CrossFit South Bay | Hermosa Beach, CA

Eicosanoids

Lets dive into these hormones from last week a little deeper. Eicosanoids are signaling molecules, which means what? It means they tell other systems how to act. And I touched a little bit on them from last week which you can find the post here.

Eicosapentaenoic Acid (whew that's a long name)

Eicosanoids are formed by adding oxygen atoms to essential fatty acid molecules (those omega-3 and omega-6’s) which have 20 carbon molecules in their structure. These essential fatty acids are ‘essential’ because the human body can’t produce them. However FROM these fatty acids, the body can make eicosanoids!

Eicosanoids are stated last week are highly complex and responsible for sleep patterns, expansion and contraction of blood vessels, immune system function, smooth muscle contraction (not skeletal muscle), and fat levels in the body among other things. Most hormones like all of these; insulin, glucagon, adrenaline, thyroid hormone, dopamine, cortisol, epinephrine, melatonin, estrogen, testosterone, etc!) are stored in parts of the endocrine system. Eicosanoids however are not stored anywhere, they are created and destroyed very quickly based on the bodies requirement for them.

Membrane of Human Cell

There are two major classes of Eicosanoids; leukotrienes, and prostanoids. Each is created by a different enzyme which is readily available all of the body. You wanna what’s crazy? The fatty acids that are used are made from the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane itself! In other words Eicosanoids are made by breaking down parts of individual cells (it’s normal don’t freak out). But this may make sense now as to why these aren’t well known and hard to study. They’re made locally, and act upon the cells around them, and their lifespan may be only a few seconds. Compare this to something like adrenaline or insulin which is created in one part of the body and transferred through the blood to all others.

There are dozens of different leukotrienes and prostanoids, but we’ll break them into two categories for our purposes, ones created from omega-6 fatty acids called Arichidonic acid (AA), and the other category being ones created from omega-3 fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). The ones which are metabolized from omega-6 have a wide array of responsibilities including inflammation, immune system signaling, and central nervous system signaling. Don’t be scared by the inflammation word. These Eicosanoids are absolutely 100% necessary for optimal body function, however with the changes in our diets in recent years the general diet has seen an exponential increase in these levels. And if we eat more omega-6 the body will naturally make more of these category of Eicosanoids. The Eicosanoids which are metabolized from omega-3 EPA also have roles in inflammation, pain, and other parts of the human systems; however in the very loose sense of the word, they work opposite of their counterparts from omega-6’s.

Note: Inflammation includes the following; redness (like from a bug bite), swelling, pain, and heat (like a fever).

What is advised for us Crossfitters (and the populous of the world for that matter) is that if we can keep a ratio of omega-3’s to omega-6’s near 1:2 in our diet, respectively, then we will be processing food and producing Eicosanoids more in line with how we evolved, and will have less likelihood of inflammatory diseases like oh I don’t know, asthma, acne, IBS, prostatitis, cancer, arthritis, psoriasis, gastrointestinal disease, hypersensitivity, Crohn’s disease, ulcers, and autoimmune diseases.

Now for some fun stuff!

Antarctica Fran from Chris Slaughter on Vimeo.

And here is a link to pictures from Antarctica! Missed you all!

WOD 1/22/2010

Power Clean 4-4-4 85%

50-40-30-20-10
Double Unders
Kettlebell Swings

No sub for double unders. Count attempts if you do not have double unders.