A major function of a healthy body is to continuously heal itself against almost every type of insult. Damage occurs constantly from microorganisms, cosmic rays, etc, and the body works constantly to heal itself. From my side of the world, disease is defined as failure to heal. Failure to heal in a skin wound results in a backup type of healing called scar tissue. Failure to heal in the brain causes scar tissue in the brain that experts can see during autopsy. This tissue is said to be the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.
Scar tissue in a blood vessel is a patch job done by the body by using cholesterol, fatty material, and calcium hardening to smooth over the lesion. This is atherosclerosis. As an example, damage is commonly caused by bacteria that get into the blood vessels and cause lesions. No scar tissue is formed with natural healing. The minor lesion becomes inflamed. This kills the bacteria. The inflammation is ended and debris is carried away. New cells fill in and the blood vessel returns to homeostasis. Each step is controlled by metabolites of eicosanoids termed, “lipid mediators”.
The starting materials for the eicosanoids and their lipid mediators are the fatty acids, EPA, DHA, and AA (arachidonic acid) and DGLA (discussed later). There are two underlying reasons that attack rates of chronic diseases in America are enormous and rising. One is sugar and starch. The other is the virtual absence of EPA and DHA in the diet. High sugar and starch stimulate the D5D enzyme. Low levels of EPA and DHA do the same by allowing the omega 6 fatty, AA to stimulate the D5D. When both of these forces stimulate the D5D, maximum amounts of inflammatory eicosanoids that are unable to cause healing are created. Thus, failure heal also underlies our chronic disease epidemics.
So, the bottom line is that insulin levels must be kept low and steady and the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio must be about one to one. Evolution set this up. Man was constructed with an evolutionary system built in to keep primitive man in top shape.
The eicosanoids are a major control system that uses specialized lipid mediators, 18 and 20 carbon fatty acids, as messengers.
This is enough for today. Coming will be the fact the Americans get almost no EPA and DHA in their diet, but do get an excess amount of omega-6, how to correct this, and a more fascinating description of current diseases that could be prevented with proper dietary fatty acid intake.
Failure to heal is the elephant in the living room.
Love this post, Fred.
The brain lesions you refer to early in this piece, are these astrogliosis? Or are you referencing something else?
I remember reading about astrogliosis years ago when looking at CJD. If I recall, biopsies revealed massive scarring in these prionic diseases…and saw similar patterns in Alzheimers patients, but not (necessarily) in dementia.
It’s been more years than I care to specify since I looked at this, so my memory is likely confused (incorrect). 😛 But what I find interesting is that invasive disease can lead to inflammation and scarring (well, that’s the obvious part, not the interesting part). Here’s the interesting part: poor nutrition can lead to this as well. Furthermore, poor nutrition can also reduce our ability to fight off invasive disease, so we get the double whammy of a pathogen (or toxin) + an inability to fight it off. That’s bad news in any context and seems to underly the paramount importance of paying attention to what you are eating.
Thanks for this. I can’t wait for the next one!