The UltraMind Solution (25 page)

I am of North Atlantic genetic background: Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Scandinavian, or coastal Native American.
* For your convenience, this quiz has been reprinted in The UltraMind Solution Companion Guide. Simply go to www.ultramind.com/guide , download the guide, and print out the quiz.

Score one point for each box you checked.

Do you gather wild plants to eat or hunt for your meat? If not, you are likely one of the 99 percent of people in the twenty-first century who are deficient in the most important ingredient in our bodies for normal cell and brain function—omega-3 fatty acids.

The Greenland Inuit (a native tribe in Greenland) consumed between 15 and 19 gm of omega-3 fats a day from eating whale, walrus, seal, and arctic char. That may be how much we are designed to operate on. Most of us consume far less than 1 gm a day.

Omega-3 fats come from wild things—which means they are hard to find in today’s society. In the modern world our only real source of omega-3 fats is fish, and most of the fish we eat are contaminated with toxins and mercury, which may lead to a host of problems you will learn more about in
chapter 10.

Aside from controlling your gene function, regulating your immune system, and improving your metabolism, these fats are vital components of the cell membrane that covers every one of the 100 trillion cells in your body. Without omega-3 fats, the proper messages can’t be communicated from one cell to another.

The two most important omega-3 fats to know about are eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). They are both necessary omega-3 fats. Since your brain is mostly fat, and 60 percent of your brain is specifically made of DHA, it is easy to see why they are so important. If you don’t have enough, the brain doesn’t work.

However, in the last 150 years we have seen an unprecedented change in our fat intake. Refined, omega-6, inflammatory oils, including corn, soy, and safflower oils, replaced omega-3 fats from fish, wild game, and wild plants.

The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats has increased from 1:1 to 10:1 or 20:1 in our diets, and the effects have been disastrous. All of the major diseases of aging as well as the epidemic of “brain disorders” are directly associated with this change in our diet.

Today the only real sources of omega-3 fats are breast milk, wild fish and game, seaweed, algae, and eggs hatched from chickens fed only on flaxseeds and fish meal.

Our brains don’t work without omega-3 fats. Period. That is why low levels of omega-3 fats have been linked to everything from depression and anxiety, to bipolar disease and criminal behavior, to schizophrenia, to attention deficit disorder and autism and learning disabilities, as well as dementia and many other neurological diseases.
¹

The omega-3 fatty acids from wild fish and certain nuts and seeds like flaxseeds play critical roles in our cognitive development and learning, visual development, immune and inflammatory function, fetal brain development, brain health, Alzheimer’s disease, and mental illness, not to mention heart disease and cancer.

At a recent nutrition conference I listened to Joseph Hibbeln, M.D. (who is the scientist in the section dedicated to nutritional neurosciences at the National Institutes of Health), where he presented some startling data about the effect of fish oil or omega-3 fats on our mental health.

He told us that the flood of soy oils and seed oils like corn in our diet, which contain high amounts of linoleic acid (an unhealthy omega-6 fatty acid), promote inflammation and disease.

In our culture, this inflammatory fatty acid primarily comes from soy oil. Eighty percent of the fats consumed in the United States are linoleic acid, which comes from soy oil and other similar fats. Twenty percent are in the
form of EPA, which comes from fish oil. (I believe we consume even less EPA.)

In Japan,80 percent of the fat eaten is EPA, and only 20 percent is arachidonic acid (another unhealthy omega-6 fatty acid). That may be why the Japanese have less depression, dementia, and heart disease.

Consuming these harmful seed and soy oils instead of omega-3 fats changes our tissue composition in dramatic ways and damages our health.

Dr. Hibbeln explained that there has been a
thousandfold increase
in the consumption of soy oil over the last century. In fact, 20 percent of all calories consumed in America are from soybean oil and therefore 9 to 10 percent of all our calories are from linoleic acid instead of the omega-3 fats, which we should be eating.

It is interesting that 4 to 5 million years of human evolution occurred in a seafood-rich nutritional environment in which
seafood
was the main source of fats. There were no seed oils, which we now use to cook French fries, doughnuts, and packaged foods. We have to ask ourselves what happens to our mind and body when our nutritional environment radically changes this way.

This level of the soy oils in our diet is unsafe. Recent research has found that homicide mortality in the United Kingdom increased dramatically with the increase in consumption of linoleic acid from soy oil.
²
The same thing happened in the United States as well as in Australia, Canada, and Argentina. Conversely, the homicide mortality rates are inversely related to seafood consumption, meaning that the more seafood people eat in a society such as Japan, the less homicide they have.

Even more dramatic was a study published in the
British Journal of Psychiatry
in 2002 that looked at the reduction in felony-level violent offenses among prisoners with supplementation of omega-3 fats.
³
A placebo-controlled trial gave one group the recommended daily amounts of vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fats and the other group retained their regular prison diet and lifestyle. By just providing vitamin and fish-oil supplements, there was a 35 percent reduction in felony-related violent crime in prison.

It has also been shown that a lack of fish consumption is universally related to depression. A one-year study found EPA was helpful in treating resistant depression.

Omega-3 fats are also helpful in treating postpartum depression. DHA from fish oils is a critical part of a mother’s breast milk that helps neurological development in the fetus. Women who have higher levels of omega-3 fats in their tissues have lower rates of postpartum depression.
⁴

Similarly, kids who have dyslexia, dyspraxia (difficulty writing), other learning disabilities, and attention deficit disorder are mostly omega-3 fat–deficient. Dopamine activity, which is critical for brain function in these children, is improved with essential fatty acid consumption. There have been controlled studies showing that giving fish oil to children with these kinds of problems improves reading and spelling in treatment groups and improves conduct in school because the nervous system is very dependent on these fats to function.
⁵

Omega-3 fats are well known for their benefits in heart health, obesity, and diabetes. They help prevent heart attacks, arrhythmias, and strokes; reduce inflammation; and prevent blood clots. But their effects on the brain are just as critical.

Omega-3 fats may sound like a miracle cure, and they can be in some cases. I have seen patients completely recover from autism with cod liver oil (which contains omega-3 fats, and vitamins A and D).
⁶

One of my patients, a twenty-year-old woman who hated seafood and avoided it her whole life, suffered from depression, learning disabilities, obesity, muscle pain, and chronic fatigue. Her blood tests showed severe omega-3 fat deficiency and an overload of inflammatory omega-6 fats. By giving her an oil change with high doses of fish oil (EPA and DHA), she recovered from her depression and cognitive struggles, her pain disappeared, and she lost sixty pounds.

But why the dramatic change with one simple supplement?

Don’t make the mistake to think all the conditions listed above (or those discussed elsewhere in the book) can magically be cured with a little fish oil. Some may, but most conditions result from imbalance and deficiencies in many of the body’s core systems. Nutrient deficiency is only one area where problems are created, and omega-3 fats are only one of those nutrients.

If you are omega-3 fat–deficient, B
₁₂
deficient, have mercury poisoning, low thyroid function, and eat foods you are allergic to, just fixing the omega-3 fat deficiencies won’t cure the whole problem. You have to fix everything.

However, nutrient deficiency is a major contributor to
all
of the other health issues you may be experiencing, so figuring out what nutrients you are deficient in and reestablishing nutritional balance is an important step on your path to UltraWellness.

I am going to use the example of omega-3 fats to show you the myriad
ways in which nutrients work in the body to normalize function and why their deficiency can cause so many diseases.

Here are four key roles omega-3 fats play in your body and reasons why they are linked to so many different mood, memory, and attention problems (as well as most chronic diseases).
⁷
These fats are literally the stuff we are made of.

1.
They build all cell membranes (along with a few other key fats called phospholipids—PC and PS).

2.
They reduce inflammation, which has been linked to almost all brain problems such as autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and depression.

3.
They balance blood sugar, which, as you will see in
chapter 7
, is essential for keeping your brain healthy.

4.
They increase the activity of a key molecule in your brain called BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor), which acts like fertilizer for your brain, stimulating new cell growth and increased cell connections.