Thank you for the compliment, but there is a great deal I do not know as I have only been reading about this for a year or so. Fats and the body is such a huge subject many lives would not be enough.
I have to go and refresh my memory and more so because I have been diverted for a while.
Omega nine is the name of a family of fats. As are omega three and six.
It means the first double bond in the carbon chain is a position nine along the string, omega three three along etc. So if you have a long carbon chain you can have more double bonds after postion nine, and provided the first is at postion nine it will be an omega nine. Oleic acid for example has eighteen carbons in a chain. The body has some flexibility and will substitute one for another in certain circumstances but works best at its design paramaters which is likely a more or less balance of omega three and six.
Oleic is the most basic in the family, and often referred to as omega nine, but is only one of the family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleic_acid
3-6-9
As usual it is complex but as a general rule most people are getting too much omega six.
Omega nine can be made by the body assuming the fats pathways are working properly. The function of the pathways that make fats are very complex. There can be competition for resources or conflicts in instruction sets, and taking omega nine could I suppose cause rebalancing of the pathways. Omega nines are found in olive oil (virgin is best as lower in six). Taking in limited quantities saves the body making it and has other benifits due to other "chemical" content of olive oil.
The one that is likely for most people to be lacking is omega three both the mother fat linolenic acid 18:3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-linolenic_acid, and the longer chain fats of the same family EPA and DHA. The body can make these from the mother fats, but lots of things stop this happening, mineral deficiency, high sugar intake etc. So the best "insurance" is to eat foods that contain long chain omega threes - the best source is oily fish or fish oil and there are some vegetarian equivalents. A trial suggested take up by the body tapers off at about 2 grams DHA a day 5tps of a good quality fish oil.
GLA can help for some but comes usually with high six.
Many nuts are also high in six.
The essence is to eat only the best quality oil sources you can, try and balance the omega threes and sixes as a key target. This will involve assiduos label reading, and asking eg "olives in oil" (olive oil ? no sunflower mostly). This site give you an idea as to fat content, and make up of foods.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20AC.html
So there are no absolute answers, but as a very general rule six is the most difficult one to control, and if a choice fish oil would be top of my list, plus .
On the nines the body can make, but taking in moderation would save the body making it - but you will see fish oil contains a wide range of oils including 18:1 which may include some omega nine 18:1.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20AC.html
But for cooking it is more stable than polyunsaturates. In general as wide a variety as possible is also good but watch those sixes very carfully they lurk everywhere in processed foods.
Please do talk to your doctor about dietary change - side effects of fish oil are limited but are an issue for some - blood thinning etc, some issue fro some diabetics etc. fats are much more powerful influences than realised.
I am afraid there are no absolute answers. My own experience is that your body sort of tells you what it wants if you give it access. When I started on this road and cut down on omega sixes but did not take fish oil I had a nut craving. When I started taking fish oil that calmed and I had to get my fish oil. Now after about nine months my need to head to the fish oil bottle has moderated,and my fat intake and "craving" has declined. I pass a packet of crisps which used to be a favourite ("hand cooked") and do not even think about them writing this has remined me of that.
I hope that helps.
RB
ABSTRACT wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-9_fatty_acid
Omega-9 fatty acid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Types of Fats in Food
* Unsaturated fat
o Monounsaturated fat
o Polyunsaturated fat
o Trans fat
o Omega: 3, 6, 9
* Saturated fat
See Also
* Fatty acid
* Essential fatty acid
Omega-9 fatty acids are a class of unsaturated fatty acids which have a C=C double bond in the ω-9 position. (See Nomenclature for terms and discussion of ω (omega) nomenclature.) Some ω-9's are common components of animal fat and vegetable oil.
Two commercially important ω-9 fatty acids are:
* Oleic acid (18:1 ω-9) which is a main component of olive oil and other monounsaturated fats.
* Erucic acid (22:1 ω-9) which is found in rapeseed, wallflower seed, and mustard seed. Rapeseed with high erucic acid content is grown for commercial use in paintings and coatings as a drying oil.
Unlike ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids, ω-9 fatty acids are not classed as essential fatty acids (EFA). This is both because they can be created by the human body from unsaturated fat and are therefore not essential in the diet, and because the lack of an ω-6 double bond keeps them from participating in the reactions that form the eicosanoids.
Under severe conditions of EFA deprivation, mammals will elongate and desaturate oleic acid to make mead acid, (20:3 ω-9). (Lipomics) This also occurs to a lesser extent in vegetarians and semi-vegetarians. (Phinney, 1990)