The Key Nutrient For Optimal Health (That Most People Don't Know About)
You want to increase your energy, slow down the aging
process, prevent disease and have some mental acuity and vitality along the
way. You spend time working out, get a bit of sunlight and try to eat right.
But are you unknowingly undermining your own health and fitness efforts with
this common diet mistake?
If you're still eating a diet that is high in grains and
vegetable oils, it's highly likely that your ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is
critically out of balance. While the optimal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should
be roughly 1:1, in the average American this ratio is anywhere from 20:1 to
50:1. Recent studies show that this imbalance can be a major cause for the
increasing incidences of heart disease, cancer, hypertension and even certain
neurological diseases such as depression, postpartum depression and Alzheimer's.
Essentially, as the body's omega-6 number rises, so does the body's overall
inflammation, and as most of you know, too much inflammation in the body causes
the majority of the most common diseases plaguing us today.
So where does this imbalance come from? More and more,
scientists are finding a link between high levels of omega-6 and the
over-consumption of grains and certain vegetable oils such as soy oil and
canola oil, and an under-consumption of high quality foods such as grass-fed
beef, fatty fish and healthy oils such as flaxseed oil and walnut oil.
What can increasing your omega-3 do for you?
Omega-3, with its high levels of DHA and EPA, is extremely
anti-inflammatory. As a result, if you suffer from inflammatory diseases such
as arthritis or ulcerative colitis, taking omega-3 can help reduce the level of
pain in your body. In addition, because of its anti-inflammatory properties,
omega-3 prevents (and might even reverse) heart disease, prevents certain types
of cancer, and even aids in the body's physical repair processes (making it
extremely anti-aging). In addition, omega-3 is highly beneficial and necessary
for brain health. Because the brain uses DHA as fuel, low DHA levels are now
being linked to low serotonin levels, which in turn causes depression, postpartum depression, memory loss, fatigue and a host of other negative health
effects. In fact, omega-3 is so beneficial to brain health that researchers at
Harvard Medical School have successfully used omega-3 to treat manic depression
and schizophrenia.
So what can you do to balance out your omega-6 to omega-3
ratio? Reduce the amount of grains in your diet and increase high-quality fish
and grass-fed meats, eliminate all vegetable oils from your diet and take a
high quality omega-3 supplement. It's very important to find a high quality
brand of omega-3 as many of the most popular brands on the market today come
from fish sources that are extremely high in mercury. Obviously the effects of
too much mercury and heavy metal toxicity would counteract the benefits of
taking an omega-3 supplement.
How much omega-3 should you take? Most likely more than
you think. Check out this simple fish calculator to see just how much your body
might need.
http://whole9life.com/fish-oil/
