stacs.
You are headed in he right direction but you need the specifics....
First of all it is not the chronic disease causing the inflammation it is the inflammation that is causing the disease.
The inflammatory system is a system that operates for the organism the way the military operates to protect a country...Without a highly functioning inflammatory and immune system we would not last very long because our environment is loaded with dangerous microbes and the normal replication of cells in growth and aging produces a steady stream of genetic mistakes that can lead to malignancies...so we need an army, navy, and airforce...
These forces need to be able to discern self from non self, because our armed forces are very strong and can easily kill our own cells if they turn on them..Germane to EPA is the control of the inflammatory system...The first thing to know is the inflammatory system is very ancient and was present in basic design in the very first multicellular animals in the Precambrian oceans 500 million years ago...And this primitive inflammatory system was membrane based and yes it also used EPA...Because multicellular animals can not survive without an inflammatory system.
Although there a many different biological agents that will trigger the inflammatory system (essentially anything organic which is not "self" or is toxic) the over all sensitivity of the inflammatory system is effected mainly by dietary considerations, This includes the quantity of certain essential amino acids as one control...The most important system however is the eicosanoid system which uses cell membrane receptors (COX and LOX) and nuclear membrane receptors (PPARs) to set the sensitivity of systemic inflammation either high or low like a thermostat adjusts the room temperature...These receptors are the controls of systemic inflammation and are present on all cells except RBCs...
Although there are a number of agents which can interact with these receptors (eg. aspirin, NSAIDs, and steroids)...The principal actors are EPA and arachidonic acid (AA) and these two PUFFAs compete for the receptor sites. Both tend to increase inflammation...but AA has a much greater effect so EPA lowers systemic inflammation when compared to AA...
So what cause increased systemic inflammation which leads to all these degenerative conditions is anything which increases the AA/EPA ratio on the membrane receptors...These factors include low dietary intake of EPA...High intake of AA....but Obesity and insulin also increases AA . Obesirty particualarly abdominal actually produces chemical that increase AA and insulin expedites the conversion of ALA and other plants chemicals into AA...
":>) JL
AI
