At 03:41 PM 4/3/01 -0400, Todd Moody wrote:
>
>The Eades have recanted that particular position in their more
>recent book, Protein Power Lifeplan.  Sears has softened his view
>too.  The consensus seems to be that consuming up to a
>tablespoon/day of flax oil will not unduly overburden the delta-6
>desaturase enzyme.

ah.  I have pplp on tape--it's abbridged :)  thanks!

>As for confusion of labels, it can be tricky.  LA is linoleic
>acid, period.  ALA is alpha-linolenic acid, but is also known
>just as linolenic acid, abbreviated as LNA.  Thus ALA=LNA.

I think I've been reading this stuff too late at night.  Thanks again.

>Also, there is a "potency" issue connected with omega-3 fats.  I
>don't understand this very well, but I have read that only about
>a tenth of ALA actually gets converted to EPA/DHA.  For example,
>Artemis Simopoulos suggests that one get at least one gram of
>EPA/DHA combined per day.  To do that, you can use fish oil and
>just add up the EPA and DHA, or you can consume an amount of flax
>oil that will give you 10g of ALA (I don't know how much oil that
>is, but according to USDA it would be about 60g of raw flax
>seeds).

Hm, I've been getting, from the fish oil, 1200mg combined and have, just
the last day or so, been upping that to more like 1800mg to see if it helps
offset things better.

FWIW, the things that have me trying to figure this all out are:  lifelong
very dry skin (makes me wonder if I have some problems with the process
somewhere), HP that's gone up in the last few years--the last year in
particular (prior to that, it seemed to go up with my weight--on your
standard food pyramid diet! it's also sensitive to alcohol, not really to
salt, and to stress--and while I've had low amounts of the first two,
stress has been way high for that same time period...), and PMS/severe
menstrual cramps.

Still reading,
Dianne