We’ve been writing recently about the importance of a particular family of fatty acids called the omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are found in flaxseeds and flax oil, green leafy vegetables, and non-farmed fatty fish, like salmon, anchovies, herring and sardines. Thousands of studies have shown that having high levels of omega-3s in your blood helps to prevent and reverse all kinds of chronic disease, including heart disease, cognitive decline and dementia, diabetes, cancer, depression and anxiety, eye problems like macular degeneration, arthritis, autoimmune disease, neurological disease and more.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how much omega-3s you had in your tissues?  Well, now you can! Dr. William Harris is a research professor at the Sanford School of Medicine in South Dakota.  He has been studying fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids since the 1970s. With fifty years of research under his belt and over 80 published papers, he is an expert in th…

When we think about what fuels our health, we focus on vitamins, minerals and fiber and the foods plus supplements that help us meet recommended daily amounts. Yet, particularly when it comes to children's health, we tend to bypass essential fatty acids. In writing recently about our newly formulated Kids Mega Multi, we said we believed all children should be on a good multi and also a source of essential fatty acids (EFAs). Both adults and children are apt to be low in EFAs, especially two EFAs commonly found in seafood, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), which are crucial to children's neurological and cognitive development. DHA, which makes up 30-60% of the retina, is also absolutely necessary for normal eye development. Shockingly, a 2021 government survey on the diets of U.S. children between the ages of 1 and 6 found that 98% were deficient in DHA. Although EPA was not measured directly in this survey, as a close relative to DHA, it can be presumed EPA wa…

Inflammation is a major factor in pain and in all kinds of disease from arthritis to allergies, heart disease, obesity, neurodegenerative brain disease and more (see Inflammation: a Common Denominator of Disease).  And one of the primary causes of inflammation is an imbalance in the modern diet between two types of fats called omega-3s and omega-6s. These two fats are sometimes referred to together as the “essential fatty acids.” They are “essential” because our bodies can’t make them, so it’s essential that we get them from either food or supplements.  Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory, while most omega-6s are pro-inflammatory. The typical modern diet provides far too few omega-3s and way too many inflammatory omega-6s.  To make matters worse, those omega-6s are usually from toxic, processed vegetable oils.  Processing these omega-6 oils damages them, often converting them into dangerous trans fats, while contaminating them with added toxins. …