How to Eat Essential Fatty Acids
How Essential Fatty Acids Improve Your Brain Power and Mental Health
How much good fat, fatty acids, should you be eating every day? And what is good fat? Most fat is good since your body needs all types of fat, but the best fats are the essential fatty acids. Even though saturated fat is called bad fat, the body still needs a little bit of this type of fat.
The amount of essential fatty acids that you should have in your diet, if you show no signs of any type of illness, is between 15 -
20% of the overall calories you eat every day. The breakdown of the types of fats that you should be eating is,
3-4% saturated fat
5-7% omega-6
2.5-3.5% omega-3
5-10% omega-9
Notice that you should be eating 5-10 % of omega-9. This is the best essential fatty acid for your health. The problem is that not that many foods or oils have a lot of omega-9, so it is hard to get 5-10% of this oil in your diet.
Digesting fats
Some of you may have problems digesting fatty acids and
saturated fats. This may occur because you,
Don't have any fat digestive enzymes
Have your gallbladder removed
Have a weak pancreas
To improve your digestion of essential fatty acids, you should be supplementing your diet with digestive enzymes. Since most fats are digested in the small intestine, just passed your stomach, you should be taking enteric enzymes.
Enteric enzymes are coated so that they are not used up in
the stomach by acid and can reach the small intestine where most of the fats are digested.
If you don't take digestive enzymes, you can improve the digestion of these fatty acids by mixing them with cottage cheese. When mixing flax seed oil with cottage cheese, the protein in the cottage cheese makes this oil more digestible.
Storing the essential fatty acids
The fatty acids and ground up flax seeds are sensitive to the environment and how they are processed and packaged. Improper handling of these oils will cause them to deteriorate and loss their potency.
The essential fatty acids are sensitive to,
Air
Heat
Light
Air
Oxygen from the air reacts quickly with fatty acids. This
Oxidation causes these oils to deterioration and become rancid. When using these oils keep the bottles close when they are not in use. Buy omega-3, fatty acid, only in dark containers.
Heat
Heating fatty acids causes them to chemically change into
molecules that are harmful to your health. This is one reason
why you should never use them to fry foods. Use flax seed oil or omega oil only at room temperature. When adding them to soups, add them after you pull the soups of the hot plate.
If manufacturers do not take the precautions to package and
process these oils in the dark and use opaque bottles, the air,
oxygen, heat, and light will destroy the value of these oils.
Light
Light is extremely detrimental to fatty acids. When light hits
fatty acids and oxygen is available, they speeds up the oxidation of these essential fatty acids by 1000 times. Under these conditions
these oils quickly become rancid. Light produces free radicals in these oils, which in turn create various chemicals that are harmful to your body.
Now, you have more facts about how to use, eat, and store the essential fatty acids. Treat them good and they will give you excellent health.
Essential fatty acids (efa's)
Essential fatty acids (efa's)
Essential Fatty Acids are oils, omega-3 and omega-6, that you can find, in certain amounts, in all oils that you can purchase in most the health food and regular grocery stores. These fatty acids are called essential because you cannot create them in your body and your cells use them every day.
If you do not eat enough of these oils… guess what… you’re going to get sick. What kind of sick? The list is quite extensive and it depends on your deficiency.
* Acne
* ADD/ADHD
* Alzheimer’s disease
* Arthritis
* Asthma
* Cancer
* Diabetes
* Eczema
* Eye diseases
* Growth retardation
* Hair loss
* Heart disease
* High blood pressure
* Immune dysfunction
* Kidney deterioration
* Kidney deterioration
* Memory loss
* Psoriasis
* Schizophrenia
It’s a good idea not to be short on these fatty acids, because this list is still not complete.
80% of the American people will come down with serious illness because of nutritional deficiencies
It is not enough to eat essential fatty acid randomly. They need to be eaten in balance. You will need to balance the Omega-3 with the Omega-6. Most people are eating around 15 tablespoons of Omega-6 to 1 tablespoon of Omega-3. If you are one of these persons then expect to be harboring or creating one of the diseases listed above
What are Essential Fatty Acids?
There are four important types of Essential Fatty Acids:
* Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA) or Omega-3 Oil
* Linoleic Acid (LA) or Omega-6 Oil
* Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA)
* Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA)
The omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are found in everyday oils that you use for cooking, baking, and eating.
* Flax seed oil – contains four times more omega-3 than omega-6
* Perilla seed oil – contains three-four more omega-3 than omega-6
* Hemp oil – contain the ideal ratio of 4:1, four times more omega-6 to omega-3.
* Pumpkin oil – contains 3 times more omega-6 than omega-3
* Walnut oil contain ten times more omega-6 than omega-3
* Safflower – has no omega-3 and 75% of its oil is omega-6
* Sunflower – has no omega-3 and 65% of its oil is omega-6
* Wheat germ oil – slight amount of omega-3 but mostly omega-6
* Olive oil – no omega-3 and 8% of its oil is omega-6
* Corn oil – contains mostly omega- 6
You can see that most oils have very little omega-3. This is why you hear a lot about flax seeds and flax seed oil because they are high in omega-3.
In recent years, a new source of omega-3 was found in the seeds of the Perilla frutescens plant. Perilla oil was found not to cause digestive upset when used in large quantities. This oil is similar to flax seed oil in content except that 19% of it oil is saturated compared to 7% for flax seed oil.
It’s cheaper to buy perilla it in liquid form, since one tablespoon contains 7700 mg of omega-3 and one capsule contains 550 mg.
It is best to alternate between oils, using one bottle at a time of flax, perilla, and hemp oil. In this way you will get the benefits that the different oils have to give.
When buying your oils, try to buy them in dark bottles. This prevents oxidation from occurring and assures that you get active and fresh oils that contain strong levels of omega oils.
Other sources of omega-3 oil are,
* Flax seeds
* Chia seeds
* Pumpkin seeds
* Walnuts
* Dark greens
* Soy products
Limit your use of soy products. These products use up your body’s minerals and have been associated various body diseases. They cause fibrin to settles in your tissues and organs. Fibrin tends to clog up your organs and causes arteries to close off when you’re short on systemic enzymes.
Fish are also high in omega-3 oil. Include these in your diet by eating them at least once a week. The fish to eat are,
* Salmon
* Sardines
* Halibut
* Trout
* Albacore tuna
* Mackerel
Add the essential fatty acids to your eating habits everyday and gain the benefit of a better life.
How Essential Fatty Acids Improve Your Brain Power and Mental Health
What is your brain made of?
Over 50% of your brain is made of good fat. Twenty percent of this good fat comes from EPA and DHA. Remember EPA and DHA comes from,
* omega-3 fatty acids
* eating fish
* borage oil
* primrose oil
* parilla oil
* NOK oil
I have covered all these oils in other articles except NKO Krill Oil. This oil is the new kid on the block. It comes from Antarctic krill, a crustacean found in the Antarctic waters. It provides EPA and DHA like borage oil does, but its chemical structure is phospholipids. Phospholipids are easier for your cells to absorb than borage oil's EPA and DHA, which is in the form of triglycerides.
The essential fatty acids provide the chemical molecules to make Phospholipids. These phospholipids gather together to form a protective barrier around each cell in your body.
If the fatty acids are in phospholipids form, your body is able to use them quicker and more efficiently.
This is what makes NOK oil a more bio-available advanced oil than borage or primrose oil.
If you are deficient in the essential fatty acids, you will be more susceptible to these conditions:
* Alzheimer's disease
* Anxiety and body stress
* Heart disease
* Attention deficit disorder
* Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
* Bipolar disorder
* Chronic fatigue syndrome
* Depression
* Learning disorders
* Memory impairment
* Parkinson's disease
* Schizophrenia
Making Your Brain Work Like It Should
Your brain needs a good daily supply of the essential fatty acid omega-3. It also uses omega-6 and AA (Arachidonic acid). So this means taking a good dose of NKO oil is a necessary daily routine for keeping your brain from shrinking.
Alzheimer's disease
Doctors believe that if every one lived to be over 120 years, they would come down with Alzheimer's disease. It is a disease that once your have it, all you can do, at this time, is to slow its progression using certain drugs and nutrients.
Before your brain starts to deteriorate to where it contains nodules of toxins, excess oxidation due to free radicals, and weaken and narrowing blood vessels, it might be a good idea to start feeding it the food it needs.
DHA is in order for Alzheimer's disease. When DHA is deficient in your diet, you can expect to have memory loss and become depressed as you age.
Lecithin is also in order since it helps to provide choline, a precursor to the memory neurotransmitter acetylcholine. It also provides the chemicals to produce RNA.
Heart disease is closely related to Alzheimer's because the heart must be strong enough to pump plenty of blood into the brain and the arteries must open enough to circulate enough blood through the brain and throughout your body.
Even if you don't come down with Alzheimer's or your family history doesn't support it, most of us are in line for dementia. Dementia is also attributed to deterioration of brain cells and support tissue. One of the causes of dementia is a diet that has been deficient in the essential fatty acids.
Here is my recommendation for supplementing with the essential fatty acids:
* Eat more good fish, at least once a week and occasionally twice a week
* Eat less fat and particularly saturated fat. A good number for daily fat intake is 15-20% of your overall calories.
* Take daily, flax seed oil and olive oil for the omega-3 and omega-6 oils
* Take a daily supplement of NKO or Borage oil, which supplies EPA and DHA
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