Month: September 2008

Too Much Flaxseed Oil

Seth Roberts12 Comments

I recently got the following email:

I’d like to advise caution about the use of excessive omega-3s, such as flax and fish oil. I discovered that too much of these oils can induce an omega-6 deficiency, since both n3 and n6 oils compete for the same enzymes in the biosynthesis pathways of prostaglandin precursors. In susceptible people, of which I am one, this leads to insomnia, psoriatic lesions, and when combined with food avoidance (e.g. Atkins-like diets, etc.), can lead to loss of immunological tolerance to food antigens. It turns out that n6 arachidonic acid is critical for the development and maintenance of oral tolerance (Newberry, 1999).

I asked her for details. She replied:

I started taking 2 tablespoons of flax oil daily with meals, and this was my exclusive added fat source for several months; I also got fat from meat and dairy. This was back in 2001. The insomnia happened almost immediately, and the psoriasis and “cellophane-like” skin developed over several weeks. I quit the flax oil after 3 months, but this was around the same time that I learned of Atkins and the Weston Price foundation- so, I cut back on carbohydrates and added fish oil and “whole foods” to my diet. It’s not clear what exactly happened around that time, but I started to descend into chronic illness: chronic flu-like symptoms, blood-sugar fluctuations, disordered sleep schedule, arthritis in my wrists and toes, rapid weight gain, etc. (And I should mention that before that I was an invincible young woman grad student, an outdoorsy athlete, was proud to never get a cold, and only mildly overweight.) I dealt with it as best as I could, since I was also trying to do my PhD thesis in engineering. I also quit taking any dietary supplements, because nothing seemed to help and I would often get weird side-effects from simple things like calcium supplements. On the advice of a physician in 2004, I added more carbohydrate back to the diet (re-introduced wheat carbs) and got hit with some frightening digestive complaints (cramps, vomiting, IBS symptoms.) It looked a lot like celiac disease, but all of the tests were negative. I didn’t have the proper genetic markers for celiac disease, either, but a strict gluten-free and dairy free diet helped nonetheless.

The GI symptoms were much better by 2005 after going gluten and dairy free, but I was still not well. What gave me the “aha moment” was taking a random dose of fish oil during that time, and having an immediate relapse in symptoms. Then I started researching arachidonic acid (the “bad” n6), with the question of “well, what is it good for, then?” That’s when I found the Newberry paper, and it dawned on me that I had inadvertently created an n6 deficiency by overdoing it on flax/fish oil. I also became quite an expert on essential fatty acid metabolism. What I had likely done was impair my ability to tolerate the introduction of new foods. I knew that my problem wasn’t gluten per se, because I would develop symptoms soon after adding exotic foods (coconut milk, pork, tapioca flour, etc.) to replace the eliminated things like milk and wheat flour.

Here are the three things I did to get well:

1) After discovering the Newberry paper, I decided to focus on acquiring pre-made sources of arachidonic acid in the diet. I found that the best source of pre-formed arachidonic acid is egg yolks and poultry, and I looked to worldwide intakes of AA to gauge my dose. It turns out that the French get a good daily dose of AA (190mg for women), and I settled on 2 egg yolks per day (65mg each) plus incidental sources. This is where I really turned the corner on feeling well.

2) I avoided known problem foods temporarily. I consulted with Jonathan Brostoff on food intolerances, and he said that the immune system requires about 6 months to “forget” its hypersensitivity to a food antigen before it can be re-introduced. I did the gluten and dairy free diet for 3 years in total, and added back foods on an experimental basis once I had been on the egg-yolk regime for a year.

3.) Finally, a gastroenterologist called my problem IBS, which is a catch-all trash diagnosis. However, I had been thinking in terms of celiac disease for a long time, and after doing searches on IBS I came across some new information about a probiotic that was supposed to help with IBS. I tried Bifidobacterium infantis (Align) for 2 months last winter, and it put me over the top. This was around the same time that I tried gluten and dairy for the first time in 3 years, and I was able to introduce it with no problems.

Today, I feel that I’m back to 100% and cured, except for the weight that I acquired during the illness. (I stopped gaining after going gluten free, but could never lose anything.) My propensity to experiment on myself led to some serious consequences, but I discovered something that relatively few people know about the importance of omega-6s.

Keep in mind that deficiency of omega-6 is very rare and overconsumption very common (e.g., the Israeli Paradox). In 2002, the Japan Society for Lipid Nutrition recommended reducing linoleic acid (LA) intake; LA is the short-chain omega-6 fatty acid, found in high concentrations in many vegetable oils, such as soybean oil. LA is converted to AA in the body.

Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 11)

Seth Roberts15 Comments

I’m now sure it’s the one-legged standing that’s improving my sleep. The new way of seeing faces in the morning doesn’t seem to matter. In case you want to try this, I’ve found that if I just raise one foot slightly I can stand one-legged much longer (about twice as long) than if I stand one-legged and pull the other foot behind me (stretching my leg muscles). I think this means the stretching pose is twice as effective per minute as the non-stretching pose; it produces the same effect in half the time.

It’s only been a few weeks, but my legs are already much stronger. Walking long distances (such as 4 miles) is easier and so is standing for long periods of time. My notions about exercise are changing, too. Before this, I thought of exercise having three types:

1. Strength. Exercise a muscle, it gets stronger. Benefits: stronger muscles can do more, look better.

2. Flexibility. Improved by stretching, e.g., yoga. Benefit: less chance of injury.

3. Aerobic. The Cooper idea. Improved by running, swimming, etc. Benefit: apparently reduces risk of heart attacks, perhaps reduces risk of other diseases. (Some people do it to lose weight, of course.) To measure aerobic fitness, The Cooper Institute stress-tested executives and found that those with better stress-test scores had lower mortality in the following years. Stress-test fitness was a better predictor of mortality than obesity — some people were “fit but fat”.

The one-legged standing seems to be a whole new category:

4. Soporific. When you stress a leg muscle a lot, presumably one or more chemicals are released that both (a) cause the muscle to grow (the well-known effect of exercise) and (b) cause you to sleep more deeply at night (the effect that interests me). In contrast to Types 1-3, there’s no need for the concept of fitness here because you don’t slowly go up and down in a measure of effectiveness (i.e., become more or less fit). Rather each day you are high or low on this measure, and the next day you start fresh. In contrast to Types 1-3, where the benefits accrue slowly (over weeks and months), the benefits are obvious the next morning (you feel better-rested) and the next day (you’re less tired). In contrast to Types 1-3, there is no connection with athletics (such as Olympic events). Conventional exercise is integral-like: It’s the sum over days that matters. Whereas this exercise is derivative-like: The benefits derive from doing a little more today than you did on previous days. The psychology is different, too. The benefits are so large relative to the cost that there’s no motivation problem. Deciding to do it is about as hard as deciding to pick up a $!0 bill. Deciding to do conventional exercise is a lot harder.

Directory.

Two Books about Memory Research

Seth Roberts1 Comment

My mom said this:

Finished reading Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From the Front Lines of Memory Research [by Sue Halpern]. As far as I’m concerned, Carved in Sand [by Cathryn Ramin] is much the better book. Less science but better, more careful and detailed, description of remedies tried. Halpern personalizes each scientist she talked to in an irritating way, and then describes their theories in great detail, only to report their failures later. As a matter of fact, most of the news she reports, especially about Alzheimer’s, is bad news. The good news is that daily exercise appears to be beneficial to memory, as are a host of other things supposedly good for it. Earthshaking.

Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 10)

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Long ago, talking about scientific discovery, Pasteur said “chance favors the prepared mind.” In my case, I now realize, this generalization can be improved on. The underlying pattern can be described more precisely.

I’ve made several discoveries because two things came together, as Pasteur said, with one element a kind of chance and the other a kind of knowledge. The two elements were:

  1. I did something unusual.
  2. I knew something unusual.

Here are the discoveries and how they fit this pattern:

1. Breakfast. Discovery: Eating breakfast caused me to wake up too early more often. Did something unusual: I copied one of my students, who told me about his experiences during office hour. This eventually led me to vary my breakfast. Knew something unusual: I had detailed records of my sleep. The combination made it clear that breakfast was affecting my sleep.

2. Morning faces. Discovery: Seeing faces in the morning improves my mood the next day. Did something unusual: I watched a tape of Jay Leno soon after getting up. Knew something unusual: From teaching intro psych, I knew there was a strong connection between depression and bad sleep.

3. Standing and sleep. Discovery: Standing a lot reduces early awakening. Did something unusual: I arranged my life so that I stood a lot more than usual . Knew something unusual: I had detailed sleep records. They made the reduction in early awakening easy to see.

4. Sleep and health. Discovery: At the same time my sleep greatly improved, I stopped getting colds. Did something unusual: To improve my sleep I was standing a lot and getting a lot of morning light from a bank of lights on my treadmill. Knew something unusual: I had records of my colds going back ten years.

5. The Shangri-La Diet. Discovery: Drinking sugar water causes weight loss. Did something unusual: I went to Paris. Knew something unusual: I had developed a new theory of weight control.

6. Flaxseed oil and the brain. Discovery: Flaxseed oil improves my mental function . Did something unusual: One evening I took 6-8 flaxseed oil capsules. Knew something unusual: I had been putting on my shoes standing up for more than a year and knew how difficult it usually was. The morning after I took the flaxseed oil capsules it was a lot easier.

7. Standing on one foot and sleep. Discovery: Standing on one foot improves my sleep. Did something unusual: In order to stretch my quadriceps, I stood on one foot several times one day. Knew something unusual: I knew that if I stood a lot my sleep improved (Discovery 3).

The unusual actions ranged from things as common as foreign travel (Paris) and stretching to the extremely rare (watch a tape of Jay Leno soon after waking up). The unusual knowledge ranged from quirky and casual (knowing how hard it is to put on shoes standing up) to sets of numbers (sleep records) to generalizations based on numbers (what scientific papers are about) to the sort of stuff taught in science classes (a theory of weight control) to the sort of knowledge derived from teaching science classes (connecting depression and bad sleep). To call this stuff unusual knowledge is actually too broad because in every case it’s knowledge related to causality.

Only after Discovery 7 (more precisely, this morning) did I notice this pattern. Read the discussion section of this paper (which is about Discoveries 1-5) to see how badly I missed it earlier.

More on Discovery 6. Discovery 7.