Balancing your fat intake is something I continually stress to all of our personal training clients. The ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 (simplistically viewed as arachadonic acid) fats in the average modern diet (“average” always equals sub optimal cr*p) is terrible. Estimates have it that our Paleolithic ancestors ate a 1:3 to 1:6 onega 3: omega 6 diet. I have read studies that have that now at 1:1000 omega3:omega 6. No wonder people are dying in ever increasing numbers from environmental diseases!
Its not too hard to sort your diet out either – eat organic meat, nuts and eggs (grass fed animals produce far more omega 3s than their grain fed counterparts) and supplement with a GOOD QUALITY (not a cheap supermarket own brand!) omega 3 product.
The following article should make you sit up and take notice:
Fatty acids clue to Alzheimer’s Brain
Scientists want to know more about the brain changes that lead to Alzheimer’s
Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer’s disease, an American study has suggested.
Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals’ memory problems and behavioural changes.
Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs.
A UK Alzheimer’s expert called the work “robust and exciting”.
There are currently 700,000 people living with dementia in the UK, but that number is forecast to double within a generation.
Scientists from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California looked at fatty acids in the brains of normal mice and compared them with those in mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like condition.
They identified raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the brains of the Alzheimer’s mice.
This is cause for cautious optimism, as fatty acid levels can be controlled to some extent by diet and drugs
Rebecca Wood, Alzheimer’s Research Trust
Its release is controlled by the PLA2 enzyme.
The scientists again used genetic engineering to lower PLA2 levels in the animals, and found that even a partial reduction halted memory deterioration and other impairments.
Dr Rene Sanchez-Mejia, who worked on the study, said: “The most striking change we discovered in the Alzheimer’s mice was an increase in arachidonic acid and related metabolites [products] in the hippocampus, a memory centre that is affected early and severely by Alzheimer’s disease.”
He suggested too much arachidonic acid might over-stimulate brain cells, and that lowering levels allowed them to function normally.
Dr Lennart Mucke, who led the research, added: “In general, fatty acid levels can be regulated by diet or drugs.
“Our results have important therapeutic implications because they suggest that inhibition of PLA2 activity might help prevent neurological impairments in Alzheimer’s disease.
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