Dietary Fat, Cholesterol, and Fish Oil importance

joejccva71

Ok so folks on my friend's list talked me into creating another one of my awesome threads. This one is going to be about dietary fat intake, cholesterol, and the important of fish oil intake.

And once again I have to do this:

Disclaimer: This thread is not meant to attack, harass, foray, crush, destroy, offend, barrage, charge, blitzkrieg, strike, thrust, or raid anyone here. Some things may or may not hurt your feelings over the internet. If your feelings get hurt, then I recommend you pick up this book at any of your local Barnes & Noble stores:




Otherwise, let's move on....

Dietary Fat Intake
Generally speaking, your dietary fat intake should be .35g to .75g per lb of BODYWEIGHT. Stay within this range, no more...no less in my opinion. Your body can get away with low low fat levels for a short period of time, but you WILL start to notice some problems with overall brain functionality (memory loss), sanity, satiety, and sex drive if you keep your fat intake too low.

Note: This does NOT mean you should eat a ****load of dietary fat and end up going over your TDEE so you can have better sex. (Just wanted to point this out)

Dietary Fat or Dietary Triglycerides that makes up for 90% of our dietary fat intake comes in 4 basic categories:

- Trans Fat
- Saturated Fat
- Monounsaturated Fat
- Polyunsaturated Fat

Trans-fatty acids are a semi-solid fat that are made from bubbling hydrogen through vegetable oil. This type of fat is absolutely useless to the human body and can cause nothing but problems. It is also the only type of fat that has proven to lead to CHD and CVD (Coronary Heart Disease & Cardiovascular Disease).

TFA [trans-fatty acid] consumption causes metabolic dysfunction: it adversely affects circulating lipid levels, triggers systemic inflammation, induces endothelial dysfunction, and, according to some studies, increases visceral adiposity, body weight, and insulin resistance…Consistent with these adverse physiological effects, consumption of even small amounts of TFAs (2% of total energy intake) is consistently associated with a markedly increased incidence of coronary heart disease.

Saturated Fats are one of the most controversial topics regarding fat intake because of the myth that it leads to CHD and CVD. Without boring you with too much detail, there is NOT enough evidence nor scientific research to support such a claim. Saturated fats also do not lead to higher LDL cholesterol levels which I'll get into in a bit. Saturated fats include egg yolks, animal fat, etc.

Monounsaturated Fats are your olive oil fats which have high content of oleic acid. Also egg yolks, and animal fat have monounsaturated fat content.

Polyunsaturated Fats are your EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) from your fish oils.



Cholesterol
Contrary to what A LOT of people think, dietary cholesterol that you eat has very little effect on your blood serum cholesterol. Your body produces it's own cholesterol regardless of the food you eat. However, this is not saying that if you have a family history of VERY HIGH LDL cholesterol you should probably not go out, tip over and drink an entire bottle of Crisco Vegetable Oil to impress your friends. The outcome of this will not be good.

There are MANY studies that disprove the theories of how Saturated Fats and Dietary Cholesterol being linked to Blood Cholesterol, but here are a few:

Of all the studies I came across, only the Western Electric study found a clear association between habitual saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol, and even that association was weak. The Bogalusa Heart study and the Japanese study provided inconsistent evidence for a weak association. The other studies I cited, including the bank workers' study, the Tecumseh study, the Evans county study, the Israel Ischemic Heart study, the Framingham study and the Health Professionals Follow-up study, found no association between the two factors.

Overall, the literature does not offer much support for the idea that long term saturated fat intake has a significant effect on the concentration of blood cholesterol in humans. If it's a factor at all, it must be rather weak. It may be that the diet-heart hypothesis rests in part on an over-reliance on the results of short-term controlled feeding studies. It would be nice to see this discussed more often (or at all) in the scientific literature. It is worth pointing out that the method used to collect diet information in most of these studies, the food frequency questionnaire, is not particularly accurate, so it's possible that there is a lot of variability inherent to the measurement that is partially masking an association. In any case, these controlled studies have typically shown that saturated fat increases both LDL and HDL, so even if saturated fat did have a modest long-term effect on blood cholesterol, as hinted at by some of the observational studies, its effect on heart attack risk would still be difficult to predict.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/01/does-dietary-saturated-fat-increase.html

Serum cholesterol response to changes in the diet ☆: IV. Particular saturated fatty acids in the diet.

For many dietary changes satisfactory prediction of the average change in the serum cholesterol level of man in mg./100 ml., is given by Δ Chol. = 1.35(2ΔS − ΔP) + 1.5ΔZ where S and P are percentages of total calories provided by glycerides of saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet and Z2 = mg. of dietary cholesterol/1000 Cal. This formula fails, however, when the dietary change involves large amounts of cocoa butter and discrepancies also appear with beef tallow or hydrogenated coconut oil diets. Controlled dietary experiments at the University of Minnesota and at 2 other centers, provide 63 sets of comparisons of serum cholesterol averages for groups of men on each of 2 chemically characterized diets. Least-squares analysis indicates that stearic acid, as well as saturated fatty acids containing fewer than 12 carbon atoms, have little or no effect on serum cholesterol in man. The equation, Δ Chol. = 1.2(2ΔS′ − ΔP) + 1.5ΔZ, yields good correlation (r = 0.93) with the observed values in these 63 sets of data. This formulation also resolves heretofore puzzling discrepancies in the literature.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0026049565900041

Importance of Fish Oil
All you really need to know here is ANTI-INFLAMMATION. That is it's major use. There are other minor health benefits which I won't get into here, but EFA's have been known to reduce arthritis, back pain, joint pain, and any kind of inflammation that the human body receives.

The normal dose is about 5-6g a day. I wouldn't go higher than that, and going lower isn't really helping as much as it could.

A few studies:

Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) as an anti-inflammatory: an alternative to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for discogenic pain.
Maroon JC, Bost JW.
Source
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. maroonjc@upmc.edu
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
The use of NSAID medications is a well-established effective therapy for both acute and chronic nonspecific neck and back pain. Extreme complications, including gastric ulcers, bleeding, myocardial infarction, and even deaths, are associated with their use. An alternative treatment with fewer side effects that also reduces the inflammatory response and thereby reduces pain is believed to be omega-3 EFAs found in fish oil. We report our experience in a neurosurgical practice using fish oil supplements for pain relief.
METHODS:
From March to June 2004, 250 patients who had been seen by a neurosurgeon and were found to have nonsurgical neck or back pain were asked to take a total of 1200 mg per day of omega-3 EFAs (eicosapentaenoic acid and decosahexaenoic acid) found in fish oil supplements. A questionnaire was sent approximately 1 month after starting the supplement.
RESULTS:
Of the 250 patients, 125 returned the questionnaire at an average of 75 days on fish oil. Seventy-eight percent were taking 1200 mg and 22% were taking 2400 mg of EFAs. Fifty-nine percent discontinued to take their prescription NSAID medications for pain. Sixty percent stated that their overall pain was improved, and 60% stated that their joint pain had improved. Eighty percent stated they were satisfied with their improvement, and 88% stated they would continue to take the fish oil. There were no significant side effects reported.
CONCLUSIONS:
Our results mirror other controlled studies that compared ibuprofen and omega-3 EFAs demonstrating equivalent effect in reducing arthritic pain. omega-3 EFA fish oil supplements appear to be a safer alternative to NSAIDs for treatment of nonsurgical neck or back pain in this selective group.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16531187

Supplementation of fish oil and olive oil in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Berbert AA, Kondo CR, Almendra CL, Matsuo T, Dichi I.
Source
Department of Department of Pathology, Londrina State University, Paraná, Brazil.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
This study evaluated whether supplementation with olive oil could improve clinical and laboratory parameters of disease activity in patients who had rheumatoid arthritis and were using fish oil supplements.
METHODS:
Forty-three patients (34 female, 9 male; mean age = 49 +/- 19y) were investigated in a parallel randomized design. Patients were assigned to one of three groups. In addition to their usual medication, the first group (G1) received placebo (soy oil), the second group (G2) received fish oil omega-3 fatty acids (3 g/d), and the third group (G3) received fish oil omega-3 fatty acids (3 g/d) and 9.6 mL of olive oil. Disease activity was measured by clinical and laboratory indicators at the beginning of the study and after 12 and 24 wk. Patients' satisfaction in activities of daily living was also measured.
RESULTS:
There was a statistically significant improvement (P < 0.05) in G2 and G3 in relation to G1 with respect to joint pain intensity, right and left handgrip strength after 12 and 24 wk, duration of morning stiffness, onset of fatigue, Ritchie's articular index for pain joints after 24 wk, ability to bend down to pick up clothing from the floor, and getting in and out of a car after 24 wk. G3, but not G2, in relation to G1 showed additional improvements with respect to duration of morning stiffness after 12 wk, patient global assessment after 12 and 24 wk, ability to turn faucets on and off after 24 wk, and rheumatoid factor after 24 wk. In addition, G3 showed a significant improvement in patient global assessment in relation to G2 after 12 wk.
CONCLUSIONS:
Ingestion of fish oil omega-3 fatty acids relieved several clinical parameters used in the present study. However, patients showed a more precocious and accentuated improvement when fish oil supplements were used in combination with olive oil.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15723739

Anyway, this thread was longer than I really wanted it to be but if anyone has any questions...feel free to ask.

Thanks.

J