Progressive Lipofuscinosis

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

Re: Feel so confused in this world of misguiding info.

“Scary” sells.

The purpose of marketing is to instill fear and confusion.

<>

Researching DHA involves looking under the rock (what DHA causes) …

Yellow Fat Disease (progressive lipofuscinosis).

I’ve written eight e-books (four of them are mini-books) on the DHA DECEPTION.

<>

Here’s a small piece of “my side of the story” (most of it was printed in a local newspaper).

<>

Dear Editor …

Re: Alzheimer’s Association’s Fourth Annual “Your Brain Matters” Luncheon.

These luncheons will be obsolete when folks realize Alzheimer’s dementia is a variant of lipofuscinosis (yellow fat disease), including the kind of Alzheimer’s associated with microcirculatory mini-strokes.

Omega 3 fatty acids — the ones supposedly necessary for brain growth — are responsible for Alzheimer’s and several other brain degenerative diseases.

Omega 3s include docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), eicosapentanoic acid (EPA), arachidonic acid (AA), and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).

DHA? Isn’t that the stuff that builds the brain?

On the contrary, it SWELLS the brain.

Divide a single disease — yellow fat disease — into many different names and it’s hard to get a handle on it.

It’s common among all mammals and many other life forms as well.

A few of yellow fat disease’s names (in alphabetical order) are …

age 50 effect / black kidney / blue kidney / bovine renal lipofuscinosis (BRL) / brown atrophy of neuronia / brown atrophy of the heart / brown atrophy of the liver / brown fat disease / brown heart disease / cardiac necrosis / cumulative lipofuscinosis / embryonic death syndrome (from mom’s use of omega 3s) / fatty necrosis / granulomatous steatitis / hepatic dietetica / hepatic steatosis / lipofuscinosis / necrotizing granulomatous steatitis / nonalcoholic fatty liver disease / non-suppurative pansteatitis / nutritional fat necrosis / nutritional muscular dystrophy / nutritional myodegeneration (NMD) / nutritional myopathy / osteohaematochromatosis / pansteatitis / pansteatosis / pigmentary atrophy of the heart / progressive lipofuscinosis / shrunken heart disease / steatitis / steatosis / stiff calf disease / stiff lamb disease / watery hide disease / waxy liver disease / waxy yellow fat disease / white fat disease / white muscle disease / xanthomatosis / xanthosis / yellow fat disease

There are so-called genetic forms of yellow fat disease, but, remember, you can’t take a bath in a blueprint tub.

Some of these (in alphabetical order) include …

adult NCL / amaurotic familial idiocy (of of the two types) / Batten disease / Finnish variant of late infantile NCL (fLINCL) / infantile NCL (INCL) / infantile osteopetrosis / juvenile NCL (JNCL) / late infantile NCL (CLN2 type), late infantile NCL (CLN10 or CTSD types) / neuronal ceroid-lipofuscinosis (NCL) / northern epilepsy / Turkish variant of late infantile NCL / variant of the late infantile NCL

Nowadays, the great majority of mainstream doctors and holistic practitioners tout DHA as something essential for brain and heart health.

It’s anything but.

Ray Peat (“The Great Fish Oil Experiment,” 2007) wrote …

“The products of PUFA decomposition include acrolein, malondialdehyde, hydroxynonenal, crotonaldehyde, ethane, pentane, and the neuroprostanes, which are prostaglandin-like molecules formed from DHA by free radical lipid peroxidation products, especially in the brain and at a higher level in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Ray Peat (“Membranes, plasma membranes, and surfaces,” 2009) wrote …

“If you want to use a polyunsaturated oil as a drug, it is worthwhile to remember that the ‘essential fatty acids’ suppress metabolism and promote obesity; are immunosuppressive; cause inflammation and shock; are required for alcoholic liver cirrhosis; sensitize to radiation damage; accelerate formation of aging pigment, cataracts, retinal degeneration; promote free radical damage and excitoxicity; cause cancer and accelerate its growth; are toxic to the heart muscle and promote atherosclerosis; can cause brain edema, diabetes, excessive vascular permeability, precocious puberty, progesterone deficiency, skin wrinkling and other signs of aging.”

Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw, Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach, 1982) wrote …

“We know that polyunsaturated fats are much more susceptible to oxidation and the subsequent generation of free radicals. Since there is a high content in the brain of the very highly polyunsaturated fatty acid docosahexanoic acid (the precursor of which is dietary linolenic acid, also polyunsaturated), it is likely that a major part of brain aging is due to free radicals generated during the abnormal, inadequately controlled oxidation of these fatty acids. Possibly the decline in sensory perception associated with age may be due at least in part to free radical damage in the brain. Sensory nerves involving vision, hearing, taste, and smell all contain large amounts of very easily peroxidized docosahexanoic acid.”

The very highly polyunsaturated fatty acid docosahexanoic acid (DHA) drops cholesterol levels, but there’s a price to pay.

According to the same source …

“The most commonly used method of lowering serum cholesterol is to substitute polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats in the diet. This tends to block cholesterol synthesis. Polyunsaturated fats are much more subject to free radical autoxidation that creates carcinogenic and immune-suppressant organic peroxides. Both animals in experiments and humans in long-term cardiovascular studies have exhibited an elevated incidence of cancer when saturated fats were replaced with polyunsaturated fats.”

But aren’t fish good for you?

Yes, in moderation, and the farther north you live.

But not because of DHA.

Farley Mowat (People of the Deer, 1951, 1952, 1975) wrote …

“There was a reason why the Ihalmiut had never learned to make and to use nets; for they were perfectly well aware of the fish that could be had for the taking. But they also knew that the results of fishing on a large scale are simply not the kind of results that can support human life in the Barrens. It all comes back again to the problem of fat. No inland fish, and this applies equally to hares and ptarmigan, can supply even a fraction of the fat requirements of the People. Fish are fine in summer as a dietary supplement when there is plenty of food in any case. In winter, a prolonged diet of fish would be as disastrous as poison to the People, and starvation in the form of fatal deficiencies would smite those whose bellies are distended with fish as violently as it smites those whose bellies are empty. Later I will tell you of a race of Northern natives who were weaned over from deer meat to fish. It is evident that the tragedy which resulted did not make its mark upon the official minds of men in high quarters.

“The deer must feed the People, and the deer alone can give the People life.”

According to the same source …

“Our slim rations were almost gone, so we gorged on fish. But though we consumed tremendous quantities, we seemed to extract no stamina, no strength and staying power from this food. It was a firsthand demonstration of the inability of fish to meet the dietary needs of men in the arctic plains.”

(Farley Mowat also wrote Never Cry Wolf, 1963, made into a movie in 1983.)

Fred Harding (Breast Cancer: Cause-Prevention-Cure, 2006) wrote …

“[Dr. Paul Dudley] White had noted that heart disease in the form of MI [myocardial infarction] was non-existent in 1900 when egg consumption was three times what it was in 1956, and when corn oil was unavailable. When pressed to support the Prudent Diet, Dr. White replied, ‘See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921 and I never saw an MI patient until 1928. Back in the MI-free days before 1920 the fats were butter and lard, and I think that we would all benefit from the kind of diet that we had at a time when no one had ever heard of the word ‘corn’.”

Paul Dudley White (the Father of American Cardiology) was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s personal physician and chief cardiologist.

What about the ALA omega 3 in flax?

It’s the stuff that makes horse meat toxic to omnivores and especially to carnivores.

Guido Majno, M.D., & Isabelle Joris, Ph.D. (Cells, Tissue, and Disease: Principles of General Pathology, Second Edition, 2004) wrote …

“A good way to understand lipofuscin is to compare it with linoleum. Linoleum, as the name implies, is obtained from linseed oil [flaxseed oil]. The British citizen who invented it around 1860 discovered that if linseed oil is heated long enough in the presence of oxygen, it becomes darker and darker, less and less oily, and eventually turns into a solid. In more general terms, if long-chain fatty acids are progressively oxidized, they gradually lose the typical properties of lipids. As their color slowly shifts from white to yellow to brown, they become less and less soluble in fat solvents, more and more cross-linked, and eventually turn into a solid mass. The hardening of oil-based paints is based on the same process.”

According to the same source …

“In the heart, the amount of lipofuscin increases progressively with age. Liver cells also contain a great deal of lipofuscin due to their long lives and high rate of autophagocytosis (a liver cell turns over all its organelles in less than a week).”

I’ve collected HUNDREDS of similar references from HUNDREDS of other sources, so it’s not like I’m a dilettante.

Sincerely,
Atom Bergstrom, Montecito
.
.