AHS19

Over the past two hundred years, we’ve witnessed the evolution of pandemics of chronic
degenerative, metabolic, and noncommunicable disease (NCD). Ample evidence supports the
conclusion that coronary heart disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, obesity, age-related macular
degeneration (AMD), and metabolic syndrome, among other chronic diseases, have risen from
medical rarities to the most common causes of chronic disease and causes of death. Whereas
the top three causes of death in the year 1900 were all infectious, by year 2000, seven of the
top ten causes of death were secondary to chronic NCD. During the same time frame, we’ve
witnessed industrially produced seed oils, rich in omega-6 fatty acids, elevate to occupy up to a
third of human consumption, or more. Such oils rarely existed anywhere prior to the American
Civil War, globally. Virtually all chronic degenerative diseases of civilization have in common
one primary metabolic defect, namely, mitochondrial dysfunction. Could omega-6 rich seed
oils, consumed to excess, be the common precipitating factor through multiple mechanisms,
including prooxidative and proinflammatory pathways, cytotoxicity, mutagenicity, and
genotoxicity? The evidence is compelling.