Health Scientist, Head, R&D   by aromamedicine   14 year

EPA,DHA,ALA are all with 3 double chains on the third bonds and that is why they are all part of Omega3. ALA has 3 double chains. DHA and EPA have 6 and 5 double-chains respectively. Fish, squid, crab, shrimp and most of animals in the sea carry all 3 types of Omega-3 because they eat spirulina and other omega3-rich food sources.

Human body and other animals can transfer ALA into DHA and EPA. If you do not use this function for a long time, your transformation ability will deteriarate. Therefore, your system function that does the transformtion will be replaced by the implementing of DHA and EPA process. In health science, we call it "substitution" procedure, meaning, your function is substituted.

On the other hand, when you eat ALA along with enzyme-rich foods from veges, your body will work to transform ALA into DHA, EPA and PGE3 etc. This process is called "regeneration".

If you need DHA and EPA urgently and you have a very weak body system that may not perform above process taht changes ALA into EPA or DHA, you can try to take some fish oil or seal oil. However, fish may contain more toxins while seal oil has much higher natural omega-3 that natural fish (natural seal has about 20-30% Omega-3 and natual salmon has 3%).

when you take ALA, you can choose from a few sources. However, Flax may be most affordable and almost the highest in ALA (57-62% in Canada). Our research centre suggests that you emulsify the oil when taking. This means, you can mix them into potato salad, think soup, rice congee or in HPRCC, we mix with high fibre powder so the oils are well dispersed. After dispersing/emulfying, your can absorb 20-40 times more oil particles comparing with taking them directly.

Note that LA, a type of Omega6, is a totally different type of polyunsaturated fatty acids with 2 double chains. It is a source of body hormones and is a must to your body. Both LA and ALA are the only 2 essential oils. The rest of them are not essential. LA is the precursor of PGE1, progesterones, testosterones and estrogens. However, LA also produces PGE2 which is a chemical working as an alarm to your body. When the reaction is too high where you might have high PGE2, but lacking of PGE3, your immune cells may attck your own system. That is one of the reason of auto immune diseases. From our researches, the best balance is yet to be found. However, we have 4 different combinations of ALA/GLA/LA for different peoples' need. OA is not important from our research because it rarely provide PGE1, PGE2 or PGE3, nor sex hormones. For reducing bad cholesterol (LDL), ALA is the best source and much more effective that OA.

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