Question: Can you give any suggestions for increasing delta-6 desaturase activity?

There's a bunch of nutrients involved in that, so many that you basically just need to do a comprehensive nutritional screening for whether something is missing there. You might just have low activity by genetics. It's probably not worth solving that problem.

The big governor though is if you have if you have insulin resistance or you have low insulin levels from chronic carbohydrate restriction, that might increase it. But you also look at your inflammation because you might have some of the higher fatty acids being depleted from inflammation or oxidative stress. I mean, more nutrient-dense diet across the board, more carbohydrate, if that doesn't do it, then just maybe take a supplement or increase the liver and egg yolks to the point where the arachidonic acid is normal. Measure your CRP. If that's high, address inflammation.

In the Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet, I have a big section on oxidative stress. I go through that testing. A starting point might be Genova's Oxidative Stress 2.0 blood panel. But if inflammation and oxidative stress are the things, work on those. If those aren't issues, then more nutrient density across the board, fix any nutrient deficiencies you find, increase carbohydrate if you're on low-carb. If none of those things work, then just increase your arachidonic acid level in your diet.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/03/08/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-23-2019

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Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the mitochondria test Mitome.