Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how different fats affect your brain and hormones, from omega-3s to MCTs. Industrial seed oils become harmful through processing like hydrogenation. The right fats reduce inflammation and support cell signaling.
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Omega 3s are your anti inflammatory fatty acid. Omega 6s are your pro inflammatory fatty acid. You need healthy omega 6s actually when you get an infection, you need an inflammatory response. When you get an injury, injure something, you get a cut, you need an inflammatory response. To start the healing process, you actually need these clean sources of omega 6s. And then when the healing is done and the infection is gone, you need the omega 3 sources and the products of the omega 3s to come block out the inflammation. Fat, real fat, healthy fat. Fat, or is there such thing as healthy fat? Cholesterol is bad for you, it's good for you. Now we've got industrialized seed oils. They're bad for us, they're killing us. What's the truth? What's the deal? Is there controversy or is this the real thing? So I want to talk about that. People asking about this more in the clinic. And actually the reality is in my clinic, we've been using healthy fats and a thing called lipid therapy for years to help treat people with neurological issues, traumatic brain injury, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. So I just want to talk about fat in general a little bit briefly, what it does in our body. Talk about the different kinds of fats. And now you can actually use healthy fats as a way for your body to heal. So the first thing to think about when you think about fats is what's the big deal? What do fats even do? What are the biologic activity of fats? Every cell in your body actually is made of fats. You have cholesterol, actually, which is a hard fat molecule, helps, helps make your cells more stable, your cell walls more firm, less plastic or less flexible. And, and so you need a certain amount of healthy cholesterol. Cell walls, DNA inside of mitochondria, those walls actually contain phospholipids. Cell wall membranes also have these things called phospholipids. These are a special kind of fat that helps with the integrity of cells. It helps with cell vibration. And that's a concept that's quite. We're learning more about your cell's biological organisms vibrate, just like your heartbeats, just like your nervous system sends out signals at certain frequency, your literal cells actually vibrate with a certain frequency in the million of hertz. And, and it's actually induced by this lipid bilayer, these two little layers of fat coming together and they create this vibration that affects every hormone receptor, every cortisol receptor, every insulin receptor. Everything that passes through there is affected by that vibration. So you want these healthy cell walls, healthy cell membranes that have adequate vibration with healthy fats. But ultimately fats are an essential nutrient, just like protein, just like water. Without know essential fatty acids. Without essential saturated fat, we don't live, we die. So fats are important. But if you change the structure of fats, if you make them less solid, the more solid and less fluid, like with omega 3s and 6s, your seed oils, if you take them and industrialize them, heat them, rancify them, then all of a sudden when they get put in these biological molecules, they don't vibrate as much. It affects neurotransmitters, it affects everything that goes across these membranes. Saturated fats, if they become oxidized through inflammation. Now all of a sudden, these cholesterol molecules and cell walls and membranes actually encourage immune cells to come into those cells. And this is a big deal, particularly in arteries. So having the right kind of fats, the right balance of fats is really super important for your health. And you can actually use these kind of healthy fats in medicine to actually help people. This has been common knowledge for actually decades in hospitals. And we get anesthesia, toxicity, using phosphatidylcholine, which is a type of phospholipid, to actually get the toxin from an of people's brains. So the concept of fats being used in medicine is not a new idea. And the idea of unhealthy fats being detrimental is not a new, it's just now coming to public consciousness. So I'm going to walk through the different kinds of fats. So you kind of understand the nomenclature. When we talk about different things, we're talking about the first thing is saturated fats. Saturated fats are typically found in things like butter, coconut oil, lard, ghee. These are the fats that give structure. They're a little more solid. They tend to be solid at room temperature. You know, so butter is solid at room temperature. So is ghee, so is coconut oil. These are things that actually give more structure to your cell walls and cell membranes, your monounsaturated fatty acids, olive oil, avocado oil, nut oils, seed oils, these actually tend to be omega 3s, 6s, 9s, they are liquid at room temperature and they actually give the fluidity to cell walls and membranes. So Everybody knows about omega 3s, how healthy omega 3s are. They're anti inflammatory. Omega 6s are the yin and the yang, right? Omega 3 is your anti inflammatory fatty acid. Omega 6s are your pro inflammatory fatty acid. You need healthy omega 6s actually when you get an infection, you need inflammatory response. When you get an injury, injure something, you get a cut, you need an inflammatory response. To start the healing process, you actually need these clean sources of omega 6s. And then when the healing is done and the infection is gone, you need the omega 3 sources and the products of the omega 3s to come block out the inflammation. Omega 9 fatty acids, these are like olive oil, macadamia nuts. They are not essential fatty acids. Your body can actually make them from other sources. But the interesting thing when you talk about particularly olive oil, the sources for these omega 7s actually tend to come with polyphenols, which are natural anti inflammatory. So one of the magics extra virgin olive oil, for example, is its impact on the gut microbiome and polyphenol's impact on inflammation, particularly in your arteries. Another type of fat are medium chain triglycerides. These are the things you typically find in coconut oil, palm kernel oil, MCT oil typically comes from coconut. It's just an extraction of these triglycerides. They are liquid at room temperature, but they're part of different, different fats. Then you have short chain fatty acids, things like butyrate, propionic acid, acetic acid. These you can get in dairy products, fermenters, so you will get those in butter. Ghee is probably the best source for this cow's, the cream on cow's milk. But the interesting thing is your gut bacteria actually will make butyrate much more than you can consume in your diet. And these short chain fatty acids are actually, are actually biological signaling molecules. So these kind of fats actually signal your peroxisomes, for example, which are these little organelles are called inside your cells to burn off toxins. They also help repair your gut barrier, your brain barrier. And when you're in ketosis, you actually make these short chain fatty acids for an energy source. Your body uses it for energy. So these fats can actually and ultimately other fats can be used as energy as well. And then. So those are your healthy fats. How about your unhealthy fats? Trans fats are industrialized fats that are produced usually through some kind of heating process. Typically you're thinking of corn oil, vegetable oils, your seed oils that are heated. You'll actually. And the thing is usually you're taking oils that are sensitive to heat and heating them in some way, making them trans. And the interesting thing about it is that these, you're taking things that are really fluid and liquidy and Making them semi solid. So one concept I talk to people about is the idea of plasticization. It's taking a oil liquid and turning a solid object. Plastic, for example, comes from oil, comes from crude oil. It used to be solid, it used to be liquid at one point in time, now it's solid. That's the exact process we do with making margarine, making Crisco. And when you take oils and you hydrogenate them, you partially plasticize them. Not enough that you see it, but they are at the molecular level. And that's ultimately what trans fats are, which is one of the reasons they're so detrimental to your health. Hydrogenated oils that get extra hydrogen added onto them, shortening junk food. One of the advantages of the hydrogenation product is this process. It extends the shelf life so these orals will last longer, but makes them not biologically active and not digestible. Same thing with trans fats. They become not biologically active and not digestible. So that can cause. Cause some issues. And then there are intensified fats, which you see in partially baked goods, commercial fried oils, et cetera. There's some additional things. Seed oils, which are typically healthy oils, if done the right way. Things like sunflower oral, safflower oil, flax oral. But the unfortunately way we industrialize them by expeller pressing them, by deodorizing them with solvents, we actually take healthy fats and turn them into unhealthy fats. I want to talk about that a little later next time around. But that's the controversy. That's what's going on right now on social media, talking about those kind of fats. And I want to talk next about their health impacts, what they actually do when they get modified, and how they affect biological systems. So stay tuned, we'll talk about that next. Take care of.
