Re: Folate, DHA and Aggression

This is epiphenomenal. I've cited studies before about "arachidonate
cascade mania" and similar disorders. It is the arachidonic acid that
is the root cause, for those on a diet high in omega 6 polyunsaturates.
If you eliminate that, except in trace amounts, you eliminate all
these problems and don't have to mess with a dangerous substance like
DHA. See, for example:

Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1998 Apr 17;245(2):487-9. Related Articles,
Links

Oxidation of individual fatty acids yields different profiles of
oxidation markers.

Visioli F, Colombo C, Galli C.

Institute of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
francesco.visioli@xxxxxxxx

Free radicals attack lipid molecules and initiate a chain of reactions
that may trigger several diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer.
Several markers of oxidative stress have been proposed, including
measurements of lipid peroxides and short-chain aldehydes levels and
evaluation of conjugated diene formation. Although it is generally
assumed that fatty acid oxidizability is directly proportional to their
degree of unsaturation, little is known about the contribution of
individual fatty acids to each of these markers. We investigated such
contributions in a model of AAPH-mediated peroxidation of individual
fatty acid micelles by assessing several indices of oxidative stress.
The results suggest that the generation of oxidation products by
individual fatty acids is not directly related to their degree of
unsaturation and indicate that the differential contribution of
individual fatty acids should be taken into account and more than one
marker of lipid peroxidation should be included in in vivo studies of
oxidative stress.

The saturated fatty acid, as one would expect, had little activity.
The MUFA, oleic, showed reasonable activity with one chemical marker.
What is interesting is that EPA wasn't that bad, considering its high
degree of unsaturation, though they didn't measure every marker
possible, just the most common ones. It's even more interesting
because in a recent study, EPA was found to be very immunosuppressive,
even compared to DHA, AA, etc. The structure of the fatty acid seems
to be a key role, as AA's high reactivity seems to be related to how
the double bonds are situated when the molecule is "bent."

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