Omega-3

“the case of omega-3s, milligram quantities, could alter your health and your outcomes. Pretty dramatic, actually, kind of amazing. One or two calories of trans fat or one or two calories of omega-3s could influence your risk.”

“So I kind of viewed them as the yin and the yang of dietary fats. And for a while, I was sort of grouped in what we call the omega-3 mafia. Like I was like, you know, all my studies were on omega-3s and the benefits. So among the unsaturated fats, the omega-3, polyunsaturated fats have by far the strongest evidence for health benefits, particularly the longer chain ones that come from seafood”

“Some of them have not. But overall, the evidence is pretty clear. If you put together mechanistic studies, risk factor studies, clinical trials, observational studies, omega-3s are good for you, particularly seafood-based omega-3s. Then there's the omega-6 fatty acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and those come in really a range of nuts and seeds.”

“Like omega-3s, they're essential. The body doesn't make them. So if you don't consume them, you actually get sick. And here's where there's, I think, you know, been a lot of confusion that omega-6s are harmful in humans and omega-6s compete”

“So overall, omega-6s are also good for you. And so this idea of the ratio, the ratio really matters because we're all so deficient in omega-3s. We need more omega-3s. If we improve our ratio by eating omega-3s, we will all be healthier, full stop.”

“Seed oils are really good for us as well and really healthy. And so omega-3s and omega-6s are really good for us. We need more of them. And then monounsaturated fats are interesting because compared to omega-3s and omega-6s, they're fairly inert. There's really one major type, oleic acid.”

“I have so many questions. So first of all, I completely agree with not getting enough omega-3, that being the big culprit here, especially when it comes to people thinking about this inflammatory ratio and omega-6 and omega-3.”

“Yeah, like 90% of Americans aren't getting enough omega-3 from seafood. I'm wondering now if you were an author on that Harvard study many years ago that basically identified not getting enough omega-3 from seafood was one of the top six preventable causes of death.”

“I almost, you were talking about yin and yang. I'd have to look, but I'm pretty sure that was our study. I think it might have been. Yeah, because I think about it also, the yin and yang, you know, thinking about like how omega-3 fatty acids being incorporated in cell membrane is very important for the fluidity that's important for the endothelial cells lining your cardiovascular, you know,”

“Think of them as biologic information. Omega-3s, when they get into the cardiac membrane, you mentioned this already, fascinating. They actually help support the ion channels where the electrical conduction through the heart is happening.”

“flat line. That's the electrical disturbance of the heart. Omega-3s stabilize that and prevent that in the setting of ischemia or acute heart attacks by stabilizing the membrane. Trans fats, in contrast, as you've mentioned, alter and negatively alter the membrane.”

“So imagine every photon of light hitting you, a rhodopsin receptor has to be recycled. If you put omega-3s in the retinal membrane, the cycling happens faster, smoother, easier. And in infants, if you give DHA during pregnancy or during breastfeeding, infants have better visual acuity.”

“EGCG in green tea has been shown to activate thermogenesis. So all of the same things. Omega-3s. Omega-3s. Thank you. Yes, Rhonda. Omega-3s have been shown to activate thermogenesis. So I think that this is the big untold story of the obesity epidemic. We're all trying hard.”

“And so they looked at this over every few months over the course of three years. The only one that moved the needle by itself was omega-3s. But when you combine them together, you saw a huge reduction. I would say huge. It's basically 3.3 to 4 months reduction in rate of aging every three years.”

“There's over 30,000 studies on omega-3s from food and from nutritional supplements. And the vast majority show that it's overwhelming evidence is that it's healthy for you. Are there some studies that show it could be detrimental? Sure. It's usually at mega dosages, truthfully, because then it could cause like arterial frib or like other things, issues like that.”

“Okay. They technically add B6 to that as well, but it only has to be a small amount. So in our practice, we're using a good daily activated multi, omega-3 and D3. If that's all that you use, you're going to get the benefits for longevity. Without all, again, I love the special ones, like the trimethyl glycine, the PQQ, like all those.”

“And here I'm referring to the so-called omega-3 essential fatty acids, in particular the omega-3 form of the essential fatty acids. There's now a lot of data showing that ingesting one to three grams of EPA in particular in the form of either fish oil capsules or liquid can be beneficial for a number of different aspects of brain and body health and can enhance focus and cognitive ability.”

“But if I were to be asked, you know, what is the one supplement that is a single ingredient supplement that serves the greatest role in increasing mental health, physical health, and performance.”

“So again, this would be single ingredient supplement. I would say it's going to be a high quality omega-3 fatty acid, typically taken in the form of fish oil. Again, you have to decide based on your budget, etc.”

“I'm forgetting the name we'll put in the show note caption who is a laboratory up at UC Santa Barbara who's looked at supplementation with omega-3s during pregnancy and brain size and function in human offspring it seems like the omega-3s the polyphenols enough”

“One of the key compounds that supports concentration and focus because it generally supports mood concentration and focus and brain function in general are the omega-3 essential fatty acids.”

“So who wouldn't want to do that? Other things input to BDNF as well. There are some research protocols to increase BDNF with various interventions, but even omega-3s, DHA in particular, amps up BDNF production.”

“are managing insulin resistance. Omega-3, high omega-3 fatty acid intake. I would imagine a diet, a lower glycemic diet. But now that we find ourselves in a situation like I'm in with my parent, where I haven't done that image, but I assume that it would light up.”

“Well, we got time. Third hour. We'll do the third hour. And I'll bring this up because an interesting study published about two months ago challenged the wisdom that omega-3 supplements, fish oil in particular, was good for the brain.”

“I mean, I've known for years that we should be taking DHA, fish oil, omega-3s in general, good for the brain, right? Right. It's been our messaging. And for me, it's still my messaging. Why was this study in the face of all of the studies demonstrating correlations between higher levels of DHA in particular and”

“Omega-3s. Right. Right. I mean, what would you tell somebody? My O2 Wiz, my friends are having, I have a particular friend who's having cognitive decline. What should he or she do? Well, omega-3 should certainly be part of that equation.”

“subjective cognitive impairment are going to gravitate to the omega-3s anyway. That's going to skew these results. You've already selected a group of people who may be experiencing cognitive decline. Number one, number two, to be fair, there's a lot of crap on the shelves in the grocery store being sold as”

“And then after training residency, I started doing research in my fellowship on omega-3 fatty acids for the lipid effects. I was the first one to use fish oil capsules to treat lipid disorders.”

“How much? Four grams, yeah. It was called the strength trial. I think what I learned, because I've always been a big advocate for omega-3s for triglycerid lowering, and there's really two reasons why omega-3s can reduce risk. One is triglycerid lowering, and the other is by antithrombotic effects.”

“And so there was really two reasons to think why omega-3s could lower risk. And one was through the EPA antithrombotic effect. The other is triglyceride lowering. And so what strength was set up to do was really a triglyceride lowering trial, and it didn't work overall.”

“Completely independent of the cloth at work. Right, exactly, yeah. That's coming. And I've been on omega-3. One of the things that really, until this receptor was identified, we couldn't understand why DHA doesn't get into the blood-brain barrier like you think. Most of your DHA has to come from the blood.”

“concentration of androgen receptors and cover the bases like creatine and zinc and boron and omegas and magnesium and some of the upstream precursors. You know, look into sleep, look into recovery and then make the decision.”

Our IdentificationSaid as “Omegas”. We believe this refers to Omega-3.

“If you're eating, you know, healthy fish, which difficult these days, you can, you know, wild organic salmon. Fish has great omega-3s, but I take a mercury-free fish oil. I take Orthomega from orthomolecular. But these first four pathways are among 16 inflammatory. But when you look at all 16 pathways, if you were to take things that block NF-kappa-B, N-acetylcysteine, alpha-lipoic acid.”

“But you need a multimineral, as we talked about, for these detox pathways. And I told people to do this with omega-3 fatty acids. All of my patients did well during COVID simply by looking at the virus driving inflammation and saying, how do we block inflammation? How do we lower inflammation?”

“They're interchangeable for sleep. Okay, that's one. I'm a big believer in getting at least one gram per day of EPA omega-3. Okay. I suggest getting it because it's now available generic and cheap, but prescription form, Lovaza.”

“There you go. Don't threaten your doctor, but you get the idea. So that's for mental health, physical health. Big believer in boosting omega-3s. Also, I don't eat fatty fish. I don't like salmon unless it's sushi and like I'm just not good at eating seafood. So that's two. Vitamin D.”

“Why do you come into land on omega-3 levels and supplementation? I take an omega-3. The data looks really pretty good that if you have some of that, it's anti-inflammatory. Whether or not it totally prevents heart disease, it's controversial now.”

“liver oil back in the day, low-quality omega-3 supplements aren't really that good for you. So this is like, you know, mythological fucking ancient wisdom. It really is. And actually, while we're on the topic of contamination, I and other labs have measured supplements and they're often contaminated with things.”

“You have to have them in their diet or you'll die. There's actually two fatty acids that you need to eat a little bit of, omega-3 and omega-6. But apart from that, you do need to eat protein. Secondly, protein is filling.”

“There's a lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables. Mediterranean diet often has fish in it, and fish has these omega-3 fatty acids. So it's the constellation of nutrients that are healthy, plus an absence of a lot of stuff like added sugar and a lot of what are the things that it eliminates most?”

“So omega-3 means that the double bond is three carbons away from the end. I don't know if this is too much information. So omega-3 fatty acid is the double bonds three carbons from the end.”

“Paleo diet said, well, look, you know, we didn't evolve to eat that many omega-6 fatty acids because we didn't have seed oils. And so we should try to have like a hunter-gatherer kind of omega-3 ratio. So try not to have more than twice as many omega-6s to omega-3s. And the argument behind that is that the omega-6 fatty acids can be turned into a, by your digestive system, to another”

“Rather than threonate, that's up there as well. You will also see things like omega-3. This is your common fish oil. Oh, this is interesting because this popped up on your labs as something we have to work on. Oh, my test. Yeah. We'll come back to that in a second.”

“are going to be filled with mercury. But I was low omega and high mercury. So what that tells us is if you were to jack your omega-3s up, your mercury is going to get into the line that we don't want it to be in. So solution: you need to alter the source of your omega-3s, get it from a higher quality place.”

“Zero. Zero. Vitamin D? Like this week? No. No. Summertime. I live in the forest. Omega-3? Nope. Why? I got full control of my diet and we get a lot of fish right now.”

“I would aggressively exercise. I would aggressively manage my lipids. I'd have a high intake of omega-3 fatty acids and I would preserve, if I could, any form of cognitive function by way of talking to people by going outside, socializing, having hard conversations.”

“and then other types of blood work, what if somebody is massively deficient in zinc, or vitamin D, or even iron, I mean, or omega-3s. And so being able to get the right testing done, I think to know, hey, what are the tools that are going to make the biggest difference? For instance, this person we just did this blood work on, we found that the number one therapy for them, that's”

“like I found out that I don't convert vitamin D well. So, and I don't convert omega-3s well. Yeah. And so, like, it very much- Yeah. Changed the way I supplemented. And when I was able to get the blood work genetically in an advanced panel, I'm telling you, again, and it's like, Gary, I already know what to do, generally speaking.”

“And, you know, your cells essentially are almost like little bodies. They have organs. We call them organelles. And I started doing research on how to heal the cell membrane, which, of course, fatty acids like omega-3s and phospholipids, and preventing oxidative stress, high-dose glutathione. I mean, these things are amazing for the cell membrane.”

“critical nutrients for, uh, related to cognitive function and risk of dementia. Um, the ones that we have the best evidence for, uh, vitamin D, iron, omega-3 fatty acids, uh, the B vitamins involved and the B vitamins involved in methylation. So particularly B12 and folate also potentially B6 and riboflavin, although that might depend a little bit more on, on the individual.”

“between nutrients, which at least to my understanding are rarely explored. You know, you'll see studies of supplementing omega-3 or having people eat some fatty fish or less and so on, but rarely in the presence or absence of some other vitamin that, you know, that can potentially impact the same pathways.”

“range so let's take one of these things okay omega-3 fatty acids i i believe that the data are pretty compelling they can be helpful for health maybe even brain health certainly i believe that but”

“than we realize so um omega-3 fats is a really good example your adipose tissue your fat tissue is a depot you know it kind of stores excess omega-3s i actually wrote a paper on this with a colleague of mine rory heath a few years ago the long chain omega-3s that we have in our in our fat stores”

“during periods like you're doing exercise those then get really you know, the brain then has access to them. So there's some studies that show that when you, but this relates to the form of the omega-3s as well. So many people will tell you that you have to take omega-3s in the phospholipid form, which is like a special, it's a special supplement.”

“So if you're going to take just one day of supplement and you want to get as much of that omega-3 in your brain, yes, you should take the, we think you should take the phospholipid form. But the form that comes in seafood, which is primarily the triglyceride form, is regulated through the body's fat stores.”

“There was actually a very recent one that just came out of... Of USC, where they gave omega-3s for a long period of time. They measured omega-3 levels in the CSF, in the spinal fluid, these people, to show that the omega-3s were getting into the brain.”

“That is particularly the case for omega-3s and B vitamins that lower homocysteine. And so this is the interactions that you were talking about earlier. And this is the best one that we know of, although I'm sure there are many more.”

“with omega-3s didn't result in any benefit if people had elevated homocysteine. So that's just one example. And you can imagine, like you kind of said, there are probably lots of these. And if we're not going into a study actually looking like, well, what nutrients does this person need, and then supplementing with them, you're not going to find any effect.”

“where words are very important so that people can communicate with accuracy. And I also wonder whether, okay, if one gram of omega-3 EPA per day is good, but maybe three is better, even though I'm at upper range, upper reference range.”

“safety at whatever dose that you're taking. And then second of all, we don't know whether it works. O' For some we do, like creatine, omega-3s, magnesium. Yeah. And creatine is actually the best. So like omega-3s, we know that they're a critical nutrient. Creatine I think is the best example because we know it's very safe, right?”

“Yeah. So sleep was one. Then the other one was nutrient status. So they didn't talk about omega-3s, B vitamins, which we do actually have some quite high quality interventional and observational kind of epidemiological data for. So there was kind of some discussion as well of those things should have been included.”

“Any bioavailable form will be fine. Then, Omega-3 fatty acids. The evidence is a little bit better for like, there are now several studies in like, in like, collegiate American football players, where they take a couple of grams of Omega-3s every day, and across a season, you see less accumulation of biomarkers.”

“So the ability for fish oil, and in particular the omega-3 fatty acids, which come in varieties like EPA and DHA, have been explored at relatively high dosages for their ability to offset some of the effects of mania and to offset the effects of depressive episodes in bipolar disorder.”

“in bipolar disorder. There are several studies that have shown that supplementing with fish oil or omega-3 fatty acids at levels of, for instance, 9.6 grams of fish oil per day for four months, greatly reduced symptoms of bipolar depression compared to the control group, which received olive oil.”

“Olive oil is a different form of fat, monounsaturated fat, but doesn't contain as much of the omega-3 fatty acids and so forth. So 9.6 grams of fish oil per day over four months is a lot of fish oil to be ingesting on a given day.”

“Oranges, cherries, olives, super anti-inflammatory. Everybody knows that omega-3 fatty acids are highly anti-inflammatory, so any type of fatty fish is really good. You should stay away from fried food, processed meat, sugars.”

“as a alternative that actually has very, very little downside. Certain supplements like omega-3 fatty acids that are found in fish oil are potent anti-inflammatories. Most of us have our omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio out of balance, so supplementing with a good omega-3 can help reduce the production of inflammatory cytokines.”

“already doing and your compliance and your adherence is going to go up. Right. What else do we got in here? Oh, omega-3. Okay. These are so well-established in the literature. They reduce inflammation. They help with cognition. Something like two to four grams a day.”