Dr. Perricone’s Top 10 Super Supplements – #9 – Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA)
Super Supplement #9: Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA)
GLA is an important omega-6 essential fatty acid. GLA can increase the metabolic rate, an effect that causes the body to burn fat, resulting in weight loss. In addition to being anti-inflammatory, the average American diet causes a deficiency of GLA because of the large amounts of trans fatty acids, sugar, grain-fed red meats and dairy products that are consumed. GLA is very difficult to find in the diet, but is found in high amounts in borage, black current, and evening primrose oils.
DOSAGE RECOMMENDATION: 200 to 400 mg of GLA per day—one to two 1000 mg of Borage Oil.
GLA Tips:
Take GLA with meals to increase absorption.
GLA improves cell sensitivity to insulin, reducing our chance of developing diabetes, heart disease and excess body fat.
Borage oil is the richest supplemental source of GLA.
As with Omega-3 fish oil supplementation, results do not happen overnight and may take up to six months. Don’t let this dissuade you from adding this vital essential fatty acid to your diet as soon as possible.
Perricone MD products with this super supplement (click below to shop PerriconeMD.com):
Perricone MD Health and Weight Management
I am glad you brought up about this GLA! I remember my instructor of bio chemistry class during my graduate program was so excited about this GLA, oneday . It has been almost like 10 years. So you would know why he was so excited back then. ^^ As far as I understood until now, normally people take enough Omega 6 through sauteing food with vegetable oil. Am I wrong? Would you still recommend taking this supplement even for people using saute as their cooking method a lot on their daily life?
Olive oil has low smoke point. In using olive oil for saute or any kind of warm cooking with heat might sometimes result over heating the oil. Would it be considered worse than using other vegetable oil with higher smoking point? I notice Mediterranean cooking still uses olive oil even in saute a lot.
In terms of relationship with monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat, would you please explain its good and bad points in terms of how it affects health? Which one will be more recommendable, higher in monounsaturated fat or higher in polyunsaturated fat or well balanced between two of the ratio? It will be nice if you can explain this with a comparison between olive oil and sesame oil. I know polyunsaturated fat is easier to go rancid but if we try to keep it fresh, would oil high in polyunsaturated fat have more recognition than now? Public interest in black sesame has become very high recently, together with black beans for its benefit to health in Korea. Sometimes, when I have a choice to use either olive oil or sesame oil in cooking, I wonder which way to go. I see interesting similarity between the Mediterranean diet and the Korean diet. Quick examples are both use garlic and other herbal spices. (There are more interesting patterns between them!) Mediterraneans use olive oil but we use sesame oil. There were no olive trees in Korea. If there were, do you think even our ancestors would prefer to use olive oil over sesame oil? ^ ^ I will value your recommendation.