William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 92

Healthcare Mythbusters

Here’s an excerpt from my new book, Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor. Here, I bust many commonly-held myths about healthcare that can impair your ability to take back your life and health, undoctored. Get beyond these myths and you are on your way to embracing the strategies I discuss in the book that provide spectacular health, slenderness, and high levels of day-to-day functioning.

 

Healthcare Mythbusters

While not as dramatic as a TV Mythbusters episode blasting a school bus into the air with a jet engine, we can still bust a few widely held myths surrounding modern medical care. Busting such widely-held perceptions, I believe, will help you get past any reluctance or fear that the medical system is something holy and exalted that cannot be bested by everyday people.

Myth #1: Healthcare is about healing.

That may have been true many years ago, and may still be alive in hospital advertising slogans. But the ethic of healing is largely lost from modern healthcare, now subverted into the cause of increased fees and revenues, expansion of healthcare systems, the growing dominance of the pharmaceutical industry, and other factors, none of which place healing first. Healthcare is no more about healing than gambling on horseraces is about preparing for retirement. In the doctor’s mind, handing you a prescription for insulin may be his version of “healing,” but you know better—there is no healing that can come from handing out pharmaeutical Band-Aids while ignoring the causes of a health problem. Don’t bet on horses to grow your retirement account, don’t count on doctors for healing.

Myth #2: Doctors are all-knowing.

Doctors can indeed know a lot about a limited menu of issues, but any individual doctor can only master so much information. This is especially true today, as the amount of health information has grown far beyond the capacity of any single human being. Given the rapid doubling rate of medical information, the education your doctor received in medical school is obsolete by the time he/she finishes internship, the training received in internship is obsolete by the time he/she completes residency, with the cycle continuing and accelerating every year. If you ever want to test the limits of a doctor’s knowledge, ask an orthopedist about the bone health benefits of vitamin K2, or ask an oncologist about the emerging science behind ketogenic diets and tumor shrinkage, or ask a gastroenterologist about the importance of prebiotic fibers for healthy bowel flora. You will, 99% of the time, encounter complete ignorance or indifference, or your question will be dismissed as unimportant, irrelevant, or a waste of time, even though each of these questions relate to crucial aspects of health in each of their respective specialties, with the science already available to back it up.

The medical model of one doctor, one answer is woefully outdated. You will see, however, that, as we fold in the expanding wisdom of the “crowd” collected via new technology, we can harness the information that comes to us from widely disparate sources at faster and faster rates. But it is unlikely to be delivered to you through your doctor.

Myth #3: Healthcare costs are high because high quality costs money.

You will be learning later on in Undoctored that, because the healthcare system operates with misguided motivations and imperfect methods, the more healthcare a population receives, the less healthy they become—actually, the more deaths experienced, death being the ultimate example of poor health. Yet the healthcare system is designed to be increasingly costly—it is expensive because it is designed to be that way.

As the Undoctored experience unfolds in this book, you are going to find that genuine health is inexpensive and within the reach of nearly everyone—because you take charge of your health without the need for layer upon layer of skyrocketing fees, revenues, and profits. The potential cost savings are breathtaking because, if you are healthy, you don’t need the healthcare system.

Myth #4: It takes years of education and training to deal with health issues.

This used to be true . . . until the Information Age came upon us and broke all the rules. We used to think that a shelf packed with encyclopedias was the perfect example of collective human wisdom; now, it is largely viewed as a relic of a time gone by, a static and unchanging behemoth in a world of rapid change and expanding knowledge. Though unnecessarily flattering, your doctor is, in many ways, the Encylopedia Britannica of health: largely static, trying to manage an unwieldy amount of information, struggling to keep up with emerging information that changes every week. It’s not entirely your doctor’s fault; it is part of the disruptive Information Age.

We are therefore not going to try and memorize the contents of medical textbooks. We will take advantage of the new health tools coming our way, handily exceeding the knowledge of any one doctor.

Myth #5: Hospitals are havens of caring and healing, operated by people looking out for your health and safety.

It’s the 21st century and healthcare is a business. If you donate money to a hospital, it would be like donating money to Walmart: you’d be donating to a thriving business that does not need your money, though your contribution helps defray the cost of paying the CEO his multi-million dollar annual salary and perks. (With rare exceptions: there are a few hospitals that do indeed operate as charitable operations, but they are uncommon.) And, contrary to the claims of high-paid hospital CEOs, salary has no relationship to quality of care (Joynt 2014). Even though most hospitals enjoy “non-profit” tax status, it does not mean that well-positioned insiders cannot profit handsomely.

The system is rigged for profit. This is why it is so difficult to understand the mind-numbing process of hospital billing, why hospitals spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, why your orthopedist drives a Maserati with “Bone MD” on his license plate. Last I checked, these are not the emblems of charitable operations.

Get with the times. You are not trying to opt out of something akin to your local church. You are trying to avoid being pulled into the grips of an aggressive, profit-seeking system that views you as an opportunity to generate revenue, even willing to bend the rules to do so, exposing you to the dangers of modern healthcare: errors, infection by resistant bacteria, drug overprescription, deplorable food.

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Apple Pie Spice Muffins

These muffins taste like a delicious slice of apple pie but have only 6.5 grams net carbs per serving since there are no wheat or other grain flours nor sugar, only benign healthy ingredients, including Virtue Sweetener.

Makes 6

Muffins:

4 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons Virtue Sweetener (or other sweetener equivalent to 1/2 cup sugar)

2 eggs, separated

1 cup almond flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 medium apple, cored and finely chopped

Topping:

1/2 cup almond flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 tablespoon Virtue Sweetener (or other sweetener equivalent to 4 tablespoons sugar)

3 tablespoons butter, cold

Preheat oven to 350º F. Place muffin liners in 6 wells of a 12-muffin baking pan.

In large bowl, combine butter and sweetener and mix.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then add egg yolks at low-speed, followed by the butter/sweetener mixture. Mix in almond flour followed by cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and apples.

Make topping by combining almond flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sweetener in small bowl, mix together. Add butter and work with fingers until mixed and a crumbly texture is obtained.

Divide muffin batter into 6 muffin liners, then spread topping over each. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick withdraws dry.

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Horse Urine… Really?

An excerpt from my new book Undoctored.

This one little tale about hormonal health of human females, pregnant horses, and drug patents paints a microcosm of the bigger healthcare picture. It is an example of how when money becomes the primary goal, health may not be served.

For years, physicians prescribed estrogen hormone replacement for women experiencing menopause, believing that drugs like Premarin, manufactured by harvesting estrogens from the urine of pregnant horses, prevented osteoporosis, improved cholesterol values, and reduced cardiovascular risk, since preliminary epidemiological studies, not real clinical studies of proper design, had suggested such benefits. Despite the lack of evidence, Wyeth-Ayerst (now part of Pfizer) spent many millions of dollars advertising Premarin and promoted its use to doctors, causing it to be the number-one most widely prescribed drug for years.

After several decades of being accepted as a routine prescription, regarded as no worse than aspirin for a headache, the whole thing fell apart in 2002 with the publication of higher-quality (randomized, controlled) studies, such as the 16,000-participant Women’s Health Initiative, demonstrating that horse estrogens increased risk for heart attack, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, and endometrial cancer.7 Though still available, Premarin has fallen from its perch as the most widely prescribed medication.

There’s more to this story: Premarin is nonhuman, a mixture of various estrogens sourced from the urine of pregnant mares (horses), very different from their human counterparts. (No surprise: Pick a species—frog, chipmunk, horse—and female estrogens and other hormones are going to differ from that of humans. Menstrual cycles, periods of fertility, and birthing methods all vary among frogs, chipmunks, horses, and other species, so it should come as no shock that their hormones also differ.) While human females produce estrogens such as estradiol, estrone, and estriol, horses express equalin, equalinin, estradiene, and a number of other estrogens not found in any human. These horse estrogens differ in structure and effect from human estrogens. The effects of these nonhuman estrogens, when administered to humans, were not fully understood during Premarin’s heyday and remain incompletely understood even today.

Why administer such a hodgepodge of nonhuman, cross-species hormones with uncertain effects in the first place? And why chance the uncertainties of nonhuman estrogens when human estrogens—hormones identical to human estradiol, estrone, and estriol—are available?

Were there studies demonstrating that horse urine–sourced estrogens were superior to human estrogens?

There are no studies demonstrating superiority of horse estrogens over human estrogens. The reasons for resorting to this nonhuman source was simple: patent protection. Patents play a huge role in the pharmaceutical industry. If hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by a drug company to develop a potential drug, the company needs to make sure its intellectual property is protected and a competitor can’t just copy it and wipe out any hope of exclusivity. One of the unique estrogens in Premarin, delta 8,9-dehydroestrone sulfate—not naturally found in any human female—is patent-protected and played a big role in protecting this drug franchise. Delta 8,9-dehydroestrone sulfate was absent from generic versions manufactured by several competitors, and Wyeth argued that it was essential to the mix. The lack of delta 8,9-dehydroestrone sulfate was declared by the FDA to be grounds for nonapproval of generic “equivalents” for many years. Horse urine and the estrogens it contains were also plentiful (think about the phrase “pee like a racehorse”), making it cheaper to extract large quantities from horse urine than from comparatively pee-challenged pregnant female humans. Even today, with wide availability of human estrogens at low cost, the majority of doctors have no idea that there are alternatives to horse urine estrogens.

Nobody fights for entities that are not patentable. Natural human estrogens are available but nonpatentable, since they have been part of the informational public domain for many years. Therefore, no drug company wants to touch them unless some manipulation, such as a novel method of administration or a biochemical modification, is exploitable. While millions of women were exposed to the uncertainties of nonhuman hormones, human hormones were available but rarely prescribed. In addition to the disservice committed to all those women, all the money spent on research—over 3,000 studies in total—to validate the use of nonhuman hormones (but not directed toward better understanding the use of human hormones) created an informational void that persists even today. At the very least, the use of human hormones avoids all the uncertainties of administering nonhuman estrogens like equalinin and delta 8,9- dehydroestrone sulfate.

Trying to ride this wild bucking bronco of nonhuman horse estrogens highlights the misguided motivations of health care that lead to pursuit of patent protection and maximizing profit, even when safer, more logical, cheaper solutions are available.

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Chocolate Mousse

Here’s a simple, creamy smooth recipe for Chocolate Mousse. Because there is no added sugar in this recipe, the end result has none of the problems of a conventionally prepared mousse: ultra low-carb with 2 grams net carbs per serving, no sugar, and plenty of healthy fat. It provides the added benefits of cocoa flavonoids, such as reductions in blood pressure and cardiovascular risk, with none of the problems of milk chocolate and other junk forms of chocolate.

As written, this version is dairy-free. Substitute heavy cream for coconut milk if you include dairy in your diet. You can also top the mousse with whipped cream. I went heavy on the eggs to generate a smooth mouthfeel and light texture. (Use pasteurized eggs if you have reason to believe that salmonella exposure may be an issue in your area.)

Makes 4 servings

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate

1/4 cup Virtue Sweetener (or natural sweetener equivalent to 1 cup sugar)

4 tablespoons canned coconut milk

4 eggs, separated

In medium bowl, combine chocolate, sweetener, and coconut milk. In double-boiler setup or in microwave, melt chocolate and stir ingredients. If using microwave, heat in 20-25 second increments until melted, stirring between each heating. Mixture should be heated until all solids are melted and consistency is that of a thick liquid.

Whip eggs whites until stiff, then fold in yolks at low-speed. Pour in chocolate mixture slowly, also at low-speed, and mix until thoroughly combined.

Distribute mousse into 4 glasses or other containers. Refrigerate if not serving immediately.

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I’ll let you in on an industry secret

The unspoken secret is that healthcare providers prefer treatment over prevention, expensive over inexpensive, patent-protectable over non-patent-protectable, billable procedure over nonbillable procedure, BMW over Toyota Prius.

Spiraling healthcare costs are the expected result because greater revenues are built into the basic principles that drive the system. The endless year-over-year increase in your health insurance premiums should therefore come as no surprise because this system is designed to take more and more of your money.

Health care is a business, a big business (the biggest business of all in the United States), a business that seeks to continually grow its revenues and profits. With 1 in 10 Americans employed in the gargantuan healthcare industry, as much as 20 percent of workers in some metropolitan areas, health care also represents a huge wealth transfer from those not in health care to those in health care (many of them multinational corporations based outside the United States). It adds up to the largest wealth transfer in the history of mankind.

You can stop blaming the burgeoning price of the educational system or the skyrocketing costs of military campaigns worldwide for increasing burdens on consumers—it’s what is being passed off to us as health care.

The push to grow health care even bigger is all around us. Direct-to-consumer drug advertising is designed to get you to ask your doctor whether you should take a drug, even if it costs tens of thousands of dollars per year and comes with the risk of liver failure and suicide. There is a continual push to “medicalize” human life: Shyness is now “social anxiety disorder” to justify “treatment” with antidepressant medication; binging in the middle of the night is now “sleep-related eating disorder” to justify treatment with seizure medication and antidepressants; obesity, declared a disease by the FDA, justifies insurance payment for gastric bypass and lap-band. Don’t be surprised if, sometime soon, bad dreams, between-meal hunger, and excessive love of your cat are labeled “diseases” warranting treatment.

The spotlight shines on new drugs and medical technologies. Hospital ads boast about the newest robotic surgery and high-tech imaging procedures. It all seems wonderful—until you stop to realize that these are the technologies created to deal with the results of neglected health, the alchemy of converting neglect into revenue. Neglect the real causes of osteoporosis, for example, and you are going to require an expensive course of prescription drugs or a new hip prosthesis. Neglect the real causes of diabetes, and you are going to need diabetes drugs, insulin, cataract and retinal surgery, coronary bypass, an implantable defibrillator, and dialysis. Neglect the real causes of autoimmune conditions, and you are going to need oral drugs to suppress the immune response, injectable biological agents, biopsies, and organ transplants. Neglect the real causes of obesity, and you will need drugs for weight loss, drugs to treat high blood sugar and high blood pressure, a CPAP device for sleep apnea, gastric bypass or lap-band for weight loss, and knee and hip surgery and prostheses to deal with weight-bearing destruction of joints.

In other words, neglect the cause, profit from the treatment. It is the unspoken but defining mantra of modern health care. Health is not part of the equation.

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Sweet Revenge

Sweet Revenge 

We have learned in the last few months that nearly 5 decades of research on heath and nutrition were shaped and directed by the sugar industry. We now understand that fat was wrongly demonized for commercial gain and that sugar consumption–the real cause underlying the surge in type 2 diabetes, weight gain/obesity, heart disease, dementia, and some forms of cancer–was essentially allowed to balloon in the American diet. You can read about this on your own here:

From the New York Times

From the Journal of the American Medical Association

It is part of our mission to make the natural sweeteners in Virtue Sweetener available so that you and your family can get “sweet revenge” by recreating favorites such as cookies, muffins, pies, and cakes without the dangers of sugar exposure. So add Virtue to your desserts and enjoy delicious treats without exposing you and your children to sugar!

And please help let others know about this nefarious nutritional duping of America by sharing the links above.

Help Us Spread the Word

You can help us by asking your local grocery stores, specialty food shops, or other retailers to stock Virtue Sweetener. This will not only help us provide you with a more cost effective way to purchase your own supply, but you will be doing your part in helping get Americans off their addiction to sugar.

So please tell your local grocer about Virtue and the great taste of monk fruit extract. You can ask your local retailer to contact Gary from Wheat-Free Market directly at info@wheatfreemarket.com or (973) 589-9200.

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What do you get for your money?

Shouldn’t the most expensive healthcare in the world also buy you the greatest health in the world?

If you pay $600-$1500 per month for a high-deductible health insurance policy for your family, does that mean that you and your family will enjoy better health? Because Americans spend nearly $10,000 per person per year on healthcare—-more than any other country on the planet, double the spending of the U.K., Canada, and Australia-—does this mean that Americans pay more and thereby enjoy better health? Less diabetes, less heart disease, less obesity, fewer cases of autoimmune disease, less arthritis, etc.?

Americans pay more for health but also are among the unhealthiest compared to other developed nations. According to an in-depth analysis from The Commonwealth Fund, the health of Americans compares poorly with other wealthy nations with more chronic disease, reliance on prescription medications, hospital procedures, and shorter lifespans. Sure, we do better than third-world countries, but we are at the bottom of the heap compared to other prosperous Western countries.

If we pay the most, why aren’t we the healthiest? Where is all this money going?

The money goes into the pockets of healthcare insiders, mostly hospital systems, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical device industry. Here, for instance, also from The Commonwealth Fund, is how Americans compare in the number of prescription drugs taken:

Americans are not only paying the most, we are the most exploited by the healthcare system. We most definitely do not have the greatest health from the process. We pay a lot of money for a system that takes advantage of us, squeezing us through drugs and procedures for the gain of healthcare insiders, not to provide better health. Do you think that the billions of dollars spent on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, for instance, make us healthier? Of course it does not—but you, in effect, pay for that advertising and the excess dollars spent on the drugs through your healthcare spending.

Lost in the healthcare scuffle is the fact that health is actually quite easy to attain without drugs, without procedures, without the doctor or the healthcare system. If the healthcare system is predatory, exploitative, and hell-bent on just building its own profits, then why even participate? Because your doctor says so? Because the glitzy TV ads and billboards say you should consider gastric bypass, a heart ablation procedure, or electrophysiologic procedure? You can achieve health virtually without cost. Health, like freedom of speech, should be free. But don’t count on your doctor or the healthcare system to tell you that because there’s no pot of gold in helping you and your family become healthy. It’s a lot more profitable treating a family of obese, diabetic, hypertensive, people with acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, joint pain, depression, and one or more autoimmune diseases than it is having a family enjoying ideal health and slenderness.

This is why I say that the enemy of the healthcare system is not sickness–it’s healthy people. If you are healthy, you are worthless to the profit-seeking healthcare system. The aim of the Undoctored book and its message is to help you be worthless to the healthcare system because you become healthy, slender, and function at a high level despite not taking a statin drug, three blood pressure drugs, an acid reflux drug, an IV drug for autoimmune disease, or submit to unnecessary procedures. It is not just possible, but likely, easy, safe, effective, and costs next to nothing.

Over time, one of my goals is to craft a process in which those of us who are truly healthy and not dependent on the perverse practices of the healthcare system can opt out—only deal with healthcare practitioners who act as our advocates for health, opt out of conventional healthcare insurance, not be victimized by predatory hospital systems. It’s a big, ambitious, long-term goal, but something that I believe we must do in order to put a stop to this awful crime against Americans called modern healthcare.

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There’s no health in healthcare

Millions of people are prescribed unnecessary medications, given dietary recommendations crafted by big business, and even undergo unnecessary procedures, all recommended by healthcare practitioners solely to feed revenue-hungry healthcare systems. Healthcare is an industry, the largest industry of all in the U.S. And it has nothing to do with helping make you healthy. Healthcare is a system created to maximize revenues for healthcare insiders.

More about this here.

Ironically, the information that could empower you (and help restore health and reverse hundreds of health conditions) is already available.

But you are unlikely to hear this from your doctor. This is why the Undoctored program was created. Start by pre-ordering, then reading, the Undoctored book.

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The next Wheat Belly Detox Challenge starts Wednesday, April 19th!

The next Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox Challenge is scheduled to start Wednesday, April 19th!

Through my New York Times bestseller, Wheat Belly, millions of people learned how to reverse years of chronic health problems by removing wheat from their daily diets. Now, I have created an easy and accessible 10-Day Detox Program.

The Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox supplies you with carefully designed meal plans and delicious recipes to fully eliminate wheat and related grains in the shortest time possible. Perfect for those who may have fallen off the wagon or for newcomers who need a jump-start for weight loss, this new addition to the Wheat Belly phenomenon guides you through the complete 10-Day Detox experience.

In addition to the brand-new quick-start program, I’ll teach you:

How to recognize and reduce wheat-withdrawal symptoms,
How to avoid common landmines that can sabotage success
How to use nutritional supplements to further advance weight loss and health benefits

The Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox also includes:

Inspiring testimonials from people who have completed the program (and have now made grain-free eating a way of life)

Exciting new recipes to help get your entire family on board

To join the Detox Challenge:

Step 1

Get the book. And read it (at least the first 5 chapters). Detox Challenge participants should be informed and active in order to get the most out of the challenge and private Facebook group.

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1JqzMea

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/wheatbelly10daygraindetox-bn

Indiebound: http://bit.ly/1KwcFTQ

Or grab the course from Rodale.

https://www.rodaleu.com/courses/wheat-belly-10-day-grain-detox

(The PLATINUM level INCLUDES the book.)

Using the code DETOX saves you $20+ when you checkout.

Step 2

Come join the Private Facebook Group.

http://bit.ly/WheatBelly-PrivateFBGroup

Step 3

Head back to the Private Facebook Group starting Tuesday, April 18th (the day before the official start of the Challenge) and onwards for tips, videos, and discussions to help you get through your detox and reprogram your body for rapid weight loss and health. Dr. Davis will be posting video instructions and answers to your questions.

Need support? Lapsed and want to get back on board? Join the thousands of people who are losing weight and regaining health by following the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox. Join us if you desire support through the sometimes unpleasant process of wheat/grain detoxification and withdrawal or if you are among those who previously followed the program but lapsed, and now want to get back on board as confidently as possible—this Detox Challenge was made for you.

Yours in grainless health,

Dr. William Davis

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How much omega-6 fatty acids do you really need?

You don’t want omega-6 overload, but you also don’t want omega-6 deficiency. The ideal omega-6:omega-3 index is 2:1 or less. How do you achieve the right balance? It is much more simple than you might think.

To ensure that you are consuming the correct amount of omega-6 vs. omega-3, choose fats such as lard and tallow (provided they are not hydrogenated, if store-bought), coconut oil, palm oil (look for sustainably produced brands), extra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, cocoa butter, and organic butter and ghee. Avoid corn, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, rice bran, grapeseed, canola, peanut, soybean, and “vegetable” oils. Also avoid any oil that is hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, as well as margarine. Linolenic acid–rich oils, such as flaxseed and walnut, are somewhere in between—use them, but don’t rely on them excessively (as they also contain substantial omega-6 oils).

Foods containing plentiful corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil, and other seed oils send omega-6 (linoleic acid) intake ten- or twentyfold higher than it should be. Such high intakes of omega-6 fatty acids contribute to inflammation, depression, heart disease risk, and developmental defects in children, particularly if combined with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, and linolenic acid—a common situation. Intake of such oils has increased so much that the linoleic acid content of fat cells has tripled.

Avoiding processed seed oils helps bring omega-6 intake down while you restore omega-3 fatty acids with fish consumption and fish oil supplements and include some linolenic acid–rich foods, such as walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseed, and pasture-fed meats. Unfortunately, some people have interpreted this advice to mean absolute avoidance of omega-6 fatty acids—but that is flat wrong. In fact, if you were to engage in complete avoidance of omega-6 fatty acids, you would get ill and eventually die. This is because omega-6 fatty acids are essential (the human body cannot make omega-6 fatty acids). Lack of omega-6 leads to skin rashes, impaired immunity, and impaired growth in children. So it is foolhardy to avoid all omega-6 fatty acids.

You don’t want omega-6 overload, but you also don’t want omega-6 deficiency. Once omega-6-heavy seed oils are avoided, modest consumption of the seeds themselves, such as sunflower or pumpkin; walnuts and other nuts; chia seeds; flaxseed; and meats provides a healthy intake of omega-6 fatty acids while not tilting the scales toward overload (just as humans have done it all along). Consume no grains and no processed seed oils while eating whole foods like nuts, meats, and vegetables and you do not have to count omega-6 fat grams or any other measure, as it simply takes care of itself.

After following this advice for a period of, say, 60 days, if you are not confident that you are maintaining a healthy balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, you can measure your own omega-6:omega-3 index with a finger-stick blood test that you can do yourself at home, such as the one by OmegaQuant (omegaquant .com/omega-3-index/). Remember an ideal omega-6:omega-3 index is 2:1 or less.

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