Omega 6 or 3?Know your fat for best health

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., June 1 (UPI) -- Changes in the fats in the Western diet may account for the increase in inflammation, which is linked to heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers said.

Inflammation is the body's response to injury or infection, but the body's immune system can also trigger an inflammatory response when there are no foreign substances to fight off and causes damage to body organs and blood vessels.

C-reactive protein increases during systemic inflammation and it has been suggested that testing for its levels may be an additional way to assess cardiovascular disease risk.

Floyd Chilton of Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues said that for the past century, changes in the Western diet -- more French fries and processed foods and less fish -- have altered the consumption of omega-6 fatty acids -- found in meat and vegetable oils -- compared with omega-3 fatty acids -- found in flax and fish oil. Many studies seem to indicate this shift has brought about an increased risk of inflammation.

Modern Western diets typically have ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 in excess of 10 to 1.

The researchers developed a dietary intervention strategy in which 27 healthy humans were fed a controlled diet mimicking the 2:1 omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids of early humans over five weeks.

The study, published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, found that many key signaling genes that promote inflammation were markedly reduced in those with the diet of early humans compared to a normal Western diet containing more red meat and vegetable oils.