Fatty Acids

ESSENTIAL FATS: Our greatest deficiency

Our fear of fat is reinforced with an unchallenged fanaticism by our mass media, our advertising, our medical authorities and undercritical medical reporters. Worst of all, there is no differ-entiation between the truly dangerous fats – the trans-fats in margarine and overfried foods, for example – and the wonderful, healing fats found in flaxseed oil and salmon and sardines. These fats have about as much in common as Charles Manson and Mother Teresa, respectively, yet our fat-phobic media tells you both are equally dangerous. In so doing, it prevents us from understanding how to obtain optimal health.

Such ignorance has propelled us from the frying pan right into the fire. Our low-fat nations have never been more overweight, and we’re falling prey to the very diseases that the low- fat, high-carbohydrate liturgy preaches we can deter. In the search for answers, we’ve looked everywhere except the most logical place – our scientific community. These researchers have amassed a rock solid body of evidence that shows we are not just eating too much fat; we’re eating the wrong kind and missing the right kind. And we’re not getting enough of the vitamins and minerals needed to enhance their beneficial effects.

Relearning the ABCS: Fats as Vita-Nutrients

Apparently, everyone seems to know that there are just three kinds of fat – saturated, derived from dairy products and red meat, and is supposedly bad; unsaturated, derived from vegetables and vegetable oils, and is good; and monounsaturated, derived from fish or olives, and is best. Except that is not the way it really is, and in fact, there is a much more useful way to classify fats.

First of all, most fats are not essential. We can dispense with many of them, because they are either harmful or, to give a nod to our fat-obsessed culture, a source of unneeded excess calo-ries. Two fatty acids, though, have been deemed essential. They’re like vitamins in that they cannot be made by the body, and a lack of either one of them will cause disease. But in the insanity of our pathological fat phobia, we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, creating fatty acid deficiencies that are in part responsible for epidemic levels of cancer, heart disease, inflammatory ailments and a host of other degenerative illnesses. What is becoming inescapably clear is that the essential fatty acids are collectively the number one missing nutrient in many Western diets. By the end of this chapter, you will understand why I prescribe or recommend supplements of these essential substances to every patient.

MEET THE OMEGAS

Although we need fat for a number of reasons (it is our primary source of reserve energy fuel, it’s part of every cell membrane in the body and it also cushions our organs), the essential fatty acids are indispensable because they provide the building blocks for the body’s numerous eicosanoids. These hormonelike chemicals, many of which are also called prostaglandins, have an enormous influence on health. Eicosanoids are the brokers of the body. They can lower blood pressure, raise temperature, open or constrict bronchial passages, stimulate hormone production and sensitize nerve fibres. And that’s just for starters. They are so dependent on dietary fat that we can directly attribute the specific activity of a particular eicosanoid to the class of fats from which it is derived.

Therefore it follows that we have the power to greatly enhance our health by picking fats that in turn create beneficial eicosanoids. Dividing them in this manner gives us the three fat families:

1. the omega-3s,
2. the omega-6s,
3. the omega-9s.

Fats in the first two classes contain the strongest power to generate eicosanoids; omega-9s are weaker and not labelled as essential but are helpful nevertheless. The real secret to good health is keeping a dietary balance between the two major classes, the omega-3s and the omega-6s, so that the body’s eicosanoids are balanced. Think of the brake and accelerator pedals in a car: we need both to drive. Having just one or the other would create serious problems.

So it is with fats. What kind, therefore, is more important than how much we eat. Our biggest problem is that during the course of the twentieth century, we have eaten too many omega-6 fats – safflower, sunflower and corn oil – and have virtually eliminated foods high in the omega-3s, such as flaxseed oil and cold-water fish. Reclaiming our health means striving to tip the balance towards these omega-3 s. Before examining the essential fats in all their medicinal detail, let’s look at the general health purposes of the three classes and their best food sources.