Starflower Oil Benefits - Highest GLA Content In The World

Starflower oil benefits the body greatly by having the highest concentration of GLA on Earth. More commonly referred to as borage oil, starflower oil has long been used by man, both for its medicinal properties and for its culinary uses. But let's get back to GLA. What is it anyway? GLA stands for Gamma Linolenic Acid, which is a part of the Omega 6 essential fatty acid family. Most people have now grown accustomed to hearing about Omega 3s and fish oil, but rarely do you hear anything about Omega 6s or 9s. So what is GLA anyway, and why is it important to me?

The reason for this revolves around why the body needs Omega fatty acids to begin with. Whether they're Omega 3s, 6s, or 9s, all Omega essential fatty acids have important and specific functions within the body. When Omega fatty acids are eaten and digested, the body begins converting them into more complex chemicals, using multi-step processes to eventually end up with compounds known as prostaglandins. Prostaglandins are similar to hormones, often being called hormone-like, and they help the body to regulate a wide variety of different functions. The standard diet usually has quite enough linoleic acid in it, which is also in the Omega 6 family, and actually gets converted into GLA by the body. The body can many times experience some problems with this part of the conversion, and can develop a deficiency in GLA even when there is an adequate supply of the precursor compound linoleic acid in their diet.

This is why starflower oil benefits the body so greatly. By eating GLA directly, the body is able to skip the initial conversion process that's required to create gamma linolenic acid from linoleic acid, and instead can use its GLA to convert into prostaglandins. A variety of studies have been performed seeking to determine what kind of a role GLA has in skin conditions, especially inflammatory conditions like eczema and psoriasis. It seems to be that when someone is suffering from those kinds of skin conditions that there is a correlative lack in GLA in their body as well. The body uses an enzyme to convert linoleic acid into GLA, and sometimes this enzyme can be either deficient or malfunctioning and can cause the body not to have enough GLA. So when a person suffering from certain skin conditions ingests GLA, they've shown improvements in many cases.

Almost all of the different Omega fatty acids seems to show some kind of positive benefits to the skin. Persons suffering from conditions such as psoriasis and eczema have shown improvements by taking Omega essential fatty acids. The main factor seems to be the prostaglandins that the body forms from its supply of Omega essential fatty acids. Prostaglandins can easily become deficient in persons, but are vital and assist in the regulation of healthy and proper skin functions. Not only is that true, but Omega essential fatty acids actually comprise the cell membrane of each cell in the human body, and some studies indicate that a diet with an improper ratio of the different Omega fatty acids can actually hinder the cellular membrane of the body's cells and can cause the cells to have poor nutritional uptake, which can often manifest in skin symptoms. So if you're someone who isn't sure if you have enough Omega essential fatty acids in your diet, then you really might want to take a closer look at starflower oil and possible a full spectrum Omega fatty acid supplement. There are many ways of getting more Omega fatty acids into your diet, this being only one. But for its content of GLA, starflower oil is unmatched and has many other great benefits as well