I ordered Fish, Omega-3 and Human Health (2005, 2nd ed.) by William Lands from Amazon in March. It came a few days ago. It is published by the AOCS Press. AOCS = American Oil Chemists’ Society.
A jewel of a book. Like a research monograph, it has lots of data, graphs, and references; unlike a research monograph, it tries to reach any scientifically literate reader, not just specialists. It has much more about mechanism than other books on the subject. “Health” in the title mainly means circulatory system health (heart disease, strokes); there is also a chapter on the immune system and a chapter on cancer. Almost nothing about mental illness or the brain. Nothing about gum disease.
I read the first edition a year ago. It is a sign of changes in my thinking that I didn’t notice a comparison of epilepsy rates in Eskimos (high omega-3 diet) and Danes (low omega-3 diet) living in Greenland. The Eskimos have twice as much epilepsy. It is the only big negative effect of the Eskimo diet. The epilepsy difference fits something I think now but didn’t think a year ago: omega-3 makes neurons more easily excited. Three observations led me to this: (a) In my choice reaction-time experiments, flaxseed oil caused an increase in anticipation errors. To reduce them, I changed from a two-choice task to a four-choice task. (b) A friend said I have become more talkative, apparently due to consuming much more flaxseed oil/day. (c) I found that flaxseed oil reduces simple RT — latency to press a button when something happens.
The two-to-one epilepsy ratio is the only case where the Eskimos are clearly worse off. The ratios in the other direction are much larger. The Danes had 20 times more psoriasis than the Eskimos (as I noted earlier), and 25 times more bronchial asthma.
I recall from undergraduate lectures that Eskimos also suffer from increased risk of haemorrhage, and this was linked to increased omega-3 intake. Take this paper for example (although it doesn’t investigate diet).
Yes, good point.