Fascinating Fun Facts of Fish, Fats, and Fptotatos
Hey Mummy,
All the talk of omega-3 fatty acids made me think of you craving fish - fish oil, more precisely - when you had rheumatic fever. Which makes sense seeing as the omega-3 FAs in fish are known to be anti-inflammatory. I also remembered you craving raw potatos - I remember you saying they had to be RAW.
So, I looked this up and in the last year there have been several papers about this subject!
Did you know that raw potato has been a folk remedy for treating inflammation forever (e.g. a raw potato on a black eye, or the juice of a mashed raw potato for arthritis)?
It turns out that there is a lipoxygenase, an enzyme that modifes lipids with oxygens, in potatos which converts an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) into bioactive lipids that, through various pathways, are potent anti-inflammatory signaling molecules! One newly characterized lipid product called is protectin D1. It seems to get rid of T cells (induces apoptosis), the accumulation of which in tissues leads to chronic inflammation. Since the potato lipoxygenase is an enzyme, boiling the potato would denature it and kill its activity - thus it has to be raw to be effective.
So, your clever body was telling you to load up on the precursor as well as the enzyme you needed to convert it into bioactive anti-inflammatory molecules when you had rheumatic fever!
My mom agreed that this was pretty amazing:
Hi Honey,
No, I didn't know anything about the folk uses for potatoes, but isn'ti t fascinating? How can a lump of dumb meat (ie a body, without any brain/thought mediation) "know" what it needed? It's not like I'd had experience with toxic inflammation before, so there was no bank of experience (even unconscious experience) to draw on....and the last time I looked, neither my gray or white matter has any experience in analytic chemistry to draw upon! There's no oogga bogga, as I'm pretty sure that whatever mechanism is involved is pretty primitive, and shared with other lumps of meat (ie cats, dogs, frogs, etc) as a basic leg up in survival. Still, it is fascinating.
Bodies are very cool. There's so much that goes on in your brain that you don't know about - it sits there doing wordless analytic chemistry and advanced immunology while you think you're thinking about "Survivor", and then when it's done it manages to translate all that into "Hey, I want fish and raw potatos!"
Good excuse for yielding to chocolate cravings, eh?
All the talk of omega-3 fatty acids made me think of you craving fish - fish oil, more precisely - when you had rheumatic fever. Which makes sense seeing as the omega-3 FAs in fish are known to be anti-inflammatory. I also remembered you craving raw potatos - I remember you saying they had to be RAW.
So, I looked this up and in the last year there have been several papers about this subject!
Did you know that raw potato has been a folk remedy for treating inflammation forever (e.g. a raw potato on a black eye, or the juice of a mashed raw potato for arthritis)?
It turns out that there is a lipoxygenase, an enzyme that modifes lipids with oxygens, in potatos which converts an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) into bioactive lipids that, through various pathways, are potent anti-inflammatory signaling molecules! One newly characterized lipid product called is protectin D1. It seems to get rid of T cells (induces apoptosis), the accumulation of which in tissues leads to chronic inflammation. Since the potato lipoxygenase is an enzyme, boiling the potato would denature it and kill its activity - thus it has to be raw to be effective.
So, your clever body was telling you to load up on the precursor as well as the enzyme you needed to convert it into bioactive anti-inflammatory molecules when you had rheumatic fever!
My mom agreed that this was pretty amazing:
Hi Honey,
No, I didn't know anything about the folk uses for potatoes, but isn'ti t fascinating? How can a lump of dumb meat (ie a body, without any brain/thought mediation) "know" what it needed? It's not like I'd had experience with toxic inflammation before, so there was no bank of experience (even unconscious experience) to draw on....and the last time I looked, neither my gray or white matter has any experience in analytic chemistry to draw upon! There's no oogga bogga, as I'm pretty sure that whatever mechanism is involved is pretty primitive, and shared with other lumps of meat (ie cats, dogs, frogs, etc) as a basic leg up in survival. Still, it is fascinating.
Bodies are very cool. There's so much that goes on in your brain that you don't know about - it sits there doing wordless analytic chemistry and advanced immunology while you think you're thinking about "Survivor", and then when it's done it manages to translate all that into "Hey, I want fish and raw potatos!"
Good excuse for yielding to chocolate cravings, eh?
posted by Joolya at
11:47 AM
4 Comments:
What's also very cool is how your body can do advanced maths when catching a ball or jumping over a puddle! Hurrah for bodies!
Chocolate! :nod:nod:nod:
Hey, it's chock full of antioxidants 'n'things, right?
It sure is. But only dark chocolate - mixing it with milk negates the good effects.
That's ok. I am one of those people who happily munches on 99% dark chocolate, no sweetening!
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