April's CR Diary

April,

I thought of you last night as I was reading Saveur. On July 3, a town in France has a festival of the red fruits to celebrate the strawberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. How much fun is that! Anyway, I always love reading how you are fine tuning your CR practice, even if it didn't keep me out of the Kashi Go Lean Crunch last night :( Do you know what kind of greens were in your lunch salad. I have access to all kinds and would love to know! Thanks.

Laura

April, I've followed your blog off and on for maybe a year. For the most part, I'm very impressed with you and your efforts. However, if you are truly interested in the ON part of CRON, you could still stand for some improvement. For example, flax oil is not doing you any good, though I'm sure you're taking it under the belief that it is a viable form of omega-3. However, only 0.5% of the ALA in flax old is converted in your body to the EPA & DHA form of omega-3. ALA doesn't aid your body anymore that an omega-6 oil, which you generally want to avoid. The food industry (and even ignorant nutritionists) have perpetrated the myth that flax oil is good for you. Nope.

I'm sure I can find significant oversights or problems with your entire supplement program. The fact that you mention RDA -- a standard that was only designed to prevent disease, but doesn't address optimum health needs -- worries me greatly.

Do you eat grains? If so, even if they're whole grains, you're making another classic mistake that would take some time to explain.

I'm a longevity nutritional expert, btw. And I have little respect for your hero, Aubrey, because he has admitted to eating so incredibly poorly, and in a conversation I had with him he claimed he could do so because he has "good genes." What a knucklehead! Not only does poor nutrition *always* trump good genes, he should be setting an example rather than driving himself to an early grave with poor food choices. Not to mention it's incredibly self-centered to believe you have good genes that can overcome Snicker's bars, his daily snack, along with fried foods, beer and chips daily. Great example he is.

Scott, where do you get your information on flax oil?

It's true that in a diet that is VERY high in omega 6's, very little of the ALA is converted to animal forms of the omega 3's. But this is because the enzymes that convert ALA are also busy converting omega 6's. They're what are affectionately termed "rate limiting enzymes".

Flax oil has very little omega 6 oils in it, so when the ALA is absorbed, it has access to most of those enzymes, and hence is converted in much larger proportion that it would be in a typical American diet (you know, where the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is in excess of 20:1, and hence where at most 5% of the ALA could be converted).

Also, the body only needs a couple grams per day of EPA/DHA, and April gets way more than a couple grams of ALA, so only 10%-30% of it probably even needs to be converted anyway.

For a longevity nutritional expert, you should know these sorts of basic things, before bashing on the flax oil industry (like it's some huge industry, comparable to the dairy industry... As if...).

Flax oil increases prostate cancer, while fish oil decreases it:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/1/204

Flax is not a good omega-3 alternative to EPA/DHA:
http://tinyurl.com/a33b9

Fish oil decreases inflammation, but not flax oil:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/4/674

Bottom-line, flax oil (ALA omega-3) is a poor mans omega-3, and relies on the body's ability to convert to the two version you really want: EPA & DHA omega-3s. Does it just not make total sense to directly take EPA/DHA, rather than the indirect version ALA? This seems like a no-brainier. Additionally, many people poorly convert ALA, or do not convert it at all, do to either genetic faults in the conversion process (they don't create the right conversion enzymes), or because of otherwise poor nutrition, which leaves them short of the building blocks to makes the right enzymes. Vegetarians, especially, must worry about the latter problem.

But hey, if you want to rely on a poor ALA to EPA/DHA conversion rate, then more power to you. The body optimally needs 3-4 grams of EPA/DHA daily, so if you're relying on ALA to get you there, you probably need to consume 20+ grams grams of flax oil. heh heh Bottoms up!

I don't have access to the full-text of the first study, and I can't tell from the abstract if they controlled for omega-6's in relation to ALA. As I stated earlier, ALA and vegetable omega-6's compete for the same enzymes, so an American diet (and these were "US men") will typically leave ALA as an undesirable form of omega-3. And you can't even argue about controlling for omega-6 intake, because in Americans, that would mean controlling for a omega-6:omega-3 ratio of 50:1 versus 20:1 versus 12:1. A few statistical outliers might have ratios of 6:1, or perhaps even the minimally preferred 4:1. Ratios of 1:1 are virtually unheard of in Americans. So ALA just isn't going to cut it for these people, and hence the study isn't going to accurately reflect the effects of getting all your PUFAs in a single meal from flax oil, where the vast majority are omega-3.

The second study would take a doctorate to dissect, and I don't have one of those yet. However, I would like to point out something that factors into the conclusions made:

> There is competition among the enzymes involved in the elongation and
> desaturation of LA and ALA. A ratio of LA to ALA of 4:1 or less has
> been shown to be optimal for the elongation of 11 g of ALA to 1 g EPA.
> This is important for vegetarians because their diets are typically
> rich in LA and poor in ALA. Because EPA is biologically more active
> than ALA and high amounts of LA decrease the conversion of ALA to EPA,
> the optimal intake of LA relative to ALA is crucial for normal
> metabolism.

ALA is typically not a good source of n-3 fatty acids for vegetarians, because they get so much LA. However, if the only source of fat in the morning is flax oil, and it comes after a long fast (giving time for much of the LA from dinner to have been desaturated by now), then the ALA in that flax oil should have ample access to the desaturation enzymes. Especially if April is keeping her n-6:n-3 ratio low in general (which I haven't checked, but she can answer in a jiffy I bet).

As for the benefits of DHA and EPA over ALA, the study pointed out that the benefits are mostly internal. ALA isn't directly used, it has to be converted. If you're getting more than enough ALA to be converted, and if the ratio of LA to ALA is lower enough, then you should be fine. Yes, you'll have to take 10-15 grams a day to get the 3-4 grams of EPA/DHA that you've quoted (and where, by the way, did you get that figure? I've seen 1-2 grams, typically. Higher doses like the one you quoted are only needed to counteract the health consequences of the 30-50 grams of linoleic acid that most Americans get in their diet).

Finally, you drew the wrong conclusion about the third study, as they didn't even test ALA or flax oil.

Speaking of inflammation, high amounts of ALA can actually help reduce inflammation in a few ways. First, they can get converted to EPA and DHA, which are beneficial. Second, they compete for the desaturation enzymes, which helps slow the formation of arachidonic acid, which itself is a culprit in certain types of inflammation. So it's a double benefit.

And I should end this comment by saying that not all CRON practitioners avoid fish or other sources of EPA/DHA. The mercury in fish is one concern, and the vitamin A content is another. I believe there was even some concern about possible negative effects of either DHA or EPA, though I don't remember which.

I personally intend to eat plenty of ground flaxseeds, but I'll also be eating fish once or twice a week as well.