Folate, DHA and Aggression



N

NWCurandero

Guest
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health in the US report
that animal studies have already shown that dietary folate can increase
tissue concentrations of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fat thought to
protect against heart disease and also depression and mental disorders.

But no human studies have examined the possibility that folate status
may affect plasma DHA concentrations.

The team carried out a retrospective study on 15 normal and 22 hostile
and aggressive subjects, with a mean age of 38 years.

Concentrations of plasma polyunsaturated essential fatty acids and red
blood cell folate were obtained prior to 1996, before American flour
was enriched with folate.

Folate was significantly correlated with plasma DHA in the aggressive
group, they report in an advance online issue of the European Journal
of Clinical Nutrition (doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602321).

Age, smoking and alcohol consumption did not alter the results. No
other essential fatty acids were significantly associated with RBC
folate in either group.

"The positive relationship between plasma DHA and RBC folate
concentrations suggests that these two nutrients should be examined
together in order to make the most accurate inferences about their
relative contributions to disease pathogenesis," concluded the
researchers.

"Our findings present one explanation why some conditions associated
with hostility and low DHA status, such as cardiovascular disease and
emotional disorders, are also associated with low folate status," they
added.

Links:

http://www.nutraingredients.com/news/ng.asp?n=64191-folate-dha

http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/1602321a.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16278690&dopt=Citation
 
By far, the best source of folate in the diet is liver.

Folate Content of Food

http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/nutrition/factsheets/folate.html

Item Folate (mcg)
Liver, chicken, 3.5 oz cooked 770
Liver, beef, 3.5 oz cooked 220
Blackeyed peas, boiled, 1 cup 210
Lentils, 1/2 cup cooked 179
Beans, white, boiled, 1/2 cup 144
Black eye peas, 1/2 cup cooked 120
Broccoli, cooked, 1 cup 104
Spinach, cooked, 1/2 cup 103
White pasta , 1/2 cup cooked 98
Flour tortilla, 10" diameter 88
Collard greens, ckd ,fresh 1/2 cup 88
Romaine lettuce, 1 cup 76
Orange juice, 1 cup 75
Fresh spinach, 1 cup 58
Wheat germ, raw, 2 Tbl 50
Tofu, 1/2 cup 55
Papaya cubes, 1 cup 53
Vegetable juice, 1 cup 51


TC

NWCurandero wrote:
> Researchers from the National Institutes of Health in the US report
> that animal studies have already shown that dietary folate can increase
> tissue concentrations of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fat thought to
> protect against heart disease and also depression and mental disorders.
>
> But no human studies have examined the possibility that folate status
> may affect plasma DHA concentrations.
>
> The team carried out a retrospective study on 15 normal and 22 hostile
> and aggressive subjects, with a mean age of 38 years.
>
> Concentrations of plasma polyunsaturated essential fatty acids and red
> blood cell folate were obtained prior to 1996, before American flour
> was enriched with folate.
>
> Folate was significantly correlated with plasma DHA in the aggressive
> group, they report in an advance online issue of the European Journal
> of Clinical Nutrition (doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602321).
>
> Age, smoking and alcohol consumption did not alter the results. No
> other essential fatty acids were significantly associated with RBC
> folate in either group.
>
> "The positive relationship between plasma DHA and RBC folate
> concentrations suggests that these two nutrients should be examined
> together in order to make the most accurate inferences about their
> relative contributions to disease pathogenesis," concluded the
> researchers.
>
> "Our findings present one explanation why some conditions associated
> with hostility and low DHA status, such as cardiovascular disease and
> emotional disorders, are also associated with low folate status," they
> added.
>
> Links:
>
> http://www.nutraingredients.com/news/ng.asp?n=64191-folate-dha
>
> http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/1602321a.html
>
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16278690&dopt=Citation
 
This is epiphenomenal. I've cited studies before about "arachidonate
cascade mania" and similar disorders. It is the arachidonic acid that
is the root cause, for those on a diet high in omega 6 polyunsaturates.
If you eliminate that, except in trace amounts, you eliminate all
these problems and don't have to mess with a dangerous substance like
DHA. See, for example:

Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1998 Apr 17;245(2):487-9. Related Articles,
Links

Oxidation of individual fatty acids yields different profiles of
oxidation markers.

Visioli F, Colombo C, Galli C.

Institute of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
[email protected]

Free radicals attack lipid molecules and initiate a chain of reactions
that may trigger several diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer.
Several markers of oxidative stress have been proposed, including
measurements of lipid peroxides and short-chain aldehydes levels and
evaluation of conjugated diene formation. Although it is generally
assumed that fatty acid oxidizability is directly proportional to their
degree of unsaturation, little is known about the contribution of
individual fatty acids to each of these markers. We investigated such
contributions in a model of AAPH-mediated peroxidation of individual
fatty acid micelles by assessing several indices of oxidative stress.
The results suggest that the generation of oxidation products by
individual fatty acids is not directly related to their degree of
unsaturation and indicate that the differential contribution of
individual fatty acids should be taken into account and more than one
marker of lipid peroxidation should be included in in vivo studies of
oxidative stress.

The saturated fatty acid, as one would expect, had little activity.
The MUFA, oleic, showed reasonable activity with one chemical marker.
What is interesting is that EPA wasn't that bad, considering its high
degree of unsaturation, though they didn't measure every marker
possible, just the most common ones. It's even more interesting
because in a recent study, EPA was found to be very immunosuppressive,
even compared to DHA, AA, etc. The structure of the fatty acid seems
to be a key role, as AA's high reactivity seems to be related to how
the double bonds are situated when the molecule is "bent."
 
montygram wrote:
> This is epiphenomenal.


What is?

> I've cited studies before about "arachidonate
> cascade mania" and similar disorders. It is the arachidonic acid that
> is the root cause, for those on a diet high in omega 6 polyunsaturates.
> If you eliminate that, except in trace amounts, you eliminate all
> these problems and don't have to mess with a dangerous substance like
> DHA.


How is DHA dangerous if *low* levels of it are linked to aggression?
How is it dangerous in molecular level detail?

> See, for example:
> Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1998 Apr 17;245(2):487-9. Related Articles,
> Links
>
> Oxidation of individual fatty acids yields different profiles of
> oxidation markers.


This paper has nothing to do with the original folate/DHA statement nor
your anti-arachidonic acid crusade, so why are you citing it?

> The saturated fatty acid, as one would expect, had little activity.


Vague and inaccurate again. "Activity" is the wrong word. What the
paper does show, however, is that saturated fatty acids can produce
oxidation byproducts.

> The MUFA, oleic, showed reasonable activity with one chemical marker.


What does that mean? You don't have "activity" with a marker, a marker
tells you "activity" is present or has occured.

> What is interesting is that EPA wasn't that bad, considering its high
> degree of unsaturation, though they didn't measure every marker
> possible, just the most common ones.


LOL. You're the one always saying how useless and unscientific markers
are and now you're trying to preserve your "fish oil = toxic" position
by saying they didn't look at enough of them.

> It's even more interesting
> because in a recent study, EPA was found to be very immunosuppressive,
> even compared to DHA, AA, etc.


What's that got to do with susceptibility to oxidation?

> The structure of the fatty acid seems
> to be a key role, as AA's high reactivity seems to be related to how
> the double bonds are situated when the molecule is "bent."


That's not mentioned in the paper, so it's pure guesswork on your part.
You also seem to have missed the part where they point out that things
may be very different in the body compared to their experimental
assays.

MattLB