ratio should is around 3:1 to 5:1 - n-6:n-3, with a minimum of 1% daily calories coming from n-3 oils (Innis, 1996). The problem is current diets have made that ratio more like 20:1 to 25:1 (Simopoulus, 1991).

WHAT? Think of it as this. Pre-clone wars, remember how they were building a droid army? That's like our current diets. We have way too many droids built for war and not enough built to help with spaceship navigation, communication and to build infrastructure.

Omega-6, Omega-3, they are both fats? What makes one so good?

Again, fat isnt bad at all, a bad balance of fats will lead to problems. Just like in my previous post I described too many bad carbs will lead to problems. To many complex carbs also affect the balance of fats in your body, I'll explain...keep reading.

The body breaks down n-6 and n-3, and in a nutshell, n-6 breaks down into a pro-inflamatory eicosanoid (AA - arachidonic acid) and n-3 an anti-inflammatory eicosanoid (EPA - eicosapentaenoic acid). You build one droid for war and one for peace. Furthermore, EPA is broken down through a process called delta-6 Desaturase, to make DHA. (This is important to note - one way to get DHA is out of EPA).

High insulin levels in the body will increase the breakdown of fatty acids, but unfortunately most will be broken down into AA (war droids), which increases the body's tendancy to inflamation. Also, people with resistance to insulin or absoulutely low levels of insulin can't make DHA - that Delta-6 process is impaired! So by letting the dark side of the force take over, more droids for war are going to be built and bad things are going to happen in your body...which will lead to war...(disease)...YES that post is coming, you have to understand this stuff first.

What the heck can I do?

Well, as recommended in my other post EAT: meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, NO SUGAR. Or, just the Paleo Diet. Unfortunately, this is still not going to give you a good ratio of n-6 and n-3, so you have to supplement. Robb Wolf recommends taking 0.5 grams of fish oil per 10lbs of body weight. This is only the EPA and DHA count in the fish oil.

WARNING MATH COMING UP (I hate math)

So, the above brand has 0.6g of EPA and DHA in it, and I weigh 180lbs. 180/10 = 18x0.5 = 9g

9g/0.6 = 15 pills. Take the pills with a meal that has fat in it. Break it up to atleast morning and evening meals.

To Conclude

Essential Fatty Acids (EFA) or droids, are crucial to the functioning of your body (the galaxy). Your current diet does not have the current ratio to maintain good health. This can lead to problems.

If you want to look better, feel better, and perform better, regulate your insulin and supplement fish oil in your diet. BUT, don't take my word for it. Try it for a month and see for yourself.

Contact me is you want help in implementing anything here (FOR FREE) or you want me to suggest a bullshit detector that will blow both you, and your doctor away! email - sbruceha/uwo.ca

Post any Questions or Feedback to Comments.

Next up: Part 2: DISEASES (WAR)

References:
This Reading is very scientific but outlines a lot of what I explained in the first few pages and then gets into diseases. The references used to make this paper are extensive.
This Reading brings together a whole slew of medical studies that discuss EFA.
The Paleo Diet site also talks about EFA.
I cand dig up more, if you want to geek out contact me.