Omega Chemistry?

As a child I was tortured on many fronts by all the usual combatants: girls, pimples, bullies, bad hair, the wrong clothes, no respect, and a houseful of high-octane sibling rivalry. Nothing in that assault, matched my grandmother’s reliance on concoctions and over-the-counter goos to treat my colds and flu. I didn’t live with my grandmother, but we seemed to visit her on the occasions I was ill. To make matters worse, she was a big, forceful woman—so all I could do was lodge a protest. Despite my spindly arms waving in disapproval, she was always successful at placing a large tablespoon (sometimes two) of cod liver oil down my throat during the most minor of upper respiratory infections.

Plugging my nose didn’t help—it was like a fish oil explosion in my mouth. I usually gagged. “This fish oil,” she would stand erect and proclaim, “is how you’re gonna get better.” I can still remember the aftertaste; it was something between licking a week old fish lollipop and gargling with stale seawater. At night she would slather my chest down with Vicks directly after the cod liver oil inquisition, making me feel like a fish basted in mentholated paste. Was there some health benefit associated with cod liver oil? Or was my grandmother secretly attempting to turn me into a sea creature?

In that vein, the next consideration along the road to Omega understanding is the various forms the Omega fatty acids come in. To reiterate information from the last blog, Omega fats are simply a way of numbering the double bonds. Since we are talking about fats with double bonds, all Omega fatty acids are unsaturated fats. If the double bond is at the third carbon-carbon link counting from the left, we call it an Omega-3. If it’s at the sixth carbon we call it an Omega-6 fatty acid; however, for all practical purposes, the Omega-3 fatty acids are the only fats made relevant to this discussion. As I will show, actually one of the most important fatty acids is an Omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic acid.

Most unsaturated fatty acids contain more than one double bond. More than one double bond implies it is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. If it contains just one double bond it’s a monounsaturated fatty acid. Therefore, the Omega-3 designation is rather generic and implies just one of the many double bonds begins in the “3” position. More on the relative importance of the “3” position later. As you might have seen in the last blog, another way to designate the Omega fats is through the “N” system. Thus an N-3 fatty acid is the same as an Omega-3 fat. An N-6 fatty acid is the same as an Omega-6 fatty acid. And indeed one of the most important fatty acids is Linoleic Acid, which happens to be a polyunsaturated N-6 fatty acid. It’s also an essential fatty acid.

Linoleic Acid (18:2 N-6)

C ― C ― C ― C ― C― C = C ― C ― C = C ― C ― C ― C ― C ― C ― C ― C ― C OOH


Why is Linoleic acid essential? Because the human body doesn’t have the enzymes to produce the double bond in the Δ9 position (9 carbons from the Dela end, or 9 carbons from the Omega end). We have to consume foods that contain Linoleic Acid or develop essential fatty acid deficiency. More later.