http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-vitamin-a-and-cancer.shtml

Cheers, guzolany

KGH:

My CLO has 850 IU of A per teaspoon. That is about 17% of the US RDA. I average one teaspoon a day.

Unless you are trying to get vitamin D by taking 50 ml of CLO a day, there should be no hazard to using CLO to get 1-2 g/day EPA/DHA, especially if you do not eat liver, as I don't.

Cheers

That's why the o3 o6 ratio may be bad in grain fed meat but there is so little of it a dolop of CLO will put you back in balance. See bacteria don't tend to like polyunsaturates and they work their ass off to saturate them. Then when the bacteria(not the grass or grain) is digested by the ruminant those fatty acids are incorporated in the tissues.

So in summation ruminants are not truly herbivores...they would better be classified as microbiovores.

One of the bloggers really need to get into this. You, Eades, Richard etc. Ruminant nutrition is ultra important because it IS the basis of human nutrition.

KGH:

Well a herbivore is an eater of plants. Both hindgut fermentation and foregut fermentation use bacteria. A ruminant is a foregut fermenter and it is foregut fermenters that have the ability to do the assembly and saturation, etc at more fundamental level. That is why they have better ratios than hindgut fermenters like pigs or horses, etc.

My question actually has to do with vasectomy. Possibly a non sequitur, but I actually believe that it relates to the broader Paleo theme of addressing and minimizing causal factors driving systemic inflammation and autoimmune issues, so please hear me out (and since we’re discussing the sexual organs of plants here, it may be not quite so far off topic!).

I recently cancelled a scheduled procedure at the last minute. I had no problem facing the procedure itself, or the potential post-operative risks. What had started to really, deeply concern me was my research into the potential autoimmune effects of vasectomy. To boil down my understanding of the issue: in a healthy male the sperm never cross the body/testes barrier so are never exposed to the immune system; after a vasectomy and the eventual rupture of the epididymis, the sperm then become ‘visible’ to the body for the first time; since the body sees their protein as a foreign agent, it mounts an immune response to break down the sperm, which are eventually absorbed. As a result, something like 70-80% of vasectomized men eventually show antibodies to their own sperm.

All well and good so far, but this gets to the point where I’m wondering if the dietary paradigm has any relevance. As far as I can tell from a layman’s perspective, this is not unlike the process that takes place when wheat gluten enters the body. The gluten protein is read as “other”, which triggers an immune response. It seems pretty obvious that there is a dosage response – i.e. the higher and more sustained the gluten loads, the more likely an individual is to experience (or eventually develop) negative effects; likewise a reduction in dosage can be expected to ameliorate the adverse effects. Sustained significant exposure to gluten = systemic inflammation and adverse autoimmune effects.

So could sustained exposure to sperm, which has been established to trigger an immune response in vasectomized males, potentially achieve the same effects as a high-gluten diet? The urologist appeared quite sanguine about the body's adaptation to developing sperm antibodies - but wouldn't there be a dosage response here as well? And wouldn't it potentially operate the same way as for gluten? In other words, just because the body develops immunity and antibodies to deal with the "invader", it doesn't necessarily follow that the sustained presence of the invader is a good thing - not if the result is a continuous state of immune arousal.

Imagine my horror at contemplating the possibility, after spending two years eliminating all gluten and most Neolithic agents from my diet in an attempt to minimize systemic inflammation and avoid the many autoimmune-related diseases of civilization, that I could spend the rest of my life with a powerful inflammation generator permanently mounted on my body!

I realize this question doesn’t completely fall within the nutrition domain addressed in this blog, but the Paleo community in general – and this site in particular – seem to be the only sources reliably addressing the autoimmune/inflammatory foundations of so many modern diseases. I’d love to hear whether you think there might be a valid analogy to be made, or if I'm way off base in my reasoning. Thanks!

As much as I've always cooked a lot, before dipping into Panu, my dishes were mainly chicken, fish, turkey, stir fries, eggs, ground beef, every vegetable imaginable....with lots of olive oil of course (the typical "healthy" recommendations). I know little about beef tarrow, lard and organ meats. But I'm interested in learning.

Thanks again for taking the time. It sounds like you've been cooking this way for awhile.

Best wishes.

I was concerned about your statement that chicken is "very heavy in PUFA." Looking up in the USDA database:

1oz Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat and skin, cooked, roasted contains 395mg of omega-6.
1oz Chicken, broilers or fryers, thigh, meat and skin, cooked, roasted contains 837mg of omega-6.

My typical lunch with 6oz of chicken therefore contains a max of about 5g of omega-6. While certainly higher than beef or lamb, the amount does not strike me as high enough to warrant avoiding chicken thighs and chicken skin. Compare, for example, to 1oz of almonds which contains 3.5g of omega-6, or 1oz of walnuts with 10.6g omega-6.

To maximize the omega-3/omega-3 ratio, I eliminated the 2oz mixed nuts I was eating each day, supplement with 4g of fish oil a day, as well as eat fatty fish 4x a week. Can you please comment?

KGH:

5 g of n-6 is about 45 kcal - this would be 2% of total kcal on 2250 a day. 4 g fish oil about 36 kcal or 1.6% so you are already at 3.6% total calories from PUFA. As long as that is your total for the day, that is pretty good. Sounds like you might be hungry though.

Why take so much fish oil? If you are need that much to balance a bunch more n-6 that I do not know about, then you are almost certainly well above 4% total kcal from PUFA.

The current popularity of olive oil is a fad. I am not dismissing it as a food, I am just saying paying $10 for a bottle of is kind of stupid, and the reasons for its current popularity are unfounded.

As far as the "tonic" part, well there is a pretty long history of all manner of substances being considered "tonics".'

Yes, but in the case of this particular "substance" there are countless studies that clearly indicate its positive effects on blood pressure, inflammation and cholesterol to name just three things. (No need to point out the shaky foundations of the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis - I am talking about how it increases HDL cholesterol, high levels of which have been strongly linked to lower risk of heart disease).

Whether $10 is too much to pay for a bottle depends on the size of the bottle :-)

While it is obvious that our diets should approximate the diets we evolved eating, surely it is not impossible that a naturally occurring fruit could provide certain health benefuis?

KGH:

You already know what I think. Olive oil is not medicine and the MUFA in it is not fundamentally different from the MUFA in lard or beef fat. I do not agree that these supposed health effects are as well established as you claim.

And, no I don't believe there are magic fruit. Maybe magic eggs and butter, though.

Check out the Saturday morning farmer's market on Arizona in Santa Monica. Amazing pastured eggs from carnivorous hens (no soy, no corn) for $4.50 a dozen from Healthy Family Farms. They do the Beverly Hills market on Sundays, too.

KGH:

Don't pay extra for eggs unless the chickens eat bugs. Chickens are not vegetarian and the free range organic eggs are almost always vegetarian. Even if they are factory eggs they still are not too bad, though. A gram of DHA/EPA a day should compensate.

Is it ok to roll with the fat off of grass pasture beef, bison and "other red meat" beasts?

How about wild turkey and other wildfowl? I really beat up the local goose population in the fall and eat alot of goose jerky.

THanks!
Don't forget to lift heavy things once and awhile!