Another Reason to Add Omega-3 Fatty Acids to your Diet
Andrew Stoll mentions in his book, The Omega-3 Connection, that excess Omega-6 consumption in the Western Diet was creating too much arachadonic acid in the body. That, in turn, was causing inflammatory reactions detrimental to human health. The following article echoes Stoll’s theories of Omega-6 inflammation:
Omega-6 Fatty acids stimulate tumor growth
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 1 (UPI) — San Francisco scientists say they’ve found omega-6 fatty acids cause human prostate tumors in cell cultures to grow twice as quickly as other tumors.
The researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center said they discovered an omega-6 fatty acid known as arachidonic acid turns on a gene signaling pathway that leads directly to tumor growth.
Lead investigator Millie Hughes-Fulford, scientific adviser to the U.S. undersecretary for Health for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, said: “Investigating the reasons for this rapid growth, we discovered that the omega-6 was turning on a dozen inflammatory genes that are known to be important in cancer.
“We then asked what was turning on those genes, and found that omega-6 fatty acids actually turn on a signal pathway called PI3-kinase that is known to be a key player in cancer.”
She said the study’s results are significant because of the high level of omega-6 fatty acids in the modern American diet, mostly in the form of vegetable seed oils, such as corn oil. Ω
Source: Cancer Research.