Oils in Diet

Oils are calorie-dense and as such can rapidly increase the calorie content for any food. So which oils have properties that are helpful and properties that aren't helpful?  And then, what is helpful and what isn't?

Oils that cause inflammation are not helpful.  Inflammation is the body's natural response to help it heal, so what is the body healing from when we consume an oil that causes inflammation?  No idea, but if we are consuming oils that cause inflammation daily we can be putting the body into a chronically inflamed state.  If the gut is inflamed absorption of nutrients is affected and ALS patients have huge, huge, huge nutrient absorption issues.  The body's ability to get rid of toxins through the liver is compromised, and toxic overload in the liver compromises mitochondria function and in ALS there's a problem with the mitochondria.

This article, http://authoritynutrition.com/6-reasons-why-vegetable-oils-are-toxic/, gives 6 reasons to not consume processed seed oils like soybean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, and safflower oil, and inflammation is one of them.  The six reasons are: 1) unnatural in large amounts, 2) mess up fatty acid composition of the body, 3) inflammation, 4) loaded with trans fat, 5) increased risk of cardivascular disease, 6) associated with other diseases.

The omega 6/omega 3 ratio is also affected by oil choices.  The importance of the omega6/omega 3 ratio, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12442909, can not be understated.  ALS is an autoimmune disease and a high ratio helps to promote autoimmune diseases.  Inflammation compromises nutrient absorption, and there is inflammation with a high omega 6/omega 3 ratio.  An omega6/omega3 ratio of 2/1 or 3/1 suppresses inflammation.  Dig deeper, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835780/, and you can find that inflammation is also associated with protein catabolism, which is muscle tissue breakdown, another huge problem with ALS.

Coconut oil has a high concentration of medium-chain triglycerides.  With ALS, the mitochondria are not working properly and are not properly delivering energy to the cells, a part of the process that is leading to cell death.  These medium-length triglycerides provide energy that cells can use through the ketosis process.  Coconut oil also has other benefits (http://www.antiaginganswers.net/healthyfats.html):

Approximately 50% of the fatty acids in coconut fat are lauric acide. Lauric acid is a medium-chain fatty acid, which has the additional beneficial function of being formed into monolaurin in the human or animal body. Monolaurin is the anti-viral, antibacterial, and antiprotozoal monoglyceride used by the muman or animal to destroy lipid coated viruses such as HIV, herpes, cytomegalovirus, influenza, various pathogenic bacteria including Listeria monocytogenes and Heliobacter pylori, and protozoa such as Giaradia lambia. Some studies have also shown some antimicrobial effects of the free lauric acid.

Immunity boosting is an added benefit of coconut oil.

Olive oil's omega 6/omega3 ratio is an unfavourable 13:1, but it actually has anti-inflammatory properties because of other components in it. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21443487.  You need both kinds of fatty acids, it is just the more 6s you have the more 3s you need to balance them.

Oils to avoid - omega 6:3

• soybean oil  - 6:1 
• sunflower oil - no omega 3
• corn oil - no omega 3
• canola oil - 2.5:1
• cottonseed oil - no omega 3
• safflower oil - no omega 3

Oils to consider

• coconut oil - no omega 3
• flaxseed oil - 0.3:1
• olive oil - 13:1

Walnuts are the highest omega 3 nut, and krill is the best source of omega 3.

All articles are a work in progress and are advisory for the reasons given.  Everyone should do their own research to verify or refute and make their own decisions about whether they think it is helpful or not.

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Glutathione System

Glutathione is your body's strongest anti-oxidant.  It is also your strongest detoxification molecule and your protein repair.  It is very import to protect your proteins from oxidative attack.

There are 3 phases to the human detoxification system:

1. activation
2. conjugation
3. transport

Transport has only recently been understood.  These are active transporters that discard the toxin that was changed through the activation and conjugation process.

Glutathione S-transferases have low expression in people with high methylmercury and sensitive to ethylmercury, compromising the ability to remove the toxin metals from the body.

All of your toxin leave the body through the same "door."  So, if your "doors" aren't working properly the body holds onto mercury, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, pcps, etc., and a huge toxin problem.

The biggest reason the transport system breaks down is inflammation, especially in the gut.

Some ways the system breaks:

• Not enough glutathione (can't make it or don't eat of it)
• A methylation disfunction
• Environmental exposures that cause oxidative consumption (use it up faster that you restore it)
• Environmental inflammation which turns down your synthesis

Genetic disorders can cause increased anemia, cognitive impairment, bladder cancer.  Genetics determine why some people are very debilitated by mercury and some people aren't.

Challenge Tests for measuring body burden for exposure to mercury do not really do that.

Liver is so important, it is worth the time to watch the 3 hours of videos in this post on how to detoxify for mercury.  The pathways to detoxifying are the same for biological toxins.


Food sources of glutathione says:

Milk thistle is an excellent source of the antioxidant compound silymarin. Silyarmin helps to prevent the depletion of glutathione in the liver. Glutathione is necessary for the liver to detoxify harmful substances. If the liver is damaged, glutathione concentrations are substantially reduced. In turn, the liver becomes more susceptible to further damage, making glutathione a vital element in the health of the liver. Cumin also has the ability to increase glutathione tissue levels. Cumin acts as a binding agent, elevating glutamate-cysteine complexes during gene expression.

Processing and cooking fruits and vegetables destroys glutathione.  The best sources are asparagus, potatoes, peppers, carrots, onion, broccoli, avocados, squash, spinach, garlic, tomatoes, grapefruit, apples, oranges, peaches bananas and melon.

Selenium is an important co-factor for the enzyme form of glutathione. Cereals, oats, Brazil nuts, walnuts, legumes, tuna, beef, poultry, cheese, eggs will help promote the production of glutathione.

Alpha lipoic acid, or ALA, promotes the synthesis of glutathione. Foods rich in alpha lipoic acid include: spinach, tomatoes, peas, Brussels sprouts, rice bran and mayonnaise. Eating these foods increases the bioavailability of this important antioxidant.

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Reading a courageous woman's blog, learned about Spirochetes.

I have been reading Stacy Neild's blog.  She started it right before she found out she had a motor neuron disease.

So, what I've been reading in the literature is that there is liver disease that tends to go with ALS, and reading Stacy's blog, this is what was found in her journey.

The first few days of our treatment focused on detoxification of Stacy's body, with extra attention on her liver. It was also a time of testing - blood, excretions and lung function.Some results from this time are:-Stacy's Liver is not able to keep up with its filtering job, so her red blood cells and her plasma have accumulated various imperfections.-She has some small tube like bacteria in her blood called spirochetes. These are linked to a range of diseases - fire up google if you are keen. -Her immune system is not functioning effectively. In some aspects it is not reacting to destroy antigens as it should, and in other situation it is hyper sensitive to some antigens and is over reacting and wearing itself out creating a response.

So, then I looked up spirochetes and I found:

Spirochetes disease: Infection with a type of bacteria which is often found in mud, sewage and polluted water. Symptoms are determined by the species involved. Diseases caused by this bacteria include Treponema infection and borreliosis. More detailed information about thesymptoms, causes, and treatments of Spirochetes disease is available below.

Last year at the lake house the water tower broke and there was also a problem with the sewage that Norma and Jay were working on.  We were up the July long weekend helping to raise the new water tower, but Norma and Jay were dealing with issues around that for a while before that.  Another connection?

Apr 5 Update:

More on microbes as a source.  Was Lou Gehrig's disease caused by tap water?  There is a lot of information about beta-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), which is a toxin causes by these algea blooms. 

Wiki is also a great source of information, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-Methylamino-L-alanine.

This is a huge discussion about cyanobacterias.

Trying to measure this stuff.

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