If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, you know that we stand very strong against PUFAs.
PUFAs are polyunsaturated fatty acids.
And PUFAs include fish oil and fatty fish.
Fish oil and fatty fish are dangerous additions to our diet that don’t belong in any quantity.
I’ve covered that recently, but here today I want to cover in this newsletter…
Why eating fish seems to be good for us.
If it’s not the fish oil that’s helping us, what is it then?
Recall that fish oil is broken down in the body very quickly due to its extreme instability.
And it turns into lipid peroxides which are very inflammatory.
Lipid peroxides contribute to long-term problems such as cancer.
So now here comes something called furan acids.
Furan acids are found in fish.
And they’re found right along with fish oil.
Is it possible that furan acid is the part of the fish that actually causes the increases our health and lowers inflammation?
It is certain that the PUFAs in fish oil are a bad thing.
Maybe it’s furan acid that makes eating fish a good thing for us?
Furan acids are generated mostly in algae.
Fish eat the algae.
Then furan oil becomes incorporated in the fish.
And then we eat the fish.
The radical-scavenging ability of F-acids may contribute to the protective properties of fish and fish oil diets against mortality from heart disease.
So far there hasn’t been too much research in furan acids.
But there has been some.
Here’s a great study that was done on furan oils extracted from a mussel.
The mussel is found in New Zealand and is used by the native Maori for food.
The study was done in Japan:
In this study, they extracted furan acid and they caused rats to have inflammation in their paws.
They then tested the effects giving the rats fish oil or furan acid.
The fish oil did very little for the inflammation in the rats’ paws.
But the furan acid reduced the swelling 75%.
We have thus revealed the potent anti-inflammatory activity of furan acids in an animal model.
Incidentally one thing I find interesting about furan acid is that they isolated it from salmon testicles as well — not just from mussels.
The furon acid accumulates in the testicle of the fish.
Then they harvested salmon testicles to get the furan acid.
It may work that way with people as well.
Men might also concentrate furan oil in the testicles as well.
This may be a huge benefit of eating fish and seafood.
I think furon oil is extremely important and understudied.
There’s really no money in studying furan oil the way there is in studying fish oil.
Fish oil research is an abomination of the special interests.
Furan oil is still pure science as the money hasn’t hit it yet.
What should you do now?
Furan oil is found in seafood.
So try to consume plenty of seafood.
You might want to consume wild shrimp, mussels, clams, oysters, and fish.
These are going to have plenty of furan oil in them.
They will also have trace elements of things like copper.
Copper and other elements are very important.
But they can be difficult to get from other dietary sources.
And meanwhile try to avoid fish oil.
Avoid eating too much fatty fish such as salmon or sardines.
Citations
Furan fatty acids: occurrence, synthesis, and reactions. Are furan fatty acids responsible for the cardioprotective effects of a fish diet?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16296395
Furan fatty acid as an anti-inflammatory component
from the green-lipped mussel Perna canaliculus
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/42/17533.full.pdf
See this for more on Fish Oil, and see more on Diet and Exercise, and for more information see effects of Fatty acids.