Building on Basics

Lipid profiler
(continued)

The problem is, omega-3 oils are found primarily in cold water fish like salmon and sardines, and the average person would have to eat a trawler's-worth of the finny food to get any benefit. Fish oil supplements are an option, but it's not certain pills offer the same effects as the fish oil found in food.

Taking what he learned from omega-3 oils, Erickson turned his attention on conjugated linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fatty acid produced in the rumen of animals such as cows when they digest corn and soybeans. Humans do not synthesize this particular fatty acid and the only way to get it is in their food.

Conjugated linoleic acid is one of many dietary substances being analyzed in the complex relationship between diet and cancer. It works like gangbusters inhibiting tumor growth in lab animals but it hasn't been tested in humans. Mice, rats, rabbits and chickens fed conjugated linoleic acid lost body fat and replaced it with lean body mass, attained enhanced immune systems, showed a reduced risk of heart disease and grew tumors at a slower rate than the animals in control groups. It's one of the most effective dietary anti-carcinogens in experiments with mice who have breast cancer, Erickson notes.

Assistant research cell biologist Neil Hubbard examines a flask of mouse tumor cells.