Fatty Acids Part Three: Omega-3s and Antioxidants

I stated in part two, that you are what you eat. This is literally true. Once ingested and absorbed, fatty acids of all types are taken up by cells and embedded within the cell membrane. Every cell in your body has a phospholipid bi-layer which basically means that each cell’s membrane is made up of two layers each made up of fatty acids and phosphorous molecules. So when you eat lots of foods containing omega-6 fatty acids, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids contained within your cell membrane increases. This literally makes every cell in your body more inflamed and makes you feel worse.

But I’ve already talked about that in previous posts. What I want to talk about today is the dangers of oxidative stress and the importance of taking anti-oxidant supplements if you are not getting enough from your diet.

Oxidative (or peroxidative) damage occurs when free radicals “steal electrons” from lipids (or fatty acids). The free-radical reaction happens in three different steps:

1.) Initiation – is the formation of a free radical. Most often this is an oxygen molecule. We use oxygen every second of our life to make energy called ATP. And our body is pretty good at it. However, nothing is 100% effective and every so often something goes wrong and the result is an oxygen free radical. These free radicals entire purpose in life is to find an electron in order to make themselves a stable molecule. They often accomplish this by stealing it from the nearest molecule it can get it from.

2.) Propagation is the second step. Once an Oxygen free radical steals an electron from a fatty acid, the oxygen molecule is stable but the fatty acid then becomes unstable and becomes a free radical itself. This reaction continues over and over again.

3.) The third and final step in free radical reactions is Termination. This is where propagation ends due two every cell being satisfied with a stable number of electrons. This happens one of two ways. Either another free radical (of the same species ie. two oxygen free radicals) meets up with the original free radical and share an electron making both free radical molecules stable (this is unlikely to happen due to the distance between free radicals in comparison to other cells). Or, an anti-oxidant donates an electron to a free radical making it stable.

The beautiful thing about anti-oxidants is that they have the ability to donate an electron without becoming unstable. This allows free radicals to become stable, and keep anti-oxidants stable, there by putting an end to the propagation step of the free radical reaction.

One of the most important anti-oxidant is Vitamin E which is a fat soluble vitamin and is also embedded in cell membranes. When free radicals come along, Vitamin E donates a hydrogen molecule to it which turns it into a harmless metabolite. This is such an important reaction that some research suggests that:

…vitamin E and related nutrients may collectively be important in protecting the body against and treating conditions related to oxidative stress such as aging, arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular disease, cataracts, diabetes, infection, and some cases of Alzheimer’s disease (Mahan 79).

For this reason, increasing the amount of anti-oxidants in your diet is important if you are also increasing the amount of Omega-3 fatty acids in your diet. While some doctors believe that supplementing with Omega-3 is worth it even if you are not supplementing with anti-oxidants, in my humble opinion, the importance of free radical scavenging by anti-oxidants is hard to over-emphasize and should probably be done with or without supplementing with fatty acids.

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