Remember Your Vitamin D and Fish Oil - Or Forget It All

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130205131629.htm#.URJYFe127
The BLUF:
"A team of academic researchers has pinpointed how vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids may enhance the immune system's ability to clear the brain of amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease."

Another cut from the article:
"Our new study sheds further light on a possible role for nutritional substances such as vitamin D3 and omega-3 in boosting immunity to help fight Alzheimer's," said study author Dr. Milan Fiala, a researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"For the study, scientists drew blood samples from both Alzheimer's patients and healthy controls, then isolated critical immune cells called macrophages from the blood. Macrophages are responsible for gobbling up amyloid-beta and other waste products in the brain and body."

Every advance in this research is good, but the first step in Alzheimer's defense is to avoid carbing yourself to death.  When your insulin degrading enzyme isn't busy working on insulin, it also gobbles of beta amyloid.  When your proteins aren't gummed up with excess glucose, they don't get wrapped in the amyloid plaques as speedily.  In other words, if you don't make your body into a glucose dumping ground, things work like they should.  

DHA, Females, Disordered Eating

I gave my presentation called "That Stuff Will Kill You" the weekend of February 16th, at Wolf River CrossFit, and it was a great time for me.  The crowd was attentive, and appeared to catch the "big rocks" of the presentation.  The process of preparing for and delivering this presentation is one that drives a good deal of revision, refinement and creativity as I reconsider how to best present the material.  This time was no exception.  I wish I could find an audience for this product about every two months - the creative cycle would be at its best on that schedule.

One issue that occurred to me was an explanation for the phenomenon of disordered eating.  Lierre Kieth's book, The Vegetarian Myth, pointed out a correlation between low fat diets and disordered eating, but I was left with little to hang my hat on in terms of causality.  Then, I ran across this article in Psychology Today that points out just how fat human females are supposed to be, relative to other mammals.
"Evidence from all over the world suggests that men strongly prefer women who have a lot of body fat (roughly 30 percent of their body weight) and whose body fat is distributed in a particular way, with very little in the waist but much more in the hips, buttocks and thighs, producing a small waist-hip ratio."

Reportedly, a healthy human female carries a higher body fat percentage than a whale.  There's no other female mammal that can hold a candle to a human female for carrying fat.

Lassek and Gaulin point out that a healthy human female stores a high proportion of hip fat as DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), which is one of two long, branched chain omega-3 fatty acids that are essential nutrients for humans.  DHA is the raw material necessary to build a human brain.

The term "essential nutrient" means we cannot make much if any DHA on our own.  There is an implication that may be drawn when considering any essential nutrient, which is that our genome evolved in an environment from which that nutrient was a plentiful part of the diet.  Put another way, if we didn't have readily available sources of DHA, vitamin C, vitamin D, creatine, B vitamins, fats and complete proteins (IOW animal proteins), and other trace minerals (magnesium, zinc, etc) in our diets as hunters and gatherers, we wouldn't be here as we are.  Because all these essential nutrients WERE readily available in our hunter and gatherer diets, we did not evolve to make these for ourselves (nor did we evolve to be independent of, for example, magnesium intake).

So, shifting gears a bit, consider a young lady who is transitioning into fertility.  Her genetic hormonal milieu should be driving metabolic processes which command that she accumulate large quantities of fat, but not just any fat.  She needs animal fats, and probably seafood of some kind if she can get it.  In fact, I'll bet such a gal would benefit from eating as many grassfed animals and their livers and brains as possible, so that she can reach the genetically programmed goal of filling the substantial quantity of fat on her hips with a brain's worth of DHA.

Why would this imperative be specific to a human?  As Lassek and Gaulin wrote:
"The reason this is a promising idea is that humans have extraordinarily large brains, on the order of six or seven times larger than expected for a mammal of our size.  Is it just a coincidence that humans have brains six times larger than similarly sized mammals, and that women have six times as much fat as typical mammals?  Probably not."

Now consider that same young lady emerging in to Neoland, in which the salient cultural message is that fat is bad for her, and skinny butts are a virtue.  She eats low fat, and as a result, eats high carb.  She feels HUNGRY!  Why?  She'll be hungry for all the reasons a high carb diet makes anyone hungry AND she's depriving herself of a nutrient that her genome thinks she needs in monster quantities.  At this point of deprivation, mis-information, and emotional disarray you might think it was a miracle if a person did not have an eating disorder.

Now, I'm as unqualified as a fella could be in actually telling anyone with disordered eating what to eat, or when to eat it, or anything of the sort.  But if you are willing to bite on the conjectures inherent in the narrative above, the thing you would want to tell your young lady is - eat fat!  Here's the fish oil!  Have some grassfed porterhouse and have some more!  Skip the wheat, sugar and other low fat neofoods, and chow down on anything fat that you can find!!!  Dinner time, honey, eat up!

Stock up the house with:
Avocado.  Coconut oil with grass fed chicken eggs.  Bacon!  Macadamia nuts and lots of salt.  Sour cream.  Butter on every veggie that comes to the table (Kerry Gold, s'il vous plait).  85% cacao chocolate, dressed in unrefined coconut oil if possible.  Full fat, pastured cow dairy.  Delicious full fat hard cheeses.

The dirty little secret is these foods are very difficult to overeat.  Add sugar and that story is entirely different - think of the difference between stuffing yourself on lard, and stuffing yourself on oreo cookies.

Fats to avoid - all those neolithic fats from seeds and corn that have been hydrogenated to turn industrial waste into a "food" product.

Foods to avoid like it's a matter of life and death - anything soy and anything that is made with wheat or breaded/fried.  Anyone who's struggling with emotional issues or addictive/compulsive behavior would be well served to skip the dose of opioids you get from modern frankenwheats (never mind the excessive glycemic response, the intestinal permeability, and the phytates which block mineral absorption).  Skipping these foods has no downside from a nutritional perspective.

Point out that the best fat loss machine on the planet is the Atkins diet, so that she may think you want her to achieve to goal of being "too lean".  But make sure she realizes that when she's eating as nature intended - lots o fat - appetite is a signal of physiological need, not a force to be contended with.  You might even dare her to eat so much fat and protein that she gets "fat".  I would also make sure she was getting the other good stuff - grass fed dairy, magnesium, zinc, sunlight and/or a good vitamin D supplement, and plenty of cholesterol.  You would want her to get anything that would add up to a "OK, that's enough of that" signal.

I do not know if anyone has tested this idea.  I do not know if it would work.  I do believe that a low fat diet is about the most unnatural thing one could conceive in terms of diet, and that for a young person in particular, the combination of low fat, excess carbohydrate, and the natural stresses of the time could easily be a toxic brew.  The worst that could happen from a high fat intervention is the person could learn that fat isn't toxic and may be just the nutrient she needs.

This concept, by the way, is a perfect example of how epidemiological science could work to benefit an understanding of human nutritional needs.  An observational study could determine the correlation between those with disordered eating and low fat diets.  If the correlation is weaker for those with high fat diets, it would justify an intervention study to determine causality.

A Clue About Insulin Sensitivity

In 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine Published a study demonstrating that highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA; e.g., arachidonate and docosahexaenoate [DHA]) in muscle membrane phospholipids are tightly correlated with insulin sensitivity [38].  Specifically, this means that the more of these HUGAs there are in the muscle membrane, the more insulin sensitive the muscle.  This observation subsequently has been corroborated and extended by multiple other studies.  For example the significant correlation between muscle HUFA and insulin sensitivity was shown to be specific to the phosphatidylcholine phospholipids which predominate on the outer layer of the muscle membrane [39].  This is interesting from the perspective that it implies a role for the background fatty acid composition of the membrane, per se, rather than the protein components inserted into it (like insulin receptors or glucose transporters).  In other words, figuratively speaking, what the 'fabric' of the wall itself is made of is very important for glucose transport - it's not just about the number of switches (i.e. receptors and transporters) inserted in the wall.

How these HUFAs get into muscle membranes is a very complex process involving both diet composition and metabolism of the various essential fats after they are eaten.  

The above is an excerpt from this very engaging book:

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Liv...

In all honesty I do not want to spend a bunch of time sorting out why the HUFAs get into cell membranes ... but I probably will.  

My guess is that where this is going is that inflammation is a contributor to insulin resistance by reducing either the contribution of HUFAs to cell membranes, or because in a high inflammation body (one in which the immune system is "on high alert" chronically) the HUFAs are oxidized too fast and thus lose their ability to serve as transport sites when commanded by the presence of insulin.  Or perhaps, a high insulin environment, in and of itself, damages the HUFAs. OR, as others have speculated, perhaps after some period of time of being stuffed full of sugars by the action of insulin, enough cell damage occurs that the cells develop a means to "defend themselves" from the sugar onslaught.  Or some combination of the above.  

In a way it does not matter.  If you are struggling to regain insulin sensitivity, you must eat a lot of fat, workout consistently, and probably practice fasting from time to time.  You must avoid fructose as much as possible.  And the fat you eat should include saturated fat, polyunsaturates from sources like nuts, and monounsaturates.  Lastly, you should ingest a balanced quantity of omega-3/6 fatty acids.

Eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

Big Fat Wolf Post

Interesting guest post at Robb's site. 
http://robbwolf.com/2011/08/03/big-fat-blog-post-part-1/

Here's the BLUF:
-Saturated fat has never been proved to make you sick.  However, in combination with a high carb, high inflammation diet, it may exacerbate a bad thing.  The key - with the atherogenic profile (high triglycerides, high LDL, low HDL) you are likely suffering from excessive systemic inflammation and too much of what are called "small dense" LDL.  These LDL particles are easily oxidized, and are a likely element of lethal atherosclerosis.
-The ratio of omega 3 fats to omega 6 fats is significant, and while supplementation of long, branched chain omega 3s is important (fish oil is best) for those who consume too much omega 6 and too little grass fed animals/dairy, but eating better quality food is the best option.
-MCTs (medium chain triglycerides) are good!  Read the post for their relatively short description of why.
(Edited 8 Sep 11)

Aragon on Fish Oil

Remember the fat free 80s?  Aragon does:
"No worries, though, these (muffins, cookies, candies, weight gain products) were virtually fat-free! What we were led to believe was that fat-free products equated to fat-free physiques. Unfortunately, that was far from the truth."

Then the fat shoe fell:

During the 1980’s national obesity rates started to drastically climb. Large behavioral trend studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES II & III), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and the Calorie Control Council Report (CCCR) collectively showed a 31% increase in overweight prevalence from 1976-1991. What is the punch line? This increase in weight was accompanied by an 11% decrease in percentage of calories from fat (from 41.0% to 36.6%). The most recent report by the BRFSS shows a further decrease in fat intake to 33%, accompanied by an increase in obesity from 11.6% to 22.1%. This is a 90.5% increase in US obesity from 1990-2002[1]. It’s obvious that dietary fat is not the evil culprit in the expansion of the population’s waistline.

http://www.wannabebig.com/supplements/fish-oil-just-the-facts/

Good fats bad fats:

Stearic acid, an SFA abundant in meat & milk fat, has been consistently observed to actually reduce blood platelet aggregation [2]. This is a good thing. In contrast, trans fats (found in high concentrations in commercially baked goods as well as processed & fried foods) have been observed to negatively impact blood lipids by not only lowering HDL, but increasing LDL as well [3]. 

Ironically, experimental research exists on healthy humans showing the least fat was oxidized on the MUFA fat dietary treatment, and the most fat oxidized on a trans fat diet [4]. This result echoes what has been seen in rats as well. It appears that the tighter the control of the study, the less “superior” unsaturated fats turn out to be for any presumed effect on body composition compared to SFA. Throw in the fact that a reducing SFA intake and increasing the degree of unsaturation of fatty acids in the diet reduces testosterone levels [5], and then you have yet another wrinkle in the mix.

Omega 3s are not all the same:

Consumption of EPA and DHA has an appreciable number of positive health effects, including decreases in blood platelet aggregation, lowered blood pressure, enhancement of smooth muscle function, decreased inflammation, alleviation of dyslipidema, and treatment of mood disorders [6-9]. There is also emerging evidence pointing to the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids on bone health [10].

What's Normal?  Why don't we get a "normal" amount of omega 3/6?

Archaeological research postulates that humans were biologically designed to thrive on a diet whose ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids was approximately 1:1, and unlikely greater than 4:1. Today, consumption of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids is estimated at roughly 25:1 [11]. This is due in part to a predominance of omega-6 oils available commercially in our food supply (corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, refined packaged grain products & pastries) and a relative minority of omega-3 sources (fatty marine fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring, and flaxseed oil, walnuts, & small amounts in canola oil).

Industrial production of omega-6-rich animal feeds has also resulted in animal tissues (livestock, eggs, and cultured fish) rich in omega-6 and poor in omega-3 fatty acids. This disproportionately high intake of omega 6’s biases our physiology towards thrombosis, hyperlipidemia, and vasoconstriction. The reverse of those effects occurs simply by increasing the proportion of omega-3 fats.

Is there a dark side to omega 3s?

EPA and DHA have a well-documented ability to suppress the body’s immune response. Although not as consistent as the immune effects, data also exist on the ability of EPA and DHA to increase bleeding time and oxidation.

Quick hits:

Fish oil is one of the few supplements that actually have a substantial body of scientific evidence backing it up.

It’s common and perfectly acceptable for products to contain slightly more EPA than DHA.

I would also error on the side of safety and keep [fish oil pills] refrigerated.

There’s a widespread belief that ALA from flaxseed is worthless for increasing EPA/DHA since the conversion is inefficient. However, Harper’s team recently observed 3g ALA/day (from 5.2g flaxseed oil) raise plasma EPA levels by 60% at the end of a 12-week trial [22].

Aragon's summary:  Looking at the body of evidence as a whole, fish oil (or increased fish consumption) has great potential for improving cardiovascular health. But for reducing body fat, the effects are minor to nonexistent.

Fish For Omega 3

Fish for 3
Great article, key points are:
Sure, flax seed and walnuts and a few other sources have "omega 3 fatty acids", and these short chain omega 3s and ALA can be converted to long, branched chain omega 3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA), but the conversion rates are very low.  Rates are decreased if serum levels of zinc, iron and pyridoxine are low, which they often are in vegans.  Thus: 
Studies have shown that ALA supplements (like flax oil) are unable to raise plasma DHA levels in vegans, despite low DHA levels at baseline. So unless they are supplementing with an algae-derived source of DHA, it is likely that most vegetarians and vegans are deficient.
The bioavailability of iron in plant sources is poor compared to animal sources, so iron deficiency is common in vegans and vegetarians. This is another reason why they tend to be poor converters of ALA to DHA.
DHA status in newborns is much lower in those receiving formula with LA and ALA, than in those receiving milk or formula with pre-formed DHA
DHA, vice EPA, is the essential form of omega 3 fatty acids - EPA seems to interfere with the action of arachadonic acid, providing a healthy inflammatory response, but DHA is a higher impact player.  Bottom line:  health demands that you eat DHA AS DHA, vice as a plant and hoping for a conversion.  This wasn't a problem when virtually the entire population ate grass fed animals and commonly ate organ meats.

Countless studies show that this deficiency is at least in part to blame for the rising incidence of cardiovascular disease, inflammatory disease, mental and psychiatric disorders and suboptimal neurodevelopment.
I don't trust anyone who cites "countless studies", but in this case, there's no down side to DHA supplementation, and a very good reason to think there's a serious downside.

DHA is likely to be the primary reason why populations that eat fish on a regular basis have consistently been shown to healthier than those that don’t. 
Wild caught salmon if you can get it fresh, or perhaps sardines if you can't get the salmon, are probably the closest most of us can come to getting this "essential" nutrient as we were meant to get it - although I'm doing my best to think of ways that I can use the liver of any deer I kill from now on.  Short of that, I recommend Green Pastures products for fish oil.  The Eades (http://www.proteinpower.com/) have recommended krill oil, also.  At a minimum, get some fish oil, note the DHA content, and shoot for a gram or so per day.

Excellent Review of O6/O3 Issues

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/how-too-much-omega-6-and-not-enough-omega-3-is-making-us-sick

BLUF:  Imbalance results in dis-functional inflammation and cell wall permeability issues.

Sense on Omega Fats Balance

One of the major differences between our post-industrial diets and the evolutionary and traditional foods of our past is in the kinds of fat we eat. One huge change has to do with the polyunsaturated fatty acids (or PUFAs), which come in several varieties, but most commonly omega 6 and omega 3. PUFAs are "essential fats," meaning we can't make them from other types of food, and we must eat them. However, never in the history of humankind have we eaten novel omega 6 fatty acids in such massive quantities.


Corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil and/or soybean oil are ingredients in pretty much all processed food. Just check the list on the back of breakfast cereals, bread and other baked goods, fried items, salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise, and sauces. Vegetable oils are used (along with canola oil) in the fryers at most restaurants. They are cheap and relatively tasteless, which make them perfect for certain industrial and restaurant food applications. They are also universally high in omega 6 fatty acids, and therefore we eat a ton of them in the Western diet, especially since throwing out butter, lard, and beef tallow 30-40 years ago.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201103/your-brain-omega-3

Why does it matter if we eat lots of vegetable oil? Omega 6 PUFAs are used by the body to make certain hormones and signaling molecules. Roughly speaking, the omega 6s are the precursors for many of the molecules that make up our body's inflammatory response. As an example - the omega 6 linoleic acid (corn oil is mostly linoleic acid) is a precursor for many molecules, but among them are the prostaglandins that the enzymes COX-1 and COX-2 work on. If you have ever taken ibuprofen or another NSAID painkiller, you have blocked the effects of COX-1 and COX-2, decreasing inflammation and therefore the easing experience of swelling and pain in the body. 
Here's the real problem - too much inflammation mediated by a high dietary percentage of the omega 6 fatty acid linoleic acid can be reasonably associated with coronary vascular disease, insulin resistance, cancer, hypothyroidism and other autoimmune diseases, thrombotic stroke, headaches, asthma, arthritis, depression, and psychosis. 


This papernotes that "it is intriguing that the dramatic increase in the prevalence of [Alzheimer's disease] in the last century not only parallels the increase in average lifespan, but also an increase from 2 to more than 20 of the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 PUFAs in the average Western diet."



...common sense will tell us that the best result would likely result from decreasing the overall omega 6 burden while making sure we get adequate omega 3s of the right kind for our brain.
In simple terms, that means significantly decreasing the amount of processed food we eat, and making sure we get some oily fish a few times a week. Switching to grass-fed beef and eating lamb or bison (which are usually grass fed) will also help. Olive oil is relatively low in omega 6 (it is primarily a monounsaturated fat and therefore a neutral player in the inflammatory vs. anti-inflammatory war), so olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice can be deliciously substituted for commercial salad dressings. For baking and cooking, use butter, lard (a commenter reminds me it should be naturally sourced and used in moderation, of course), or coconut oil! It won't kill you. Really.

Some Omega 3s Are "More Equal" Than Others

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_whole_flaxseed.htm
And this is an example of the ones that are less equal. Flax seed does indeed have O3 fatty acids, but they are the short chain variety.  These do not become the long branched chain O3s that we probably do need to supplement, given that most of us ingest too much O6 fatty acids.

Ideally, we don't eat a whole bunch of either O6 or long branched chain O3 fatty acids, as they are poly unsaturated fats which tend to oxidize and create undesirable results.  But since we all likely eat too much O6, we have to get enough O3s to balance the 6s; ideally, a 2 to 1 ratio or thereabouts. The hard part is that the test to evaluate your success in balancing this ratio costs about $150 bucks.

With apologies to Sir Winston, flax seed is the kind of omega 3s "up with which I will not put."

Eating Grass

If money were no object, my CF gym would be right in the middle of my pastured beef cattle. Pastured animals change everything in the food chain from bad to good, and would be cost competitive without the negative impact of the Feds.

Along with taste, freshness and cost, consumers these days are also concerned with where their food comes from.

This new focus has created a renewed interest in grass-fed beef, both as a healthy alternative to corn- and hormone-fed cows and as an environmentally friendly industry.

Until just a few generations ago, beef cattle intended for human consumption were raised on a diet of grasses and hay. Their diet began to include corn and grains with the rise of industrialized farming after World War II. Pasture-based farming never went away completely, though, and is growing on family farms across the U.S.

Pasture-based agriculture benefits humans, the environment and animals in many ways. Grass-fed beef is higher than grain-fed in omega-3 fatty acids, and lower in calories and fat. It also has higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid, another fat thought to reduce heart disease and cancer risks, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Read more:  http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/From-grass-to-plate-1193392.php#ixzz1HrHr9zLj

Green Pastures Blue Ice Royal - Gel

This stuff is fabulous!  The cinimon flavor makes it taste like a dessert.

Recommended by Tim Ferriss and Ramiel Nagel

Making the Case for Low Fat Diets Causing Depression

http://undergroundwellness.com/is-your-low-fat-diet-making-you-depressed-anxious/
Interesting link in which the potential is discussed for how a low fat diet could make you mentally as well as physically ill.  Lierre Keith's book covers many similar points.  I don't know that this rises to any level of probability or certainty, but since there's no good reason to eat low fat, it hardly matters UNLESS you have to live with someone who's on a low fat diet and they are depressed.  In that case, make sure they are getting the zinc, vitamin D and long, branch chained omega 3 fatty acids (DHA/EPA) they need, try to get them to leave the vegetable oils alone, and see if you can tempt them with good vegetable fats like olive oil, macadamia nuts, avocados, and coconut oil/cream/milk/water.

Protein Leaching

The most vocal proponents of the protein-causes-bone-loss theory are those who promote vegetarian and vegan diets. These commentators rail not just against protein, but specifically animal protein. Animal protein, they assure is, is a major cause of the high rates of osteoporosis seen in Western countries.

If this were correct, we would expect to see higher bone densities in vegetarian and vegan individuals. In fact, the opposite is true. Studies repeatedly show either no difference or lowerbone densities in those who follow vegetarian diets.

A recent meta-analysis encompassing nine studies of 2749 subjects (1880 women and 869 men) found that, overall, bone mineral density was 4 percent lower in vegetarians than in omnivores at both the femoral neck and the lumbar spine. The effect was more pronounced in vegans, who totally avoid animal products. While the researchers concluded “the effect size is unlikely to result in a clinically important increase in fracture risk”, the results do not even begin to support the incessant and rather shrill claims by vegetarian/vegan activists that meat and animal protein are harmful to bones[2].

http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=1117

BLUF:  The evidence does not support the thesis that "high protein" diets cause loss of bone minerals leading to osteoporosis, with the possible exception of those doing a very low carb, aka ketogenic diet,  for a long time.  This won't change what the vegans and vegetarians are saying, because the loud ones live in a world of fantasy anyway.  However, I hope it will change what folks like Loren Cordain say, unless he can find some evidence to support his conjecture that we should eat vegetables and fruits to balance the net acid load of proteins (and cereal grains if you are into that sort of thing).  

Aside from the lack of supporting evidence that "high" protein intakes present a risk to bone health through a high net acid load at the kidney, I have never thought it was smart to try and eat your way to a balanced acid load.  How one could possibly sort out how much veg was enough to balance all the acid sources was always a mystery to me.  For most diet inputs, if you don't have a way to measure the output, you are most likely just "whistling Dixie."  The one exception to this policy I practice is to eat about a gram a day of DHA/EPA in fish oil, but when the DHA/EPA tests become reasonably priced, I'll use those to inform my dosages, much like I will use my next test of vitamin D levels to set my dosage for next winter.

Lastly, Colpo's post is a good example of how hard it is to get a good scientific outcome in human trials.  Example:  Eskimo's are reported to have accelerated bone demineralization, despite otherwise great health, very low rates of the diseases of the West, and an active lifestyle.  It could be the high protein intake coupled with low plant intake that causes the bone loss, but it could also be low vitamin D from the long winters.  Further, what if you live on the ketogenic side of the spectrum (IOW, very low carb, say 30g/day), but have a FEAST day once per week in which you way over consume?  What if you are ketogenic but do a lot of strength work; will that overcompensation eliminate the bone loss?  Ditto if you are a hard training vegan - will the body find a way to pull more of the available minerals into the bones in response to the demands of hard training?  This is why application of even good studies, of which there are few, is problematic in real humans living in the variety of ways that we do, with multiple variables in diet, life style, age, gender, and other health factors like vitamin D levels, stress levels, sleep quantity and quality, etc etc etc.  

So keep working on your N=1 experiment on yourself.  And for that experiment, don't be overly fearful of your "high" protein intake.

Fish Oil Geek Talk

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/fish-oil-natural-triglyceride-form-is.html
Interesting post from William Davis, again.

The gist:
Taking any kind of fish oil, provided it is not overly oxidized (and thereby yields a smelly fish odor), is better than taking none at all. All fish oil will reduce triglycerides, accelerate clearance of postprandial (after-eating) lipoprotein byproducts of a meal (via activation of lipoprotein lipase), enhance endothelial responsiveness, reduce small LDL particles, and provide a physical stabilizing effect on atherosclerotic plaque.

But if you desire enhanced absorption and potentially lower dose to achieve equivalent RBC omega-3 levels, then triglyceride forms are better. 

Dr. Davis on Fat, and a Plan Summary

Fat is not the demon

"I rejected the 10% fat diet long ago after I became a type II diabetic, gained 30 lbs, and suffered miserable deterioration of my cholesterol values on this diet. I also witnessed similar results in many hundreds of people, all following a strict low-fat diet. In fact, elimination of wheat--whole, white, or otherwise--along with limitation or elimination of all other grains has been among the most powerful health strategies I have ever witnessed.
"The majority of people, in my experience, after an initial positive response to an Ornish-like low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet will either plateau (stay overweight, have low HDL, high triglycerides, plenty of small LDL, and high blood sugars) or deteriorate, much as I did.
"By the way, regardless of which diet you follow, it is, in my view, absurd to believe that diet alone will do it. What about vitamin D normalization, thyroid normalization (thyroid disease is incredibly common), omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, identification of hidden sources of risk (something that is unlikely in Ornish, since small LDL particles skyrocket on a low-fat diet), postprandial glucoses, etc., all the pieces we focus on to gain control over coronary plaque? Eating green peppers and barley soup alone is not going to do it."

ALA Converts to Long Branched Chain Omega 3 Fatty Acids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3
"Synthesis of the longer n−3 fatty acids from linolenic acid within the body is competitively slowed by the n−6 analogues. Thus accumulation of long-chain n−3 fatty acids in tissues is more effective when they are obtained directly from food or when competing amounts of n−6 analogs do not greatly exceed the amounts of n−3."
IOW, this is one reason to go for the fish oil vice canola oil or other sources of ALA. 

I think in time we'll find that omega-3 fatty acids are not in and of themselves beneficial, but must be kept in balance with omega-6 fatty acids.  The SAD is biased 20-1 in favor of omega-6 - healthy populations show a ratio of 1-2 or 1-3 of omega 3 to omega 6.  In other words, there's at least some evidence that it's the relative level of omega-3 that matters, not the abosolute level, based on populations that have virtually no omega-3 or omega-6 intake, but are still healthy.

Omega 6 and Omega 3 Balance Affects Fat Gain

I'm not a great fan of Dr. Sears' editorial on the topic, but this study highlights a serious consideration as we wrestle through our choices about what to eat.  It is extremely hard to match the paleolithic diet with industrial foods (eg corn finished beef/chicken).

"an article published in Cardiovascular Psychiatry and Neurology (2009;2009:867041) demonstrates what happens when you take genetically identical mice and put them on different diets for three generations. The diets were equal in calories and total fat, but only differed in the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats. By the third generation, the mice on the high omega-6 fatty-acid diet were considerably fatter, had higher levels of arachidonic acid (i.e. Toxic Fat) and had more damage to their organs.

Thus all the cries for more exercise and eating fewer calories by nutritionists (and politicians) may have little effect on our obesity epidemic. To make the situation even more ominous, the author of this study told me that his group will present even more disturbing research at the International Fatty Acid Conference I am attending next week in the Netherlands."

http://www.zonediet.com/Community/ScienceBlogs/tabid/289/EntryId/26/Ominous-new-warnings-issued-about-Toxic-Fat.aspx

Fish Oil Supplementation

I highly recommend you look into fish oil as there no other convenient way to shift the balance in your intake of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids. Best I can gather, we need a 1-3 ratio of 3 to 6 - but many of us and our peers in the US are getting about 20 omega 6 to 1 of omega 3. This imbalance sets us up for chronic inflammation, which you may find manifested as aches/pains, slow healing, chronic tendonitis (tennis elbow, for example), or hand pain from too much computer time. Annecdotally, many folks get relief through a dietary change - first step of which is omega 3 supplementation via fish oil. Start with one and work your way up to 3-4000mg. If you experience any unusual swelling in joints - small bump big bruise - cut back. If they make you have 'fish burps' - you're not alone. It gets better over time - short term, freeze the pills.