Could persistent inflammation be a bigger deal than we thought? While reading “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” I had a few aha moments. One of these moments was when I found out that the membranes of our cells are made up of polyunsaturated fats, and that the wrong ratio of pro-inflammatory omega-6 to anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats in our cell membranes could influence insulin’s ability to interact with our cells, leading to worse insulin resistance. The second big realization came when I read that the two main predictors of type 2 diabetes were biomarkers of lipogenesis and biomarkers of inflammation.
This started me thinking…we have had access to processed carbohydrates since at least the industrial revolution and it hasn’t been until the last 50 years or so that the rate of metabolic syndrome has skyrocketed. I’m not saying carbs aren’t a problem, but what if they are only half of the problem? While reading “The Big Fat Surprise” I realized that the huge shift to using vegetable oils, etc. in the 50’s and 60’s seems to correlate with when Americans started getting much sicker. I’m guessing that most restaurant foods are cooked in or fried in some kind of vegetable oil. It’s very hard to know the omega-6 vs omega-3 content of meat that is not grass fed, but it makes sense that the difference would be significant. I tried looking up the fatty acid profile of grass (yup, that’s what I do in my spare time) and found that any fatty acids it contains are for the most part omega-3s, vs corn fed to most livestock, which would be a source of mostly omega-6s.
What if inflammation is an answer to why we stall on keto diets? It seems like right around the time that people get fat adapted, their weight loss stalls. When you first start a keto diet, it’s likely that your body is not efficient at using fat for fuel so it will overproduce ketones. Ketones are known to reduce inflammation, so what if this reduction in inflammation is part of what contributes to the huge improvement in insulin sensitivity in the first few weeks of keto? As your body starts getting more efficient at using fat for fuel, it makes less ketones. What if this drop in ketones causes inflammation to slowly creep up due to the still-present high level of omega-6 fatty acids in our diet?
The other day I saw an advertisement for something that was basically a prescription dose of fish oil marketed to type 2 diabetics. I know of a few people who have found that adding chia or flax seeds to their diet seemed to help them loss weight. Apparently it is harder for our bodies to use the ALA in seeds than the EPA or DHA in fish, but the specifics on how hard it is seem to be lacking. What if adding these things to our diets, trying to eat grass fed, and avoiding vegetable oils is almost as important as avoiding carbs? I’d love to hear if anyone else has ideas about this!
