Understanding Omega-3 Impact: Health Benefits Through Diet and Research

Nutrition 2:52 0
“we knew nothing about Dr. Dyerberg and Bang and Eskimos at this point, we just hadn't shown up on our radar. They had published their stuff, I just didn't know about it.”

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Nutrition 3:07 0
“Fish oil is from an animal but it's liquid, so it's got this kind of cuts across and so he said well let's see what high fish oil diet does to cholesterol levels.”

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Nutrition 3:19 0
“we had three groups you know saturated fat, control, polyunsaturated fat and fish oil and that's when we were doing our very high dose you know drink a half a cup of salmon oil every day for our volunteers.”

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Nutrition 3:44 0
“that's when we discovered that it lowered triglycerides because we weren't looking for that we were looking for cholesterol effects.”

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Nutrition 6:23 0
“the work of the danish investigators dyerburg and bang and greenland eskimos linking omega-3 with reduced atherosclerosis that was becoming well-known then”

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Nutrition 7:01 0
“supplement manufacturers were starting to make omega-3 and make claims that they lowered lowered cholesterol levels because we did see a lowering cholesterol in the both the vegetable oil group and the salmon oil group”

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Nutrition 9:00 0
“we studied platelets we got a hematologist on board scott goodnight and we did all kinds of platelet studies. Platelet aggregation was reduced by the omega-3 uh bleeding time was reduced”

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Nutrition 11:26 0
“we did one big study where we were doing open-heart surgery on people trying to pre-load them with omega-3 before open-heart surgery this was a dr moserfarian's study opera study and we're trying to prevent post-op afib by giving him a big load of omega-3 ahead of time”

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Substances 12:15 0
“that got the omega-3 than the placebo less need for transfusion which was kind of cool I mean that that is not that we would advocate it for reducing risk for bleeding but it's not increasing risk for bleeding interesting”

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Substances 12:57 0
“the FDA in their package insert for Lovaza and Vascepa they say does not cause clinically significant bleeding.”

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Substances 13:19 0
“Lovaza is the EPA plus DHA ethyl ester, Vascepa is an EPA-only ethylester.”

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Substances 15:39 0
“there have been some studies on omega-3 playing a preventative role in pulmonary embolisms.”

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Nutrition 19:44 0
“vegetarian or vegan would be an algal oil so the original source of epa and dha in a fish is not that they make omega-3 they don't really make omega-3 any better than we do or make epa and dha they eat pre-formed epa and dha and it comes from their food sources which at the bottom of the food chain is these micro single celled micro”

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Nutrition 20:30 0
“different companies have identified which strains specific strains of algae microalgae will make dha or epa or both and they've commercialized or they've industrialized it and they harvest the oil it's an expensive process at this point”

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Nutrition 20:50 0
“if we can get over the gmo issue there are two or three groups that have found ways to put genes into plant or land plant animal land plants that can be grown you know as long as you've got ground you can grow them um camelina is one even soybean oil which starts with ala you can get up to a fair amount of dha epa and dha with genetic engineering of these plants”

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Nutrition 22:45 0
“the omega-3 index being an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease”

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Nutrition 25:17 0
“just eat more fish or take supplements and you can raise your omega-3 levels and reduce risk”

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Nutrition 25:52 0
“we called it the omega-3 index we didn't really know what to call it didn't want to call it red blood cell epa plus dha is too much and we picked red blood cells because that had been used in past studies and it makes sense because it's a long-term marker of omega-3 status because the omega-3s are in the membrane of the red cell and in most other tissues in the body all other tissues”

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Nutrition 28:41 0
“the plasma has certainly has omega-3 and you can express the plasma omega-3 content as a percent of total plasma fatty acids it's just that the number you get like in normal might be two percent for plasma epa dha whereas for red blood cell epa dha which is just the red cell membrane it might be five or six percent would be normal”

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Nutrition 31:38 0
“the omega-3 index is better indicator of brain than plasma”

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Nutrition 32:42 0
“there is quite a bit of background variability in the omega-3 index”

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Nutrition 34:54 0
“some people actually may require a much larger dose of omega-3”

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Nutrition 36:11 0
“in an ideal world for every randomized controlled trial you do, you obviously need to measure something like the omega-3 index at baseline and after treatment”

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Substances 38:12 0
“that's why it's important to titrate the omega-3 any given patient you know you just don't ask them how much fish they eat and call it good”

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Substances 41:00 0
“the most successful omega-3 trial in years was reduce it with four grams of epa and they they reported that the most the only risk factor they could measure or thing in the blood that they measured that would predict outcomes it was better than cholesterol better than triglycerides was the omega-3 level was the omega-3 level achieved that was the strongest predictor of benefit in the reduced trial”

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Nutrition 43:38 0
“you might want to go down to your local drugstore and pick off a bottle of fish oil and just take it and don't tell anybody or at the very least you can do your fish intake or start eating more fish”

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Nutrition 44:00 0
“omega-3 is probably the easiest one of the easiest nutrients to study like a drug of all the nutrients because our background intake is so little and that there's so little metabolism in vivo metabolism of omega-3”

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Nutrition 45:27 0
“average americans roughly 5 omega-3 index which is epa and dha in red cells as a percent of the total fatty acids in the red cells so five percent of the fatty acids in the red cell membrane epa and dha japan it's on average nine percent”

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Nutrition 46:10 0
“we like to say be over eight percent that's the goal that's been our target so you can get up to about 15 or 16 we have seen two or three people out of hundreds of thousands that are over 20”

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Nutrition 49:46 0
“correlated the omega-3 index to cause mortality is able to even predict uh mortality very very interesting study um i shared it on social media but i would love to talk about it yeah yeah sure that was a it's gonna be probably one of my capstone studies i think in in hindsight um it was a collaboration among 17 different cohorts like like the framingham studies of cohort women's health initiatives mesa epic these are all and from all around the world these are groups that have been recruited at one point in time blood samples taken fatty acid levels measured in that blood and then the investigators just follow this group of people over time to see what happens what kind of diseases they get you know who gets who dies who doesn't and so we had 17 of those pooled together and around 40 45 000 people all together where we had omega-3 levels at the beginning and then roughly um the total follow-up time when you're when you're looking at risk for death all cause mortality you obviously look in a given window of time because if you wait long enough it's one hundred percent everybody…”

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Substances 56:49 0
“if you have a low omega-3 and you're non-smoker, it's not so bad, your risk of death maybe is 30 over the if you're a smoker and you have a high omega-3 that's the other flip side but you're a smoker your risk is kind of like having a low omega-3 being a non-smoker.”

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Substances 57:36 0
“smoking actually lowers the omega-3 index, smokers have lower omega-3 index than non-smokers.”

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Substances 58:14 0
“having a high omega-3 level is protective and in the same sense that having low cholesterol is protective in the same sense that having low blood pressure is protective.”

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Substances 1:01:22 0
“giving omega-3 does lower inflammatory levels.”

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Nutrition 1:03:54 0
“it's actually a bewildering array of molecules that have been discovered made from epa and dha that operate on different cell types and different receptors through different mechanisms but at the end of the day they suppress an inflammatory response and keep it from getting out of control.”

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Nutrition 1:04:31 0
“what we saw in framingham was all these mediators are are inversely related to the omega-3 level and these people aren't chronically inflamed.”

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Nutrition 1:06:54 0
“i think much more likely to be an anti-inflammatory mechanism and anti-platelet so thinner blood less likely to clot.”

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Nutrition 1:09:21 0
“we've seen that we've got a data set of 40 some thousand people we see the very strong correlation between high omega-3 and lower healthier rdw and we're getting ready to submit that now”

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Nutrition 1:09:35 0
“the ways that omega-3s may be protective we may have never thought of yet still which makes it hard to explain to people how they work”

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Nutrition 1:12:16 0
“raising your omega-3 index is going to have implications all over the body that may not be even measurable in a blood test”

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Disease prevention 1:12:44 0
“we published a study looking at the omega-3 index and COVID-19 associated mortality”

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Nutrition 1:15:24 0
“the higher the average fish intake the lower the risk of death and covet”

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Substances 1:16:10 0
“they found that DHA, again in silico experiments, if it's present will hold that thing in a closed position.”

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Substances 1:17:20 0
“it also showed that linoleic acid did the same thing.”

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Nutrition 1:19:15 0
“the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is so important everyone's so concerned about eating too much omega-6”

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Nutrition 1:21:22 0
“we published two papers with this consortium of the 17 or 20 cohorts we've had several other papers all looking at fatty acids and some outcome and one of them looked at linoleic acid levels in the blood and cardiovascular outcomes and found that the higher the linoleic acid the lower the risk for cardiovascular disease and another paper looked at linoleic acid levels and risk for developing diabetes higher omega-6 linoleic lower risk for developing diabetes”

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Nutrition 1:22:54 0
“2013 paper that was published by yeah um yes and he looked at blood omega-3 levels i don't know if it was platinum plasma phospholipids yeah omega-3 and the incidence of prostate cancer in a trial of people was called the select trial where people were given high dose alpha tocopherol and or selenium selenium right um and he found a correlation between the plasma phospholipid phospholipid omega-3 and right prostate cancer”

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Substances 1:27:17 0
“two to three grams a day from supplements um i don't really have a favorite supplement i kind of maybe like your friend in norway i if people send me supplements oh yeah try this um and then salmon probably once a week for sure try to do more but at least once a week uh so my index is around 10.”

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Substances 1:28:47 0
“epinova which is a epa plus dha same ratio is in lavazza except they're free fatty acids not ethyl esters so they're unasterified epa and dha which which they had previously shown are more readily absorbed.”

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Substances 1:28:53 0
“the trouble with those is they're also pretty irritants their gi irritants free fatty acids are so they had to encapsulate they had to um entirely coat the pills.”

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Substances 1:34 0
“taking 840 milligrams there's a one capsule levasa”

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Substances 1:40 0
“it's four grams a days which is really five times higher than anybody's ever used before for omega-3 dosing”

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Substances 1:57 0
“if they know that they can increase their omega-3 index by you know supplementing with omega-3 and or increasing their you know fatty fish like salmon or sardines that have high omega-3 in it to prevent and stave off dementia”

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Substances 1:39 0
“looking at 70 trials in pregnant women given omega-3 that the giving omega-3 reduces risk for premature birth especially early premature birth before 34 weeks”

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Nutrition 1:40:01 0
“in that trial unfortunately there was apparently compliance with dha supplementation was not very good so the change in omega-3 index was not much in that big trial so they didn't see a benefit it could be because women weren't taking it”

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Nutrition 1:40:35 0
“we do have a test we developed in omega quant called the rbc mother's dha test rbc dha test i can't remember the name of it um i'm gonna get in trouble uh but anyway it's it's a test for pregnant women to measure their red cell dha levels and we think being over five percent is where you want to be”

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Nutrition 1:42:05 0
“there's plenty of evidence that having a higher omega-3 level in mom i mean it's mixed evidence as is everything if you look several years down the road kids do are doing better in some studies yeah they're not doing worse they're either doing no different or better”

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Substances 1:47:04 0
“you want to be careful to give omega-3 if you're giving that high a dose to people you might want to be a little more attentive to afib but there's no increased risk for stroke there's actually decreased risk for stroke which would be the clinical outcome of an afib right event”

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Most important takeaways of the video

  1. Dr. Bill Harris was initially unaware of pioneering omega-3 research by Dr. Dyerberg and Bang involving Eskimos, indicating a gap in nutritional research dissemination during the late 70s.
  2. Studies showed unexpected benefits of high doses of fish oil, such as lowering triglycerides and reducing platelet aggregation, shifting research focus towards omega-3's effects on triglycerides and platelets.
  3. Omega-3 fatty acids were linked to reduced atherosclerosis by Danish investigators Dyerburg and Bang, leading to the initial popularity of omega-3 supplements.
  4. Manufacturers claimed that omega-3 supplements lowered cholesterol levels, but later insights suggested the reduction was due to decreased saturated fat intake, highlighting early misconceptions in omega-3 research.

Early Omega-3 Research and Developments

Dr. Bill Harris, associated with the Sanford School of Medicine, initiated discussions regarding the nascent stages of omega-3 research. Despite the foundational work by Danish investigators Dyerberg and Bang on Eskimos and omega-3’s implications on atherosclerosis, Harris admitted to initially lacking awareness of their work during the 1970s. He was involved in several studies exploring the impact of a high fish oil diet on cholesterol and triglyceride levels. His earliest studies surprisingly indicated significant reductions in triglycerides when the original focus was on cholesterol.

Further Applications and Observations

Further research by Harris expanded into studying the effects of omega-3 on platelets and the possibility of reducing bleeding time, similar to the effects observed with aspirin. The unexpected benefits led to more comprehensive studies, including the OPERA study aimed at preventing post-operative atrial fibrillation by pre-loading patients with high doses of omega-3.

FDA Regulations and Supplemental Forms

The FDA has recognized omega-3 supplements like Lovaza and Vascepa for not causing significant bleeding, with Lovaza containing both EPA and DHA, and Vascepa containing only the EPA fatty acid. These recognition paved the way for their prescribed use in managing triglyceride levels among other cardiovascular benefits.

Impact on Chronic Conditions and Longevity

An extensive study pooled from 17 cohorts involving about 45,000 individuals globally correlated higher omega-3 levels with reduced total mortality rates. The findings were significantly noticeable in cardiovascular health but were also present across other causes of death.

Dietary Sources and Recommendations

Algal oil is recommended for vegetarians and vegans as a direct source of EPA and DHA, the primary omega-3 fatty acids initially obtained by fish from microalgae. The broader discussions by Harris also touch on the potential of genetically modified plants like camelina or modified soy as future sustainable omega-3 sources.

Practical and Preventative Measures

From a practical standpoint, regular intake of fish or fish oil supplements was advised to maintain or increase omega-3 levels, potentially aiding in the overall reduction of cardiovascular risks and other health benefits. Harris emphasized the omega-3 index—a measure of omega-3 fatty acid levels in red blood cells—as an important biomarker for assessing cardiovascular disease risk, advising an optimal target index of over 8%.

In conclusion, the discussions and studies reflect a growing understanding and application of omega-3 fatty acids in both dietary and therapeutic contexts, highlighting their broad and impactful benefits across various aspects of human health.