Re: Linoleic acid a carcinogen?

montygram said:

Biochemist Ray Peat has been pointing this out for years now. There
was a recent report of an experiment done (you can go to
sciencedaily.com and search for fried polyunsaturated and it should be
the first item) on a product of linoleic acid called 4-HNE. The
interesting thing is that I found a scientific paper that noted that
another product of linoleic acid was much more damaging than 4-HNE,
which is very bad stuff indeed. You can go to pubmed.com and search
for some key words, such as lipid peroxidation, and you'll see that
this is the worst thing you can eat, yet it is being promoted as
"essential." Do a search of pubmed.com for spiteller lipid
peroxidation and you'll see several reports by a group of scientists
that have specialized in this direction. There are scientists who
state in their abstracts that lipid peroxidation is the underlying
cause of all "chronic disease," and from my extensive research over the
last 4 years, I'd have to agree. Free iron is a problem, but as
Spiteller mentions, when cells are damaged, a cascade of events
results, iron gets liberated along with linoleic acid (or the fatty
acid derived from linoleic, called arachidonic), and several very
dangerous molecules are formed, which then can do severe damage to
cells and organs. Because there is no real scientific evidence to
suggest that a full grown adult needs linoleic acid (and plenty to
suggest it is nothing but harmful), I restrict my intake of it to trace
amounts. When you do that, your body makes its own polyunsaturated
fatty acid, called the Mead acid, which is much more stable and does
not form such harmful substances. There are several studies showing
that people or animals with Mead acid instead of omega 6
polyunsaturates in their tissues have lower inflammation or are more
resistant to it, which makes sense biochemically.

If you do a search for arachidonic depression on sciencedaily.com
you'll see that the levels of this horribly damaging substance are
elevated in depressed patients brains, and there is something called
arachidonic cascade mania, another biochemical situation that leads to
psychological disorders. Indeed, the so-called epidemic of autism is
likely due to the much higher intake of linoleic acid now, as compared
to 30 or so years ago. It wouldn't take much to test this idea, and
pleny of scientists are writing about it, but the big healthy agencies
are usually looking for bacteria, viruses, high cholesterol, or
something else that is either irrelevant or a secondary phenomenon.

I read the Ray Peat's newsletters and can only confirm his theories on
the unsaturated fats damaging effects on health, through personal
experimentation. Eliminating all PUFA's (especially) as much as possible
seems to work much better for me then eating omega 6 and try to balance
it with enough omega 3 to limit the damage.

--
Dawid Michalczyk
http://www.art.eonworks.com - Art and Illustration

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There are several studies showing

that people or animals with Mead acid instead of omega 6
polyunsaturates in their tissues have lower inflammation or are more
resistant to it, which makes sense biochemically. <<

COMMNENT

Studies on what species of animal? The studies which suggest that
PUFAs, especially LA (linoleic acid 18:2w-6) are "carcinogenic", are
likely to be based on rodent work. Rodents are great at converting this
to GLA, DHGLA, and finally to arachadonate (AA = 20:4w-6), which as you
out point out below is a big inflammatory. And is probably what gives
rodents on high PUFA diets cancer (though there is a threshold effect
for PUFA dose and cancer in mice and rats, and it is NOT the case that
the less PUFA in rodent diet the better, as you seem to imply).

Humans, however, don't convert LA to GLA very well, and since GLA is
rare in the diet, humans eating large amounts of LA don't seem to
suffer from too much arachadonate (AA) as rodents do. As with cats and
other carnivores, most AA in humans is eaten in the human diet,
pre-formed. We get it from eggs and turkey and bacon grease and milk
and stuff like that. And all that AA may well be part of what's giving
us more cancer on the Western diet. Vegans who get no pre-formed AA and
a LOT of plant LA, don't have big inflammatory problems, or cancer
problems. Sorry, but that's an epidemiological fact. We're not big
rodents.

People who bypass the desaturase block from LA to GLA by taking GLA
supplements directly (EPO, blackcurrent, borage) without an EPA w-3
supplement to block the conversion of GLA to AA in the liver, get a big
AA blast they surely aren't looking for. But they're rare. Anybody
taking borage these days is probably also taking fishoil.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If you do a search for arachidonic depression on sciencedaily.com

you'll see that the levels of this horribly damaging substance are
elevated in depressed patients brains, and there is something called
arachidonic cascade mania, another biochemical situation that leads to
psychological disorders. <<

COMMENT:

Fine. Have them eat less eggs and poultry. Also farmed salmon seems
amazingly high in AA, since fish also are great at making it from LA
(which they get in their corn feed when aquacultured).

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Indeed, the so-called epidemic of autism is

likely due to the much higher intake of linoleic acid now, as compared
to 30 or so years ago. It wouldn't take much to test this idea, and
pleny of scientists are writing about it, but the big healthy agencies
are usually looking for bacteria, viruses, high cholesterol, or
something else that is either irrelevant or a secondary phenomenon. <<

COMMENT:
They're looking for mercury. Forgetting that the first big push in
MMR/thimerosal vaccination happened in the middle 60's. All our
autistics in the US should be about > 40-45 years old right now. Which
is not what we observe.

Anyway, autism is not more common in big LA eaters. Autistic Jains?
Autistic Adventists? No, I don't think so.

Again, humans aren't rats or fish. We don't turn LA into AA that
efficiently. Which means LA is not the pro-inflammatory for us that it
is for these other species. I know you want to eat hydrogenated coconut
oil and don't want to hear this either, but that's too bad. WIthout
some LA, you're one day going to wind up like the hydrogenated coconut
fed dogs.

SBH

When people have too much Omega 6 LA and too little of Omega 3s DHA,
EPA, ALA and Omega 6 GLA they have a lot of inflammation. LA can over
time be toxic but the results build up over years. Fatty foods like
peanuts, red meat and junk food have high doses of LA and should be
taken in small doses.

First paragraph republished with link @

http://debunkbigpharma.blognation.us/blog/_archives/2005/6/25/973858.html