Vitamin D Correlation With Parkinson's

"According to the featured article, the findings refute the previous belief that vitamin D deficiency is a symptom of Parkinson's and instead squarely implicates vitamin D deficiency as one of the causes of Parkinson's:

"Previous studies in Asian populations reported a higher prevalence of hypovitaminosis D (deficiency or insufficiency) in patients with more advanced disease, suggesting that long-term effects of Parkinson's disease may contribute to the development of insufficient vitamin D concentrations," the authors write.
"Contrary to our expectation that vitamin D levels [in Parkinson's patients] might decrease over time because of disease-related inactivity and reduced sun exposure, vitamin D levels increased over the study period.
These findings are consistent with the possibility that long-term insufficiency is present before the clinical manifestations of Parkinson's disease and may play a role in the pathogenesis of [Parkinson's]."

This isn't the first time that I've told you sub-clinical levels of vitamin D is a risk factor for Parkingson's. But now the Archives of Neurology is offering even further scientific proof that backs this claim up."

Mercola On D & Parkinson's

It stands the hair on my neck to hear the term "risk factor" because the impliction is that someone thinks they know enough about the disease to assign mathematical probabilities aka "risk factors" but they have not even proven causality.  So take this for what it is - people are getting Parkinson's ever younger, they seem to have lower levels of D on average than those who don't get Parkinson's, and no one really knows why. 

Since Parkinson's is observed to increase in frequency just like all the other diseases of the West, it is a good bet that the same dietary changes are the cause of each.  Most likely candidates:  excessive sugar/wheat intake, excessive omega-6 intake, low levels of vitamin D due to unnaturally low sun exposure and perhaps re-inforcement of the resulting metabolic and hormonal derrangement due to inadequate amounts and quality of sleep. 

Good news - remedying the above costs little, will make you feel better every day, and has no known side effects.

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.

WHS - Seed Oil Hypothesis

Concise, important post about why we don't want to eat seed oils.  Fits the general model of not necessary for health, suspect due to their novelty in the human diet, and some data supporting the hypothesis that these oils have a high, negative impact.

The hard part is - they're everywhere and hard to avoid.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/04/do-seed-oils-cause-multi-generational.html

As per the usual, with Whole Health Source, there's as much to chew on in the comments about the article as there is in the article itself - a benefit of a well established blog with very bright commenters.