5 Benefits of Omega-7 Fat. Where to get it.

Food is complex, and foods with fat contain a multitude of different fats. Some are more common, like the saturated fats palmitic and stearic acid, or the monounsaturated fat popularly in olive oil, oleic acid. But one fat has a special place in my heart for the fact that it's not just a fuel source, but a potent hormone-like molecule that can improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, along with other benefits. This is palmitoleic acid, a rare omega-7 monounsaturated fat found mostly in macadamia nuts, with smaller percentages in salmon and cod liver oil. In this video, I wanna review 5 benefits of palmitoleic acid, and then share some nerdy details about why this lipokine is tricky to study. I'm also going to provide you some nibbles of knowledge about macadamia nuts in particular if you stick around. Welcome to my channel. Stay curious. On that note, I want to define the jargon I just spewed out. Lipokine. -kine is a suffix that in biology generally refers to a group of hormones. So hepatokines are hormones from the liver. Hepato meaning liver, kine meaning hormone. Osteokines are hormones from bone, like sclerostin, a osteokine that I covered in a previous video if you wanna check that one out. Again, prefix osteo-, suffix -kine, bone hormone. So lipokines are fat hormones that communicate to organs to regulate systemic, whole body metabolism. And a group, lipokines, that was identified actually in 2008 in a paper in Cell, one of my favorite journals, with the founding member of that family of lipokines being palmitoleic acid itself, that omega-7 fat found in macadamia nuts. So here are 5 benefits of palmitoleic acid. One is improved insulin sensitivity. In multiple studies, palmitoleic acid has been associated with improved insulin sensitivity as well as lower incidence of diabetes in humans. For example, one cohort study of over 3,000 participants observed higher levels of transpalmitoleic acid, which comes primarily from exogenous sources, dietary sources, rather than endogenous production, your body making it. This transpalmitoleic acid was related to a 17% reduction in insulin resistance and as much as a 62% decrease in incidence of diabetes in the top fifth of transpalmitoleic acid levels versus the bottom fifth, which is an astonishing number for something like that. Second, improved lipid profile. Palmitoleic acid, associated with improvements in insulin sensitivity, palmitoleic acid has improvements in things like triglyceride to HDL ratio, and has been shown to lower LDL, increase HDL, and lower triglycerides. And this is thought to represent a global improvement in cardiovascular risk profile. Admittedly, I will say there are mixed data on the effects in humans, reason being, I'll get to that a little bit later, but overall, in my reading of the literature, there's generally an improvement in triglycerides and HDL. At minimum. The third major benefit is anti-inflammatory. Palmitoleic acid is an anti-inflammatory hormone molecule. One study that I really love, albeit a mouse study, is one in which they induced metabolic inflammation by feeding mice a high-fat, high-carb diet to make the mice obese. And this obese, inflamed status can actually be imprinted in the form of a metabolic memory in certain cells. So in the author's own words, metabolic inflammation during a high-fat diet or obesity, they show that bone-derived macrophages from high-fat-fed mice retain a memory of the dietary environment, the high-fat, high-sugar dietary environment in vivo, in the live mice, displaying elevated levels of pro-inflammatory genes like TNF, NOS2, CXC11 and IL-6. And in this study, they show, we show, we the authors, that treatment with palmitoleic acid, referred to as PO in the study, reversed the pro-inflammatory gene expression and inflammatory cytokine secretion, decreasing inflammation by wiping out the negative immune inflammatory memory, wiping the immune inflammatory memory clean, which I think is super cool. And that's shown here in this graph, where HFD refers to the high-fat, high-carb diet, and you can see on the y-axis the expression of inflammatory molecules, and that treatment with palmitoleic acid, which is the hashed bars, shows a decrease in the level of inflammation. A fourth benefit is satiety. Palmitoleic acid can trigger the release of satiety hormones in the intestines, including the satiety hormone cholecystokinin. And this is in animal studies, and it leads to decreased food intake. But you're probably wondering, "Nick, you said animal studies. What about real food consumption in humans? What happens if you feed humans macadamia nuts, which are really rich in palmitoleic acid, but also loaded with calories?" Ooh, scary calories. Well, it turns out that in an interventional trial, 4 weeks of supplementation with macadamia nuts has actually been shown to significantly drop BMI. And you can take that for what you will. Fifth, there are also potential improvements in bones and skin. Now, the data here are admittedly less strong, but I still think they're really cool. So for example, in a bone in vitro study, palmitoleic acid omega-7 decreased the activity of bone-destroying osteoclasts, induced osteoclast apoptosis, programmed cell death, and decreased bone resorption. And in a skin study aimed to investigate the effects of palmitoleic acid on the expression of COX-2 MMP-1, and, um, type 1 procollagen, which are markers of skin inflammation and wrinkle formation. Treatment of the skin cells with palmitoleic acid suppressed UV radiation-induced expression of these inflammatory cytokines, suggesting that palmitoleic acid may serve as a novel agent against skin inflammation, damage, and maybe even wrinkles. Although I'll admit I'm stretching beyond the present data here, but if there is a potential wrinkle benefit of macadamia nuts, I know quite a few macadamia nut lovers who won't mind. And yes, I'm thinking of you, Mom. Okay, so those are the benefits, at least some of them. But there's a catch to studying all of this. Palmitoleic acid omega-7 metabolism is really complex. Palmitoleic acid comes in cis and trans forms with different properties. It can be synthesized from the body in fat cells or in the liver, and it can be consumed directly from the diet, or consumed in the form of other fatty acids that are then are converted by the body itself. So for example, as just a level of complexity, eating carbs can actually increase activity of an enzyme, SCD1, that can increase palmitoleic acid levels in the blood by 1.3-fold. But eating macadamia nuts can also increase palmitoleic acid levels by 1.3-fold in other studies. And source does matter. The bagel and the macadamia nuts are not the same thing. And analogous to other hormones, there's thought to be a resistance phenotype to palmitoleic acid in people who are metabolically unhealthy with obesity. So palmitoleic acid levels might be really high in a person with obesity, but it doesn't have the same bang for its buck because they're resistant to it, just like they're probably insulin resistant. So this is confusing, right? And all this makes the body of literature on palmitoleic acid muddy and murky, but I have enough confidence in your intelligence to highlight this murkiness and share that, in my humble opinion, reading the literature, on balance out there, there are notable benefits for palmitoleic acid and foods that increase dietary exogenous palmitoleic acid, including high-fat dairy, which has fats that can be converted to palmitoleic acid, and also fatty fish, and especially, of course, macadamia nuts. So on macadamia nuts specifically, One thing I really love about them is the palmitoleic acid, hence this video. But above and beyond that, macadamia nuts are pretty cool. They are super rich in monounsaturated fats overall, even more so than olive oil, and certainly more than any other nut. And I'll also throw out there that macadamia are very low in omega-6 compared to other nuts, including linoleic acid. Personally, I don't avoid omega-6 or linoleic acid like the plague. Plague, but I realize some people do, and that's an individual choice. So I offer this as a "for what it's worth." So for example, an ounce of macadamia, just 1 ounce, has 1/26th the level of omega-6 linoleic acid as walnuts. So 369 milligrams per ounce in macadamia versus 9,580 milligrams per ounce in walnuts. At minimum, this means macadamia nuts will be more stable if you do heat them. And I'll leave some tips for roasting them if you want to in the notes below. And at best, maybe it means that there's a metabolic advantage of macadamia nuts over other nuts if you're a heavy user like me. And really more important to me personally, macadamia nuts are low in lectins, which can present challenges to some people with very sensitive digestive systems, meaning macadamia nuts are easier for me to tolerate in bulk, and I know a lot of other people. And quite honestly, I'm not above eating a jar of macadamia nut butter in a sitting if I'm feeling like it. So this for me is a big benefit. Now, with all that said, I have a disclosure. As you probably know by now, I've partnered with the company House of Macadamia. I'm a regular user of their products and moving forward, partnerships and sponsors are a practical next step for me to continue to be able to bring you information that's hopefully educational and increasingly entertaining with with editing, etc., etc. But I'm sensitive to maintaining my authenticity. I only agreed to this partnership because I believe in their product and the science behind it. Hopefully, you do now too. And if you're interested in trying out their products, the products that I eat, I have put together bundles that you can access with the link below and get 15% off. Um, I really enjoy the product and honestly rely on macadamia as a major source of body and brain fuel. Basically daily. And if you haven't tried macadamia nut butter, I'll just say it will ruin peanut butter for you, so be careful. Um, and with that, thank you for listening.