whatt does lipid soluble mean?

If something is lipid soluable does that mean that it dissolves in fats? Any fats? Is there a difference between animal fats like cholesterol and plant fats like seed oils? If I wanted to dissolve something in lipid what would be a good choice?

Lipids refer to a pretty diverse group of substances. It would probably be easier to say something fat soluble will dissolve in something that is hydrophobic, and for practical purposes you're referring to a liquid, so typically an oil. Hydrophobic is often interchanged with lipophillic, or "fat loving".

But that doesn't mean it has to be a fat either. Just hydrophobic. So you could dissolve a fat soluble substance in butane, methanol, kerosene, or one common one is propylene glycol.

It depends on what kind of performance you are after and at what temperature.

You could melt butter and dissolve a fat soluble substance in it, but at room temperature you won't have a liquid. This is often why the plant oils get used for these kinds of solutions because with things like olive oil (or peanut, canola, sunflower, macadamia nut, etc.) you'll have a liquid at room temp. Generally, the more solid a fat the less you'll have to worry about oxidation. Oxidation becomes more of a concern with the greater level of unsaturation, meaning vegetable oils are more worrisome. These generally have to have antioxidants added.

You get things like avocado or shea butters and you have more saturated fats (well, really a mix of sat. versus unsat.) but they're more solid, will absorb to less of an extent, and are greasier.

Also, the more unsaturated the fat, the less likely it is to dissolve in an alcohol.

If I was looking for a topical or something to take internally, I would probably go for propylene glycol. Topically it absorbs well and is not greasy like other natural fats, and you also don't have the oxidation concerns. It will dissolve many of the fat soluble ingredients you're likely to want.

Two of my favorite antioxidants are both lipid and water soluble. Ecklonia cava and lipoic acid.
Scavenging free radicals in both fat and water soluble tissues.

Interesting. Thanks.

CausticSymmetry wrote:Two of my favorite antioxidants are both lipid and water soluble. Ecklonia cava and lipoic acid.
Scavenging free radicals in both fat and water soluble tissues.

I assume you know you need extra biotin with lipoic acid, just making sure in case you have missed it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278559

YAER wrote:

CausticSymmetry wrote:Two of my favorite antioxidants are both lipid and water soluble. Ecklonia cava and lipoic acid.
Scavenging free radicals in both fat and water soluble tissues.

I assume you know you need extra biotin with lipoic acid, just making sure in case you have missed it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278559

This is a persistent myth. I've talked about this topic for as long as I've used it (10 years). I went on the cautious side off course for several years taking extra biotin until finally it was discovered it was not accurate.

CausticSymmetry wrote:

YAER wrote:

CausticSymmetry wrote:Two of my favorite antioxidants are both lipid and water soluble. Ecklonia cava and lipoic acid.
Scavenging free radicals in both fat and water soluble tissues.

I assume you know you need extra biotin with lipoic acid, just making sure in case you have missed it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278559

This is a persistent myth. I've talked about this topic for as long as I've used it (10 years). I went on the cautious side off course for several years taking extra biotin until finally it was discovered it was not accurate.

How can it be a myth? The studies show ACTUAL FIGURES on enzyme distrubtions. My grandmother also lost alot of hair on lipoic before i told her about the biotin. Alot of people have seen this same effect.

Shaft,

I just noticed you also asked the question about how animal fats and plant fats differ. The thing is, most fats are made up of an alcohol backbone (glycerol in humans) and then fatty acids attached to it. These predominate in your fat tissue.

Lipids are pretty complex things. You could have a biochem class and study just lipids for a year.

In terms of nutrition your biggest interest will be in the fatty acids themselves. And these differ mainly in length and degree of saturation...i.e., how many carbons long is the chain (long-chain versus short chain), are there zero double bonds (saturated ala coconut oil), one double bond? (mono-unsaturated ala olive oil), two+ double bonds? (polyunsaturated ala many veggie oils).

The different chain lengths and saturations that help us make the distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats are what you'll focus on in terms of your diet for the most part. Both animal fats and plant fats contain varying chain lengths, but for the most part animal fats tend to contain far less polyunsaturated fat. Plants contain more polyunsat and less saturated fat.

But it will require you to actually google a particular fatty acid or fat type to see the specifics.

Cholesterol is a modifier of membranes. It slides into cell membranes in between fatty acids and helps change their physical properties, acting like a buffer so that your membranes won't solidify as it gets colder, and won't totally dissolve as the temperature increases.

YAER wrote:

CausticSymmetry wrote:

YAER wrote:

CausticSymmetry wrote:Two of my favorite antioxidants are both lipid and water soluble. Ecklonia cava and lipoic acid.
Scavenging free radicals in both fat and water soluble tissues.

I assume you know you need extra biotin with lipoic acid, just making sure in case you have missed it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278559

This is a persistent myth. I've talked about this topic for as long as I've used it (10 years). I went on the cautious side off course for several years taking extra biotin until finally it was discovered it was not accurate.

How can it be a myth? The studies show ACTUAL FIGURES on enzyme distributions. My grandmother also lost alot of hair on lipoic before i told her about the biotin. Alot of people have seen this same effect.

YAER - Totally reasonable question. I'll post a reference on the why (it's a critique of the study you linked).
For quite a number of years I cautioned people to take extra biotin, however this is no longer the case.

If she suffered a problem, I doubt it was from the biotin. I have two possible explanations. I believe that B-vitamins are necessary if lipoic acid is consumed regularly, because it increases the use of energy/glucose metabolism the need for B-vitamins increases. The other, is that certain people who do not have certain nutrients available lipoic acid can lower levels of thyroid hormone. Having said, that I believe the perfect stack (this prevents this) is adding Acetyl L-Carnitine (some do better with other forms of carnitine), in any case, either are pro-hair and improve the efficacy of lipoic acid.

http://geronova.com/consumer-blog/lipoic-acid-and-biotin-is-supplemental-biotin-necessary/