Omega 3 & Fish - 022

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. I once asked a group why it's important to know sources of omega three other than fish. One gentleman responded, I might not catch any fish. And another said, I don't like fish. The answer I was actually looking for was, there aren't enough fish to supply omega three for 7 billion people. Today we're going to discuss the downside of sourcing omega three. SPEAKER C From Fishy Living is a 13 part production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good healthy. SPEAKER B Omega three is an essential fatty acid. Our bodies can't make it. My guest today is Dr. Eddie Ramirez. Welcome, Eddie. SPEAKER D Thank you. SPEAKER B First of all, why do we need omega three? SPEAKER D As the name said, so this is an essential oil. In other words, you need to have it in your diet for the body functions to work properly. Your brain depends on it, and many of your cells depend on it. There are some substances that omega three helps to remove, and there are many studies that show the benefit of the omega three, such as helping avoid atherosclerosis, such as help decrease arrhythmias, such as reduce the stickiness of your platelets that could end up giving you a serious problem, such as stroke or a heart attack. And also, there are many autoimmune diseases that respond very well with omega three. SPEAKER B That's a bunch of very good reasons to make sure that we have a good source of it and a good supply of it. Your brain, your heart, your autoimmune doesn't leave much, does it? SPEAKER D And it's interesting how we have been conditioned to think in a certain way. Whenever somebody hears the word omega three, what do they automatically think? SPEAKER B Always fish. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B Any group. And you get a chorus of fish, and it seems to be the only thing that people really know. SPEAKER D That's right. And we don't realize that there are many other healthy sources. We will see those in a minute of this omega three that is accessible, that is cost effective, and that it has those beneficial effects to your health. And I've been involved in lots of research projects. Just last year, I submitted for publication 31 studies. 31, 31. 31 in one year, including one on fish. And it was a very well designed study. We're talking about 5600 people in this study. So it's a nice big sample. There were people from all over the world, including many from New Zealand and Australia. SPEAKER B Okay. You had some Australians in your study. SPEAKER D That's right. And also we were also taking into account different religions, different ages. It was a nice and diverse studies. The way people were cooking their fish was varied. Some of them like it raw, some of them like it cooked and so forth. And we can see that study in the screen. This study was presented in a very important meeting of pharmacological related things. And the reason why they were interested is because this was related to toxins. And we found in this study how eating fish had a very negative effect on mental health. Which is interesting. SPEAKER B Well, that's interesting because it's meant the omega three in fish is you take it so that you can improve your brain health. SPEAKER D That's right. But we actually found the opposite with our data. I not manipulated my data or anything. This is what our raw data is showing. You could predict actually the level of depression by their intake. And see, this is the point. In the past, fish was an excellent food. In fact, even Jesus ate fish. If you go and look in the Bible, it was actually not any fish. There were certain rules, what type of fish that he was eating, which was the fish with scales and fins. They had to have both at the same time. So the problem of today's society is that we have polluted our oceans, our rivers. There was an expert on pollution that we were talking with a few years ago and he was telling us that in the past you could actually find mercury free fish in the rural waters of Canada and in the oceans near Alaska. But he told know now today even that fish has been polluted with the mercury and we still actually don't understand the exact mechanism. How is that happening? We are theorizing that it may be related to rains and so forth. As our world environment is getting so loaded with toxins, even some of them are going via the rain and so forth. And what happened is that these toxins start to accumulate. And see, with mercury this is something serious. Oh yes, because things get accumulated and especially in your nervous system and mercury is something extremely toxic. So we theorize that the mechanism, why we're seeing more depression among those fish eaters have to do with the fact that you may be eating small amounts of that mercury, but as you continue doing that, that mercury accumulates in your system and end up affecting your mental health. In fact, there's plenty of research that shows that when you get fish, any fish, every fish has mercury to a certain level. I'm co author in a book called Rethink Food together with Michael Greger. If you want to find some good information, detail about journals, where this information comes from, I would invite you to search Fish and Michael Greger. You will find some good sources there to inform you of real causes of the problem. SPEAKER B You do medical practice, you do research, you write books and you're doing even more than that. I just don't know how you'll ever fit it all in. But we are very privileged to actually have you talking to us about this. And I'm very pleased that we can actually understand because fish is actually promoted because of omega three. But it always does come with a warning no more than twice a week. And that's a concern in itself. And it should be a bit of a red light to people, shouldn't it? SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B There are some pregnant women should not have it. SPEAKER D That's why there's some international guidelines that show that that pregnant women, children, small children, so if it affects them, it will also affect you would have to, yes. And there is something in ecology that is called biomagnification. Biomagnification is how we describe the phenomena of how toxins increase as they move up on the food chain. Not actually too far from where I live in Northern California. They had a study in which they documented this biomagnification. We're going to see that study on screen. In this study they were studying a toxin called DDD. It's something very similar to DDT. If you notice in the lake water there was only 0.2 parts per million. It is so small that amount than any international body will tell you. That's acceptable. You can drink that water. But the microscopic vegetables that live in the plant that are called phytoplaxin, those have five parts per million. SPEAKER B That's quite a big jump actually, isn't it? SPEAKER D That's right. From zero two to five. Still, that five is parts per million. So steel is very small within acceptable range. But the worrisome part was those vegetarian fish that ate those microscopic vegetables. Those had between 43 hundred. And then you jump to the carnivorous fish, which are the ones eating those vegetarian fishes, which had up to 2500 parts per million tremendous levels of this DDD. Now I just need you to use your imagination and imagine now the humans that eat those carnivorous fish, they're going to have even higher levels. That's why this is something serious because. SPEAKER B Have they ever done a test to see how many parts per million humans have? SPEAKER D Not on the DDD. SPEAKER B Not on that interesting. SPEAKER D That would be very interesting to know. But this is something serious because these toxins have serious effects such as affecting the growth of a baby. If you expose a baby to many of these toxins, you could actually end up with something serious such as malformation in the baby. So that's why I would encourage every pregnant women, especially as far as possible from fish as you can, because those toxins are there. And as you get exposed to that many times this accumulates in your body and can have some negative consequences. SPEAKER B So each time you take it in, take in any mercury in any form, does it ever leave your body or does it just keep accumulating? SPEAKER D You need special interventions to help them get out of the body. So no, it just keeps on accumulating. The body does release a little bit of it but most of it can continue to accumulate in your body. Now Omega Three has been so well researched that we know very well that it helps for many things, there is no question about that. But one of the issues that has come out is the reality of the situation that Omega Three oil is very contaminated with all these toxins. See, it's not just the mercury. There are PCBs, so we'll mention that briefly in a minute and many other toxins that get accumulated when you concentrate the fish oil. So the average fish oil that you buy in the market is loaded with these toxins now. SPEAKER B So it's not just mercury we're talking about but by the time you eat it as fish oil it's worse. SPEAKER D It is worse because it's concentrated. So things that may be in some moderate levels in the fish now they are concentrated in the fish oil. So you cannot patent Omega Three per se because it's just a nutrient. So a pharmaceutical company got the bright idea. They said, why don't we try to separate the toxins from the fish oil and then we can patent it and when we can sell it for lowering cholesterol or many other medical conditions. So they went ahead and did that. And that actually patented version of Omega Three oil is actually available here also in Australia. It's available around the world. But see, when the pharmaceutical representative came to us to talk about it we asked him, okay, you're saying that you're removing toxins. How much toxins are you actually removing? And it was one of those questions that the pharmaceutical agent couldn't answer to us and they said, well, I actually don't know this answer. Why don't you write directly to the company and they'll give you the answer? So we went ahead and did a letter and wrote them and they actually answered to us. And you know what they said? They said, it is actually impossible to remove all the toxins from the Omega Three oil. There is still some toxins present but it is less than the average fish oil. So as you can see, this is a reality and we're not making these stories to make you afraid, we're just showing you the facts. SPEAKER B No, I mean we really do need to have that information and if people still want to eat it or drink it, I believe, but at least we should know. SPEAKER D It wouldn't be honest from me having this knowledge and not tell you. See, I travel very much. Just recently I was in Iceland enjoying the beautiful hot springs there. They're fantastic. If you ever had a chance, go there. They are absolutely fabulous, those hot springs there. In Iceland and near Iceland there was a fascinating research that was done. There are some islands that are north of the UK that are called the Pharaoh Islands. And scientists there started to realize that the IQ of the children living in those islands was starting to decrease. And they were very puzzled why these children are decreasing. Pharaoh Islands today is a prosperous country just like Australia. They try to keep their oceans clean and so forth. It's not like a developing country that you go and you see all the pollutants being thrown to the ocean and so forth. They're careful to maintain their oceans clean and so forth. So scientists started to test the food that these people were eating because they thought maybe this is related to something they are eating. And sure enough they realized that their intake, especially of mercury but other toxins was very high due to their high consumption of food products. SPEAKER B Food products? SPEAKER D Food products. Fish products. That's right. So fish and also they eat whale. There one of the few places where they kill whales. They have not signed that agreement that their Jewish shouldn't kill whales. But anyhow, they started to have that link and realize that the problem lay in that as they were eating these sea products that was affecting their children there's. A very good documentary was actually noticeably down. SPEAKER B We have to work out what this is. It was enough to really get attention. SPEAKER D This was a public health crisis. SPEAKER B Do you have a sort of a figure on that? SPEAKER D So what I recommend you is to view the documentary ten points, 15 points down than the normal it was the down. You can watch a documentary if you Google the words Frontline, which is a nonprofit government organization in America. And Pharaoh Islands and Mercury. Google those three words frontline, Pharaoh Islands and mercury. You will see the details of the study. SPEAKER B And Pharaoh Island is spelled F-A-R-O-E. That's right. SPEAKER D F-A-R-O-E yes, that's the way that you spell So this is big problem. Why expose your children to these type of problems? And also what you were mentioning in the beginning is very valid point. See, we are depleting our fish stocks around the world. As the method of fishing have improved, we are creating an ecological disaster. See, when you go to places like Africa and you see the people there with the little boat and a little net catching fish, those people are never going to cause a global crisis. But when you have this industrial size boat in which they throw these huge nets and pick up absolutely everything that is in their midst, this starts to have a huge negative effect in the reserves of fish in the world. In fact, there was a big crisis some years ago in Canada in which they overfish and people have to change location where they're living. There was just not enough fish to keep up with to be able to provide for the fishermen and so forth. And also today in many places they are raising fish in an artificial fashion in which they have them in one enclosed area and the fish starts to grow and they feed them and so forth. Well, studies show that that is actually worse for the environment than the fish that are running around wild. The reason why is because in order to feed those fish, you need to fish other fish. So not because you are eating farm salmon and these type of foods. You are making a huge impact at the level of the ecology when you choose to use that. Plus, because those animals are living so close together, their risk of disease increases. So they have to throw antibiotics and different things, and you are being exposed to these things. There's a fabulous documentary if you want to see the details. SPEAKER B Incredible. We know they feed antibiotics to land animals, but yes, feeding them to fish, it's like, what else? SPEAKER D The name of the documentary is called End of the Line. I would highly encourage you, if you're interested in this topic, showing the details of this overfishing around the world and the kind of global crisis that we're facing. Time magazine put it among the list. The group of creature that is in the most danger of being extinguished are fish in general. That's the number one. And when you are doing these choices in your food to a certain level, you actually have some responsibility with this crisis. SPEAKER B Well, I think you've fairly well convinced us that fish is really something to be very concerned about. Omega three is something to be very concerned about too. We must have it, and we must have it in our diet because our bodies don't make it. So what are we going to do? Where will we find a good source of omega three? SPEAKER D We have good sources of omega three in the vegetable source. So let's see the graphic that we have on screen about the sources of plant based omega three. If you notice flaxseed or linseed, which that's where you get actually the name omega three has tremendous levels of omega three. So those chia, walnuts, wheat germ, and even spinach and almonds have certain levels of omega three. SPEAKER B Well, that's quite a spread really, isn't it? It's not just one or two things, although some are obviously richer sources. But the greens, while they're not a high source, we're meant to be having lots of them. SPEAKER D That's right. And green soybeans also, when it's mature, doesn't have it, but when it's green, you have that omega three. So what I encourage my patients is that you need to make sure, especially if you're on a plant based diet, you need to make sure that you are supplying enough omega three in your diet. So purposely you need to add these foods in your daily intake. So make sure that you are eating that flaxseed. You need to grind it you're not a cow, so that you can just eat it whole. It won't make you any benefit, you need to grind it. And you can add it on your cereal in the morning to your food that you're cooking, to your salads. And as you notice, many nuts are also very rich in these omega three. SPEAKER B S. So the nuts, again, were the walnuts. And I think did you say almonds had some? SPEAKER D Yes, almond has some, not so much. But the almonds tend to be more of a rich type of food. SPEAKER B And the chia and so that's lovely. You can do some lovely things with chia. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B Dessert with that. SPEAKER D Just don't eat just one. Try to use rotation. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER D And the second food, chia. Actually, there's a state in Mexico named after chia. It's called chiapas. SPEAKER B Okay. SPEAKER D That's how important that state is. And then we have another graphic that clearly shows another of the disadvantage that you have when you are eating fish oil. The next graphic, what we are seeing in the vertical axis, we are seeing cholesterol. And we're comparing the different levels of cholesterol among fish oil made out of different fish and how much cholesterol we would eat if we were to partake of 100 grams of beef. So you can see that eating a T bone steak will actually give you about 79 milligrams of cholesterol. Now compare that to herring oil. Much more higher salmon oil, sardine oil, cut liver oil. SPEAKER B Eddie, we're just talking about three teaspoons of the oils, not a large quantity like the steak, just that's 15 grams. It's only three teaspoons. So very concentrated than a T bone steak. That's huge. SPEAKER D So, yes, these are the implications of partaking of this fish oil. So especially people that have heart issues and so forth, this wouldn't be the best advice for them to eat these types of foods in order to provide that omega three. SPEAKER B That's an understatement. Not the best advice. I mean, it's really a big concern. Really big concern. SPEAKER D And, you know, there was a fabulous study that show that some pesticides are actually found on the tissues of breast cancer patients. And breast cancer is not a rare cancer in Australia. It's a big killer and unfortunately, something very common. So we still actually don't understand the mechanics and so forth, but we theorize that the exposure of toxins via fish consumption may play an important role in that increase of breast cancer. SPEAKER B That's really such an awful thing to hear. I mean, it is. It's a tragic thing when people get that. SPEAKER D And also, not only that, there's also cancer related to the fish. See, we've been studying this for the last 50 years. There was a published paper that came out. They compare in the waters of Michigan the change in the health of fish in a 50 year range. And what they found they were studying a particular fish there called the bullhead. It's a very common fish there. They found that compared to 50 years ago. Now, 30% of the bullhead that they capture in that lake of Michigan actually has liver cancer. And we theorize that this could possibly come due to the exposure of those toxins that are in his flesh. They end up affecting the health, and the fish also end up developing this type of problem. SPEAKER B You've listed a lot of things. There a lot of concerns about sourcing omega three from fish or just eating fish. Let's just summarize those. First of all, it's high in mercury. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B What else did you say? SPEAKER D And we also have the exposure to DDD. Yes, you also have exposure to toxins that affect the development of a baby or a pregnant woman. It also can affect negatively the IQ of children. It is a product high in cholesterol. It is a product the fish oil especially very high in toxins. And we know from studies that PCVS that come specifically from fish decrease and damage the sperm in males. SPEAKER B All of those big concerns. Good reasons to look at the plant sources that the good Lord placed in a good number of things in nature. And I think that's a really good way to go. Look, some of the things that in today's presentation might have surprised you, but we trust that they'll benefit you. And if you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website. That's at 3abnaustralia.org.au Click on the Watch button and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for joining us. SPEAKER C You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia television.