by Lorna R. Vanderhaeghe, B.Sc.
I was introduced to essential fatty
acids over 23 years ago when my
oldest daughter, who was then a
toddler, was stricken with the worst
case of eczema our family doctor
had ever seen. I wasn’t a “health
food convert” back then and I followed
the doctor’s advice of applications of
cortisone cream. After months and no results
we were sent to a skin specialist. The specialist
looked at my toddler covered in
weeping, itchy sores and wrote a prescription
for a stronger dose of cortisone containing
cream. I remember asking whether the
eczema had anything to do with allergies or if
a stressor could play a role and what type of
side effects were associated with the cortisone.
He shrugged off my concerns about the
drug side effects and laughed at my suggestions
of the cause.
On my way home from the specialists,
feeling totally disillusioned, I passed a health
food store. I had never been in a health food
store before that day but something told me
to push my daughter’s stroller into that store.
The store owner took one look at my baby
and declared she had an essential fatty acid
deficiency and handed me a bottle of evening
primrose oil. She carefully told me how the
primrose oil worked, that it contained
gamma linolenic acid and how to give it to
her. One month later her eczema was gone.
Entering that store changed my life forever. I
started reading books and researching papers
on anything that had to do with nutrition
and alternative medicine. That was my introduction
to alternative health and healing and
it is fitting that after all these years I write a
book about fats.
Over the last decade North Americans
have been consistently told that fat is bad for
us and we should reduce or eliminate its consumption.
We are consuming more low fat,
no fat foods than ever yet we have become
the most obese society on the planet. The
message is flawed as not all fat is bad and
some fats are essential for life. Low fat, no fat
or fat-altered foods, along with other dietary
evils, are the cause of most degenerative
conditions.
The Right Fat Diet
So pervasive are fat-altered foods that if we
look closely at the labels on the foods we
purchase, we might be surprised at how
many low fat, fat-free, hydrogenated, partially
hydrogenated foods we put into our
grocery cart each week. Over the last decade
U.S. food manufacturers have delivered hundreds
of thousands of reduced-fat or fataltered
foods, from low fat salad dressings to
no fat potato chips, married with the message
of “lose weight by cutting or reducing
fat in the diet.” Yet with the focus on no fat,
low fat foods we have skyrocketing rates of
obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease
and cancer. Pouring all fat into the same
category has caused our disease scales to rise.
Back 20 years ago the research into
healthy fats was just beginning. Today thousands
of studies worldwide, many of them
quoted by Karlene Karst and myself in our
new book Healthy Fats for Life, provide the
evidence that certain fats and oils including
extra virgin olive oil, hemp, organic flax seed
oil, coconut butter, borage, evening primby rose, fish oils, butter and CLA provide amazing
healing properties. These marvelous healing
fats reduce our risk of heart disease and diabetes,
help us burn fat, oil arthritic joints, prevent
depression, manufacture our hormones,
improve our skin, boost our immune system
and so much more.
Vitamin F
Essential fatty acids, also called vitamin F, are
exactly that “essential”—meaning the body
cannot produce them and we must get
them from our food. Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D. in
totalhealth’s special “Nutritional Supplement
Guide“ says it best: “Vitamins are not a luxury
or an invention of the vitamin industry.
Vitamins are substances that the body must
have to survive. This is stated by the very
meaning of the word vitamin, which in Latin
means vita life + amine. The bottom line—we
are not eating enough of these essential fats
and we are paying the price.”
Advances in medicine are often thought of
in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, gene therapies,
diagnostic or surgical techniques, yet
simply making healthier food choices would
give us the biggest breakthrough in preventing
and treating the illnesses of our affluence.
Diseases of inadequate nutrition affect up to
80 percent of North Americans. We are the
most overfed, undernourished group of people
in the world, filling our bodies with empty
calories and toxic foods with very dangerous
side effects.
A return to a diet consisting of fresh, organically-
grown fruits and vegetables, wild fish,
free-range chickens and eggs, grassland fed
beef and nuts, seeds and grains in their whole
form could solve most of our health problems.
But alas, convenience of shopping weekly at
the grocery store and our busy schedules send
us packing the freezer with frozen foods and
our pantry with processed foods that last for
weeks without spoilage.
Time for an Oil Change
Healthy Fats for Life provides you with an
overview of all the healing fats and how you
can incorporate them into your diet. It also
exposes the deadly fats and advises which
foods they are lurking in. Karlene Karst and I
have explained how nutritional supplement
manufacturers make quality oils in capsule or
liquid form. It is important to use oils of the
highest quality. The days of eating rancid cod
liver oil every day are thankfully a thing of the
past. Most importantly, we help you to understand
how to use these oils to prevent or treat
certain disease conditions.
Fats That Make You Slim
We have included a chapter in which essential
fatty acids have been studied to enhance thermogenesis
or the burning of fat and how to
maintain normal weight using fats in our diet.
Yes you heard it correctly, fat that helps you
burn fat.
Other chapters cover diabetes, heart disease,
skin conditions, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorders in children, pregnancy,
cancer and arthritis and mental disorders
including depression.
Our goal with Healthy Fats for Life is to
break the myth that all fats are bad. We also
want you to achieve optimal health and vitality
by changing the bad fats in your diet to the
healthy fats. The human body has incredible
regenerating abilities and it takes a very short
time to reverse the damage done by eating bad
fats. I am thankful that I was educated on
healthy fats and oils a long time ago and that my
family has had the benefit of growing up with
organic cold-pressed nut and seed oils in their
diet over the last 20 years.
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Healthy Fats For Life
Lorna R. Vanderhaeghe, BSc
Karlene Karst, BSc, RD
Quarry Health Books $24.95
ISBN-1-55082-330-2
To order call: 1-888-826-9625
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