Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Fish oil (魚油) and seal oil (海豹油)


Did you know, Greenland Eskimos have a low chance of having heart disease and cancer compared with other Western populations? This fact is quite interesting, when you think about all the high-fat contents of their daily diet, such as seal and whale.
Medical researches have shown beneficiary affects with cardiovascular and thrombotic diseases when your diet is complemented with sources of "n-3 PUFA", meaning seal oil, cod liver oil and whale oil.

Oils from fish and seal are quite similar in their fatty acid composition and their affects on health, although fish oils are more readily available for extraction. Seal oils also have similar EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DPA (docosapentaenoic acid) properties as fish oils. DPA was shown to have the effects of stimulating the repair of blood vessels and may have attribtued to reducing female coronary artery diseases.

One of the advantage of seal oil over fish oil is the resistance from oxidation. The n-3 PUFA fatty acid in fish and mammal oils are known to have a high rate of auto-oxidation, naturally producing chemically toxic substances that can cause cancer in humans.

The other advantage of seal oil is related to the structure of the fatty acid, in which fish oil and seal oil are esterified and consumed differently inside the body, resulting in higher n-3 PUFA levels in the erythrocyte membrane and neuronal tissue.

0 comments: