Did you know that there are certain fats that are essential to your health? The fats are building blocks for all kinds of stuff in the body. I have written about the omega 3 fats EPA and DHA found in fish oil and how they help us fight inflammation and support brain function. But these are not considered essential fats because the body is able to make these in limited quantities from the true essential fatty acids.
What are the true essential fatty acid building blocks that make everything fat-based in our body? They are the omega 3 fat called ALA, or Alpha- linolenic acid and the omega 6 fat called LA, or linoleic acid. Some people call these the parent essential oils as all the other oils in the body come from them. Think of these two oils the same way you think of vitamins – they come from the food you eat and you have to have them to survive.
As I discussed in my article on fish oils, the American diet has become terribly unbalanced. There should be roughly equal amounts of omega 6 and omega 3 oils in the diet and our diet has blown out the levels of the omega 6 oils to the point that we get about 20 times as much as we need. This is because the omega 6 linoleic fatty acid is found in abundance in vegetable oils like corn, soy, sunflower, cottonseed, and the like. We eat tons of these because we cook with these oils. But there is an interesting issue here. Even though we are eating tons of linoleic acid in our cooking oils, we are usually still deficient in them. How does that make any sense?
Lets understand this with an analogy. Suppose you had a dietary requirement for two fresh organic raw egg whites a day to be healthy. In our food delivery system, fresh eggs just don’t happen. You have to have your own chickens for that to be a reality. Organic eggs are just now becoming available at our grocery stores. Now how about the raw part of the requirement? How often do we ever eat raw egg whites? I would guess never is about the right answer. Well we have just such a requirement
for the essential fatty acids. They must be fresh, organic, and raw – meaning never heated. None of the oils at your grocery store or that are used in the food supply chain fit these requirements. Every fatty acid (oil) you consume has been heat damaged, oxidized, and it contains toxic contaminants. These damaged fatty acids make damaged products in our body that simply don’t work quite right. Things that don’t work quite right produce degenerative disease conditions.
The vegetable oil industry massively expanded during the 1950’s just as processed food started to become popular. Isn’t it interesting that this is exactly when the rise in chronic degenerative diseases started? The rise in the use of vegetable/seed oils matches the rise in chronic disease. In science we call this a correlation, not a causal relation. But when you define the specific biochemical pathways that create a disease and demonstrate a cause effect relationship between the possible culprit and the disease, you now have a conclusive proof of cause. The pathways between damaged fatty acids and the body synthesis of damaged cell walls, hormones, signaling chemicals, and so on have been known for a long time. But it is not economically viable to alarm the public about this. Our entire food chain depends on the use of these damaged
products. Our country lives on corn, soy, and wheat.
I have vigorously avoided vegetable oils/seed oils for 30 years now, so this is not new information. What I have failed to do was to make sure that I had a source of the essential fatty acids in my diet to meet my needs. I avoided the bad, but did not put in the good. I started getting the good in when I started taking fish oil and upgraded when I switched to krill oil, but it turns out the EPA and DHA in those oils are only a tiny part of what my body makes from the parent essential fatty acids. Yes, I am getting the good benefits of pumping up the EPA and DHA from fish oil, but they don’t do everything.
What got me started on this article was coming across a bit of biochemistry I was not aware of. The proper configuration of the two essential fatty acids ALA and LA is critical for moving oxygen across cell membranes. Cell membranes are made of fatty acids and phosphates. Heat treated fatty acids do not have this right configuration. My cells are starving for oxygen and can’t make the fuel they need to operate well as a result.
Now obviously this is not a black and white issue. We do get some undamaged fatty acids from the vegetables and grains we consume, particularly raw foods. But considering that lack of energy is the number one complaint American’s express to their doctors, then chances are most of us are not getting enough. In fact the evidence is piling up that chronic disease is really disease of the energy factories in our cells, the mitochondria. Even cancer looks like it is all about the mitochondria and very little to do with genetics.
OK, so what can we do about this? The obvious simple answer is to take some of these oils daily. The better answer would be to switch to a totally organic, fresh, and significantly raw food diet. Raw nuts and seeds are a great source of these essential fatty acids. Flax seeds and sunflower seeds are good sources if they have not been heated.
Those of you that know me can guess what I did next. Of course I created an essential fatty acid supplement. And also of course I had to take it several steps further by adding to it all the fat soluble essential vitamins – A, D, E, and K2. Now I can take my essential fatty acids and get the fat based vitamins at the same time – without adding any more pills to my morning. In order to minimize the amount to take, I researched just which oils had the
highest levels of ALA and LA in them. Camelina oil has the highest levels of the omega 3 parent oil ALA – alpha linolenic acid. A special high oleic sunflower oil has the highest levels of the omega 6 parent oil LA – linoleic acid. With a bit of further research I was able to source organic, unheated, and unprocessed (meaning no solvents for extraction) forms of these oils. These are not going to be found in your grocery store, though you might fine them in your health food store.
Sourcing the vitamins was a little more difficult, as most sources have stuff put in with the vitamins I don’t want. Eventually I was able to find pure vitamins in nothing but MCT oil from coconut. I combined the vitamins with the oil so that 1 teaspoon of oil will give you about half of your daily needs. I suggest the average person take 1 to 2 teaspoons of the essential fatty acid oil a day. Taken slowly over a couple months, enough of this oil will be incorporated into your cell membranes that you should notice real changes in your functioning. I have read about some patients who saw changes in only a couple of weeks after using these parent oils. Things like wound healing, where new cells are being made rapidly, were evident fairly quickly.
The last bonus was in the addition of Evening Primrose oil and Pumpkin seed oil. This is for the GLA – gamma linolenic acid content. Although technically the body can make GLA from ALA, most people don’t have enough of the enzymes to make this conversion, and GLA does some really nice things in the body, so I decided to add it in as well.
The final product is a pretty combination. It will take several newsletters to cover the health benefits of the fat soluble vitamins. Though most of you are already tuned in to the importance of vitamin D, the other ones, A, E, and K2 are equally important. I have a dozen bottles in
brown glass at the office for only $20 a bottle. These oils are fragile so keep them away from sunlight (hence the dark bottle) and in the fridge once opened.
This was a fun challenge for me and I am glad to be able to share this with you.