Posted by Larry Hoover on March 26, 2005, at 11:15:20
In reply to Not all Omega-3s are created equal, posted by itsme2003 on March 23, 2005, at 2:17:51
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> > Omega-9 fatty acids are not deficient in most people's diets, and there is no imbalance associated with their lack.
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> > With the advent of modern food processing over the last century, and the novel availability and amount of vegetable oils in our diets (from an evolutionary perspective), I cannot conceive that anyone is deficient in omega-6 or omega-9 fatty acids. We currently get about 60 times as much as our ancestors had in their diets. Simultaneous to that increase, we've lost half our omega-3 intake.
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> > I was able to exactly match a commercial (Udo's) 3-6-9 oil blend by simply proportioning canola, olive and flax oils appropriately. Hocus-pocus oil, IMHO.
> >
> > Just my perspective.
> >
> > Lar
> >
>
> Keep in mind that there are two important items about a particular fatty acid. The position of the first double bond (the omega) and the chain length. The body can shorten the chains fairly easily, but has a lot of difficulty making the chain longer. Thus you can't really take flax oil (a shorter chain omega-3) and expect to get the benefits that you would get from fish oil (a longer chain omega-3).
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> I have read that the standard American diet is deficient in Gamma Linolenic Aid (GLA) which is an omega-6 fatty acid. Thus a person could be in a position of ingesting way too much omega-6 fatty acid, yet not get enough of one particular omega-6 fatty acid.
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> I agree that the average person has no deficiency of omega-9 fatty acids. These come along naturally in all of the named ingredients in this oil. Besides from a marketing perspective, omega 3-6-9 oil probably sounds better than omega 3-6 oil.All absolutely correct. There is no substitute for ingestion of preformed EPA and DHA. Moreover, ingesting the combination of omega-3 fats (which bind to desaturase enzymes with higher affinity than do omega-6) with GLA shunts the GLA into an alternative pathway (not towards arichidonic acid) that produces anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.
The commercial 3-6-9 blends are nothing more than snake oil products, IMHO. Udo is a quack.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:445077
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050323/msgs/475780.html