Dr. Jorn Dyerberg was one of two Danish doctors who discovered that Eskimos in Greenland, with low rates of heart disease, have much more omega-3 in their blood than Danes in Greenland, with normal rates of heart disease. This was the beginning of the great interest in omega-3s. Here is an interview with Dr. Dyberg. Among his comments:
As for ALA, an omega-3 from plants that is converted in the body to EPA and subsequently DHA, he was unconvinced. In terms of biological effects of DHA and EPA, Dr. Dyerberg said there are many. “We don’t know of any specific biological effects of ALA,” he said.
“Tissue experiments give you an ALA concentration of zero. This omega-3 is either burnt or converted,” he said. “And the conversion is low.”
“If we want the benefits of omega-3, we have to eat them as long chain,” he said, referring to EPA and DHA.
My research — revealing very clear benefits of flaxseed oil, no doubt because of its ALA — shows this is quite wrong.
Thanks to Dave Lull.
Isn’t it a wee bit misleading to end the quote where you do? With your edit, you can say
“My research — revealing very clear benefits of flaxseed oil, no doubt because of its ALA — shows this is quite wrong.”
But Dr. Dyerberg continues directly
“But it wasn’t all doom and gloom for ALA, as Dr. Dyerberg said it could be effective: “If you change your diet dramatically, you can achieve the same EPA and DHA levels in cells on an ALA diet, but you have to change your diet totally,” he said. “Diet compliance will be poor,” he added.”
Most observers would have to agree that changing the diet to ingest 500 calories per day of flaxseed oil, which is something like 25%-30% of a person’s total daily calories (with little other nutritional value), is a very major (”dramatic”) diet change, and one that most people would tire of rapidly.
You have changed your diet “dramatically”, and “achieve[d] the same EPA and DHA levels in cells on an ALA diet”, which pretty much agrees with Dr. Dyerberg’s remarks.
I did want to put Dr. Dyerberg in the best possible light — even though it might seem exactly the opposite. I thought quoting someone saying 2 wrong things was not a clear improvement over saying 1 wrong thing.
As Tyler Cowen and Anonymous and several others can attest, you can get fabulous benefits from just 2 T/day of flaxseed oil. Taking 2 T/day of flaxseed oil isn’t “chang[ing] your diet totally” — quite the opposite — nor is it hard to do forever.