‘Lifting from head to toe’: Weight-loss drugs boost popularity of surgeries to remove extra skin
The food you eat may be affecting your body’s ability to fight cancer cells in the colon, according to a new study.
The potential culprit: an overabundance of certain omega-6 fatty acids — perhaps from ultraprocessed foods in your diet — that may hinder the anti-inflammatory and tumor-fighting properties of another essential fatty acid, omega-3.
“But if you have a body subjected to years of a chronic inflammatory milieu created by an imbalance of omega-6s, the type commonly found in ultraprocessed and junk foods, I believe it’s easier for a mutation to take hold and harder for the body to fight it,”
A Western diet is often high in omega-6 fatty acids, experts say, due to widely available seed oils often used to fry fast foods and manufacture the ultraprocessed foods that now make up about 70% of the US food supply. Linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid that is found in corn, peanut, soybean, safflower and sunflower oils, is the most common omega-6 in the US food supply.
Many people have a significant imbalance of omega-6 to omega-3 in their bodies — a November 2015 study found levels of linoleic acid have increased by 136% in the fat tissue of Americans over the past half century.
