Have many, many Rodale published books. Might buy this one.
Have taken Borage Oil for years. What does the book say it helps?
First...BE CAREFUL !!!!!!
Pg.120, paraphrased:
"GLA (....as found in Borage oil) is transformed into DGLA, but, as I just noted, that's not the only fatty acid it can form. In fact, GLA is actually delivering two separate streams into two different buckets. One...GLA delivered to your inflammatory cells; ...the other to your liver. The GLA delivered to inflammatory cells is converted to friendly DGLA. The GLA to your liver is converted to AA -- the exact thing we're trying to avoid!
...So taking too much GLA can actually put you at risk for a cardiac event. They don't tell you that at the health-food store!"
He says that GLA should be taken with OMEGA-3 EPA.
"this also makes a lot of sense in terms of the hunter-gatherer diet. In addition to fruits, nuts, legumes, roots, and other non-cereals, early man ate a great deal of shellfish, which contains high levels of EPA. That's why the hunter-gatherer diet is estimated to have had an Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty-acid ratio of 1:1, as opposed to the ratio of 20:1 found in most American diets today. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense that we'd need to have a combination of GLA and EPA for our immune system to work properly.
Let me spell this out. Hunter-gatherers would have gotten the LA they needed from the animals they hunted for food: the GLA..from the nuts, legumes, and roots they gathered: the EPA from the shellfish they ate. Because the animals they ate were much lower in fat, as venison and other game meats are today, they would have gotten very little AA from their diets. In other words, hunter-gatherers were getting a near-perfect balance of polyunsaturated fatty acids for the optimal operation of their immune systems, by simply eating what was available to them. By contrast, the meat and fish we eat today are loaded with AA and LA, and we get very little GLA and EPA from our diets."
The AA is the stuff which causes inflammation. He has a list of foods to avoid, like farm-raised fish, such as salmon, and to also avoid egg yolks. He favors LEAN beef and lamb, and recommends supplimentation with Omega-3 fish oil and GLA-containing Borage Oil, and to NEVER take GLA without Omega-3.
These folks sent me the offer for this book:
http://www.puritan.com/