Fats That Heal Fats That Kill: An Interview with Udo Erasmus. Part II: Essential Fatty Acids, Hormonal Manipulation, and Nutritional Supplements

Interview by Ori Hofmekler, April 2000.

What began as a personal disaster - being poisoned on the job by industrial pesticides - was turned into the triumph of a best-selling book. ("Knowing that the poisons I had been exposed to were carcinogenic and that cancer often involves fats, I needed clear, accurate, factual information.") Following is an exclusive interview with Udo Erasmus, Ph.D., author of Fats That Heal Fats That Kill. Erasmus is considered by many to be one of the most serious health gurus today, especially concerning fat metabolism, but also libido, aging, and beauty.

Says Erasmus in the preface of his book, "My health is my responsibility... Our drug-oriented medical approaches cannot lead us to health... Foods and nutrition are primary options for self-help in health."

With this credo as a guiding thread, Erasmus has fashioned a thought-provoking, sometimes controversial - but always nutritionally sound - understanding of the role of fats (both good and bad) in our diet.

POWER: Can you explain what prostaglandins are and how they are connected to essential fatty acids?
ERASMUS: The prostaglandins are hormones that are made from essential fatty acids. There are also hormones that are made from cholesterol, hormones made from amino acids, and hormones made from proteins. Prostaglandins come in three families, two of them good and one that causes some problems. They each have their place. In the jungle, the prostaglandin 2's are very good for survival. And the prostaglandin 1's and 3's make sure that the prostaglandin 2's don't get out of hand. There are prostaglandins that relax arterial muscle tone. There are prostaglandins that constrict arterial muscle tone. You would expect that some prostaglandins will help to maintain an erection. So they could be very helpful. Of course it also helps to be near a desirable object - and maybe it helps to be in love.

POWER: You said that there is a relationship between beauty and essential fatty acids. Does this refer to skin that is beautiful? Beauty in general? The aging process? Or all of these?
ERASMUS: Well, if you look at it from its foundation, you cannot separate health, performance, and beauty. Because performance requires health, and beauty is really the external manifestation of healthy biochemical function. It sounds very unromantic, but that's how it is. And it's also manifested on the skin. Because the essential fats, besides improving cardiovascular health, energy levels, and brain function, are required for brain development, healthy glands and organs, and [they] help with weight loss. They are also anti-inflammatory and anti-autoimmune - which all together makes beautiful skin, if you get the right ratio and enough of them. We measure optimum intake by how the skin feels. When you get the optimum amount of essential fatty acids they form a barrier in the skin against the loss of moisture, and so they are nature's perfect moisturizer.

POWER: Can you use them topically on the skin?
ERASMUS: They're not used in external cosmetics because if you put them on the skin they'll go rancid. That's why you need to take them internally, and they will make the skin soft and velvety. The reason we use skin as our measure for optimum intake is because skin gets the essential fats last.

POWER: Do you know how much Omega 3's and 6's one should take, and how long one would need to take them before seeing a change in one's skin?
ERASMUS: To do our work we use a blend that is twice as rich in Omega-3's as Omega-6's. Usually adults need between two and three tablespoons a day. I use about 3 tablespoonfuls a day in the summer, and four in the winter, because during the fall when the weather turns people begin to notice their skin gets dry, and that's nature telling them they need more oil. Bodybuilders may need to take seven or eight to get the same results on their skin that I feel I get with three or four.

POWER: Is there anything like too much of a good oil?
ERASMUS: Too much? We have people take 50 percent of their calories from fats. That's a lot of fat. They lose weight on them, they lose their arthritic symptoms on them.
The Eskimos got up to 60 percent of their calories from fat, and they didn't have clogged arteries, get diabetes, cancer, or multiple sclerosis. Although their diet was much higher in fat [than the diets that were killing us], theirs was unprocessed and our was processed; theirs was very rich in essential-fat derivatives, whereas ours was a poor source of essential fats.

POWER: In other words, there is no limit to how much good fat you can take?
ERASMUS: Well, there is one limit: If you take more fat at any one time than your liver can process - because your liver has to process fats - then you will feel heavy or nauseated, and what that means is you need to spread it out over the day so you never give your liver more than it can handle. Some people can take a huge amount of fat and not have a problem with it, and some people can only take a little at a time. That's really the main symptom you might get.

POWER: You produce your own oil, Udo's Choice Perfected Oil Blend. Is this the best combination of oil on the market today?
ERASMUS: I'm the guy who pioneered the whole deal. I'm the guy who dug out the information. I had cancer to look forward to. I knew that cancer often involves fats, and I didn't know how, so I dug out the information. It took me six years of digging through the journals. That's a long time to spend researching something. And then I developed machinery for making oils with health in mind. Of all the people who are going in this direction, I'm the only one who has the education. I get a lot of feedback because I work with a lot of people. I try it on myself, my friends - and if that works, then I expand the circle.
The reason why we use skin to determine what's optimum is because your brain, your liver, your heart require the oils - and if they were deprived because the oil went to the skin first, then you would have serious health problems. But you can live with dry skin. It's not beautiful, but you can live with it. So nature's wisdom says skin gets it last. By the time your skin is soft and velvety, you also know that you have dealt your health issues, because the rest of your body has what it needs.

POWER: So you know that all your inside organs have enough fat?
ERASMUS: Right.

POWER: Some men and women suffer from water retention under the skin, usually puffiness under the eyes. Is there any way that this oil can remove it?
ERASMUS: Well, there are a couple of issues we are talking about here. One is kidney function. The essential fats are extremely important for kidney function, and if your kidney doesn't work you retain water. But that's more a bodywide thing, and again the Omega-3's do a better job here, but you've got to have enough Omega-6's not to become deficient. So don't just use flax oil for it. You really need more Omega-6. We use flax with some sunflower and sesame to improve the ratio. The other issue is involved with allergies or liver function. And if it involves allergies you need to make sure that foods are properly digested or you need to remove certain foods. I would rather improve digestion than remove foods. And that is a result of histamine and prostaglandin action in the body as a result of allergies.

POWER: How are you going to digest the food if you're allergic?
ERASMUS: What we do is give people the oil to improve gut integrity and prevent leaky gut that leads to food allergies. And then we give them enzymes to replace the enzymes destroyed when foods are cooked. And we give them particular enzyme mixtures that are very rich in proteases, because poorly digested protein causes most of the problems. When food is completely digested, there is virtually nothing left to be allergic to anymore. So that's why we would rather replace the enzymes, taking them a little closer to how it was in nature again, than to remove foods. Because we've seen people remove so many foods from their diet that the only thing they could eat was oatmeal, and oatmeal is not a balanced diet. So I would rather go in the direction of helping digestion than removing foods.

POWER: Can stretch marks be helped? Women often get stretch marks after birth. Men can get them when they lose weight, or pump up too much when bodybuilding. What about wrinkles? Is there any way to remove or reduce these two hazards of aging skin?
ERASMUS: For stretch marks I only preventative [measures]. Most of those people end up with a zinc deficiency, and then the collagen comes apart. That's what the stretch marks are from. So that's preventable. But I don't know of any reversal for it. Once you got 'em you got 'em. So if you don't think stretch marks are very beautiful, this is a very good reason to take the wise road of getting the nutrients you need before you have problems.
In terms of water under the skin, with bodybuilders who want to look shredded before their competitions - which means no fat under the skin so you can see all the muscle striations - we have consistently used oils rich in Omega-3's, and when properly balanced, they can attain [the] fat burn-off under the skin they want. This can be done with oils now. They used to do it with diuretics. Diuretics are very hard on kidney function, and they deprive you of potassium, which is also hard on cardiovascular function. The athletes are getting just as good results - probably better - with the proper use of oils.

POWER: Do the oils burn the fat or remove water under the skin?
ERASMUS: Burn the fat. Now while it could also be water - it would remove the water as well, provided the kidneys aren't doing their job of getting rid of excess water. So it could actually be both - but the oils do a good job on both.

POWER: Well, it could also be that Omega-3 is an estrogen blocker, and it is estrogen that gives you a lot of body fat under the skin.
ERASMUS: And wrinkles come from skin being dry. Those essential fats - if you get them in the right ratio, in the right amount, and the right kind - will remove some. I've seen people in their eighties with soft, velvety skin. They'll have some brown spots, but their skin is soft and velvety. The character lines, which are the deep wrinkles, I have not seen reversed. I mean, I don't know, I'm 56 - I don't have a whole lot of wrinkles. I will get those character lines. But the oil does a wonderful job if you get enough oil to keep the face from getting all the other wrinkles that come from dryness. And then the other [areas] where it works well [are] eczema, psoriasis, and acne. It's also very helpful on those conditions.

POWER: There are some degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis or other physical problems that, according to traditional medicine, don't show any serious solution right now. Is there anything you want to say about myasthenia gravis, for example, and other degenerative diseases?
ERASMUS: Well, there is research that shows that in places where essential fat intake is high, multiple sclerosis is very rare. So that's from one end. From the other end, people who get multiple sclerosis, if you look at their diets, they're usually very poor diets, lots of crackers and cheese, very few greens and very few fats...And then the third place to come from is that we have seen people with multiple sclerosis arrest the progression of the disease and improve their energy levels. In some cases, with lots of greens - because greens are really important there - even reverse it.
You know, wisdom is better than hind sight. It's better to head it off doing things right in the first place than to wait until you have the problem and try to reverse it. Prevention is always easier than reversal. The only people at this point in the general sense in this society who are taking the wise approach are actually the people who want to look good and be fit. The people who are interested in beauty and performance. Those are the people who are embracing the idea of good nutrition on a preventative basis. Whereas the rest of the population generally neglect themselves until something goes wrong, and then they try to look for some technology to fix it. So the kids are the wisest of the bunch in this area.

POWER: Do you have any opinion about people suffering from mental problems like obsessive behavior?
ERASMUS: There is some research on obsessive-compulsive disorder that [says] fats are important. Certainly in depression, [there is] good research and consistent feedback [that says] when people make the oil change we recommend, their mood is elevated and their depression is lifted. Hyperactivity responds, dyslexia responds, clumsiness responds, attention deficit responds... Also, in schizophrenia, there's less hallucination. People deal with stress better and feel calmer. Also intelligence improves, and there's research on that - I.Q. goes up by six to nine points.

POWER: Talk more about eating disorder and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Eating disorder is a big disease today, for women especially.
ERASMUS: Yes. There are a couple of things I know. The essential fats should be helpful. They're also helpful in Alzheimer's. But zinc is also important in eating disorders. I guess what I would say to those people [with eating disorders] is that you will never be perfect externally, even if you're very beautiful. Perfection is meant to be an inner experience. Go a little easier on yourself, maybe break a few rules, be a little bit rebellious - and try not to be perfect in other people's eyes.
I talked to a fourteen year old girl in Australia. I was at one of the conferences. And her mother said, "Would you tell my daughter what she needs to do?" - because she had an eating disorder. So I talked to her just about a few things, and finally I whispered in her ear, "You're far too beautiful to treat yourself this badly." And she started to cry. And that was the beginning of changing for her. And I had no idea that would happen.

POWER: What is your opinion about hormonal injection therapy? Is there any better way to go about it?
ERASMUS: Well, first of all, I would not get involved with hormone manipulation if I hadn't first put the natural program in place - making sure you get all your minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and essential fatty acids in optimum quantities for your needs. Food is number one. Food is primary health care, because the body is made out of food, and if you deal with that, just about everything will work. Your genetic material knows what to do if it's given the tools that it needs. I would not do hormone manipulation. The other thing is that foods are very safe.

POWER: Do not inject anything foreign before you try all your options?
ERASMUS: Right. Hormones are very powerful - much more powerful than nutrients, so they have to be used with a much greater degree of caution. There are many stories about bodybuilders that were so intent on getting huge that have had serious health problems. I've talked to some of them; I do consultations with them sometimes. So I would caution people about hormones simply because they are so powerful and they act in such tiny doses that you really need to know what you are doing. I would not use them unless the nutritional program had been put in place; you were at an age where you had a particular glandular problem that had been measured; and you were really clear [on what you were doing].
Thyroid hormone will help in some cases like that; testosterone or estrogen or progesterone might help. Growth hormone, I would have some serious problems with because it's a protein, and people become allergic to it. I would maybe use D.H.E.A., but only if there was a measured deficiency, and the person was over 50. But certainly not for people who are young.

END OF PART II