Borage Wildflowers - Best Source of GLA

If you've ever visited an herb garden, you've probably glanced at a colorful border plant called borage. The leaves are edible, tasting somewhat like a cucumber can be used in salads or cooked as a green. Its use dates back to 23 A.D. when Romans lauded the plant, saying it gives courage and drives away depression.

The modern-day uses of this humble herb is in the oil from the seeds of the plant. Borage, it is proven, is one of the highest yield sources of GLA, an acronym for Gamma-Linolenic Acid. GLA is quite similar in chemistry to a better known prostaglandin precursor named EPA. EPA is the active ingredient in fish oil. Some studies have shown that it may help in reducing heart disease.

At the moment, borage GLA is being tested at some of the foremost clinical institutions. Researchers at the New England Medical Center have concluded a clinical trial to determine to determine if GLA in borage oil has an effect on the immune system. A recent press release stated, "The primary results of the clinical study provided further evidence that diet supplemented with gamma-linolenic-acid modifies the immune system and may have a broad reaching influence on the pathogenesis of such inflammatory diseases as arthritis, psoriasis, eczema and auto-immune diseases."

GLA and the Diet

GLA is not commonly available in the average diet, but is made in the body by the metabolism of linoleic acid, which is present in large quantities in Western diets. It is reported that five to 15 percent of dietary linoleic acid is normally converted to GLA. However, (according to Horrobin, 1981 and Kinsella, 1988), the conversion process is easily inhibited. Conversion declines with age and is blocked by chronic alcohol consumption. It has been reported that lower levels of GLA in so-called "normal" groups of middle-aged individuals could contribute to heart disease, stroke or diabetes in later years. Deficiencies also affect women suffering from PMS (premenstrual syndrome). Supplementation with GLA could prove helpful in these cases, if clinical trials prove out.

Sources of GLA

If you frequent health food stores, then you are aware of the shelves stocked with a number of GLA sources: evening primrose oil, black currant oil and borage oil. The question is which to choose? Borage is the most recent GLA product on the market and we are just becoming aware of its attributes.

Borage is definitely at the top of the list as the best source of GLA for these reasons:

1. Higher GLA content
2. Lower cost factor
3. Safety (chemically free), and
4. Bioavailability

Independent clinical tests show that borage oil contains up to 26 percent GLA. This far exceeds the GLA content of evening primrose oil and black currant oil, which have a GLA content of approximately about nine to 18 percent. The cost is lower for the borage product by one-half to two-thirds because of the higher GLA content and because the borage seed is three times larger than black currant or evening primrose seeds. For the higher quality borage brand, the oil is expellorpressed from the seed. For these oils there are no solvents used in the extraction, so the borage GLA is chemically free. Once brand, B10-EFA borage, actually meets the strict World Health Organization CODEX standards for edible oil.

Finally, borage is more bioavailable, which represents the body's ability to convert the GLA into prostaglandins, A recent research paper (Muderhwa, J.M., Dhuique-Mayer, C., Pina, Ml, Galzy, P., and Graille, J., 1987) states that "humans absorb GLA in the form of triglyceride. Due to the way people metabolize triglycerides, the fatty acid in the middle position (the number two position) is the most available for utilization by the body." The paper then compared the three sources of GLA and determined that borage oil had 58.5 percent of its GLA in the middle position, while black currant and evening primrose oil had 38.3 and 48.4, respectively. It certainly appears that Mother Nature has broken the GLA supplementation barrier for the 1990s. Nice work for a plant that is thousands of years old and brought up to contemporary use by today's research laboratories.

Written by Bob Kennedy for Total Health Magazine

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