Essential Fatty Acids

You know, one of the real interesting topics in nutrition right now, and we've been speaking about it, is related to how small amounts of specific nutrients can have such dramatic effect on physiological function. And one of the interesting examples of this that's emerging in the literature has to do with the essential fatty acids icosapentianoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid, or EPA and dha. You know, a lot of people have felt that these fatty acids, they just regulate our triglyceride levels in our blood and they lower blood fats by some kind of mysterious mechanism. But recently, the mechanism of how they work is starting to be much better understood, that they actually impact specific gene expression patterns. They have an effect on regulatory nodes and what are called the intracellular signal transduction process. Now, isn't that a remarkable tongue twister? Intracellular signal transduction, what does that mean? The transition of messages outside the cell all the way through the cell cytoplasm to the nucleus of the cell where the book of life, the genome exists. And turning on specific gene expression patterns through that regulatory mechanism. And what's been found is that certain fatty acids like EPA and DHA have a very remarkable ability to modulate this intracellular signal transduction process through, through the effects they have on kinases and gene expression. Now, what does that mean clinically? What it means clinically is this helps us to understand how EPA and DHA might have positive effects on neuronal function and help to resist dementia and maybe in fact very important preventive agents against things like Alzheimer's disease by this regulatory mechanism they have in lowering neuronal inflammatory signaling and improving then gene expression patterns that are associated with a healthy brain and a healthy nervous system. So I think we're starting to really witness some very remarkable changes in our thoughts about how nutrients work from this kind of gross system down to the cellular and biochemical level to understand the right thing at the right place at the right time. Even small amount can have very dramatic positive effects over time on an individual's health outcome. Now, the converse of that clearly is what about the wrong thing at the wrong time? Like a toxin or a pesticide or a toxic mineral like a lead or a cadmium or a mercury? Couldn't it have then the converse effect of a little producing an adversely large effect? And of course that's being seen to be true as well, that sometimes what we're starting to recognize is that it's not a kind of a traditional toxicology where the dose is directly related to the effect that sometimes small amounts of the exposure to the wrong substance can have a larger effect, adverse effect, than expected. So this works at both ends of the spectrum. A good effect from a small amount with the right substance, a bad effect of a larger amount with the wrong substance. So it opens up the new field of toxicology to be what we call hormetic. The term hormesis stands for a small amount of a substance having a bigger biological effect than we had anticipated. And this can be playing both good and bad. Clearly, in designing the appropriate nutritional program for an individual, you want to maximize the positive hormetic effects and you want to minimize the adverse effects of the negative hormetic substances, the toxins. A whole new concept as to how nutritional products like EPA and DHA can be used therapeutically.