Transcript from video, 13:00-21:00, see below.
Note:
Ray Peat said on one of the "politics and science" radio shows with John Barkhausen that Chris Masterjohn is a very good researcher. He said his only disagreement with him is on the essentiality of the "essential fatty acids". Masterjohn is not a fan of the anti-inflammatory drugs, the COX inhibitors. Aspirin can to some extent be considered such a drug.
It should be mentioned that Masterjohn believe that we only need extermely small quantities of the "essential fatty acids". At one point he says 0.5% of calories during growth and development is enough, and adults that suffer from degenerative diseases or want to build muscles would also need this much, but other adults possible nothing (if b6 and other nutrients are provided). However, if they are provided from liver, just 0.12% of energy would be enough. He suggests 1% of energy for pregnant women.
Almost anyone following a typical Peat diet will obtain vastly more than this. Orange juice alone has 0.8% of calories as PUFAs.
Still, I think it is worth discussing whether an extreme PUFA restricted diet devoid of liver and egg yolks but high in shellfish (rich in EPA) in conjunction with aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs can cause issues. The issues described by Masterjohn would especially be digestive or auto-immune disorders (I devopled this problem myself from ingesting large quantities of curcumin/turmeric and ginger, despite reasonable intakes of arachidonic acid and low epa/dha intake).
I also read about how cats developed reproductive failure on an AA deficient diet (they cannot make AA out of linoleic acid). Although miniscule quantities of AA was required to prevent this problem, more was required in the presence of fish oil.
----
Chris Masterjohn:
"When people try to talk about proinflammatory things being bad and anti-inflammatory things being good---
I feel like inflammation is an essential process that is the reason that we're all alive today. And I think it gets a bad rap, and I think if you wanna be proinflammatory or anti-inflammatory, you are taking sides in a homeostatic balance that you don't understand. Homeostasis is all about balance, and so if your body's not trying to take sides, and if you're trying to take sides in that war… we should reflect a little bit about that.
And so you know back in the 1990s for example, where a lot of the ideas were developed about omega-6 fatty acids being inflammatory and omega-3 fatty acids being anti-inflammatory, we did not understand that when inflammation stops, there is an active process of resolving the inflammation. All we knew was you could initiate inflammation and then we kinda thought that
it's supposed to just dissipate and if it's not dissipating it´s because we have too many proinflammatories, and the focus on omega 3´s being anti-inflammatory was on EPA - which is a fatty acid that's especially high in fish oils - being able to inhibit the initiation of inflammation
By basically interfering with the metabolism of arachidonic acid or AA which is the corresponding omega-6 fatty acid, the thought was that since arachidonic acid is the omega-6 fatty acid that's used to initiate inflammation, what we wanted to do is get enough EPA to block that function and the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, meaning most over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, and some prescription pain anti-inflammatories are all based on blocking the enzymes that metabolize arachidonic acid into these supposedly pro-inflammatory molecules that initiate inflammation.
So all of this focus was on interfering with the initiation of inflammation and all those things were called anti-inflammatories and now this is the school of thought that high-dose fish oil came out of, because the high dose fish oil is supposed to supply enough EPA to block the function of arachidonic acid. And what the high dose fish oil is doing is essentially the exact same thing as the over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs.
Those fatty acids, you want in small quantities and that´s the nutritional fact, but when you take high doses fish oil, you're relying on a pharmacological effect, that´s essentially the same as taking over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs.
Now the problem with that is that over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs are COX inhibitors (that's not all of those drugs but the bulk of them are COX inhibitors). COX is the enzyme that metabolizes arachidonic acid. Those are all tied to especially the digestive distress and to some degree to auto-immune disorders.
And we also know going back to the 19th century that cod liver oil, which is a form of fish oil that happen to be very rich in fat soluble vitamins was very helpful when used in small quantities, but when used in huge quantities could also lead to severe digestive problems and possibly some auto-immune disorders. Very similar side effects between the over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs and high doses of marine oils. So why is that? Well in the past decade what we've discovered is that inflammation resolution is an active process that the body deliberately engages in.
And there are two raw materials used for the process of resolving inflammation. The first is arachidonic acid, the supposedly inflammatory bad guy. Again the COX enzymes, the ones that are inhibited by anti… so-called anti-inflammatory drugs. Those enzymes metabolize arachidonic acid during inflammation and resolution, in order to resolve inflammation. So what we now know is that these over-the-counter so-called anti-inflammatory drugs interfere with the initiation
of inflammation and interfere with the resolution of inflammation, and the same is probably true of the high dose fish oil, which is designed to mimic the effects of those drugs.
So by being anti-inflammatory, and deciding that instead of helping the body resolve inflammation, we're gonna be against an essential body process. We´ve also forced against the essential body process of resolving inflammation. And what that means is that when we rely on these drugs or pharmacological effects of foods that are used in unreasonable doses to mimic the
effects of those drugs, is that we interfere with the process we wanted to interfere with, and then we interfere with processes that we didn't even know about.
And the result is that we end up with more inflammation using the anti-inflammatory drugs, because we didn't understand that starting inflammation is a good thing when it is targeted correctly, and resolving inflammation is a good thing. So I think what we want to focus on is providing the body with all the raw materials that it needs to both initiate, correctly target,
and resolve inflammation, and taking away any possible inhibitors of the body's natural processes in doing that.
So I think what we want is the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid, which is found especially in egg yolks and liver, and to a lesser extent in other terrestrial animal fats. And we can also synthesize to some degree from plant oils, and then we also want DHA, which is an omega-3 fatty acid that also is critical to the resolution process of inflammation, and that´s found to some degree in fish oils and other marine fats, and also in other terrestrial animal fats, especially if they are grass fed, and again we can synthesize a little bit from from plant oils.
But we also want to get rid of these drugs like COX-inhibitors, the over-the-counter so-called anti-inflammatory drugs, and we also want to get rid of approaches like high dose fish oil, where we're consuming way more than we would otherwise consume of those fatty acids in the diet. And then finally I think we need to clear up our language a little bit and stop talking about things as proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory, stop talking about inflammation as it´s a bad thing, and instead start talking about how can we get the body to naturally regulate, correctly target, that process of inflammation."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_KjyBZpLs
Note:
Ray Peat said on one of the "politics and science" radio shows with John Barkhausen that Chris Masterjohn is a very good researcher. He said his only disagreement with him is on the essentiality of the "essential fatty acids". Masterjohn is not a fan of the anti-inflammatory drugs, the COX inhibitors. Aspirin can to some extent be considered such a drug.
It should be mentioned that Masterjohn believe that we only need extermely small quantities of the "essential fatty acids". At one point he says 0.5% of calories during growth and development is enough, and adults that suffer from degenerative diseases or want to build muscles would also need this much, but other adults possible nothing (if b6 and other nutrients are provided). However, if they are provided from liver, just 0.12% of energy would be enough. He suggests 1% of energy for pregnant women.
Almost anyone following a typical Peat diet will obtain vastly more than this. Orange juice alone has 0.8% of calories as PUFAs.
Still, I think it is worth discussing whether an extreme PUFA restricted diet devoid of liver and egg yolks but high in shellfish (rich in EPA) in conjunction with aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs can cause issues. The issues described by Masterjohn would especially be digestive or auto-immune disorders (I devopled this problem myself from ingesting large quantities of curcumin/turmeric and ginger, despite reasonable intakes of arachidonic acid and low epa/dha intake).
I also read about how cats developed reproductive failure on an AA deficient diet (they cannot make AA out of linoleic acid). Although miniscule quantities of AA was required to prevent this problem, more was required in the presence of fish oil.
----
Chris Masterjohn:
"When people try to talk about proinflammatory things being bad and anti-inflammatory things being good---
I feel like inflammation is an essential process that is the reason that we're all alive today. And I think it gets a bad rap, and I think if you wanna be proinflammatory or anti-inflammatory, you are taking sides in a homeostatic balance that you don't understand. Homeostasis is all about balance, and so if your body's not trying to take sides, and if you're trying to take sides in that war… we should reflect a little bit about that.
And so you know back in the 1990s for example, where a lot of the ideas were developed about omega-6 fatty acids being inflammatory and omega-3 fatty acids being anti-inflammatory, we did not understand that when inflammation stops, there is an active process of resolving the inflammation. All we knew was you could initiate inflammation and then we kinda thought that
it's supposed to just dissipate and if it's not dissipating it´s because we have too many proinflammatories, and the focus on omega 3´s being anti-inflammatory was on EPA - which is a fatty acid that's especially high in fish oils - being able to inhibit the initiation of inflammation
By basically interfering with the metabolism of arachidonic acid or AA which is the corresponding omega-6 fatty acid, the thought was that since arachidonic acid is the omega-6 fatty acid that's used to initiate inflammation, what we wanted to do is get enough EPA to block that function and the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, meaning most over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, and some prescription pain anti-inflammatories are all based on blocking the enzymes that metabolize arachidonic acid into these supposedly pro-inflammatory molecules that initiate inflammation.
So all of this focus was on interfering with the initiation of inflammation and all those things were called anti-inflammatories and now this is the school of thought that high-dose fish oil came out of, because the high dose fish oil is supposed to supply enough EPA to block the function of arachidonic acid. And what the high dose fish oil is doing is essentially the exact same thing as the over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs.
Those fatty acids, you want in small quantities and that´s the nutritional fact, but when you take high doses fish oil, you're relying on a pharmacological effect, that´s essentially the same as taking over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs.
Now the problem with that is that over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs are COX inhibitors (that's not all of those drugs but the bulk of them are COX inhibitors). COX is the enzyme that metabolizes arachidonic acid. Those are all tied to especially the digestive distress and to some degree to auto-immune disorders.
And we also know going back to the 19th century that cod liver oil, which is a form of fish oil that happen to be very rich in fat soluble vitamins was very helpful when used in small quantities, but when used in huge quantities could also lead to severe digestive problems and possibly some auto-immune disorders. Very similar side effects between the over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs and high doses of marine oils. So why is that? Well in the past decade what we've discovered is that inflammation resolution is an active process that the body deliberately engages in.
And there are two raw materials used for the process of resolving inflammation. The first is arachidonic acid, the supposedly inflammatory bad guy. Again the COX enzymes, the ones that are inhibited by anti… so-called anti-inflammatory drugs. Those enzymes metabolize arachidonic acid during inflammation and resolution, in order to resolve inflammation. So what we now know is that these over-the-counter so-called anti-inflammatory drugs interfere with the initiation
of inflammation and interfere with the resolution of inflammation, and the same is probably true of the high dose fish oil, which is designed to mimic the effects of those drugs.
So by being anti-inflammatory, and deciding that instead of helping the body resolve inflammation, we're gonna be against an essential body process. We´ve also forced against the essential body process of resolving inflammation. And what that means is that when we rely on these drugs or pharmacological effects of foods that are used in unreasonable doses to mimic the
effects of those drugs, is that we interfere with the process we wanted to interfere with, and then we interfere with processes that we didn't even know about.
And the result is that we end up with more inflammation using the anti-inflammatory drugs, because we didn't understand that starting inflammation is a good thing when it is targeted correctly, and resolving inflammation is a good thing. So I think what we want to focus on is providing the body with all the raw materials that it needs to both initiate, correctly target,
and resolve inflammation, and taking away any possible inhibitors of the body's natural processes in doing that.
So I think what we want is the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid, which is found especially in egg yolks and liver, and to a lesser extent in other terrestrial animal fats. And we can also synthesize to some degree from plant oils, and then we also want DHA, which is an omega-3 fatty acid that also is critical to the resolution process of inflammation, and that´s found to some degree in fish oils and other marine fats, and also in other terrestrial animal fats, especially if they are grass fed, and again we can synthesize a little bit from from plant oils.
But we also want to get rid of these drugs like COX-inhibitors, the over-the-counter so-called anti-inflammatory drugs, and we also want to get rid of approaches like high dose fish oil, where we're consuming way more than we would otherwise consume of those fatty acids in the diet. And then finally I think we need to clear up our language a little bit and stop talking about things as proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory, stop talking about inflammation as it´s a bad thing, and instead start talking about how can we get the body to naturally regulate, correctly target, that process of inflammation."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_KjyBZpLs