Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Vacation

I'll be out of town until the beginning of November, so I won't be responding to comments or e-mails for a while. I'm going to set up a post or two to publish while I'm gone.

As an administrative note, I get a number of e-mails from blog readers each day. I apologize that I can't respond to all of them, as it would require more time than I currently have to spare. The more concise your message, the more likely I'll read it and respond. Thanks for your understanding.

9 comments:

Fredrik Gyllensten said...

Have a great vacation!

Robert Andrew Brown said...

Have a fantastic relaxing fun time

Thanks for all your hard work and excellent blogs

zXc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Brown said...

When you return from vacation, I'd like to see a post regarding Jerrold M. Olefsky's recent article about omega-3s and insulin sensitivity published in Cell.. http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2010/09/04/omega-3-fish-oil-diabetes-inflammation/

On page 687 the authors wrote, "While SFAs are proinflammatory and unsaturated FAs are generally neutral, we found that omega-3 FAs (docosahexaenoic acid [c22:6n3, DHA] and eicosapentaenoic acid [C20:5n3, EPA]), the major ingredients in fish oil, exert potent anti-inflammatory effects on GPR120."

The authors repeated the statement about SFAs being prinflammatory on page 688.

Thanks

Stephan Guyenet said...

Hi David,

Yes, I've been discussing that paper via e-mail with a few others, including Robb Wolf, Pedro Bastos and Chris Masterjohn. It's interesting because it's a new mechanism for the immune modulating properties of omega-3 fats. I probably won't post on it because although it's interesting, it's rather technical and has limited practical value at this point.

You often see the statement that SFA are inflammatory in scientific papers. I'm immersed in that research so I can tell you why they say that. It's because when you put a lot of free saturated fatty acids on cells, in the absence of other fatty acids, it's generally more toxic/inflammatory than when you put on an equivalent amount of unsaturated fatty acids (with some exceptions). You can get the same effect if you inject a lot of free SFA directly into the brain or other organs. The problem is that as far as I can tell, eating SFA doesn't increase free SFA in the body because the proportion of free SFA appears to be homeostatically regulated.

So yes, SFA are proinflammatory if you inject them directly into an animal and upset the normal fatty acid balance, but it does not follow that dietary SFA are proinflammatory. If that were true, coconut and palm oil should be toxic to animals and humans alike, but in fact coconut and palm oil compare favorably to PUFA seed oils and even MUFA oils like olive oil in rodent studies, particularly if they are supplemented with a bit of omega-3 to bring the PUFA back into balance.

Rainbow Spork said...

Hi there. I just recently stumbled upon your blog in looking up the Paleo Diet, and wanted to follow your blog via my Blogger dashboard but I can't find an option to do so. Do you allow for following?

Rainbow Spork said...

Heh...never mind. Apparently I didn't look high enough.

Unknown said...

I wish your vacations will be memorable. Have a good time.
Best Regards
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"Guppy" Honaker said...

I hope your vacation was restful and enjoyable. It's the second of November, and greatly looking forward to new posts from you Stephan!

- David

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