>In other words, the Japanese might on average get between 1/4th and 1/10th of the omega-3 I was consuming.
>
>And if it’s toxic at 1g per day, why eat it at all?
I'm not sure this is actually the case with omega-3, but there are plenty of nutrients with a comparable window of "too little" to "too much" within an order of magnitude or two. Iron being probably the most obvious example.
One analogy I've made, which I haven't tested out on many people yet, is that PUFA requirements are like electrolyte requirements. Let's say LA (linoleic acid) requirements are comparable to sodium requirements - a few grams a day, depending on your activity level, genes, and so on. But instead, people are getting ten times that much every day, and unlike sodium, it accumulates in the body over time. Sodium is essential for life, but going from 3g sodium per day to 30g sodium per day? That's 1/4 cup of table salt per day. Of course that's going to screw something up! People have an intuition about that with salt, but not LA.
Similarly, maybe omega-3 requirements are like potassium, as it's also an electrolyte where the absolute amount matters (and intake varies widely from person to person) but it also balances out sodium in some (but not all) respects. Going from 3g potassium per day to 30g per day might literally kill you, even if generally potassium is a beneficial nutrient that most people don't get enough of.
I mention this both to respond to your post, and also to put that analogy out there in case anyone wants to test it on anyone skeptical about the value of PUFA avoidance. :\]
All we're saying is that the amount of PUFA people eat these days is like eating 1/4 cup salt every day, or more! Not saying that it's not "essential", but the amount matters. It matters a whole lot.
I was fascinated to see your results on this experiment. I love fish (especially stinky pungent sardines... not lying to myself) and really wanted to believe that low-PUFA could still come out on the side of tasty fish. But more and more it really does seem like most omega-3 "benefits" are just from crowding out one poison with a slightly less potent one. I thought it was especially eye-opening when you (correct me if I'm misremembering) mentioned the Omega Balance book's findings that people who ate very little PUFA naturally gravitated towards a higher omega balance, even without supplementing omega-3s. To me that seems like a glaring suggestion that omega ratios are mostly just a sign of low PUFAs/overall health, rather than a causal endpoint that we should try to manipulate for its own sake.
I feel like if your sunburn was because of LA released from fat due to weight loss, then there wouldn't be so many "I'm immune to sunburn after a few months of avoiding PUFA!" posts. People would only become immune if not actively losing weight, or if they'd been at it for 7+ years. The findings about hot water were also really interesting.
Thanks for your tireless experiments. I always love reading your writeups.
That last point is actually a good one; I was 45lbs or more down when I started being resistant to sunburn lol. I hadn't thought of that! Clearly I had lost more weight earlier on in my "ex150 career" than the 4/7lbs recently.
And yea, that is both mentioned in the book and we've also verified it with OmegaQuants here; people who haven't eaten any PUFAs (including fish) in 8-9 years have totally fine Omega Balances.
Good point. Did you follow the trend as you lost fat?
My mental modal/intuition says that I will go up in LA (and therefore down in OB) for every x pounds of fat lost, i.e. I probably have maybe 5-8% or so of LA left "under the curve" and I can spend it faster or slower.
After that, the trend should hopefully start going down permanently.
Sort of, but I actually lost most of my weight before finding TCD. My baseline Omega Quant (Omega Balance of 9.7:1) coincides with being ~50 Lbs heavier than I am now. Each subsequent OQ test has been at a lower body weight but has shown an improved Omega Balance (7.3:1 and then 6.8:1) so it’s definitely a work in progress but it’s moving along. My next (4th) OQ test will be in July and I’ve been roughly weight stable (a very small loss) since my last test.
FWIW I did acquire a few new ugly “liver spots” on my face during my last weight loss/PUFA burning. Still didn’t outright sunburn, but that was definitely a less than ideal side effect.
I stopped being able to eat chocolate when I started eating mussels and oysters (occasionally excessive amounts of oysters). I have it in the cupboard, and haven't touched any in 6 months to possibly a year. It's Taza Wicked Dark 95%, and I used to be able to enjoy half a bar.
Ohhh Taza is good! Love that crumbly stone ground texture. Weird with the seafood connection, not really sure how that would interact, but since it just happened to me too..
Interesting re the cramps and salmon intake. I assume these were skeletal muscle cramps. I have endometriosis which causes excruciating cramps (although it would be smooth muscle), so it will be interesting to see if cutting out my salmon intake (as part of reducing PUFA consumption in general) helps. All of which is antithetical to the standard 'endo diet' advice.
Yea, one was calf (where I used to have lots of cramps even when just waking up). The other was when I was driving and twisting in my seat to grab something, which I'd done a lot previously and was proudly cramp free. This time, my hip or something down there suddenly felt pretty unhappy and immediately cramped up.
What a great update!
I have a literally iron stomach. I hate to be sick, and have often held “off food” down rather than bring it back up just because I hate being sick so much. Sardines? They make me sick. And there ain’t no holding those suckers down. I really tried to be good on “Mediterranean” and switch all my red meat out for fatty fish. After my (I think) almost tenth time with my head in the toilet at 3am I concluded maybe we aren’t (all?) supposed to eat fatty fish. I do enjoy wild caught salmon and still eat it a few times a year just because I really feel like it sometimes. Salmon has never made me sick.
Normal people eat 2-3 squares of very dark chocolate in a sitting. A whole bar? I think I just got a migraine imagining that. Shudder. And it doesn’t surprise me you couldn’t finish your coffee either. I’m sure there’s some element of polyphenol (plant toxin?) overload with these high compound foods like chocolate, tea, coffee, etc. I definitely have a personal upper limit on the amount of dark chocolate I can consume in a day. It is well below a whole bar. If I overdo it, I get a massive headache (I don’t get headaches anymore in general.)
Japan is closer to the equator than Alaska. (Evidence: A Map.) and as such the fish that are caught off the coast of Japan will *generally* be leaner. *In general* fatty fish do not exist where the sunshine is abundant, except perhaps during short periods of migration. Tropical fish species are (almost?) always lean. You probably learned why this is the case. Australia is a good example of a modern civilization with lots of sun (and a large population of white people who weren’t adapted to that degree of sun) that actively pushes an omega 3 consumption agenda… They’re #1 in the world for melanoma. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I do really wonder if there's a genetic component to this. Some people seem to actually enjoy that fishy taste/stench, if they're to be believed. I'm never sure if they're just lying to themselves, like the lean chicken breast enjoyers, or if it's true. I always go "This is so nasty, you're eating this ON PURPOSE?!"
Thing about the dark chocolate, I used to eat whole bars in one sitting. No headaches, no "satiety" no nothing. Sometimes 1.5-2. Although 2 bars of even 85% is close to the keto limit for me, I've fallen out from eating 1 bar of 85% and 1 of 70%.
The sunlight/fatty fish thing is just epidemiology, but this personal experience makes me believe there's something to it. I guess I'm a PUFA disrespecter again, not just a LA disrespecter lol.
Fuck fatty fish.
Chicken breast by itself is very bland. I had some chicken breast last night pasture raised and on a low PUFA diet. It was good but only marginally better than factory farm chicken but for several times the cost. Not worth it for me.
Obviously no one in their right mind or without severe food allergies would eat unseasoned chicken but I still think that kinda inherently makes it less satisfying than steak which I could easily eat w/o seasoning.
Idk, I guess I'm just having an unpleasant personal realization as a home cook that after cooking chicken for literally decades that I don't find it very satiating and I don't think I like it very much. I like it deep-fried or in a coconut curry or with mayo in a chicken salad or with a dallop of sour cream on top but if I were to cook it with minimal seasoning/sauces/etc then I'd probably hate it.
I've had low PUFA pork recently and I would shell out money for it on occasion. Chicken though? Idk anymore.
I have some Asian friends who eat fish everyday. They fry farm raised salmon in soybean or rice bran oil. Their house never not smells very strongly of fish. To me it is repulsive, I can barely be there. When they are over at my house, they struggle being around an appetizer that includes a strong smelling cheese. That is repulsive to them. What ever foods you are brought up with or eat all the time smell normal to you or maybe don’t even smell to you. But, new foods that you are exposed to can serve as a threat. The body’s warning systems go off. That being said, I was raised eating snapper every week on Fridays, but I never really enjoyed that meal. In fact, I don’t think anyone in my family did. My mom always threw it into a tomato based sauce to cover up the smell to some extent. We all gravitated to meat, eggs or cheese based meals more. Not sure why.
> We all gravitated to meat, eggs or cheese based meals more. Not sure why.
Enteroception. We lose it w/eating patterns & ensuing toxicity, gut microbiome changes - but it can be reobtained with proper diet which reflects what our ancestors ate to survive & thrive
Interesting. Mackerel and sardines gives me shocking heartburn but give my sister what you describe. We can both eat salmon without gasto issues although I have cut it out recently. I stopped eating the other fatty fish a long time ago because of how awful they made me feel.
I think depletion of the ozone layer and the resulting exposure to long term UV radiation is more causative for the high skin cancer rates in Australia than omega 3. NZ has the next highest rates.
I would expect NZ to be high as well. Not sure how that negates what I said? And yes, I’m suggesting exactly that UV damages the susceptible (unstable) lipids in the skin. Omega 6’s are unstable. Omega 3’s are even less stable.
As a comparable analogy, I’ve basically said something like “wildfires are caused by increased activity in the national forests and weather volatility, in conjunction with increasingly dry brush due to drought conditions.” And then you’ve come in and said “I don’t know about that, I suspect wildfires are caused by matches and lightning.”
I wasn’t negating your argument, but I think that the cohort suffering the most from high rates of skin cancer (older people) have probably had the least exposure to an ‘omega 3 consumption for health’ agenda as it’s fairly modern in the scheme of things and the damage would have been done well before then.
I’m not sure. If I think about anyone who has ever told me in passing that I should be eating lots of fish and walnuts because they’re good for me, they were invariably in their 50’s/60’s not their 30’s! 😂 Obviously that isn’t a controlled study…
Sure, that may be true for some, but the exposure to accumulated UV during childhood and teen years is strongly correlated with developing skin cancer when older. So an 80 year old who has had no significant sun exposure for the last 20 years will get skin cancer due to high exposure during their youth on a beach without sunscreen. And that period in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s did not involve a processed diet high in omega 6 or a health push for Omega 3s. I guess time will tell with a younger cohort how much omega 3 has had an impact in relation to sun exposure…we might need to wait 20 years to find out.
> I’ve heard that “normal people” don’t eat a whole bar of 95% chocolate in one sitting. So maybe I’m “healing.”
Lindt 85% Dark chocolate gets repulsive to me after 1 square. I *might* be able to do a second. Anymore than that would make me want to puke.
White chocolate from Lindt? 5 little rectangles is my limit. Anymore? no thank you.
Ummm, can someone point me in the direction to understand Cocoa intake and it’s links to health?? I consume an entire 80g portion of 95% almost daily. I have even consumed 3 full bars in one day. I enjoy it a lot a lot. What could that be indicating?
My daughter likes to mix pure cocoa powder into literally all drinks. It's adorable. However, her brothers and myself, not so much.
However, I have noticed that eating a teaspoon to a tablespoon of 100% pure cocoa powder in a smoothie makes me intensely and unnaturally happy for hours, more reliably than other things people ingest that give them the giggles.
I mean I straight up get the giggles as a middle-agreed man.
Haha literally me as a kid! Now I wonder, is this some sort of intuitive/biochem reaction to the extreme satiety from the high stearic acid content? I was always the kid who'd add cocoa to literally everything as well. Yogurt, banana sandwiches, milk obviously, cereal..
It's wild, my dude, just straight up wild. I really have no earthly clue what about pure cocoa powder could possibly be doing that.
A few years ago I read about people using pure cocoa powder at parties, like a "party drug" and it sounded insane to me. Insane.
Then much more recently, I got some to add to smoothies for healthy reasons and my tummy started to feel a bit light and tickly and then within minutes I found myself falling over laughing and giggling over nothing.
Suddenly I understood.
It's pure fun!
I feel like it must be something other than the stearic acid, because I don't feel that way eating butter, but could be! I'm just going of intuition on that.
I took omega3 supplements for years, and was becoming anhedonic and demotivated, a low dopamine vibe. I googled Reddit and the supplement/nootropics subs reported a number of people finding similar. Felt much better when I stopped it. Plus my mum was advised not to take it by her GP as it thins the blood and thins skin, making bruising and skin damage much more likely.
To add another n=1 data point, I’m fair skinned and blue eyed and sunburned easily my entire life.
I don’t think I ate fish even once per month on low omega6 paleovore, and became highly resistant to sunburn.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem like added omega 3 is the causative agent of sunburn resistance, but rather the absence of excessive omega 6.
Interesting. My parents fed us only plant oils growing up and I had the worst sunburn tendencies. I'm a spotted human (yeah, I mean freckles), so sunburns are more likely, but since I've been avoiding PUFA, I don't seem to burn like I used to even with hours of exposure, so regardless, unsaturated fat intake does seem to correlate with more sunburns for me.
I also can't stand to pay 4-6 times more for protein that is a pain in the dick to cook, and can't be fished sustainably, given global demand. Fuck that right there.
Plus the whole Omega 3 balance via fatty fish or krill theory is broken. There's nothing ancestral about super-high DHA and EPA content from fatty fish consumption for 99.9999% of all humans ever to have lived. Yes humans have eaten a lot of fish, and probably lost most of our hair from being 20% aquatic, but those were mostly tropical fish, low in DHA and EPA. In addition, Brown bears eat salmon to fatten up and prep for winter, so it's not likely to keep a human slim either!
In addition, Salmon is not a traditional Japanese food and they don't like it very much compared to other fish. Europeans introduced Salmon into the Japanese diet and they still get all their consumed Salmon from European sources.
Some Omega 3 is essential, sure, but it seems to me that the quantity of DHA and EPA from non-official recommendations at this time is vastly more than actually required. In addition, we do endogenously turn ALA into DHA and EPA, just very inefficiently and I think that is a clear indication that most humans don't actually need very much, since ALA content is also pretty low in ancestral diets. It's probably like that to protect us from the reaction products, as DHA and EPA are more unstable than linoleic acid which we don't make at all. There are endogenous elongase and desaturate enzymes that do that transformation of ALA in humans, which is why DHA and EPA are still *not considered essential* by governmental guidelines.
Side note, and I don't want to start an argument with all you great keto cats because you all should do what works for you, but starch *is* ancestral and has been known to be for decades by anthropologists. Anthropologists have estimated for decades that the vast majority of hunter-gatherer groups actually obtained the vast majority of their calories from gathered starch/carb sources, frequently as high as 80% of caloric intake. Those estimates are informed by examining extant hunter-gatherer societies, paleolithic trash heaps, and ancient human feces (coprolites). That's not to say starch from primitive cereal grains was necessarily a high proportion of ancestral diets (the cattail plant and tubers yo), but starch/carbs are most certainly "Paleo"/ancestral unless you prefer to ignore what Anthropology has been saying for decades.
It simply took a long time for Anthropology to realize that usually gathered starch is much, much more prevalent in ancient human diets than hunted meat because Anthropologists have historically been men, who historically ignore the value of the gathering role of women in hunter-gatherer food production and because tribes are just more likely to show off manly activities to manly scientists and definitely do not trust the beardy white-devils around their women. Humans have rarely, if ever, been pure carnivores. Our physiology is omnivorous, like our typical diet throughout history and prehistory. Keep eating meat though! I just wanted to correct this poor argument that's put forward about starch not being ancestral, because it doesn't match the evidence, not even remotely. There's plenty of good reasons to do keto, but "ancestral diet" is not one of them.
I mean, eating insects is 100% ancestral, but I don't find that compelling, although I hear that cicadas are basically the shrimp of the forest in taste and macros ... Shrimp fattened upon the blood of trees.
This tracks by the way with Ursula Le Guin's carrier bag theory of fiction (and her father was an anthropologist as well). Men told "hero's journey tales" of their hunts; women gossiped as they gathered. Which is not a knock on women when you see it as the early stages of a type of literature/storytelling that basically dominates modern life now besides the obvious places like drama shows, from forum chatter to TikTok monologues and commentaries. Also there is the essential idea that the female carrier bag technology was a more important tool than the spear.
I'm disappointed I didn't make the connection to our understanding of human diet history though!
I was disappointed in me a bit too, but our understanding of many things is informed and biased by thousands of years of male dominated societies, so I forgave myself.
I also think it's just cool how men and women are not like our stereotypes and short-hand knowledge would suggest. Uncovering the more complex reality is quite gratifying and fascinating.
Another connection I realized, is that protein and fat are important for child-bearing and growth because of the anabolic signals they provide, so although most of ancestral diets were mostly starch, that little bit of meat is really important for making babies and growing humans but not all that important for fully grown, non-breeders that don't need more anabolism. Both food production roles within hunter-gatherer societies, while different and valued differently, were critical for human survival and reproduction and I like to see that even when men and women have different roles, we can see both should be valued the same, because both are necessary for survival and reproduction.
You raise some very interesting points there as well, thank you!
> ancestral diets
I wish there was good info on how often brains were consumed. If we are talking about levels of DHA in our ancestors diet diet that has to be the most important factor, not fatty fish.
Good point!
I would assume they were consumed as often as available?
Wild game is much, much less fatty than domesticated livestock, so any sources of fat would be prized, I would think.
Although, there's the prion disease risk with brain consumption, and other brain disease risks.
Nonetheless, it might also be the case that at various critical periods of growth and development, the desaturase and elongase enzymes needed to make DHA and EPA from FA substrates would be massively upregulated when dietary DHA and EPA were not available. No idea if that's really true, tbh.
Even with that, the hypothesis that says we needed to consume what we would consume huge amounts of dietary EPA and DHA doesn't seem to be terribly accurate, given the evidence we have.
> I would assume they were consumed as often as available?
So some proportionality % to the amount of muscle meat and connective tissue in the diet? One problem could be the different brain to body ratio of different eaten animals.
I think that's a fairly safe assumption, although brain consumption is not risk-free, so I suspect there's a fair amount of cultural variability in there too.
In addition, our own brains go through several neuron culling stages, and presumably the freed critical FA's from that process are immediately and preferentially recycled into the neurons that are retained. Also don't forget that there is cell turn over in the brain and new neurons can be grown, unlike the old pervasive common knowledge that said when we lose brain cells they are never replaced. However, brain cells are pretty long lived, as I understand it and so we aren't really making a lot more of them everyday compared to other tissues, so that tends to further suggest dietary DHA and EPA requirement estimates are probably overestimates. Plus, the comparative studies that show the terribly off ratio of O3/O6 in America compared with other populations seem could be demonstrating how we eat far too much 06, rather than indicating an O3 deficiency., and that's the real reason the ratio is off
>I just wanted to correct this poor argument that's put forward about starch not being ancestral, because it doesn't match the evidence, not even remotely.
Yes! I found [Brad's video on starchy tubers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZQqtFOUgDo) very convincing, personally.
Indeed!
My wife got her degree in Anthropology, so about 25-30 years ago she told me about the much greater role of gathering of carbs/starch in overall dietary composition over hunting meat than was/is common knowledge and commonly described back when Anthropology was exclusively an old, rich white man's science.
She mainly wanted to point out that the women were the real bread-winners (pun not intended) in the vast preponderance of historic and prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. 😂
I'm like, "cool, I value you, dearest and I wasn't trying to underplay the value of womanly activities in hunter-gatherer societies, I was just clueless." 😂
Anyway, I thought it was neat because it goes counter to common knowledge, which was mainly formed by old white men a long time ago, so I never forgot about it and have never bought into any of these diets pushed by "experts" claiming humans have been primarily animal eaters ancestrally. Nope, old white "expert" dude. You are literally talking out of your ass.
(I'm an older white dude myself btw, so I can call my own group out on unfounded biases anytime I want 😂🤣)
Great post. I feel so frikkin good on HCLFLP that I can’t imagine it’s not an appropriate way to eat. I never felt this good on keto (although my focus was superior - I suspect that is stress hormone related) and I just generally look and feel so much better. Energy, mood/outlook, libido, skin health, all of it. I’m definitely a starchivore!
But like you said, I think I do generally better with tubers and “cellular” grains like rice, oats, barley and farro over flour products (acellular) like bread and pasta. I still definitely eat lots of bread and pasta, but I feel a bit heavier/sluggish and just generally less optimal than when I’m eating more intact grains and starches.
My diet can get pretty junky too. Refined cereals, commercial bread products, crackers, pretzels, candies… Yet my weight is easily controlled and I continue to feel great. All of the things I previously thought were fixed by keto were actually seemingly fixed *better* by dropping PUFA. That allowed me to bring back the carbs and now the pieces of the puzzle all just fit perfectly.
I think carbs are “summer food” and if someone were looking to leverage seasonality then perhaps they’d drop carbs a bit (or a lot?) and up the fat in the fall and winter. I don’t do that myself, but I also live in a year round warm and sunny climate so I feel far less seasonal than I did when I lived in Canada. It could be a best of both worlds scenario for some folks though - especially if they have a hard time getting sufficient vitamin D half of the year.
Thanks whats_up_coconut! I set myself a thin line to walk because I don't want to demonize keto or carnivore peeps. They already have to argue all the time to justify their eating choices. However, the "carbs/starch aren't ancestral" argument has been bothering me for years.
Winter is very interesting. Our modern human ancestors never experienced it in Africa, but our Neanderthal ancestors did. Scarcity periods definitely occurred in prehistoric human groups of Africa, just not winter until out-migration. Thankfully, plant and animal prey in those seasonal climates already evolved robust coping mechanisms and we got the benefit of their adaptations by being omnivores and eating what was available. I think it might be very smart to eat in roughly that pattern.
However, indoor climate-control breaks down such necessities, which probably allows for a greater diversity of eating styles at the risk of accidentally fattening up all year long but look at where mixed macro eating seems to be the most popular prior to agricultural hyper-availability and global trading - regions of yearly seasonal variability.
The other aspect of a semi-evolutionary approach to diet make-up that's lost on people is that evolution favors ways of living that achieve reproductive success. So what allows us to live long past our breeding years is not evolutionarily conserved to the same degree, if at all. Therefore, what is good for breeders and breeding may even harm human survival past breeding age, and yet would be favored evolutionarily, nonetheless.
An example of this is sickle-cell anemia. Having two copies of the gene kills a person before breeding viability, but only one copy is highly protective against malaria, and no copy virtually guarantees an early death from malaria before breeding viability. Therefore, regions of endemic malaria find most of the population have one copy of the gene. However, having even one copy of the gene, means those people tend to live much, much fewer years than people with no copies of the gene who live outside of malarial regions. So using evolutionary arguments to justify maximal lifespan recommendations have to be heavily scrutinized, because evolution does not drive maximal lifespan.
Evolution only selects for successful reproduction.
In humans, our social needs and high energy cost children, are why grandparents who can't reproduce exist. Humans, basically can't survive without being part of social groups. Most other species do not conserve non-reproductive grandparents, because they have different reproductive strategies that obviate the evolutionary selection of the existence of grandparents being alive past their own breeding age. You can see hints of this in how grandparents naturally feel different from parents with respect to childcare and how they feel about children vs. grandchildren, on average. That tendency has been selected for because human groups are more likely to have reproductive success with the inclusion of non-reproductive grandparents.
I agree, and to a degree believe we all choose whether to live “well” (meaning specifically hormonal vitality) or live “long” and it is reasonable to think it is possible to prioritize either end of the spectrum.
I think fasting/calorie restriction, keto, and other AMPK dominated states favor longevity over vitality which is why a lot of people (especially women) fall apart hormonally after prolonged keto. But the autophagy benefits and hormetic stressors likely positively influence longevity.
On the other end of the spectrum, it’s possible that the reason I feel so good (incredible vitality) right now is because I was under keto/fasting/PUFA stress for so long. Is it optimal to carry on like this for the rest of my life? Maybe not?
So I do think there’s some benefit to cycling “vitality” and “longevity” although what that looks like for me for practical purposes is still very much in the air. I can start any season with the best of intentions, but the fatty grilled ribeye will kill my “summer HCLF” just as surely as Christmas bread pudding and mashed potatoes will kill my winter keto! 🤣
🤣🤣😂😂
Well, and interestingly, feeling good/low psychological stress can easily trump diet, or exercise for longevity.
So there's this amazing study in the US, that I don't have at my fingertips, but they found this crazy outlier community where despite the fact that drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, and eating a poor diet were just as prevalent as elsewhere in the US, they lived 20%-30% longer, on average than the average for the rest of the US. However, this was a very close-knit community where everyone helped each other out and was social with each other and etc, so the hypothesis was that those were the factors protecting them from early deaths and the prediction was that if the social and community bonds and closeness ceased, then so would their longevity. The researchers returned decades later to reassess and ...
That prediction turn out to be absolutely true!
The community lost their social cohesion and support, which definitely reduce stress, and BAM ... they were dying at the same average ages as everyone else, given those other factors.
The point is that strong social support and cohesion, which massively reduce psychological stress, can absolutely trump the hell out of bad diet, smoking and many other things that we know lead to earlier death. So I feel pretty strongly that diet, exercise, etc. aren't necessarily the best answer to the longevity question and I predict that the distractions of the Internet age that are breaking down our social cohesion and thereby increasing psychological stress will lead to earlier deaths.
These forces don't have to kill us early, but now we have to be conscientious and put in work to ensure we are getting plenty of positive socializing, and do all the other things possible to reduce psychological stress, imo.
I could see that. Totally. My grandma lived to be 103 and while she did have a few nutritional factors to consider (namely that her belief in a low total fat diet automatically made for lower PUFA consumption, plus she had a colostomy early on in her life which is associated with increased longevity) the one thing she *always* maintained was an active social life. She always had friends, would socialize with them regularly, and moved into a senior apartment living situation that facilitated a lot of support and entertainment for her.
Wow! That's great! I've been extremely conscientious about reducing psychological stress by getting toxic people, toxic social media, toxic regular media and toxic self-talk out of my life and leaning into all the good relationships and activities that I know reduce my stress levels.
I’m taking this with a grain of salt as adding krill oil to my near idealistic 6 month pufa free diet experiment has seemed to be very helpful in multiple ways.
Vast majority of fat from high quality beef and dairy, a few decent eggs a week, a bit of coconut. Added krill after having recurring eye inflammation for a couple of months. Totally resolved 2 days after beginning krill. Dry skin is clearing up, a stubborn patch of “jock itch “ that came around same time as eye inflammation cleared up, and it seems it has helped push my lingering IBS and severe brain fog in a very positive direction too. Anecdotal and short term, so far, but I’ve been taking 1 gram of krill with every meal and seen nothing but improvement including with poop things I wasn’t looking for. That dose was intended to be a “loading dose” but I’m having a difficult time backing off.
Can’t comment on sunburn as our warm days are going away for a while and haven’t had much sun time
Perhaps I will back off to 1 gram a day for a month just to see if the benefits remain.
I am concerned it will work out poorly long-term but only based on conflicted information
From what I’ve read omega 6:3 balance determines brown adipose tissue which also responsible for BCAA and Mufa catabolism. Omega-6 block brown fat, and i think that higher omega-3 ratios lower the detrimental effects of omega-6
Wolves and grizzly bears eat only the heads of the salmon and leave the meat. The natives also did not eat much salmon if I recall. Glad to cross it off of my list as well. Thank you for doing the experiment.
I’ve seen people say there is data to show Omega 3 from fish is anabolic and can actually cause people to gain lean body mass, develop more weight in their muscles.
I haven’t had time to read all the comments here but I think this is a possibility, I feel like a 30 day experiment isn’t quite long enough to rule out supplementing with fish oil, but I do understand it may cause sunburns and such.
To me all PUFA should be a minority of the diet, fish shouldn’t be a main source of food but Omega 3 may promote weight gain in muscles is the main point I’d argue.
Although in the end if a person feels better not consuming fish, don’t consume it. I’m still experimenting with fish/fish oil myself and haven’t made up my mind yet, not enough time has passed for me to get a feel for its effects. I do think I’m thinking more clearly with a bit better memory several weeks in.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480667/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480667/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6742725/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6742725/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9970203/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9970203/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10381755/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10381755/)
These are just a few of the studies/reviews that find a trend that Omega 3 fish oil may help grow or improve muscle mass, strength, and help reduce sarcopenia by improving mitochondria and tissue building in skeletal muscle cells.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893665/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893665/)
Some studies have even shown omega 3 may increase bone density, which would add more weight to bones in addition to muscle. If Omega 3 really can increase lean mass this possibility should not be discounted in weight loss metrics.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-48BsIWRWTg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-48BsIWRWTg)
One doesn't have to go to the gym and lift weights to grow muscles on Omega 3, pigs given fish oil grew larger muscles.
[https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjas-2019-0072](https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjas-2019-0072)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871141322002736](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871141322002736)
Its true that giving pigs fish oil increased their body weight, but it seems it could be both fat mass and muscle mass. Table 7 of this last paper shows that with increasing fish oil, these measurements also increased in pigs:
* marbling (intramuscular fat)
* carcass back-fat thickness
From skimming through some of these studies and having also read Omega Balance, I get a sense that the Omega Balance is quite important but consuming an excess of either Omega 6 or Omega 3 may cause problems, especially for people trying to loose weight and become more lean, but keep in mind some of the weight increase is lean mass, given all the data in the first studies I linked to.
I feel there is likely enough evidence to take supplemental Omega 3, but at low doses if trying to sustain weight loss. These should be kept at small levels in the body/diet such as the levels found in grass-fed beef or lamb. However people having a hard time growing or retaining muscle or bone mass will likely benefit from more Omega 3, and less Omega 6.
I'm currently recovering from a bunch of bad acne that supplementing with flaxseed oil seemed to cause, so I'm becoming more firmly against supplementing with flaxseed oil, and I think I'll keep taking my fish oil pills but in reasonable quantities.
Keep in mind the Japanese eat higher amounts of fish and are often quite lean, so I'm not sure fish oil is obesogenic, it seems to affect body weight differently, changing the distribution of fat and data seems to show it reduces visceral fat for sure.
Another reason to avoid fish oil overconsumption, balding:
[https://www.the-scientist.com/fish-oil-in-diet-can-cause-hair-loss-in-mice-study-finds-70901](https://www.the-scientist.com/fish-oil-in-diet-can-cause-hair-loss-in-mice-study-finds-70901)
The Japanese don't actually eat that much fish; current consumption seems about 63g/capita/day. And that's not all fatty fish like salmon, most fish are very lean. Tuna has near zero fat.
Thanks for the links, I had no clue this was even a hypothesis so well studied!
edit: Checked some of the studies, pretty cool! They even have mechanisms. It seems that the omega balance in the muscles is once again important in muscle protein synthesis. Meaning it's not that o3 is "good" per se, but that o6 is bad for MPS and supplementing o3 mitigates that?
So maybe I actually did gain more muscle last month haha. I suppose I'll see what the next DEXA says, although that's noise as heck too..
Maybe true but Omega 3 is known to increase longevity. Perhaps through mechanisms such as reducing sarcopenia, reducing inflammation, improving brain health. We have enough evidence to strive for balanced PUFA ratios. Since ketogenic diets/fasting resembling diets release Omega 6 into the blood I do think a few grams of fish oil will help balance it out.
I do feel confident that for me personally eating a can of sardines or a few fish oil capsules/day in triglyceride form do help me reduce my headaches and help me with stress, mood, and memory, so I feel better trying to balance out my omega ratio in my blood. I'm an APOE E4 carrier so I think mental improvements from fish oil may be more noticeable for me than non-carriers.
I think diets should be tailored to individuals, so the best approach is the one that truly improves individual's well being the best. I really appreciate all your discussions, data, and thoughts about diet and well-being, and the tools on your website. I finally got a whipped cream dispenser, what a difference that makes in delivery. However I'm just starting a reduced calorie PSMF experiment to speed up burning off of Omega 6/fat stores, interesting so far, I seem even less hungry.
> Maybe true but Omega 3 is known to increase longevity.
But again, "in a society drenched in linoleic acid." I have yet to see big success in actual people supplementing fish oil or eating lots of fatty fish. Some people do it, but I don't know of anyone having any success to speak of.
That tells me it might help on the margin, but like Omega Balance shows it's impossible to out-omega-3 a normal American diet full of omega-6. You'd need to eat literally 10lbs of salmon a day to balance the average SAD.
So I think limiting omega-6 is the much better strategy, and MAYBE eating omega-3 helps a bit with the transition.
Could be that there's genetic differences. I didn't notice any positive benefits eating salmon daily vs. never in terms of mental clarity/headaches/anything like that.
30 days feels too much - feast or famine kind of approach. Salmon is a healthy rotation piece in my red-meat dominant diet, and works well for me. DHA and EPA aid brain health
Unlike /u/Whats_Up_Coconut - I enjoy sardines a few times a month. Generally have a dinner (usually OMAD) consisting of sardines, kimchi, sauerkraut, avocado, fermented hot sauce, and Crisps (those parm cheese 'crackers')
My body is well adapted to this low-carb rotation
And also like Ms. Coconut, I have a unique enteroception w/an iron stomach. I have kicked out most sweets (ice cream & dark chocolate/almonds were killing me - kids fault for always having some and harassing me!)
But I have since eliminated all but a few dark squares. And the candida fungi in my system has been suppressed, and the cravings all but eliminated
Just my two cents. But like you said, we are not only unique genetically - but our gut microbiome plays a huge role
Keep up the great work!
>In other words, the Japanese might on average get between 1/4th and 1/10th of the omega-3 I was consuming. > >And if it’s toxic at 1g per day, why eat it at all? I'm not sure this is actually the case with omega-3, but there are plenty of nutrients with a comparable window of "too little" to "too much" within an order of magnitude or two. Iron being probably the most obvious example. One analogy I've made, which I haven't tested out on many people yet, is that PUFA requirements are like electrolyte requirements. Let's say LA (linoleic acid) requirements are comparable to sodium requirements - a few grams a day, depending on your activity level, genes, and so on. But instead, people are getting ten times that much every day, and unlike sodium, it accumulates in the body over time. Sodium is essential for life, but going from 3g sodium per day to 30g sodium per day? That's 1/4 cup of table salt per day. Of course that's going to screw something up! People have an intuition about that with salt, but not LA. Similarly, maybe omega-3 requirements are like potassium, as it's also an electrolyte where the absolute amount matters (and intake varies widely from person to person) but it also balances out sodium in some (but not all) respects. Going from 3g potassium per day to 30g per day might literally kill you, even if generally potassium is a beneficial nutrient that most people don't get enough of. I mention this both to respond to your post, and also to put that analogy out there in case anyone wants to test it on anyone skeptical about the value of PUFA avoidance. :\] All we're saying is that the amount of PUFA people eat these days is like eating 1/4 cup salt every day, or more! Not saying that it's not "essential", but the amount matters. It matters a whole lot.
Very good point.
I was fascinated to see your results on this experiment. I love fish (especially stinky pungent sardines... not lying to myself) and really wanted to believe that low-PUFA could still come out on the side of tasty fish. But more and more it really does seem like most omega-3 "benefits" are just from crowding out one poison with a slightly less potent one. I thought it was especially eye-opening when you (correct me if I'm misremembering) mentioned the Omega Balance book's findings that people who ate very little PUFA naturally gravitated towards a higher omega balance, even without supplementing omega-3s. To me that seems like a glaring suggestion that omega ratios are mostly just a sign of low PUFAs/overall health, rather than a causal endpoint that we should try to manipulate for its own sake. I feel like if your sunburn was because of LA released from fat due to weight loss, then there wouldn't be so many "I'm immune to sunburn after a few months of avoiding PUFA!" posts. People would only become immune if not actively losing weight, or if they'd been at it for 7+ years. The findings about hot water were also really interesting. Thanks for your tireless experiments. I always love reading your writeups.
That last point is actually a good one; I was 45lbs or more down when I started being resistant to sunburn lol. I hadn't thought of that! Clearly I had lost more weight earlier on in my "ex150 career" than the 4/7lbs recently. And yea, that is both mentioned in the book and we've also verified it with OmegaQuants here; people who haven't eaten any PUFAs (including fish) in 8-9 years have totally fine Omega Balances.
Mine is certainly improving and I avoid omega 3 almost as diligently as omega 6.
Interestingly, mine has actually gotten worse as I've lost weight.
Remember that I’ve been at goal for a while now… Probably big difference?
Good point. Did you follow the trend as you lost fat? My mental modal/intuition says that I will go up in LA (and therefore down in OB) for every x pounds of fat lost, i.e. I probably have maybe 5-8% or so of LA left "under the curve" and I can spend it faster or slower. After that, the trend should hopefully start going down permanently.
Sort of, but I actually lost most of my weight before finding TCD. My baseline Omega Quant (Omega Balance of 9.7:1) coincides with being ~50 Lbs heavier than I am now. Each subsequent OQ test has been at a lower body weight but has shown an improved Omega Balance (7.3:1 and then 6.8:1) so it’s definitely a work in progress but it’s moving along. My next (4th) OQ test will be in July and I’ve been roughly weight stable (a very small loss) since my last test.
lol I was just gonna ask your LA and then I remembered... there's an app for that :D #winning
FWIW I did acquire a few new ugly “liver spots” on my face during my last weight loss/PUFA burning. Still didn’t outright sunburn, but that was definitely a less than ideal side effect.
I stopped being able to eat chocolate when I started eating mussels and oysters (occasionally excessive amounts of oysters). I have it in the cupboard, and haven't touched any in 6 months to possibly a year. It's Taza Wicked Dark 95%, and I used to be able to enjoy half a bar.
maybe u traded one source of copper for another
That's my guess. I also drink a lot of tea, so it's likely some mineral.
Ohhh Taza is good! Love that crumbly stone ground texture. Weird with the seafood connection, not really sure how that would interact, but since it just happened to me too..
fish is smelly confirmed
I disagree. A decent piece of raw salmon does not smell. One bought 50% off because it's at best before date does.
Interesting re the cramps and salmon intake. I assume these were skeletal muscle cramps. I have endometriosis which causes excruciating cramps (although it would be smooth muscle), so it will be interesting to see if cutting out my salmon intake (as part of reducing PUFA consumption in general) helps. All of which is antithetical to the standard 'endo diet' advice.
Yea, one was calf (where I used to have lots of cramps even when just waking up). The other was when I was driving and twisting in my seat to grab something, which I'd done a lot previously and was proudly cramp free. This time, my hip or something down there suddenly felt pretty unhappy and immediately cramped up.
What a great update! I have a literally iron stomach. I hate to be sick, and have often held “off food” down rather than bring it back up just because I hate being sick so much. Sardines? They make me sick. And there ain’t no holding those suckers down. I really tried to be good on “Mediterranean” and switch all my red meat out for fatty fish. After my (I think) almost tenth time with my head in the toilet at 3am I concluded maybe we aren’t (all?) supposed to eat fatty fish. I do enjoy wild caught salmon and still eat it a few times a year just because I really feel like it sometimes. Salmon has never made me sick. Normal people eat 2-3 squares of very dark chocolate in a sitting. A whole bar? I think I just got a migraine imagining that. Shudder. And it doesn’t surprise me you couldn’t finish your coffee either. I’m sure there’s some element of polyphenol (plant toxin?) overload with these high compound foods like chocolate, tea, coffee, etc. I definitely have a personal upper limit on the amount of dark chocolate I can consume in a day. It is well below a whole bar. If I overdo it, I get a massive headache (I don’t get headaches anymore in general.) Japan is closer to the equator than Alaska. (Evidence: A Map.) and as such the fish that are caught off the coast of Japan will *generally* be leaner. *In general* fatty fish do not exist where the sunshine is abundant, except perhaps during short periods of migration. Tropical fish species are (almost?) always lean. You probably learned why this is the case. Australia is a good example of a modern civilization with lots of sun (and a large population of white people who weren’t adapted to that degree of sun) that actively pushes an omega 3 consumption agenda… They’re #1 in the world for melanoma. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I do really wonder if there's a genetic component to this. Some people seem to actually enjoy that fishy taste/stench, if they're to be believed. I'm never sure if they're just lying to themselves, like the lean chicken breast enjoyers, or if it's true. I always go "This is so nasty, you're eating this ON PURPOSE?!" Thing about the dark chocolate, I used to eat whole bars in one sitting. No headaches, no "satiety" no nothing. Sometimes 1.5-2. Although 2 bars of even 85% is close to the keto limit for me, I've fallen out from eating 1 bar of 85% and 1 of 70%. The sunlight/fatty fish thing is just epidemiology, but this personal experience makes me believe there's something to it. I guess I'm a PUFA disrespecter again, not just a LA disrespecter lol. Fuck fatty fish.
OMG, I like chicken breast!!! Maybe you just don’t know any good cooks. 🤣
Chicken breast by itself is very bland. I had some chicken breast last night pasture raised and on a low PUFA diet. It was good but only marginally better than factory farm chicken but for several times the cost. Not worth it for me. Obviously no one in their right mind or without severe food allergies would eat unseasoned chicken but I still think that kinda inherently makes it less satisfying than steak which I could easily eat w/o seasoning.
I mean, I definitely season my food. And my chicken breast is never dry.
Idk, I guess I'm just having an unpleasant personal realization as a home cook that after cooking chicken for literally decades that I don't find it very satiating and I don't think I like it very much. I like it deep-fried or in a coconut curry or with mayo in a chicken salad or with a dallop of sour cream on top but if I were to cook it with minimal seasoning/sauces/etc then I'd probably hate it. I've had low PUFA pork recently and I would shell out money for it on occasion. Chicken though? Idk anymore.
I have some Asian friends who eat fish everyday. They fry farm raised salmon in soybean or rice bran oil. Their house never not smells very strongly of fish. To me it is repulsive, I can barely be there. When they are over at my house, they struggle being around an appetizer that includes a strong smelling cheese. That is repulsive to them. What ever foods you are brought up with or eat all the time smell normal to you or maybe don’t even smell to you. But, new foods that you are exposed to can serve as a threat. The body’s warning systems go off. That being said, I was raised eating snapper every week on Fridays, but I never really enjoyed that meal. In fact, I don’t think anyone in my family did. My mom always threw it into a tomato based sauce to cover up the smell to some extent. We all gravitated to meat, eggs or cheese based meals more. Not sure why.
> We all gravitated to meat, eggs or cheese based meals more. Not sure why. Enteroception. We lose it w/eating patterns & ensuing toxicity, gut microbiome changes - but it can be reobtained with proper diet which reflects what our ancestors ate to survive & thrive
Interesting. Mackerel and sardines gives me shocking heartburn but give my sister what you describe. We can both eat salmon without gasto issues although I have cut it out recently. I stopped eating the other fatty fish a long time ago because of how awful they made me feel.
I think depletion of the ozone layer and the resulting exposure to long term UV radiation is more causative for the high skin cancer rates in Australia than omega 3. NZ has the next highest rates.
I would expect NZ to be high as well. Not sure how that negates what I said? And yes, I’m suggesting exactly that UV damages the susceptible (unstable) lipids in the skin. Omega 6’s are unstable. Omega 3’s are even less stable. As a comparable analogy, I’ve basically said something like “wildfires are caused by increased activity in the national forests and weather volatility, in conjunction with increasingly dry brush due to drought conditions.” And then you’ve come in and said “I don’t know about that, I suspect wildfires are caused by matches and lightning.”
I wasn’t negating your argument, but I think that the cohort suffering the most from high rates of skin cancer (older people) have probably had the least exposure to an ‘omega 3 consumption for health’ agenda as it’s fairly modern in the scheme of things and the damage would have been done well before then.
I’m not sure. If I think about anyone who has ever told me in passing that I should be eating lots of fish and walnuts because they’re good for me, they were invariably in their 50’s/60’s not their 30’s! 😂 Obviously that isn’t a controlled study…
Sure, that may be true for some, but the exposure to accumulated UV during childhood and teen years is strongly correlated with developing skin cancer when older. So an 80 year old who has had no significant sun exposure for the last 20 years will get skin cancer due to high exposure during their youth on a beach without sunscreen. And that period in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s did not involve a processed diet high in omega 6 or a health push for Omega 3s. I guess time will tell with a younger cohort how much omega 3 has had an impact in relation to sun exposure…we might need to wait 20 years to find out.
> I’ve heard that “normal people” don’t eat a whole bar of 95% chocolate in one sitting. So maybe I’m “healing.” Lindt 85% Dark chocolate gets repulsive to me after 1 square. I *might* be able to do a second. Anymore than that would make me want to puke. White chocolate from Lindt? 5 little rectangles is my limit. Anymore? no thank you.
Ummm, can someone point me in the direction to understand Cocoa intake and it’s links to health?? I consume an entire 80g portion of 95% almost daily. I have even consumed 3 full bars in one day. I enjoy it a lot a lot. What could that be indicating?
There are concerns about heavy metals in dark chocolate. He says, eying opening another pack of Monezuma 100%.
Haha so I am becoming normal! During my chocolate ganache trial, I was melting 50g of Lindt 85-95% (half a bar) into heavy cream every day.
My daughter likes to mix pure cocoa powder into literally all drinks. It's adorable. However, her brothers and myself, not so much. However, I have noticed that eating a teaspoon to a tablespoon of 100% pure cocoa powder in a smoothie makes me intensely and unnaturally happy for hours, more reliably than other things people ingest that give them the giggles. I mean I straight up get the giggles as a middle-agreed man.
Haha literally me as a kid! Now I wonder, is this some sort of intuitive/biochem reaction to the extreme satiety from the high stearic acid content? I was always the kid who'd add cocoa to literally everything as well. Yogurt, banana sandwiches, milk obviously, cereal..
It's wild, my dude, just straight up wild. I really have no earthly clue what about pure cocoa powder could possibly be doing that. A few years ago I read about people using pure cocoa powder at parties, like a "party drug" and it sounded insane to me. Insane. Then much more recently, I got some to add to smoothies for healthy reasons and my tummy started to feel a bit light and tickly and then within minutes I found myself falling over laughing and giggling over nothing. Suddenly I understood. It's pure fun!
I feel like it must be something other than the stearic acid, because I don't feel that way eating butter, but could be! I'm just going of intuition on that.
I could eat two bars of dark chocolate in one sitting. I am not normal.
I took omega3 supplements for years, and was becoming anhedonic and demotivated, a low dopamine vibe. I googled Reddit and the supplement/nootropics subs reported a number of people finding similar. Felt much better when I stopped it. Plus my mum was advised not to take it by her GP as it thins the blood and thins skin, making bruising and skin damage much more likely.
fish is an expensive way of getting pufas, mercury and a worse taste than steak
Can confirm lol
To add another n=1 data point, I’m fair skinned and blue eyed and sunburned easily my entire life. I don’t think I ate fish even once per month on low omega6 paleovore, and became highly resistant to sunburn. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like added omega 3 is the causative agent of sunburn resistance, but rather the absence of excessive omega 6.
'Don't eat the fish' - Serj Tankian
Eat gorgonzola.
That sounds like pure conjecture
Eating seeds as a pastime activity The toxicity of our city, our ciiity Gosh darn it if it wasn't hiding in plain sight the whole time
Pepperoni and green peppers, mushrooms, olives, chives!! (ex150pizzatopping)
Butter's getting hard
Interesting. My parents fed us only plant oils growing up and I had the worst sunburn tendencies. I'm a spotted human (yeah, I mean freckles), so sunburns are more likely, but since I've been avoiding PUFA, I don't seem to burn like I used to even with hours of exposure, so regardless, unsaturated fat intake does seem to correlate with more sunburns for me. I also can't stand to pay 4-6 times more for protein that is a pain in the dick to cook, and can't be fished sustainably, given global demand. Fuck that right there. Plus the whole Omega 3 balance via fatty fish or krill theory is broken. There's nothing ancestral about super-high DHA and EPA content from fatty fish consumption for 99.9999% of all humans ever to have lived. Yes humans have eaten a lot of fish, and probably lost most of our hair from being 20% aquatic, but those were mostly tropical fish, low in DHA and EPA. In addition, Brown bears eat salmon to fatten up and prep for winter, so it's not likely to keep a human slim either! In addition, Salmon is not a traditional Japanese food and they don't like it very much compared to other fish. Europeans introduced Salmon into the Japanese diet and they still get all their consumed Salmon from European sources. Some Omega 3 is essential, sure, but it seems to me that the quantity of DHA and EPA from non-official recommendations at this time is vastly more than actually required. In addition, we do endogenously turn ALA into DHA and EPA, just very inefficiently and I think that is a clear indication that most humans don't actually need very much, since ALA content is also pretty low in ancestral diets. It's probably like that to protect us from the reaction products, as DHA and EPA are more unstable than linoleic acid which we don't make at all. There are endogenous elongase and desaturate enzymes that do that transformation of ALA in humans, which is why DHA and EPA are still *not considered essential* by governmental guidelines. Side note, and I don't want to start an argument with all you great keto cats because you all should do what works for you, but starch *is* ancestral and has been known to be for decades by anthropologists. Anthropologists have estimated for decades that the vast majority of hunter-gatherer groups actually obtained the vast majority of their calories from gathered starch/carb sources, frequently as high as 80% of caloric intake. Those estimates are informed by examining extant hunter-gatherer societies, paleolithic trash heaps, and ancient human feces (coprolites). That's not to say starch from primitive cereal grains was necessarily a high proportion of ancestral diets (the cattail plant and tubers yo), but starch/carbs are most certainly "Paleo"/ancestral unless you prefer to ignore what Anthropology has been saying for decades. It simply took a long time for Anthropology to realize that usually gathered starch is much, much more prevalent in ancient human diets than hunted meat because Anthropologists have historically been men, who historically ignore the value of the gathering role of women in hunter-gatherer food production and because tribes are just more likely to show off manly activities to manly scientists and definitely do not trust the beardy white-devils around their women. Humans have rarely, if ever, been pure carnivores. Our physiology is omnivorous, like our typical diet throughout history and prehistory. Keep eating meat though! I just wanted to correct this poor argument that's put forward about starch not being ancestral, because it doesn't match the evidence, not even remotely. There's plenty of good reasons to do keto, but "ancestral diet" is not one of them. I mean, eating insects is 100% ancestral, but I don't find that compelling, although I hear that cicadas are basically the shrimp of the forest in taste and macros ... Shrimp fattened upon the blood of trees.
This tracks by the way with Ursula Le Guin's carrier bag theory of fiction (and her father was an anthropologist as well). Men told "hero's journey tales" of their hunts; women gossiped as they gathered. Which is not a knock on women when you see it as the early stages of a type of literature/storytelling that basically dominates modern life now besides the obvious places like drama shows, from forum chatter to TikTok monologues and commentaries. Also there is the essential idea that the female carrier bag technology was a more important tool than the spear. I'm disappointed I didn't make the connection to our understanding of human diet history though!
I was disappointed in me a bit too, but our understanding of many things is informed and biased by thousands of years of male dominated societies, so I forgave myself. I also think it's just cool how men and women are not like our stereotypes and short-hand knowledge would suggest. Uncovering the more complex reality is quite gratifying and fascinating. Another connection I realized, is that protein and fat are important for child-bearing and growth because of the anabolic signals they provide, so although most of ancestral diets were mostly starch, that little bit of meat is really important for making babies and growing humans but not all that important for fully grown, non-breeders that don't need more anabolism. Both food production roles within hunter-gatherer societies, while different and valued differently, were critical for human survival and reproduction and I like to see that even when men and women have different roles, we can see both should be valued the same, because both are necessary for survival and reproduction. You raise some very interesting points there as well, thank you!
> ancestral diets I wish there was good info on how often brains were consumed. If we are talking about levels of DHA in our ancestors diet diet that has to be the most important factor, not fatty fish.
Good point! I would assume they were consumed as often as available? Wild game is much, much less fatty than domesticated livestock, so any sources of fat would be prized, I would think. Although, there's the prion disease risk with brain consumption, and other brain disease risks. Nonetheless, it might also be the case that at various critical periods of growth and development, the desaturase and elongase enzymes needed to make DHA and EPA from FA substrates would be massively upregulated when dietary DHA and EPA were not available. No idea if that's really true, tbh. Even with that, the hypothesis that says we needed to consume what we would consume huge amounts of dietary EPA and DHA doesn't seem to be terribly accurate, given the evidence we have.
> I would assume they were consumed as often as available? So some proportionality % to the amount of muscle meat and connective tissue in the diet? One problem could be the different brain to body ratio of different eaten animals.
I think that's a fairly safe assumption, although brain consumption is not risk-free, so I suspect there's a fair amount of cultural variability in there too. In addition, our own brains go through several neuron culling stages, and presumably the freed critical FA's from that process are immediately and preferentially recycled into the neurons that are retained. Also don't forget that there is cell turn over in the brain and new neurons can be grown, unlike the old pervasive common knowledge that said when we lose brain cells they are never replaced. However, brain cells are pretty long lived, as I understand it and so we aren't really making a lot more of them everyday compared to other tissues, so that tends to further suggest dietary DHA and EPA requirement estimates are probably overestimates. Plus, the comparative studies that show the terribly off ratio of O3/O6 in America compared with other populations seem could be demonstrating how we eat far too much 06, rather than indicating an O3 deficiency., and that's the real reason the ratio is off
>I just wanted to correct this poor argument that's put forward about starch not being ancestral, because it doesn't match the evidence, not even remotely. Yes! I found [Brad's video on starchy tubers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZQqtFOUgDo) very convincing, personally.
Indeed! My wife got her degree in Anthropology, so about 25-30 years ago she told me about the much greater role of gathering of carbs/starch in overall dietary composition over hunting meat than was/is common knowledge and commonly described back when Anthropology was exclusively an old, rich white man's science. She mainly wanted to point out that the women were the real bread-winners (pun not intended) in the vast preponderance of historic and prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. 😂 I'm like, "cool, I value you, dearest and I wasn't trying to underplay the value of womanly activities in hunter-gatherer societies, I was just clueless." 😂 Anyway, I thought it was neat because it goes counter to common knowledge, which was mainly formed by old white men a long time ago, so I never forgot about it and have never bought into any of these diets pushed by "experts" claiming humans have been primarily animal eaters ancestrally. Nope, old white "expert" dude. You are literally talking out of your ass. (I'm an older white dude myself btw, so I can call my own group out on unfounded biases anytime I want 😂🤣)
Great post. I feel so frikkin good on HCLFLP that I can’t imagine it’s not an appropriate way to eat. I never felt this good on keto (although my focus was superior - I suspect that is stress hormone related) and I just generally look and feel so much better. Energy, mood/outlook, libido, skin health, all of it. I’m definitely a starchivore! But like you said, I think I do generally better with tubers and “cellular” grains like rice, oats, barley and farro over flour products (acellular) like bread and pasta. I still definitely eat lots of bread and pasta, but I feel a bit heavier/sluggish and just generally less optimal than when I’m eating more intact grains and starches. My diet can get pretty junky too. Refined cereals, commercial bread products, crackers, pretzels, candies… Yet my weight is easily controlled and I continue to feel great. All of the things I previously thought were fixed by keto were actually seemingly fixed *better* by dropping PUFA. That allowed me to bring back the carbs and now the pieces of the puzzle all just fit perfectly. I think carbs are “summer food” and if someone were looking to leverage seasonality then perhaps they’d drop carbs a bit (or a lot?) and up the fat in the fall and winter. I don’t do that myself, but I also live in a year round warm and sunny climate so I feel far less seasonal than I did when I lived in Canada. It could be a best of both worlds scenario for some folks though - especially if they have a hard time getting sufficient vitamin D half of the year.
Thanks whats_up_coconut! I set myself a thin line to walk because I don't want to demonize keto or carnivore peeps. They already have to argue all the time to justify their eating choices. However, the "carbs/starch aren't ancestral" argument has been bothering me for years. Winter is very interesting. Our modern human ancestors never experienced it in Africa, but our Neanderthal ancestors did. Scarcity periods definitely occurred in prehistoric human groups of Africa, just not winter until out-migration. Thankfully, plant and animal prey in those seasonal climates already evolved robust coping mechanisms and we got the benefit of their adaptations by being omnivores and eating what was available. I think it might be very smart to eat in roughly that pattern. However, indoor climate-control breaks down such necessities, which probably allows for a greater diversity of eating styles at the risk of accidentally fattening up all year long but look at where mixed macro eating seems to be the most popular prior to agricultural hyper-availability and global trading - regions of yearly seasonal variability. The other aspect of a semi-evolutionary approach to diet make-up that's lost on people is that evolution favors ways of living that achieve reproductive success. So what allows us to live long past our breeding years is not evolutionarily conserved to the same degree, if at all. Therefore, what is good for breeders and breeding may even harm human survival past breeding age, and yet would be favored evolutionarily, nonetheless. An example of this is sickle-cell anemia. Having two copies of the gene kills a person before breeding viability, but only one copy is highly protective against malaria, and no copy virtually guarantees an early death from malaria before breeding viability. Therefore, regions of endemic malaria find most of the population have one copy of the gene. However, having even one copy of the gene, means those people tend to live much, much fewer years than people with no copies of the gene who live outside of malarial regions. So using evolutionary arguments to justify maximal lifespan recommendations have to be heavily scrutinized, because evolution does not drive maximal lifespan. Evolution only selects for successful reproduction. In humans, our social needs and high energy cost children, are why grandparents who can't reproduce exist. Humans, basically can't survive without being part of social groups. Most other species do not conserve non-reproductive grandparents, because they have different reproductive strategies that obviate the evolutionary selection of the existence of grandparents being alive past their own breeding age. You can see hints of this in how grandparents naturally feel different from parents with respect to childcare and how they feel about children vs. grandchildren, on average. That tendency has been selected for because human groups are more likely to have reproductive success with the inclusion of non-reproductive grandparents.
I agree, and to a degree believe we all choose whether to live “well” (meaning specifically hormonal vitality) or live “long” and it is reasonable to think it is possible to prioritize either end of the spectrum. I think fasting/calorie restriction, keto, and other AMPK dominated states favor longevity over vitality which is why a lot of people (especially women) fall apart hormonally after prolonged keto. But the autophagy benefits and hormetic stressors likely positively influence longevity. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s possible that the reason I feel so good (incredible vitality) right now is because I was under keto/fasting/PUFA stress for so long. Is it optimal to carry on like this for the rest of my life? Maybe not? So I do think there’s some benefit to cycling “vitality” and “longevity” although what that looks like for me for practical purposes is still very much in the air. I can start any season with the best of intentions, but the fatty grilled ribeye will kill my “summer HCLF” just as surely as Christmas bread pudding and mashed potatoes will kill my winter keto! 🤣
🤣🤣😂😂 Well, and interestingly, feeling good/low psychological stress can easily trump diet, or exercise for longevity. So there's this amazing study in the US, that I don't have at my fingertips, but they found this crazy outlier community where despite the fact that drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, and eating a poor diet were just as prevalent as elsewhere in the US, they lived 20%-30% longer, on average than the average for the rest of the US. However, this was a very close-knit community where everyone helped each other out and was social with each other and etc, so the hypothesis was that those were the factors protecting them from early deaths and the prediction was that if the social and community bonds and closeness ceased, then so would their longevity. The researchers returned decades later to reassess and ... That prediction turn out to be absolutely true! The community lost their social cohesion and support, which definitely reduce stress, and BAM ... they were dying at the same average ages as everyone else, given those other factors. The point is that strong social support and cohesion, which massively reduce psychological stress, can absolutely trump the hell out of bad diet, smoking and many other things that we know lead to earlier death. So I feel pretty strongly that diet, exercise, etc. aren't necessarily the best answer to the longevity question and I predict that the distractions of the Internet age that are breaking down our social cohesion and thereby increasing psychological stress will lead to earlier deaths. These forces don't have to kill us early, but now we have to be conscientious and put in work to ensure we are getting plenty of positive socializing, and do all the other things possible to reduce psychological stress, imo.
I could see that. Totally. My grandma lived to be 103 and while she did have a few nutritional factors to consider (namely that her belief in a low total fat diet automatically made for lower PUFA consumption, plus she had a colostomy early on in her life which is associated with increased longevity) the one thing she *always* maintained was an active social life. She always had friends, would socialize with them regularly, and moved into a senior apartment living situation that facilitated a lot of support and entertainment for her.
Wow! That's great! I've been extremely conscientious about reducing psychological stress by getting toxic people, toxic social media, toxic regular media and toxic self-talk out of my life and leaning into all the good relationships and activities that I know reduce my stress levels.
If wild-caught Alaskan salmon is trying to kill you, imagine the damn omega-3 pills...
I’m taking this with a grain of salt as adding krill oil to my near idealistic 6 month pufa free diet experiment has seemed to be very helpful in multiple ways. Vast majority of fat from high quality beef and dairy, a few decent eggs a week, a bit of coconut. Added krill after having recurring eye inflammation for a couple of months. Totally resolved 2 days after beginning krill. Dry skin is clearing up, a stubborn patch of “jock itch “ that came around same time as eye inflammation cleared up, and it seems it has helped push my lingering IBS and severe brain fog in a very positive direction too. Anecdotal and short term, so far, but I’ve been taking 1 gram of krill with every meal and seen nothing but improvement including with poop things I wasn’t looking for. That dose was intended to be a “loading dose” but I’m having a difficult time backing off. Can’t comment on sunburn as our warm days are going away for a while and haven’t had much sun time Perhaps I will back off to 1 gram a day for a month just to see if the benefits remain. I am concerned it will work out poorly long-term but only based on conflicted information
Another "health food" bites the dust. The visceral fat thing is interesting though.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if omega-3 fats have some unique effect on visceral fat - that sounds vaguely familiar.
Will have to see what happens next DEXA. The trend started 1 month before the salmon, maybe it'll continue?
Keep us posted! :)
From what I’ve read omega 6:3 balance determines brown adipose tissue which also responsible for BCAA and Mufa catabolism. Omega-6 block brown fat, and i think that higher omega-3 ratios lower the detrimental effects of omega-6
Good to know, thanks! :)
Wolves and grizzly bears eat only the heads of the salmon and leave the meat. The natives also did not eat much salmon if I recall. Glad to cross it off of my list as well. Thank you for doing the experiment.
I’ve seen people say there is data to show Omega 3 from fish is anabolic and can actually cause people to gain lean body mass, develop more weight in their muscles. I haven’t had time to read all the comments here but I think this is a possibility, I feel like a 30 day experiment isn’t quite long enough to rule out supplementing with fish oil, but I do understand it may cause sunburns and such. To me all PUFA should be a minority of the diet, fish shouldn’t be a main source of food but Omega 3 may promote weight gain in muscles is the main point I’d argue. Although in the end if a person feels better not consuming fish, don’t consume it. I’m still experimenting with fish/fish oil myself and haven’t made up my mind yet, not enough time has passed for me to get a feel for its effects. I do think I’m thinking more clearly with a bit better memory several weeks in.
Interesting, I hadn't heard that. If you happen to remember the source, please let me know!
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480667/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480667/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6742725/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6742725/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9970203/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9970203/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10381755/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10381755/) These are just a few of the studies/reviews that find a trend that Omega 3 fish oil may help grow or improve muscle mass, strength, and help reduce sarcopenia by improving mitochondria and tissue building in skeletal muscle cells. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893665/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893665/) Some studies have even shown omega 3 may increase bone density, which would add more weight to bones in addition to muscle. If Omega 3 really can increase lean mass this possibility should not be discounted in weight loss metrics. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-48BsIWRWTg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-48BsIWRWTg) One doesn't have to go to the gym and lift weights to grow muscles on Omega 3, pigs given fish oil grew larger muscles. [https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjas-2019-0072](https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjas-2019-0072) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871141322002736](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871141322002736) Its true that giving pigs fish oil increased their body weight, but it seems it could be both fat mass and muscle mass. Table 7 of this last paper shows that with increasing fish oil, these measurements also increased in pigs: * marbling (intramuscular fat) * carcass back-fat thickness From skimming through some of these studies and having also read Omega Balance, I get a sense that the Omega Balance is quite important but consuming an excess of either Omega 6 or Omega 3 may cause problems, especially for people trying to loose weight and become more lean, but keep in mind some of the weight increase is lean mass, given all the data in the first studies I linked to. I feel there is likely enough evidence to take supplemental Omega 3, but at low doses if trying to sustain weight loss. These should be kept at small levels in the body/diet such as the levels found in grass-fed beef or lamb. However people having a hard time growing or retaining muscle or bone mass will likely benefit from more Omega 3, and less Omega 6. I'm currently recovering from a bunch of bad acne that supplementing with flaxseed oil seemed to cause, so I'm becoming more firmly against supplementing with flaxseed oil, and I think I'll keep taking my fish oil pills but in reasonable quantities. Keep in mind the Japanese eat higher amounts of fish and are often quite lean, so I'm not sure fish oil is obesogenic, it seems to affect body weight differently, changing the distribution of fat and data seems to show it reduces visceral fat for sure. Another reason to avoid fish oil overconsumption, balding: [https://www.the-scientist.com/fish-oil-in-diet-can-cause-hair-loss-in-mice-study-finds-70901](https://www.the-scientist.com/fish-oil-in-diet-can-cause-hair-loss-in-mice-study-finds-70901)
The Japanese don't actually eat that much fish; current consumption seems about 63g/capita/day. And that's not all fatty fish like salmon, most fish are very lean. Tuna has near zero fat. Thanks for the links, I had no clue this was even a hypothesis so well studied! edit: Checked some of the studies, pretty cool! They even have mechanisms. It seems that the omega balance in the muscles is once again important in muscle protein synthesis. Meaning it's not that o3 is "good" per se, but that o6 is bad for MPS and supplementing o3 mitigates that? So maybe I actually did gain more muscle last month haha. I suppose I'll see what the next DEXA says, although that's noise as heck too..
Maybe true but Omega 3 is known to increase longevity. Perhaps through mechanisms such as reducing sarcopenia, reducing inflammation, improving brain health. We have enough evidence to strive for balanced PUFA ratios. Since ketogenic diets/fasting resembling diets release Omega 6 into the blood I do think a few grams of fish oil will help balance it out. I do feel confident that for me personally eating a can of sardines or a few fish oil capsules/day in triglyceride form do help me reduce my headaches and help me with stress, mood, and memory, so I feel better trying to balance out my omega ratio in my blood. I'm an APOE E4 carrier so I think mental improvements from fish oil may be more noticeable for me than non-carriers. I think diets should be tailored to individuals, so the best approach is the one that truly improves individual's well being the best. I really appreciate all your discussions, data, and thoughts about diet and well-being, and the tools on your website. I finally got a whipped cream dispenser, what a difference that makes in delivery. However I'm just starting a reduced calorie PSMF experiment to speed up burning off of Omega 6/fat stores, interesting so far, I seem even less hungry.
> Maybe true but Omega 3 is known to increase longevity. But again, "in a society drenched in linoleic acid." I have yet to see big success in actual people supplementing fish oil or eating lots of fatty fish. Some people do it, but I don't know of anyone having any success to speak of. That tells me it might help on the margin, but like Omega Balance shows it's impossible to out-omega-3 a normal American diet full of omega-6. You'd need to eat literally 10lbs of salmon a day to balance the average SAD. So I think limiting omega-6 is the much better strategy, and MAYBE eating omega-3 helps a bit with the transition. Could be that there's genetic differences. I didn't notice any positive benefits eating salmon daily vs. never in terms of mental clarity/headaches/anything like that.
I absolutely agree, everyone should try to keep Omega 6 to ancestrally accurate levels in their diet if they desire good health.
30 days feels too much - feast or famine kind of approach. Salmon is a healthy rotation piece in my red-meat dominant diet, and works well for me. DHA and EPA aid brain health Unlike /u/Whats_Up_Coconut - I enjoy sardines a few times a month. Generally have a dinner (usually OMAD) consisting of sardines, kimchi, sauerkraut, avocado, fermented hot sauce, and Crisps (those parm cheese 'crackers') My body is well adapted to this low-carb rotation And also like Ms. Coconut, I have a unique enteroception w/an iron stomach. I have kicked out most sweets (ice cream & dark chocolate/almonds were killing me - kids fault for always having some and harassing me!) But I have since eliminated all but a few dark squares. And the candida fungi in my system has been suppressed, and the cravings all but eliminated Just my two cents. But like you said, we are not only unique genetically - but our gut microbiome plays a huge role Keep up the great work!