IMPORTANT UPDATE: CHANGE TO OMEGAS PRODUCT IN GLUTEN PROTOCOL

IMPORTANT UPDATE: HIGHER NATURE ESSENTIAL OMEGAS 3679 CHANGE.

As you can see on the Gluten Healing page, I have included a balanced essential fatty acids product as part of the core protocol:

Core TGF Gluten Protocol:

These are the top three core products I use in the grain and dairy free version. The rest of the protocol is a kind of ‘pick & mix’ where you choose what products you need as add-ons, depending on what’s going on in your particular case. Please make sure you read the whole Step 3 section in the Gluten Plan for much more about these products, dosages etc and others that you could substitute, plus products for specific issues as below. And always work with your health practitioner!

• Twinlabs Allergy Multi 

• Higher Nature Complete Omegas 3:6:7:9 

• Kirkman Pro-Bio Gold Hypoallergenic 

However, eagle-eyed K recently let us know that ‘corn’ had dropped off the list of freefroms on the Higher Nature Omegas product. It is a staple of the Gluten/Barrier Rx because of the need for a balance of omega oils. I checked with Higher Nature and they changed supplier and can no longer guarantee it is corn free. They said:

“Our Technical Department informs me that we changed manufacturer in October 2013 and the new product contains a tiny amount of citric acid which is used as a processing aid. We have not listed the citric acid in the ingredient list as it is a processing aid. However, as citric acid is usually produced from fermentation of corn, we have removed corn from the DNC, in case there are extremely corn sensitive customers.

To put everything into perspective, the amount of citric acid present in the finished product is less than 0.0007mg per capsule. This is 0.7micrograms of citric acid per capsule. Citric acid is sourced from fermentation of corn and being extremely cautious we removed corn form the DNC. However, no corn residue should be present in any case in the citric acid and the amount of citric acid potentially present in the product is tiny, trace level.”

Of course, I put our TGF case about trace amounts as per. I do respect them though for taking a stance on it on their label because most other companies wouldn’t have bothered. I have asked that they make practitioners better aware of formulation changes so we don’t have to stumble onto these changes.

So, the quest to find an alternative began. This was far from easy as most fatty acid products are either omega 6 or 3 or are plant-based rather than including fish oil. Why is this important? Because most TGFs suffer with malabsorption issues and are probably not very efficient at converting plant based fatty acids eg. linseed into actual EFA and DHA. You can take lipase enzymes, of course, and other stuff to help enable that process but most TGFs can’t tolerate enzymes either. Result: we have to find a fish oil source so we don’t have to do the conversion ourselves.

Turns out the Higher Nature product was a very unusual goodie for us which is, of course, why I chose it in the first place. We could have taken up to four different products to match the original Higher Nature one ie. an omega 6/GLA product plus a fish oil product, then adding an omega 7 sea buckthorn and perhaps an omega 9 oleic acid product, but I have tried my best to come up with a single product for ease. It doesn’t actually exist, or if it does, I haven’t found it yet. You would think finding a balanced fatty acid product which is fish and plant based would be easy. It isn’t; I was really surprised.

In the end, I discounted around 30 products and checked around fourteen more fully and all but one fell at the final TGF hurdles. The best I have come across are from Biotics, which do not include the omegas 7 or 9 but do have enough of the 3 and 6 at least in decent, good form amounts.

The best match, fatty acid and actually value wise, is Biotics EFA-Sirt Supreme Capsules. You need to take 4 a day to match the fish oil levels of the HN product. It gives you a lot more GLA than the previous product. 4 caps a day would give you:

600mg EPA (HN was 680mg)

400mg DHA (HN was 480mg)

500mg GLA (HN was 180mg)

It comes in 180 capsules so is quite an expensive product to buy initially but it worked out that at 4 a day, a pot would last you 45 days and was actually cheaper per day than almost all of the others I considered. This product contains a small amount of soy tocopherols as an antioxidant note. The ascorbyl palmitate is synthetic not plant-based and the rosemary extract is acetone, not grain alcohol. Everything else also checked out TGF safe. (Not easy this, is it?!)

I will continue to try and find a soy tocopherol free one but they are even rarer as you have to have some kind of antioxidant to stop the fatty acids going rancid. that is either citric acid or soy based usually.

You can get the Biotics EFA Sirt Supreme via ND as usual – and use your 10% discount code, of course. You can also get it direct via NutriLink – please use my name Micki Rose as your practitioner when ordering. NutriLink can sometimes do samples too so worth asking. It does actually help me too if you order via Nutri Link sometimes because I ask them all manner of awkward questions and find all suppliers are more helpful when some sales are coming their way, if you know what I mean!

Ok, so I hope that all makes sense and helps you. Sorry we have had to change it but well done to K for spotting it so we could. Incidentally, this kind of update is included for free on the Barrier/Gluten Planners Facebook Group, by the way, for people who have purchased that. The reason I am including it here is because it is part of the core gluten healing protocol I give on this website for you so you need to know. I will now go off and change the Gluten Plan text too. I do wonder sometimes if manufacturers truly understand what a simple formulation change to a product means for people like us!