I did a follow up OmegaQuant test and was shocked to find my O6:O3 ratio had continue to move from 0.9:1 to 0.7:1!
I didn’t change my eating or supplementation pattern since my last OmegaQuant test that yielded the 0.9:1. But it was interesting that all that taking of O3 supplements (around 6.3g per day) and removing all that O6 out of my diet (steaming all vegetables, cooking with grass fed beef tallow, no olive oil or other plant based oils) yielded an even stronger O3 showing against O6 in my body.
I asked my researcher friend on what happens if I my ratio goes so far to the other side in favor of O3. Literally no research exists as to what happens to the human body in this condition. I must be a biological anomaly right now in the 21st century; the prevalence of O6 in the typical human diet doesn’t easily allow for a guy like me who is willing to hold a consistent eating and behavior pattern for months.
The only paper he found was this one: Phase I Clinical Study of Fish Oil Fatty Acid Capsules for Patients with Cancer Cachexia: Cancer and Leukemia Group B Study 9473 by C. Patrick Burns, Susan Halabi, et al., Clinical Cancer Research Vol. 5, 3942-3947, December 1999. These researchers gave upwards of 21g of O3 supplements to cancer patients. What was interesting was that they found gastrointestinal distress, like diarrhea, accompanied such large doses of O3 supplements.
This was precisely the symptom I was experiencing more of over the last few months. I noticed that my stomach was having more diarrhea episodes now, whereas before I hit even the 0.9 to 1 I would rarely have diarrhea or even any kind of stomach distress.
Altered fat composition intake and thus fat metabolism? Altered gut bacteria make up? More gut bacteria that processes O3 fatty acids that also causes diarrhea and stomach upset? This all is new and nobody really knows, or has researched it.
Today, I decided to stop all O3 supplementation (except in cases of eating out where I could not control the quality of my food and I would continue my 5g supplementation at every meal where I ate out) and then retest in 4 months to see what changes happened. I think that there is some evidence that 1:1 ratios is best, and I’m betting that if I pull back my ratio closer to that, my GI distress should go away. We shall see.