Okay, Margaret Okuzumi has a question. "The paid Cronometer app has a nutrient balance
meter for Omega-6 to Omega-3. I know you've said non-vegans don't need to worry about
Omega-6, Omega-3 balance, but is there a danger to too much Omega-3 compared to
Omega-6 or insufficient Omega-6 intake. On my current diet Paleo Reset, I'm regularly
exceeding the AI for Omega-3, but I'm not often reaching the minimum AI for Omega-6,
unless I make a really concerted effort to say, eat sunflower seeds or large quantities of nuts,
or should I not worry about that because any normal sort of diet should actually
have sufficient linoleic acid. I don't think Cronometer database is missing much Omega-3
or Omega-6 data for the vegetables and fruits I eat because many of the entries are showing very
minute quantities of one or the other. Should I strive to at least meet the
AI for Omega-6 if I have chronic disease or inflammation? After reading through the vitamins
and minerals sections for Omega-6, Omega-3, I'm thoroughly confused. My diet is not low fat,
generally 30 to 45% fat, but most of my fat intake is monounsaturated at present. I need
to stay away from consuming lots of saturated fats because it makes my cholesterol levels skyrocket."
All right. Thank you for your question, Margaret. Basically,
the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio is something that is entirely pertaining to getting these
oils from plants. So the physiologically essential form of Omega-6 that you need is arachidonic acid.
The physiologically essential form of Omega-3 that you need is DHA, and there is EPA,
my stance is sort of controversial on, but I think EPA has some positive pharmacological benefits
in certain circumstances, such as lowering triglycerides or treating certain psychiatric
disorders, particularly anxiety and depression, but I don't believe that EPA is an essential
fatty acid in humans. And when I say essential, I'm talking about physiologically essential,
meaning there's going to be a deficiency syndrome if it's not there.
So the purpose here is to get enough DHA and arachidonic acid into your tissues.
If you are eating fatty fish and egg yolks, and obviously you have to eat enough, so let's say
if you're eating two servings of fatty fish a week and you are eating two egg yolks a day,
you probably don't need to worry about the Omega-6, Omega-3 ratio or meeting the AI
for Omega-6 to Omega-3 because remember what is an AI? An adequate intake is defined as
the median or mean intake of an apparently healthy population. So an AI is sort of like,
we couldn't come up with a number so we looked at what people were doing and we said it was good.
That's what an AI is. So as we were talking about earlier on over consumption of Omega-6 oils,
people are probably consuming too much Omega-6, and so if you're not meeting the AI,
it's not surprising you wouldn't meet the AI. You probably shouldn't meet the AI for Omega-6
fatty acids. You probably should regularly exceed the AI for Omega-3 fatty acids because generally,
our population doesn't consume enough Omega-3.
So I think it's totally normal to not meet the AI for Omega-6 and to exceed the AI for Omega-3.
Question is really, if you have systemic inflammation going on,
you frame this as, should I strive to at least meet the AI for Omega-6 if I have chronic
disease/inflammation? Well, if you have chronic disease/inflammation, you might be depleting your
Omega-6, which means depleting arachidonic acid, which means you might need more arachidonic acid.
So does that mean you should meet the AI for linoleic acid? Not really.
It means that you need more arachidonic acid, and so one way to get more arachidonic acid,
if you have good conversion from linoleic acid is to eat more linoleic acid,
but you're probably going to get better bang for your buck by eating more egg yolks or more liver,
and after that, you're probably going to get more bang for the buck out of supplementing
with arachidonic acid derived from a mushroom. If you search
Amazon for arachidonic acid, you'll find supplements like that.
And after that, you're going to get somewhat less bang for the buck, but still a lot more than
hitting the AI for linoleate... You're going to get somewhat less bang for the buck out of evening
primrose and borage oil supplements. And then after that way down at the bottom, yeah, you would
probably get more arachidonic acid at some point from linoleic acid. What you should probably do is
get an OmegaQuant fatty acid profile and look and see whether your arachidonic acid levels are good.
A big profile that I like, Genova ION panel also has plasma fatty acid analysis. You can also get
plasma fatty acids from Quest, but OmegaQuant does them in phospholipids, which is ideal.
So if you get their full fatty acid profile and look at the arachidonic acid specifically
to see if it's in range, if it's depleted, you need more arachidonic acid. If you need
more arachidonic acid, you can get it through the ways I just ran through.
If your arachidonic acid levels look good, you shouldn't worry at all about meeting the AI for
linoleate as far as I'm concerned. So I hope that helped Margaret. Thank you for your question.