It's a bit lengthy, but I found it terrific - for those of you (lurkers and posters) who still feel the need to go the 'fat free/Susan Powter/Snackwells' route that didn't work in the 90's, and the reasons as to why you should NOT cut healthy fat out of your diet!
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Part 1 of an exclusive interview with best-selling author Udo Erasmus
Udo Erasmus is a "giant" in the field of nutrition. Maybe you want to know exactly how much fat you need in your diet. Maybe you're unsure about which type of fats are best to cook with. Perhaps you've considered adding oils (such as flax seed oil or hemp seed oil) to your diet, but you're confused about which ones you really need.
Read on, and have Udo (pronounced oo-doe) guide you, step-by-step, through the minefield of myths and confusion about the fats that heal and the fats that kill.
Busy? Here are three key questions Udo answers in this interview:
What are the benefits of eating more of the good fats and less of the bad fats?
Why is it a bad idea to cut all fat from the diet?
How much fat do you recommend for people wanting to lose weight?
Christian Finn: What are the three or four key benefits of eating more of the good fats, and less of the bad fats?
Udo Erasmus: Well, let's see. I don't know if I can limit it to three or four. The good fats are defined as essential fatty acids. The body can't make them, but it has to have them, so they have to be supplied from outside.
Every cell, every tissue, every gland and every organ in the body has to have them, otherwise they can't work. If you don't get enough, your health deteriorates. You literally fall apart cell by cell. And if the deficiency is sustained long enough, then you're going to die. That's how important they are. That's part of the definition of essential.
And the good news for people who have neglected the good fats, is that if you're deteriorating because you're not getting enough, and you bring back into the deficient diet the essential fatty acids that are missing, then all the deficiency symptoms that are the result of not getting enough are reversed. You recover your health.
Research says that essential fatty acids elevate mood and lift depression. They are natures answer to the serotonin re-uptake inhibitors like Paxil and Prozac. They also calm down hyperactive kids, dogs, cats, horses and adults. People feel calmer. They deal with stress better. They don't fly off the handle as much.
Essential fatty acids also speed learning and can increase IQ by 6-9 points. They help in many of the mental conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They can help autistic kids. They also help people with Alzheimer's.
The research on women and children says that every time a woman has a child, she loses 3% of her brain weight. That must be replaced. Each child depletes her further, and each child gets less essential fatty acids than the previous child does.
Older children get the most essential fatty acids required for brain development as well as brain function. On average, they have the highest IQ in the family.
Researchers think that is why younger children in large families have far more developmental and behavioural problems. And they also think it's why women get more depression than men, as well as more fibromyalgia, more chronic fatigue, more collagen diseases, more inflammatory diseases and more auto-immune diseases, digestive diseases and allergies than men do.
Women get those from two to nine times more frequently than men, and the depletion of essential fats during child bearing sets them up for those conditions. Add digestive problems and allergies to that list.
So the researchers say the women need to make sure they have a reliable source of essential fatty acids in their diet, both for their own health and the health of their children. Unfortunately, most women don't have a reliable source of essential fats in their diet.
Some men think that women are hypochondriacs, but there actually is a reason for their higher rate of health complaints. The brain is over 60% fat, so we're fat heads! And the human brain is far larger, therefore has a greater fatty acid requirement during pregnancy, than most animals.
Essential fatty acids also have important functions in sperm formation, heart function and visual function. They increase testosterone production, optimise thyroid function, lower most cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure and high triglycerides. They are anti-inflammatory, and are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.
Christian Finn: How do we tell which fatty acids are essential?
Udo Erasmus: You cannot call a fatty acid or a nutrient essential until researchers have identified at least one biochemical reaction in the body in which that nutrient is required, and without which that reaction cannot take place. So we're talking about a real clear definition.
And the essential fatty acids come in only two sizes. One is omega-3 (also known as n-3's) and the other is omega-6 (also known as n-6's). They are required by every cell. N-3's are missing from most people's diets. Both n-3 and n-6 are missing from the diet of anybody on a low fat diet.
Christian Finn: That's the problem I see all the time. People think they should cut all fats from their diet. And that's obviously a mistake.
Udo Erasmus: If you cut all the fats from your diet for long enough, it will kill you. If you have no fats in your diet, you won't get any essential fatty acids.
One of the areas where we've done quite a bit of work over the years is in the area of energy level. We're using an oil blend that I developed for the work we do. The blend is twice as rich in n-3 as n-6. And we modelled it somewhat after the Eskimo diet, which is two and a half times richer in n-3 than n-6.
That's as high as you want to go in n-3's. If you get higher than two and a half, you'll end up with flax oil, which is three and a half to four times richer in n-3. That will make people n-6 deficient if used exclusively. This down side effect is the main reason for developing a blend of oils with a safe, optimal ratio of n-3 to n-6.
Christian Finn: Are essential fatty acids useful for treating people with Type II diabetes?
Udo Erasmus: Essential fatty acids are required for insulin function. But you have to be careful when you increase n-3 and n-6, because diabetics then become more insulin sensitive. You then have to lower insulin or put them on a slower acting insulin. And most important, you need to lower carbohydrate intake at the same time. The research is clear about that.
Diabetics should be getting their carbohydrates not from complex carbohydrates, but from green vegetables. When you increase essential fatty acid intake and lower their carbohydrates by shifting them to green non-starchy vegetables, instead of potatoes, bread and pasta, you get exceptional improvement with diabetics -- both Type I and Type II -- but especially the latter.
We also see exceptional results in energy levels, stamina, and physical performance in athletes. We've worked with a lot of athletes.
Christian Finn: Well, that's certainly something of interest. In terms of specifics, what oils were you using? How long did it take to see these improvements?
In the human athletes, we use one tablespoon (15ml) per 50lb of bodyweight. We're using the oil blend I developed to do these studies because we think that's as close as we've seen to ideal in this situation. It's called Udo's Choice Oil Blend. Within two weeks -- and sometimes within three days -- they notice that their stamina increases. They recover quicker, build muscle faster, and perform better. They also focus better and sleep better.
The increase we see in stamina is often between 40 and 60% in athletes who push the limits of their performance - the ones who exercise to exhaustion. Within a couple of weeks of starting on the oil blend at 15ml per 50lb of bodyweight, a cyclist, who was doing 90km a day to exhaustion, was able to do 146km. We're talking about a serious increase. A boxer, instead of working out an hour and a half to exhaustion, is now doing two and a half hours. It's a dramatic increase. Athletes also build muscle faster.
Some of the kickboxers we worked with were putting on muscle so fast they were ending up in the next higher weight class. They didn't want to do that because they hadn't beat up everybody in their own weight class yet! They had to lower the daily dose of the oil so they didn't put on the muscle so fast.
In horses and dogs we use less oil than in humans. With dogs and cats, we give them about a teaspoon per 80lb of bodyweight.
Christian Finn: And is that what you recommend for someone wanting to lose weight?
Udo Erasmus: Losing fat is really what you're talking about. We tell people to start small (1 teaspoon) and increase gradually to take as much oil as it takes to get their skin soft and velvety. And the reason we do that is because the skin gets essential fats last and loses them first.
Essential fatty acids have vital functions in the vital organs, but you can live with dry skin. Nature's wisdom says skin gets them only when everywhere else has what it needs. So it's a good way to measure it. When your skin becomes dry it means you need more of the right kind of oil. Mix the oil in your vegetable and your protein foods.
In winter, when it's cold, people notice that their skin is drier than in summer. When that happens it's nature telling them to take more of the right type of oil. Again, take enough to make skin velvety smooth. It ballparks to about a tablespoon per 50lb of bodyweight.
It's different for different people, but your skin will always tell you. If you sweat, you'll lose more. If you have a fever you'll burn more, so the skin gets dry. You're burning more essential fatty acids as part of the bodies mechanism to deal with whatever the cause of the fever is. Your skin will always tell you how much oil you need.
When a woman is pregnant, her child will draw essential fatty acids from her body to build its brain. But again, the woman can tell how much she needs by her skin. If she breast-feeds, the child will take about 11 grams of essential fatty acids out of her body every day through breast milk. So she needs about a tablespoon just to replace what the baby pulls out of her, plus however much she needs for her own body.
Again, her skin will tell her. That's the way to measure it. About a tablespoon per 50lb of bodyweight -- less in summer. I need 60ml in winter and I can do it on 45ml in summer.
Christian Finn: So you change it according to the season?
Udo Erasmus: Yes. It changes by season but I do it by how my skin feels. In summer, my skin will be fine on 45ml, and in winter I'll need 60ml. If I go to a dry climate where everybody has dry skin, all I do is take a little extra oil and that takes care of keeping my skin properly oiled.
Christian Finn: Why does that happen?
Udo Erasmus: When you get enough essential fatty acids in your diet they form a barrier in the skin against the loss of moisture. They are nature's moisturiser. When you don't get enough you lose moisture through the skin. That'll also get you constipated, because then your body pulls water out of your stool to replace what you're losing through your skin.
Now let me get back to weight loss, or fat reduction. If we give people 45 to 75ml a day of the blend, we consistently see thirty to fifty pounds of fat reduction in a year in obese people who need to lose a lot of fat. Research has confirmed the importance of the right fat diet (rich in essential fatty acids with emphasis on n-3) for weight management.
Christian Finn: What else do you tell people who want to lose weight?
Udo Erasmus: We tell them to lower their carbohydrates, to get the majority of their carbohydrates from green foods.
Most people think that eating fat will make them fat, so they lower their fats if they're overweight, and eat more carbohydrates. That's completely wrong. The carbohydrates they eat that they don't burn will turn into fat. Most of the overweight in Western society comes from people eating more carbohydrates (sweets and starches) than they burn.
Christian Finn: Isn't that what the data shows? Even though carbohydrate intake has gone up and fat intake has dropped, obesity has increased.
Udo Erasmus: That's right. Not eating fats will make you fat. Fats suppress appetite. Any fat will do that. That's why Atkins' diet works. But he doesn't pay attention to the quality of the fat. The good fats, especially the n-3's, inhibit fat production in the body by limiting the activity of genes that make enzymes required for fat production. They do this at the genetic level.
That means the n-3's act like hormones, acting on the genetic level by turning up and turning down gene activity. That's pretty cool! N-3's do this better than the n-6's. N-6's do it to a small extent and, the research says, monounsaturates, saturates, and trans-fatty acids don't do it at all.
N-3's turn up the genes that make the enzymes required for fat burning and thermogenesis (blowing off calories as heat), and they can raise metabolic rate. We've seen this in a lot of people. N-3's also enhance glycogen production. They shift the body from burning more carbohydrate to burning more fat. In addition, n-3's (and n-6's to a small extent) turn up the genes involved in fat burning. They slow down fat production, and speed up fat burning and heat production.
Essential fatty acids also elevate mood and lift depression, so people are less likely to overeat because they're depressed. They decrease inflammation, which means that they'll help you lose water held in tissues because of inflammation. Water retention is part of overweight in some people.
And, because they give you more energy, better mood, and they make your skin nice, you're more likely to feel good about yourself to want to take care of yourself. So there are a number of different reasons why they help in weight reduction. My view is they are the most important and most neglected aspect of weight reduction.
All of the weight loss programs are fat phobic. When you go off the diet, you get fat again because they taught you incorrectly to avoid fat.
I'm not posting this as an advert for Udos, I just think it's a terrific interview and really touches on why EFA's are so important.
My hormones are so nuts though (even with HRT) that it could be hormonal. I hate it though.
