PUFA’s are essential, because your body does not make them, however the ideal window may be small and most American’s get below the ideal window.
PUFA’s are by far the most easily peroxidized of the three major types of fatty acids (the others being monounsaturated, and saturated which see almost no peroxidation damage.
As a result PUFA’s (not saturated fat) are now being considered as possibly the CAUSE of heart disease because they carry the oxidative damage into the lining of cells of blood vessels. This model suggests that high triglycerides or cholesterol is not the cause, but rather the sign of coronary heart disease, because blood vessel lining cells will try to incorporate the very sturdy cholesterol molecule into their cell membranes to prevent oxidative cell ageing. Also, PUFAs (because they carry oxidative damage throughout the body and into cell membranes when they are consumed too much) are also now believed to cause cancer, and they definitely accelerate the metastasis rate of cancer.
(As a side note, in the initial study on saturated fat in the 60s, people with CHD were given either a certain number of grams of saturated animal fat, olive oil, or corn oil (omega 6 rich). The corn oil group had the most deaths, and the olive oil group was second, but in part because the corn oil group died from cancer, and as a result of those premature deaths, they didn’t die from CHD quite as much. The researchers ended the study and concluded that CHD patients just weren’t good subjects to show what they all wanted to believe, that saturated animal fat raised the CHD risk which it does not. In another long term study of the same nature the researchers stopped the study several years early because their were signs that the PUFA group was tending to develop cancer at a much greater rate than the saturated fat group).
The right amount of omega 3s is complicated by the fact that American’s eat way too much omega 6s. Omega 3s are even MORE susceptible to peroxidation than Omega 6s, but they also cancel out some of the effects of Omega 6. So if an American is eating 25 grams of Omega 6s a day, they probably will be better off overall with 6-10 grams of Omega 3s to negate some of those effects, even though 6-10 grams of Omega 3s are not ideal in isolation. They just make it less worse.
From what I have read, PUFA’s may start to cause problems at about 10 grams a day. Since without high omega 6s, 2-4 grams of Omega 3s a day seem to be in the ideal range for health, that creates an ideal combination of no more than 7 grams of omega 6s and 2-4 grams of omega-3s to be inside the range where they may start to damage health.
So the most conservative view is no more than 7 omega 6 and 2-4 omega 3s. Also for men, you want more DHA than EPA, and you want as much of the 2-4 grams to come from DHA and EPA as possible.
I THINK THIS IS THE BEST RECOMMENDATION BECAUSE at 2-4 omega 3s and no more than 7 omega 6s you clearly have no evidence of disease due to deficiency of either one. You have enough Omega 3s for optimal health, and not so much omega 6s that you need more omega 3s.
There are some more mid-line recommendations that 15 grams of Omega 6 and 6-8 grams of omega 3s might be ok, especially if you aren’t going to be able to get your omega 6s lower anyway given common food choices.
If you have been deficient in Omega 3s for a long time, you can and probably should go a little higher to let the levels of Omega 3 in fatty tissues come up. You may have years of high omega 6s in your adipose.
Keep in mind that a normal 1 gram fish oil capsule only has 0.3 grams of omega 3s, so you would have to take 10 of them to get 3 grams a day (although with way to much EPA and too little DHA for a man). So in your case, 10 typical 1 gram fish oil capsules only has 3 grams. Flameout has the right ratio of DHA to EPA for males. It also has fewer other fatty acids, so 4 Flameout has about 4.5 grams of total oils (including CLA which may be beneficial) and 3 of those grams are omega 3s.
I take 4 Flameout, unless I eat fish that day. Then I skip it. There is evidence that fish has other co-nutrients that may help your omega 3s work, so I think it is good to have salmon or sardines a couple times a week, and 4 Flameout on other days.