The Oils

Building Better Health

Part 5

The Oils

by Jay Constant PHD

The past few articles certainly provided grounds for controversy, and a few of you picked it up right away, very good. Without saying so, I exposed not one, but two major nutritional blunders, misconceptions, and down right lies. The first was how crucial to the body sodium is, especially for digestion, the bowels, the joints, and the lymphs. In building better health, it’s crucial to fix digestion first, and elimination second.

Conditions such as acid reflux, ulcers, arthritis, and lymphatic conditions can be easily and permanently corrected by additional sodium in the diet. For those of you who missed the article, I am referring to "food sodium", not "salt", which is a compound of sodium chloride. Then in the following article I stated that "magnesium" was by far the most important mineral for the body, and that "calcium" had to be in the proper ratio with magnesium or it actually became a major pollutant for the body.

Today, I'm going to talk about "the oils". Listening to the doctors on a regular basis on the early morning network shows, it’s amazing how bad the advice is on a daily basis. No wonder we lead the world in heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. etc. etc. They never speak of common deficiencies or nutrition. They have us all playing "prescription roulette". Today was perhaps the worse, or at least in the top 10 (as there is a lot of bad advise coming from the experts), the ridiculous idea that taking an aspirin a day is the best way to prevent a heart attack.

While it is true that a daily aspirin can reduce the risk of a heart attack, it is certainly not the best or even a good way to do it. No one ever mentions that an estimated 200 people die everyday from side effects from long term use of aspirin such as internal bleeding, ulcers that don't heal, or very toxic liver damage.

Fish oil reduces the risk of heart attack as well as or better than aspirin, and has dozens of other beneficial and crucial effects that aspirin certainly can’t match. Both aspirin and fish oil reduce the inflammation in the cardiovascular system, however, aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack by interfering with blood clotting (which is a calcium function) or platelet aggregation. Fish oil, on the other hand, reduces the risk of heart attack by literally "lubricating" the platelets so they can't stick together abnormally.

Fish oil also reduces the risk of death from a heart attack, reduces abnormally high triglycerides, increases HDL (the good) cholesterol, and decreases the abnormally high levels of fibrinogen, another cardiovascular risk factor. There are dozens of clinical studies that have proven that a daily dose of the fish oils could prevent 110,000 heart attacks per year, or a 40% reduction.

I discovered a long time ago, that where you live can greatly influence blood pressure. My wife and I moved to New Hampshire after 15 years of paradise living in the Florida Keys, Big Pine to be specific. As soon as we moved here, my blood pressure was high. I did take extra magnesium, but it only brought it down a little bit. It was October, and very rainy, and the days were very short. I increased my fish oils, and added additional Vitamin D, and the blood pressures have been fine ever since.

I still take 4000 IU per day of Vitamin D every day. In the Keys, the weather was almost always perfect, with tremendous amounts of sun, a natural source of Vitamin D. From October to April there isn't much sun in rural New Hampshire, with November through February having very short eight-hour days. Several studies have been done that show the farther from the equator people live, the higher their blood pressure goes.

Another study published in Lancet reported that ultraviolet light exposure, which increases the body's own production of vitamin D, lowered blood pressure. A few other studies showed that Vitamin D supplementation from fish oil reduces both systolic and diastolic numbers. Taking several studies together, they strongly indicate that Vitamin D is nature’s leading blood pressure regulator.

Moving on, type II diabetes affects probably a third of the US population right now (even though not called that) and can be accurately defined as the body's inability to metabolize fats and oils properly, specifically a lack of omega 3 oils. TV doctors and advice have greatly confused and misled us down another alley with their polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, trans-fatty acids, butter is bad and margarine is good crap. For the record, butter is good and margarine is one molecule different than plastic. Butter from grass fed cows, sheep, or goats contains the omega 3 fats, crucial for health and prevention of type II diabetes. This is not true for butter made from grain fed cows, sheep or goats.

So margarine is terrible advice, as well as most of the vegetable oils, they simply don't contain enough omega 3's and too much omega 6's. The way I explain it in layman's terms is we may get a tiny amount of omega 3 fats in our daily diet, but we get a ton of omega 6's and this throws the balance off. When people complain to me of irritability, lack of concentration, anxiety, depression, I immediately think of type II diabetes. These are all early signs and symptoms treated accordingly with the proper meds, of which there certainly are a lot of them, billions of dollars annually.

This is what I called "prescription roulette" earlier. They may or may not treat the symptom, but we end up with bigger problems down the road, which require more meds. If I were depressed, or had anxiety, I would simply up my oils. Studies have shown that a brain high in omega 3's worked fine and had good memories. The lower the omega 3's, the worse the memory became. Omega 3 fatty acids are also stored in the eyeball itself for elasticity, and it’s this elasticity that keeps the eyeball round. When we get deficient, the eyeball loses elasticity, and begins to "ovalize", which causes the lens to flatten, and our eyesight can only get worse. How about dry eyes, scratchy eyes, poor night vision, lack of tears in the eyes, etc.? Think of the oils.

Finally, if I still haven't convinced anyone, the skin needs the oils also. Dry skin and a majority of skin issues simply need some oil. How much oil? I don't know, but enough to get results. Some people need a lot based on genetics, blood type, and even where they live. Lately, the word has gotten out about Vitamin D being necessary for proper calcium absorption in the bones and joints, though the recommended amounts are so low it’s probably not going to help.

I, myself, take 3000 IU of fish or flax oil daily, plus an extra 3000 IU daily for my blood pressure and bones, and another 50,000 IU daily of Vitamin A for my eyesight, which is still perfect, day and night. The upper limits for everyone would be different, but up to 10,000 IU Vitamin D appears safe (though 40 IU is the USDA recommended amount) and 6000 to 10000 IU of the omega 3 from fish, flax, coconut, or olive oil is perfectly fine (800 IU is the recommended amount) and Vitamin A 50,000 - 100,000 IU from fish is fine (though 60 IU is the recommended amount). IU is short for international units, and the measurement for liquids such as oils. MG is short for milligrams, the measurement for solids, as in other vitamins and minerals........

Till next time, J.

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