omega-3 and 6 sources

Hi Judith

Roll on the DVD, I say. You are right. It is not easy to find this information, except on sites that are selling products, so it is not easy to extract the whole truth. I did find some good info on www.womentowomen.com , but they sell products too. There is an article called Causes of Inflammation, with a lot about diet and metabolism.

I have had some progress by just introducing more variety into my diet. For me this has included less fat, less meat (and leaner meat), more flax, less dairy, much less wheat, a little more of the other cereals, more legumes and pulses, less nuts, even more veges, particularly lightly cooked or raw greens, less refined foods, less packets and tins, less sugar. Less food overall, actually. My body certainly feels less prickly. My masseuse thinks that is because I have less uric acid in my muscles. Wha? My perspiration certainly doesn't taste as sharp and salty. Weird.

Louise

Hi Judith

I don't really believe that there are bad foods. They are all just food, but there are foods that are better in smaller quantities. eg, with our western, supermarket diet, omega 6's are over-represented in food that has been processed. That's why I figure that eating more different types of foods, rather than cutting out foods, is a better way to balance my diet. If I eat more fruit and veges, by definition I am eating less of other foods. I try to make the foods that I am eating less of the ones that have omega 3's, hence cutting fat off lean red meat, which has lots of omega 3's, (but the fat has more omega 6's).

I don't eat margarine, have always been a butter eater. Less wheat equals less bread equals less butter. The good thing about nuts is that they are a very concentrated food, so they satisfy for longer and they have lots of fibre, and if they are raw, they have enzymes(?), so I do eat nuts at breakfast time, but just a little handful, but the upside is that I often don't feel like having cake or bikkies with my morning coffee. I also then skip on the toast, and the butter and the yummy jam.

Unprocessed is preferable to processed, mostly raw preferable to cooked, lower fat over higher fat, low GI over high GI, complex carbs inc sugar, over simple carbs, less rather than more, etc.

Cheers

Louise

Yes, I meant omega 6, and I have changed it. Thanks. I think we share similar food philosophies. I too and trying to fine tune it. I think that is probably easier when you eat a bigger range of foods, because you have more options and are less likely to miss out on nutrients by manipulating diet. Dermatitis is much better and body aches and pains are much less, especially after a strenuous day.

I was weeding almost all day today, trying to get rid of long grass before the snakes wake up. I only found baby one, and he got more of a surprise than I did. Our old dog loves lying on shadecloth and she had been lying on a folded up piece, in the sun on a weedy path, and this little fellow was curled up under the shade cloth the dog was lying on, so he got very warm! I lifted the shadecloth to move it and he sprang up like a jack in the box and wriggled away faster than I have ever seen a snake move in my whole life! I only got half a surprise because I was expecting to find a snake or two in that part of the garden. Being spring they are still pretty sleepy, so it is easy to find them by mistake. It was a salutory lesson, and hardened my resolve to finish the weeding! I'll only do weeding in the cool of the morning from now on, while they are all still in bed! We are still getting frosts for another couple of weeks.

The curcumin sounds interesting. Let us know how you go with it.

Louise

Hi Judith,
Sorry, i've been offline for nearly a week, but slowly making my way through posts now!
I've been taking turmeric pills, as part of the anti inflammatory diet. I think they definately help, as i noticed a definate improvement when i upped my dosage of them.

I have taken a more radical diet shift than Louise, but I'm desperately trying to get this LS under control. So i have cut out nearly all my 6's, so no nuts, no vegetable oil in anything (except my few precious oat cakes--till i figure out to make them!), no olive oil, no sugar, no caffeine, no precious decaf late treat.... and eating more sea food + taking fish oil (need to order than algae oil) & turmeric. i fell off the diet rather badly and definately felt the effects, so now i'm back to it 100% and feel so much better. the other night i ate a curry from a restaurant, but took extra 3's and turmeric with it and didn't notice anything being worse.

as a result, my POP feel amazing, and my LS is definately improving...i just want it gone! but we'll get there... As Louise said, roll on the DVD...i can't wait!!!! i want to understand this all better...

Hi Judith

How much turmeric per day is a dose that you can tell is making a difference?

Also, according to http://www.plantcultures.org/plants/turmeric_production__trade.html turmeric is easily adulterated with other species that produce the same coloured powder, and nasties like lead chromate and less nasties like talc, particularly in Asian local markets, but in international markets it is less likely.

I would want to ensure that I bought high quality turmeric if having it on a daily basis. How do you tell it is high quality? Buy a familiar name brand that has a lot to lose by being prosecuted for impurities? What is the cost of guaranteed purity? Maybe a respected name like Blackmore's, or is that no guarantee? Oh, I am a cynic!

Louise

i had read that it's much more potent in a capsule than powder, but don't know why it would be. but a quick googles seems like it has a tiny bit of the curcumin. I'll look into that... i take 4 capsules a day of 400mg each, so 1600 mg turmeric or according to something i read, only 80mg of curcumin.
will look more into this weekend

butter--i eat loads now. yum yum! i'll look more at oat cake recipes to figure this out...think i need to get oat flour.

i know what you mean Louise about ensuring it's pure. I buy it from a mainstream vitamin shop which is fairly reputable, but you never know...but i do know that it's really helping, so i'm sticking with it till i find another alternative. still waiting for someone to send me my chaparal but should get it soon...

Judith...we are taking four of those small, roundish capsules in the morning and I usually take two more at night. The DHA flax oil I mentioned seems to be only about 10% algae oil and both my husband and I can feel a difference - the pure algae oil is more potent. I do not know yet if this is a reasonable dose but we seem to be doing well.

Also Kiki...freshly ground hot chili peppers are very anti-inflammatory. I have a little hand-crank food grinder that grinds them up in a few seconds with minimal fuss. We have them on top up of potato soup, homemade pizza, etc. There must be a million anti-inflammatory herbal teas as well. SO many things are anti-inflammatory - in the same grinder I make raw applesauce and dose it heavily with clove and nutmeg.

Yes...it means this stuff becomes very expensive. That's why we went to the liquid. This is a brand new industry and all we can hope for is that supply and demand will begin to even things out.

Edit** Also Judith...I'm still experimenting. I'm actually getting Omega-3 from several sources and in time might not feel I need so much of the oil. I know I was terribly deficient.

thanks for that christine. I'll try them (though not great with hot!). i was doing soooo well this month, made it mid cycle with no itch at all, then i ate some dried currants and bam, off we go again. argh! so frustrating. unfortunately i just can't afford the algae oil pills right now, so have to stick with fish (especially as i've been given a load of norwegian stuff...). but i'll keep experimenting.
thanks!
Kiki

so just reading about nuts and omega's has led me to the whole point some people have made that you can't just look at ratio's...you need to look at how much omega 6 is actually in something. ie walnuts have a 4:1 ratio, but a ton of omega 6 so you need a ton more to balance it, versus other nuts may have a bad ratio but actually very little omega 6 (and almost no 3), so whilst the nut doesn't balance itself, you need very little omega 3's to balance it.
hadn't thought about that!
oh, more reading to do...

Hi Kiki,
Its the ratio that matters as I guess you know. Walnuts are suppsed to be relatively high in omega3 to omega 6 ratio- they have even used them for omega3 experiments at Uni I think due to their relatively high ratio.

Pretty sure NO foods are all omega3 or all omega6 (or could be). Hope this helps.

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/omega-3-omega-6.html

http://efaeducation.nih.gov/sig/esstable.html

I can't vouch for the accuracy of these, but hope they help. Basically, it seems to me there is O6 in almost all vegetable sources of O3, and in addition there is some doubt how much O3 we can actually use from vegetable sources. In order to get lots of O3 without lots of O6 (currently I aim for 2 grammes daily) I have added oily fish (tinned Alaskan wild salmon and Portuguese sardines) and high strength fish oil to my vegetarian diet. But this means I have to accept the saturated fat that is also present in fish. Luckily, current official thinking seems to be that saturated fat is not quite as bad as previously thought. (Though I fear official thinking may be contaminated by pressure from the livestock industry.) It's a minefield.

i'm not sure it's so simple....because the ratio is important, but on the other hand how much. so for instance, some foods may have almost no omega 3, but conversely have very little omega 6, so you don't need to balance very much. walnuts do have a lot of omega 3 and thus better ratio it seems, but have a ton of 6, so you need even more 3 to balance them....so, walnuts have 3 gm of omega 3, but 30 of omega 6--so if i eat 100 g of walnuts, i need to eat another 54g of omega 6 to get my 2:1 ratio. by contrast, is i eat 100g of almonds, i only need to eat 18g of omega 3 to balance them. so it's actually quite complex...

alix, just to throw out something else to worry about, be aware of how much tinned fish you eat if they are conventional tins, as the lining on tins is full of the nasty chemicals from plastics. you can get tins w/o the bpa, but they are pretty rare.... and be sure the fish oil is free of heavy metals.
ah, so many things to think about!