A number of years ago I started focusing on the imbalance of omega 6 oil (vegetable oils) to the omega 3 oils (fish oil, flax oil, and phospholipids) in our diet. A healthy body has a fairly even mix of the two oils, and that is what exists naturally in vegetables. Unfortunately, beginning about 100 years ago the food industry started producing oils derived from seeds like soy, corn, sunflower, cotton seed, and so on. These are all almost entirely omega 6 oils. Deceptive marketing campaigns suppressed competing tropical oils like palm and coconut and our consumption of seed oils increased 1000% while our consumption of fatty fish decreased markedly. The average American today has a body with 10 to 20 times as much omega 6 oil as omega 3 oil in it.
Why is this important? Simply put, omega 6 oils create inflammation while omega 3 oils fight inflammation. We need some inflammation to help us fight infections and recover from injuries, so we need some omega 6 oils. In fact getting undamaged healthy omega 6 oil in our diet is a whole other topic for promoting health. Industrially produced omega 6 oils are all damaged in processing and even further damaged whenever they are heated above body temperature or exposed to the air. Essentially deep fried anything is severely toxic because of this.
Aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Advil all work by blocking the pathway in which the omega 6 oil promotes inflammation. When I ask patients if any of these helps them with their pain, I am really finding out how bad their 6:3 oil ratio is. If over the counter pain killers help you, then you know you are getting too much omega 6 oil in your diet.
Years ago when I started adjusting my diet to eliminate any processed seed oils, I was supporting my health by taking krill oil as my source for omega 3 oil. The reason I used krill oil was because at that time all the fish oil I could buy was badly oxidized. It smelled fishy, created fish burps, and gave me an upset stomach. Krill oil is protected from oxidation because it is bound to a phospholipid. This blocks the oxidation of the oil. This is also the natural form in which the omega 3 oil is primarily used in the body – the brain specifically. As hunter gatherers, brains were the main source of omega 3 oils in our diet. We don’t eat brains much these days.
We learned an interesting thing a few years ago when Ellen and I took our first cruise to Alaska. One of the day trips was to an area to watch for bears. The streams were packed full of salmon which the bears were harvesting. On the walk I notice the hillsides were littered with salmon bodies. I asked the guide why there were salmon all over the place. The answer was amazing. The guide told us that the bears catch the salmon and carry them up the hill and then eat out the brains of the fish and leave the rest. Sure enough when we looked closer, all the salmon bodies had a single bite taken out of each one right where the brains would be. The guide said that the bears only wanted the fattiest part of the fish. But as we know, salmon is full of salmon oil. The bears specifically wanted the type of fish oil found in brains – the phospholipid bound oil.
Back then krill oil was expensive, so when molecular distilled fish oil came out that removed both the oxidized portion but also any mercury (another big problem with fish oil) I started to use this fish oil. Additionally I had taken some brain recovery seminars where very large doses of omega 3 oil were recommended and krill oil was simply way too expensive for this purpose. It’s now been a year since I started taking large doses of the fish oil. I don’t want to keep taking such large doses of omega 3 oil because both omega 3 and omega 6 oils are designed to be used in very small doses in the body – like a gram or two of each per day. I took large doses of omega 3 oils in order to kick out the excess omega 6 oils that had formed dysfunctional cell membranes. I wanted to rebuild the proper balance of 3 to 6 in my body. But too much of either oil will create problems. The body needs just the right mix of omega 3 & 6 oils combined with the right saturated fats and mono-saturated fats. The right mix of the hard saturate fats linked to the flexible polyunsaturate fats form all our cell membranes so they will have the right amount of rigidity, plus flexibility.
The bottom line is that I am switching back to the krill oil for my omega 3 fat source. The phospholipid bound nature of krill oil is more easily absorbed and is already in the form needed to travel in our blood stream. This is what the “good” HDL cholesterol is made with. Additionally I now find that the brain can not actively absorb the typical triglyceride form of omega 3 oil (DHA) that it needs. It only pulls in the form of DHA bound to the phospholipid phosphatidylcholine. The brain uses the DHA to form brain cells and the choline to manufacture the primary brain neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Additionally krill oil has the added benefit of containing the super powerful antioxidant astaxanthin. Astaxanthin protects the krill from the sun’s harsh ultraviolet rays – like and internal suntan lotion. In fact we can take astaxanthin and get some of the same results. It will increase our tolerance to sunlight UV radiation by about 50% thereby making us less likely to get a sunburn and skin damage. Krill also forms the largest animal biomass on the planet. That means there is less concern about “over fishing” krill, as there is a lot of krill around. Krill are like the insects of the sea. On land insects are the largest animal biomass on the planet. There are tons more insects on the planet than all other animals combined.
What are krill anyway? Krill are tiny little shrimp-looking creatures. They are not shrimp, but they look similar. Krill are vegetarians, eating algae and phytoplankton that grow close to the surface in the ocean. So krill swim around just under the surface of the ocean, especially in colder waters where their favorite algae live. As the ice levels around Antarctica has declined, the natural diet of the krill is waning. This loss of their natural diet is actually the greatest threat to the populations of krill. The astaxanthin is actually formed by the plankton the krill eat and gives the krill a pinkish red color.
I recently picked up some 500mg krill oil capsules at a good price, so I will have about a dozen bags in the office of 60 capsules for only $14. That is even cheaper than Costco.
For those of you that have been pumping in the high potency fish oil from the office, this is a good opportunity to switch over to the more actively absorbed form of omega 3 oil – krill oil.