Understanding Fatty Acids and Health
tldr; Is understanding all the fatty acids and their interactions necessary for good health?
One of my X correspondents posed this excellent question:
(For the answer to the second question, see the thread.)
My short answer on X was:
“1. Ultimately it's a black-box analysis. You don't need to understand what's happening with all the fatty acids. Just that differences from 'natural' cause disease.”
That’s true so far as it goes, but I thought that a little expansion might help people understand why I think that.
Dolphins Get Diabetes
How on Earth can dolphins get diabetes?
“Dolphins as Animal Models for Type 2 Diabetes: Sustained, Post-Prandial Hyperglycemia and Hyperinsulinemia” (Venn-Watson, 2011)
They don’t eat any carbohydrates, of course, as they live in the ocean and whatever tiny amount they get would be in the form of glucose or glycogen in their prey animals.
They also don’t eat any seed oils, at least not that I am aware of. In captivity, they are still fed fish, not some horrible biscuit concoction like many other zoo animals.
“Similar to humans, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) can develop metabolic syndrome and associated high ferritin…. (Venn-Watson, 2015)
These dolphins were under the care of the U.S. Navy, and were a generally healthy population, with longer life-spans, lower per-annum mortality, and “had consistently lower levels of stress hormones”.
“They are fed high-quality, frozen-thawed whole fish diets consisting of primarily capelin (Mallotus villosus), as well as herring (Clupea harengus), mackerel (Scomber japonicus), and/or squid (Loligo opalescens).” (Venn-Watson, 2015)
However, they had higher insulin, ferritin, and triglycerides than the wild population they were compared to.
Ferritin is Not a Marker of Iron Status
“Ferritin is the true measure of iron in blood, and high blood ferritin is reflected in iron overload. In humans, the severity of insulin resistance is associated with increasing serum ferritin levels and hemochromatosis…” (Venn-Watson, 2011)
“It is unknown precisely why ferritin increases in some people and how high ferritin increases the risk of metabolic syndrome [17–19].” (Venn-Watson, 2015)
This is, unfortunately, a common misconception. I discussed ferritin and iron in this post:
In a nutshell, ferritin is more of a marker of inflammation than of iron status. Ferritin is a protein used for iron transport and storage. But the test for ferritin is positive even if the protein contains no iron. So high ferritin reflects an inflammatory state and, one suspects, higher necrosis; and not higher iron intake or stores (Kell, 2014). Low ferritin can also reflect a low-inflammation state, as induced by athletic training, for instance.
So ferritin is a marker, a result of disease; not a mediator:
“2. (Science: chemistry) A chemical substance (transmitter substance) that induces activity in an excitable tissue, such as nerve or muscle…”
No Dietary Carbohydrate, So What To Test?
“Fish are high in essential Ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and these nutrients have been associated with both beneficial and detrimental effects related to diabetes [7–9].” (Venn-Watson, 2015)
So they take blood from both the domestic and wild dolphins (after checking to make sure the wild dolphins have full stomachs, to see if there are any differences or correlations in their blood fatty acids and the fish in their diets.
“To assess potential protective factors against metabolic syndrome related to fish diets, fatty acids were compared between two dolphin populations with higher (n = 30, Group A) and lower (n = 19, Group B) mean insulin (11 ± 12 and 2 ± 5 μIU/ml, respectively; P < 0.0001) and their dietary fish.” (Venn-Watson, 2015)
And it turns out that the difference was in three fatty acids, due to the different, limited types of fish fed to the domestic dolphins.
‘Fixing’ Diet Resolved Malnutrition
Correcting their diets led to an increase in what they concluded was the causative fat, C:17.0, heptadecanoic acid; an odd-chain (odd number of carbons) saturated fat.
Normalizing dietary fatty acids resolved diabetes.
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