I question these charges -- I just went into Pubmed and typed in fish
oils and out of the two or three dozen abstracts I read, I only found
one that said anything negative about fish oils and that was some t-cell
activity reduction with DHA supplementation but not EPA -- no real life
bad outcomes mind you, just temporay reduction of numbers. In fact, the
vast majority of the papers were positively associating fish oils with
all sorts of health benefits, particularly mental stuff, CVD and cancer
-- real outcomes and not just test tube results. I agree with Groves and
Peat that most research does find that the polyunsaturated vegetable
oils are bad news -- they do make the cell walls too flobby (in fact,
the way they lower cholesterol is that the walls are so flexible the
body in all it's wisdom recruits cholesterol to shore up the walls that
the amount in serum is reduced and since doctors love numbers, polys at
first looked promising -- but they increase cancer). But the animal
based long chain fatty acids do not show these same properties -- they
are used preferentially in the brain's signalling structures. Actually
they constitute over 60% of brain fats and the brain is mainly fat! I
have come to the position that one needs to be careful in selecting a
fish oil supplement -- too often they are contaminated with all the
nasties that plague fish in general. I believe the newer pharmaceutical
high dose molecularly distilled fish oils are the way to go -- anecdotal
evidence from doctors like Mercola indicate that the quality of the oil
used really does make a clinical difference. (He used to recommend fish
oil from Costco, but realized that that stuff didn't give him the
clinical results he was after. Too often these biochemists get all
worked up about stuff that goes on in the test tube, and don't
appreciate the complex, intelligent working of the intact human
organism. There is much evidence that humans took a huge leap forward
when they began to eat fish (especially salmon) and get into the marrow
and brain case of animals where they found plentiful pre-formed long
chained omega threes readily available. The health of native peoples who
rely heavily on long chain omega 3 fatty acid rich food is real life
evidence of their benefits.

Liz
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> In a message dated 4/1/04 11:29:44 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> and who ever ate any kind of oil in paleolithic? R. Peat's newsletter
> rubbed my nose in that idea.
> Peat advocates eating coconut oil.  I get his newsletter too and have read a
> few of his books. His problem with fish oil supplementation is the same
> problem he has with all polyunsaturated oils -- their structure makes them prone to
> rancidity, they lower immune function and thyroid function, and they can make
> the cell walls too permeable.  His argument is that although they can ease the
> suffering of arthritis and inflammation , there is a significant downside to
> them.  Check out Barry Groves' website for more info on the downside of
> polyunsatured oils -- especially fish oil.  http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/  I've
> posted this stuff several times before -- just do a search in the archives.

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