samedi 14 novembre 2009

Is diet of good help for asthma?

Asthme et régime alimentaire
Mainly diet can interfer with asthma through the intake of essential fatty acids. To be clearer I will give precise advices as the agrobusiness is very opaque about that issue of essential fatty acids and the labels still more.
W3 are natural anti-inflammatory nutrients, especially the long chain Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA in the literature) present in fatty fisches (tuna, salmon, macquerel, herring, sardine and anchoys...) but also the medium chain W3 fatty acid linolenic acid which is present in LEAVES, salad, roquette dandelion, and so on or in linseed (oil) and also canola (oil), and eventually in meat or milk of GRASSFED animals only (mammals).
OK? If you don't eat fish which I highly recommend, you can supplement your diet with good krill oil. As an asthmatic I suggest that you try a daily supplementation of krill oil (two capsules) during six months in order to check the specific effect of W3 PUFA on your production of eicosanoids the molecules responsable of inflammation. Good krill oil mean for instance Neptune krill oil or Aker biomarine krill oil.
Nevertheless you have to choose these foods when you play the modern hunter gatherer role in "wild" supermarkets! All other stuffs are made of W6 (corn, soy , wheat...) or worst of trans fats which you have to avoid completely as these trans fats are very proinflammatory and atherogenic.
Same for eggs, poultry which is raised in fields choose herbs, some grains, and lombrics... Not corn or cereal granules human made by transforming all sort of grains and legumes (soy is a legume), especially by heating, extruding and adding pure chemical vitamins. These eggs are labelised outdoor keeping or outdoor rearing hens.
So you can understand that organic can be misleading.
If the poultry is kept outdoor on sufficient surfaces of grass, if the cattle is grassfed all is OK. Organic is probably better on the long run because of a higher content in minerals, oligoelements, phytochemicals and quasi-absence of biocides.
If the organic farmer feeds all his animals with organic corn you will have a severe desequilibrium of your intake of essential fatty acids. Obviously an organic desequilibrium! I should add that it is difficult to find this kind of information in the jungle of the food products but it is possible, more today than ten years ago as the demand is growing with proper information of the consumers.
And remember one thing which is essential: linoleic (parent W6 fatty acid) and linolenic (parent W3 fatty acid) are like vitamins you are unable to synthetise them. So the ratio of these two fatty acids in your intake is the ratio of your body (cell membranes of the brain, heart, muscles, synthesis of derived molecules etc). The ratio W6/W3 of paleo diet is between 3 and 1, our "modern" diet made of food products and grain fed animals is above 15 and for people who don't eat leaves above 25! All changes were made in the last 50 years! For instance the so popular med diet is beneficial partly because of a favorable W6/W3 ratio around 7 to 10.
In the same approach in order to modify substantially the W6/W3 ratio you have to decrease the intake of W6. One major source is oil. Sunflower and other oils (sesame, safflower) are very rich in linoleic acid the first W6 fatty acid. So choose olive oil which is neutral (W9) or wallnut oil (delicious), canola oil or linseed oil. These oils are fragile and you should keep them in the frig and use them in the same year, so don't buy big bottles unless you have several children.
This diet is supposed to decrease the severity of asthma crisis not their frequence. So the answer to my initial question is definitely yes. But this diet will also dramatically decrease the probability of cardiovascular diseases, cancers and arthrosis! A major step toward good health.

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