Raena Morgan: We’re visiting with Dr. Jorn Dyerberg, and he is a pioneer in the research
of Omega 3s. Dr. Dyerberg, could you tell us what it was about the Omega
3s and the Eskimos that brought this research to bear?
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: To be honest, it was a coincidence. We were, as I just said, visiting—
exploring the way of living of Eskimos to try to find out how come that
they, in spite of a high fat diet from seal and seal blubber, had a low
number of coronary heart attacks. We collected blood samples from them,
brought them back to Denmark and analyzed them for cholesterol and
blood lipids and found they had a fair and reasonable low level of blood
cholesterol, but not enough to explain how come that they had maybe one
10th of the number of coronaries compared to Danes and to Americans.
And, we had those precious samples; we had 130 samples, and we said no
one will ever get up there to remote areas and hunters and Inuit Eskimos
and collect blood samples in fasting states, so we better do whatever…
analyzing we could do. And, [in] the department that was headed by Dr.
Bang—he is passed away now—we had an old gas chromatograph.
Raena Morgan: Gas chromatograph?
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: That’s a technical term for an inlitigun machine that can analyze fatty
acids. We said we better do fatty acids because—and they will print it in
some journal and then someone will know in years to come that the fatty
acid pattern in the Eskimos was that—because we had those precious
samples. So, we did fatty acid analysis. And, while studying the tracing of
the fatty acid coming up from that machinery we found some new peaks
that were never seen before. We didn’t know what they were. I, as a young
researcher, had to do some digging down and I went to America and visit
Dr. Ralph Holman in Minnesota. He was the expert at that time on fatty
acids. He kindly invited me to his lab and he said, “Jorn, I guess you have
found two Omega 3 fatty acids.” And, I said, number 3, what’s that? He
said, “That’s fatty acids with the double bonds in position 3 from the one
end of the molecule and they are called Eicosapentaenoic acid and
Docahexaenoic acid.” And, I remember myself going outside his office
and saying, Eicosapentaenoic—and I learned these two new names—that
was in ’72 or something.
Raena Morgan: So, that was real new.
Dr. Jorn Dyerberg: That was new things. Nobody had dug into these before, and I got some
samples to identify, and I went back home and then we found out—yes,
these were the peaks that we found in the Eskimo blood like EPA and
DHA—two long chained Omega 3 fatty acids. Then, at the same time, in
the early mid 70s, new research came up from Sweden and Britain telling
us from another fatty acid, arichidonic acid, which is Omega 6—I’m sorry,
this is a bit complicated but that’s how life is—it is complicated. From this
fatty acid could be made prostaglandins which influences blood
coagulation—blood clotting—coronary heart disease. Suddenly we said to
ourselves, how…could it be so from our Eskimo fatty acids [that] there
could be another series of prostaglandins that could influence blood
clotting in another way so it didn’t promote blood clotting but…acted
against blood clotting, and that could be maybe one of the reasons [for] the
Eskimo lower coronaries. And, we went down into that in biochemistry
and went to England. I did some research with Sir John Vane, who later on
got the Nobel Prize for his research in arichidonic acids. We found out
that, yes, from EPA could be made new prostaglandins that did not
promote blood clotting to the extent that the prostaglandins from
arichidonic acid. And, the truth of the fact the Eskimos ate a lot of these
EPAs/DHAs, we did our tours up there…and collected their food and
analyzed the food from seals and fish—fatty fish—and found out that—
yes, EPA and DHA is in fatty fish. We found out that that could be one of
the reasons [for] their lower coronaries. From that moment—we published
that in 1976—and from that moment Omega 3s went into the medical
society.
Raena Morgan: Well, very good Dr. Dyerberg. We’ll come back and we’ll talk some more
about this exciting subject.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services