The hype surrounding some dietary supplements is just that, with results falling short of promises.

And most of us dismiss these scams as “snake oil”.

This pejorative term for quack remedies dates back to the late 1900’s, when patent medicines of dubious provenance and efficacy were commonplace.

But surprisingly, snake oil probably wasn’t – and isn't – a medical fraud.

Snake oil arrived in the American West after the Civil War, brought there by Chinese laborers as a traditional topical remedy for arthritis and other joint ailments.

Because it was among the most exotic of the Chinese remedies, and because European-Americans assumed that Asian medicine was superstitious nonsense, it seemed natural to label as “snake oil” all bogus cures – including the many bogus patent medicines peddled by white traders.

 

The original snake oil salesman Texan cowboy Clark Stanley became known as the “Rattlesnake King” after he patented and popularized snake oil: a move inspired by his (alleged) apprenticeship with a Moki tribal medicine man at Walpi, Arizona.   Clark was a major attraction at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where his act included killing rattlesnakes to extract their oil.   Following passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, the authorities tested Stanley's product and found it was mostly mineral oil.   However, Clark’s “Snake Oil” also contained chili pepper extract – which contains the proven pain killer capsaicin – and penetrating, soothing camphor, so topical application probably alleviated pain to some extent. Clark was fined $20.00: a heftier sum in those days, but not enough to dent the small fortune he garnered from sales of “snake oil”.

Now, snake oil's disreputable image seems ready for reversal.

Based on their fish-like fatty acid profiles, the sea-snake oils used in Chinese liniments may constitute very reasonable remedies for joint problems.

Snake oil’s healing secret isn’t one anymore

Compared with fatty, cold-water fish like Salmon, the sea-snake oils used in Chinese traditional medicine are even richer in EPA: the marine omega-3 proven to exert substantial inflammation-moderating effects.

This is no surprise, because, like predatory ocean fish and marine mammals, these ocean-going reptiles eat fish. Sea snakes use the flexible, high-energy omega-3s they obtain from their fishy diets to maintain the fast metabolisms needed to survive in frigid seas.

Compared with omega-3s produced in terrestrial leaves and aquatic algae and plankton, omega-6 fatty acids – which predominate in seeds, nuts and grains – become stiffer and slower at cold temperatures.

In the late 1980’s, San Francisco psychiatrist Richard Kunin, M.D. hypothesized that the oil from fish-eating sea snakes might be high in omega-3s, which would explain its long use in Chinese medical practice as a ...

If omega-3s originate in plants (as we know they do), and the green leaves of plants are the most abundant source of these fast-moving fats (in the form of alpha linolenic acid, the parent omega-3), then what happens in autumn when leaves turn color and fall to the ground?

I’ve been asking myself this question as I’ve been raking leaves this November.

Do these omega-3 fats, the predominant fat in the membranes of the chloroplasts of green leaves, fall to the ground with those leaves?

Or do plants have some strategy for salvaging their omega-3s?

They must, I think. Otherwise, dead leaves would be much more nutritious than they obviously are. And animals wouldn’t leave them for humans like me to rake up.

But how does this salvage operation take place? Are the omega-3s in chloroplasts turned into omega-6s, a second family of polyunsaturated fats, and then shuttled into a plant’s developing seeds?

Omega-6s are slightly less fast-moving than omega-3s, but they are far less susceptible to attack by oxygen molecules, or oxidation. It makes sense that the stored fats in seeds contain many more omega-6s than 3s.

I was able to find the answers to some of my questions about leaves in an article in Plant Physiology, appropriately titled, “Making Sense of Leaf Senescence.” There, I learned that leaf senescence, that which gives us our incredible fall colors, is an orderly process and under strict genetic control. It is not simply a degenerative process but is, indeed, a complex system for recycling fats, as well as nitrogen and other useful building materials.

 

Photo by Susan Allport

Proof of this can be seen with the naked eye, I was surprised to learn. In most species of plants, such as the birch whose leaves are shown here, aging begins at the edges of the leaf and proceeds inwards. The last areas of the leaf to senesce are those around the veins of the leaf: the leaf’s vascular system. Since the veins are necessary for exporting everything that can be exported out of the leaf, they are the last thing to go.

The leaf responds to changes in the environment -- be it light, drought, nutrient deficiency, infection, or wounding -- by expressing special senescing genes, genes that encode for enzymes that break down and rearrange all the useful, recyclable parts. Complex molecules such as chlorophyll and proteins are turned into smaller and more transportable molecules, which are then moved into a plant’s roots, seeds, stems and bark, and reassembled, or stored, as necessary.

 

About Susan Allport As well as being an occasional contributor to Vital Choices, Susan Allport is an award-winning writer who contributes to The New York Times and other publications and authored the acclaimed book about omega-3s, titled The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed From The Western Diet and What We Can Do To Replace Them (University of California Press, 2006).   Susan is the author of two other highly praised books – The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging, and Love, and A Natural History of Parenting – and has appeared on Oprah & Friends Radio and NPR’s "Science Friday" and "The Splendid Table".  For more, visit susanallport.com.

But what exactly happens to the alpha linolenic acid in a chloroplasts’ membrane?  That’s what I really wanted to know. For land animals, there is a shift in the availability of the two families of essential fats, the fats that plants can make but not animals, with the changing seasons. This shift has important health and metabolic consequences, as I explained in a previous article: “Seasons of Fats”, and I wanted to understand how it takes place.

Is the alpha linolenic acid turned into linoleic acid (the parent omega-6 fatty acid) in the leaf? Or are the omega-3s stored somewhere in the plant for use the next spring? I couldn’t find the answer to these questions in the article in Plant Physiology and so I emailed John Ohlrogge at the Plant Lipid Metabolism Lab at Michigan State University.

Nothing so simple, Dr. Ohlrogge, emailed me back, since plants transport very little lipid or fat. Fats are sticky substances, and plants don’t have the lipoproteins (HDL and LDL) that animals use to transport fats. So plants turn fats into sugars, which are highly soluble, before moving them ...