Posted by Larry Hoover on December 22, 2005, at 10:42:16
In reply to Normal level of arachidonic acid in blood?, posted by Laurie Beth on December 21, 2005, at 11:13:12
> Several months ago, I got my phospholipids tested for essential fatty acids. As a nursing mom, I'd been supplementing with 2.5 - 5 grams of EPA/DHA combined a day (at the time, I was using a 2:1 ratio of EPA/DHA).
>
> Here's what they were:
>
> GLA 0.00
> AA 6.91
> EPA 5.57
> DHA 6.02
>
> I was surprised to see my AA so low, but I have since realized that might not be so surprising. I don't eat a lot of meat, never eat organ meat, and usually get only the egg yolks that are in whatever processed food I eat. I get most of my protein from dairy and nuts (and some from whole-wheat bread). Since apparently dairy does not contain preformed arachidonic acid, maybe I don't typically get a huge amount of AA from my diet, especially relative to what I must be giving a nursing baby.
>
> I get a good about of LA, however, and I would have assumed that that was getting converted into GLA, then into DGLA, then into AA. But there's alcoholism in a first-degree relative, and apparently people with alcoholism genes may be deficient in the enzyme needed to convert LA into GLA. The lab I used doesn't measure DGLA, unfortunately, and I'm not sure if a 0.00 GLA level also means my DGLA levels are low.It seems a reasonable presumption. DGLA isn't stored and doesn't serve any functional purpose that I recall. It's an intermediate, which is incidental to the other long-chain PUFAs.
> Anyhow, seeing these numbers made me wonder if I have too low a level of DGLA AND AA, at least while consuming so much omega-3 acids, and while giving my baby these essential fatty acids through my milk.
There are variants of the delta5 and delta6 desaturase enzymes that bind omega-3s very much preferentially, compared to omega-6. The result is a disturbance in eicosanoids, also, as there is a class of those prostaglandins which arise directly from GLA.
> I am suffering from my second post-partum depression, which started about 2 months after this baby was born.
>
> Does anyone know what a normal level of phospholipid AA is? Is 6.91 too low?
>
> Thanks.Are those percentages? I have been unable to find a normalized table of long-chain PUFA content from blood phospholipids. You're low on AA and high on DHA, if the following data are "normal". Table 2.
http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/15/9/1388
Here's another. See Table 2, also.http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/350/6/560
You're definitely way low on AA. GLA is easy to add, though, and it would bypass whatever genetic restriction in its synthesis that may be present. You can get GLA in evening primrose, borage, and black currant seed? I'm not sure of the third one. Borage oil has the highest concentration of GLA.Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:590968
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20051208/msgs/591243.html