Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
April 2009
The Inuit (Eskimo) people of Greenland almost never die of sudden cardiac arrest. They rarely suffer from asthma, emphysema, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis or psoriasis either. Fish, with its high content of omega-3 fats, is the protective factor in the Eskimo menu.
In the course of a heart attack the heart sometimes loses its ability to beat in a coordinated fashion. During this chaotic activity, known as ventricular fibrillation, the heart stops pumping blood and brain cells begin to die after about 4 minutes. Omega-3 fats appear to make the heart more resistant to fibrillation. That makes a heart attack more survivable.
Calcium is an important factor in maintaining strong bones but it's not the only one. The skeleton is constantly remodeling itself so that if key nutrients are missing it will become more fragile over time, eventually leading to osteoporosis. Omega-3 fats help to maintain the ability of bone cells to absorb nutrients and to keep up with the remodeling process.
Our immune system protected humans pretty well from an enormous variety of germs when there was a one-to-one balance in their diet between omega-3 and omega-6 fats, a situation that lasted for a couple of million years. Then we invented vegetable oils.
Most plant-derived oils (peanut, safflower, sunflower, corn) contain large amounts of omega-6 fatty acids. The healthy one-to-one ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fats has tilted far toward the omega-6s and it's now about 15 to 1 in their favor. Too much omega-6 fat in the diet sends the immune response into overdrive and the result might be rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or any number of so-called autoimmune diseases.
Fish that live in cold water are the best sources of omega-3 fats. Mercury and other contaminants are a concern to many people but for most adults the risk is very small compared with the enormous benefit of these fats. That is even true for pregnant women, although they and small children should avoid those fish that are near the top of the food chain (tuna, shark, tilefish) and in which toxins accumulate. Persons who avoid fish can get almost the same benefit from fish oil capsules.
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.