Why the Balance of Omega-6 and Omega-3 Fats Affects Your Health

The balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fats affects whether your cells promote health or disease. If you eat too little omega-3 fat and/or too much omega-6 fat, you are setting the stage for health problems.

When it comes to fat, you are what you eat. Unlike carbohydrates and protein, fat is the only macronutrient that does not get broken down into smaller units when you eat and digest it. These intact fats have a tremendous impact on the function of your body. If you eat chiefly omega-6 fats, that’s what you will find in your body: primarily omega-6 fats in your cells. (The same thing happens to the meat of animals raised on feedlot diets of grains rich in omega-6.) Conversely, if you eat a lot of omega-3 fats such as fish, that intake, too, will be reflected proportionately in your cellular makeup—if (and this is a big if ) you don’t have too many omega-6 fats in your diet as well.

The Type of Fat You Eat Shifts Your Body’s Biological State

The preponderance and type of fat in your cells dramatically affects the biological actions in your body. That’s because both omega-3 and omega-6 fats make powerful, hormone-like chemicals that shift the landscape of your body toward promoting either disease or health. The proportion of these fats eaten ultimately infl uences the inner workings of your cells, becoming a predictable biomarker of both your diet and disease. Simply put, show me the amount of omega-6 and omega-3 fats in your diet, and I’ll show you your body’s biological state: pro-disease or pro-health.

The omega-3 and omega-6 fats work like a seesaw moving up and down, trying to achieve a healthy equilibrium for your body. This balance works at keeping your blood pressure normal, maintaining a regular heartbeat, healing wounds, and keeping your mood flowing smoothly. When the amounts of these fats eaten are in balance, this tandem relationship works well.

One of the key reasons omega-6 fats have such sway over omega-3 fats is that these fat families need the same enzymes to make their potent biological compounds in the body. Those indiscriminate enzymes are in limited supply, like taxis on rainy day in New York. It’s harder to get a taxi during inclement weather because so many more people use them (a case of competitive supply and demand). Once the taxis are saturated with people, no cabs are left for others, no matter how great their need.

Doesn’t it seem odd that there would be such an antagonist metabolic environment? Remember, it wasn’t always that way. For thousands of years, our ancient ancestors chomped on a diet that provided equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 fats. Therefore, the body had no problem with fats sharing enzymes.

A Diet Rich in Omega-3 Fat Protects Health

The omega-3 fats that make their way from your dinner plate down to your tiny cells can shift the biological state of your body. They do so by making compounds that fight inflammation, prevent blood clots, and reduce stress chemicals, all of which help to prevent chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer. This biological shift is so profound that heart disease scientists created the “Omega-3 Index” blood test, which refl ects the content of omega-3 fats in your heart cells. Some researchers believe that the omega-3 index may be one of the best predictors of heart disease.

A Diet High in Omega-6 Fat Promotes Disease

Omega-6 fats have distinct and opposite effects in your body. They are in direct competition with omega-3 fats to make their powerful and often opposing biological compounds. When omega-6 fats greatly outnumber the omega-3 fats, they behave like a dietary bully, dominating your body’s cellular playground.

A diet rich in omega-6 fats shifts the biological state in your body to one that sets up the conditions to promote diseases: infl ammation, blood clotting, and increased stress chemicals. The omega-6 fats create damaging compounds associated with arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, stress, mood disorders, and cancer, to name a few. In fact, death from heart disease is predicted linearly from the amount of omega-6 fat in the body.

A brief point needs to be made about the key omega-6 fats, linoleic and arachidonic acids: They are essential fatty acids, too. Yes, they are nutrients—yet archrivals, if you will, of the omega-3 fats. Omega-6 fats are not unlike other essential nutrients, such as vitamins A and D. They are required for your body to function, but when taken in high levels, they can pose dangerous health problems.

Helpful Articles