I have a fun omega-3 anecdata point going right now. A friend of mine researches the stuff in mouse models and told me it's extremely beneficial, but you need to buy a fancy brand to avoid rancid oil or heavy metal contamination both of which ~null out the benefits. She recommended Sports Research.
I bought some and started taking it and my 1:1 bullet chess ELO jumped from 850 to ~1070 over the next couple weeks.
I play chess a bit like sushi ginger for the mind - purge working memory with a short intense task to context switch. I intentionally don't study openings or anything so I can use it as a benchmark for mental horsepower with a reasonably slow drift in the baseline from 'actually learning chess'.
My friend says this effect is way too big to actually attribute to the vitamins and it has to be placebo etc but I'm thoroughly enjoying the idea that omega-3 Nick would win 3/4 bullet matches against deficient Nick.
Consumer Labs offers as a subscription service testing of various vitamins Including fish oil. They perform a great service, and I think it's economical in terms of determining if what you're buying is really what you want.
Heavy metal contamination is classically not a problem because the fish oil is distilled. My guess is your researcher friend has fallen victim to the marketing of the pharmacological industry-- Although I do want to indicate they do have value, probably not the 500 percent markup that they put on what in essence is a generic product.
Some natural fish oils are not distilled and do have this problem-- These are normally marketed as natural or cod liver oil or something that should hit your radar pretty quick. Your friend's concern about rancidity is clearly a problem And pretty well understood by people for years if you have any familiarity with chemistry. Omega threes get their name from the fact that you have a weird bend on the end of a long carbon molecule. This is susceptible to oxidation. This is true for any Omega 3 molecule regardless of its length Or it's sourcing.
This includes omega-3 "drugs" like Vascepa (pure EPA) and Lovaza (EPA and DHA combination).
Fortunately in testing, they have not found widespread issues with rancidity, although they definitely have found pockets. My normal suggestion to everybody is by a high volume manufacturer that you know is tearing through the product quite rapidly. My top suggestion is Costco. Then make sure you keep your fish oil in the refrigerator, and churn through it on a regular basis.
p1esk · 3h ago
If I eat raw salmon (sashimi) a couple times a week, would I still benefit from consuming fish oil?
Aurornis · 2h ago
Sashimi is typically served with very small portion sizes.
You're not getting as much fish oil from sashimi as someone taking concentrated pills every day. However, whether or not it matters is a different story. The benefits of fish oil appear be inversely proportional to the size of the study (as in this 1000-person study that has some hints of p-hacking) so I wouldn't worry about it.
theologic · 2h ago
It's strange to being using Hacker news as a nutrition advice, but this is something that I have been reading research on Pubmed for years. (Actually going back to the grateful med....).
Approximately 50-60% of brain weight is made up of lipids, of which about 35% consists of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Of the omega-3 PUFAs present in the brain, DHA accounts for more than 40% of total omega-3 PUFAs in neuronal tissue, especially in gray matter.
Now I know this is slightly different than the OP, but I consider the primary reason for incorporating Omega3 in your diet is specifically to give your brain the basic building blocks that it needs to create the right structure. And the issue is you have to eat Omega-3. It's not something that you can manufacture: you can take a shorter chain and potentially increase the length of the carbon to get it all the way up to an EPA or DHA, but even this falls off as you age. So I don't consider taking flaxseed oil a good idea.
Without spending a long time on this, Long term supplementation I believe we can come up with an extremely strong line of evidence that suggests it helps neurological and emotional health. Now while there may be other benefits, this one is so massive and so clear to me, this is the reason that you want to make sure that you get this basic building block.
What is clear the western diet for the most part is severely lacking in in Omega-3 (or often called N3 PUFA in research), therefore if you're not thoughtfully measuring what you take in, you very well possibly could be running low especially considering that there is a significant Sigma in terms of what people need to have a healthy brain.
So now let's talk about the food supply. The problem is virtually every fish in the world has mercury higher than what you want. The only fish that looks like it has an acceptable level of mercury is salmon in certain geographies such as Alaska. My guess is you're actually eating some type of farm raised salmon, And I would have concerns unless you exactly understand the sourcing.
Without getting into the details, It is phenomenally difficult to come up with clear guidelines for biological humans that have wild diversity in terms of genetics and how your body processes food stuff. If anybody tells you they absolutely know the right dosage for you, immediately you should call BS. The data is way too far ranging to suggest a simple and clear case of what any individual needs.
Now keeping that in mind, I would suggest that most people probably need around one gram worth of EPA slash DHA in their diet basically forever. Depending upon your genetics maybe you could go down to half of this.
This is not a number you should guess at, and with things such as perplexity, You can find out how much EPA and DHA you are taking in in your salmon. You should be able to find out the number of ounces and talk to the cook about what they are serving. And 100 grams of salmon depending upon if you're eating clean salmon which has lower levels of EPA/DHA or farming salmon which has more oil but normally is dirtier, you should see somewhere between 1 to 2G.
unsupp0rted · 2h ago
> It's strange to being using Hacker news as a nutrition advice
Bodybuilding forums are always like 10-20 years ahead of cutting edge research in terms of off-label uses for things, hyper-efficient non-mainstream protocols, etc. Granted they're also 10-20 years ahead in terms of BS generation.
But I've learned a ton of useful things about nutrition from HN. It helps that nobody knows anything about nutrition anyway.
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
I agree with all you say here. I’ve been studying this for over 15 years because my family suffered from early heart attacks, like below 50 years of age. My brother died of a heart attack at 48.
This heart disease risk along with psychiatric problems my family, including suicides led me to getting my genetics. Once I had them, it became clear how much I need long chain poly unsaturated fatty acids and specifically higher omega-3 than the normal European Caucasian population.
This is primarily because of polymorphisms I have in two genes FADS1 and FADS2.
Currently, I pretty much eat negligible amounts of short chain poly unsaturated fatty acids. The major components of my diet are cold water seafood, and muscles and oysters. Plus a lot of seaweed (this is from another prism I have, I am a FUT2 non-secretor. I also eat a very low amount of carbohydrates.
Now I’ve had serious psychiatric problems in my life. Three attempted suicides, for hospitalizations, and I was on a ton of medications. But guess what, I’m no longer on any medication‘s, my blood pressure has normalized, and my lipids are normal. And I can’t count the other of other minor bothersome symptoms I’ve had that have vanished.
No, I am a huge outlier, but I am also sort of a canary in a coal mine. Because while I am extremely sensitive to deficiencies of omega-3 fatty acids. Anyone who does not get at least the minimal amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids will end up having health problems. Whether you need long chain or short chain polyunsaturated fatty acids is going to depend on your genetics.
My genetic haplotype is K1, which is uncommon for Europeans to have. The dates back to over 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age. I also seem to have a lot of finish heritage, which I can possibly trace back to the Sami people who are a very high fat high omega-3 diet.
But anyway, you’re right, this is not a number. You should guess that because omega-3‘s can really thin out peoples blood. I need this but for other people this might be a huge problem.
theologic · 1h ago
By the way, thanks for sharing. Super interesting and I love the personal vignette.
johnyzee · 3h ago
Yes. A real, raw source is almost certainly better than a processed and treated source. Packaged fish oil is sometimes rancid, unnoticeable to you, and those oxidation products are harmful. It is also heavily loaded with antioxidants, without which fresh fish oil goes rancid within hours, and which have their own detrimental effects when in excess.
anonymars · 3h ago
I'm confused, it sounds like you very much don't recommend supplementing if already eating enough fish?
johnyzee · 2h ago
Sorry, that's what I meant (misread the OP). Better to just eat fish.
jajko · 1h ago
Well they are not that healthy these days (salmon or tuna). Maybe 1x a week is still fine, but we are just guessing the long term toxicity thresholds.
wahnfrieden · 2h ago
Isn't algae DHA better than fish oil for several reasons?
As I understand it the fish oil only has it because the fish consumes the algae, also.
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
The best source is always going to be from fish. That’s because it comes with other things such as calcitonin and D3.
bnycum · 5h ago
I also started taking the Sports Research omega-3 capsules early this year. Seems the consensus for taking any omega-3 is that it's single-source and wild caught which is why I chose that brand. My biggest benefit has been my eyesight with way less floaters.
However I started taking creatine this summer to help with my recovery from running now that I'm older. I will say I feel it's done more for my cognitive function than the omega-3 did.
RankingMember · 4h ago
> biggest benefit has been my eyesight with way less floaters.
Huh, did you also have to get any laser surgery done to get rid of them totally? My research always indicated that once you had floaters, they were basically just there forever and your brain just learned to work around them.
wil421 · 3h ago
My eye doc said I had a slight case of blepharitis and that I should use high quality fish oil and eye lid cleaning wipes. The oil would help the membranes or gland in the eye lid, can’t remember which.
pretzellogician · 3h ago
I hadn't heard that! I'll have to take good fish oil religiously.
Blepharitis is just the worst.
bnycum · 3h ago
No surgery and I don't wear any vision correction, they aren't gone 100% just reduced greatly. I really only ever notice them when going from dark to light. Typically never inside my house under normal light, mainly just outdoors.
My diet does lack seafood overall. While I love salmon my family doesn't. If we eat seafood it's mainly catfish and shrimp though, as we are in Louisiana.
j45 · 1h ago
Not all floaters. The information in the doctors clinic can lag behind 10-20 years, best to keep an eye on studies that might not reach them, since no doc can read everything.
adastra22 · 3h ago
> wild caught
Wouldn't wild caught have more heavy metals?
maxboettinger · 5h ago
How much do you take? Evidence-based dosage guidance for supplements is hard to find. Pointers to primary sources with empirically supported dose ranges for common supplements—magnesium, zinc, and multivitamins—appreciated!
theologic · 4h ago
This really is a good use for Perplexity. I suggest a prompt along the lines of "what is the pubmed indications for what somebody should take for omega-3 or n3 pufa for X". This way your pull the primary research and you can have a conversation to your needs.
With that written, generally the literature indicates that somewhere around 1-2G daily of EPA/DHA is in the range of what is fringe mainstream. There is a lot of variance around this and a lot of debate. For example, you'll get a debate about the ability of the body to convert 22 EPA into 24 DHA, so some will push DHA as the preferred source for the body.
adrian_b · 4h ago
The range of 1 to 2 g daily of DHA+EPA has been suggested based on the daily consumption of 2 g or more that is typical for populations like the Japanese, who include a great proportion of marine food in their diet and who appear to derive health benefits from this.
I agree that for now there is no better evidence about which is the optimal daily intake.
Quantities about 10 times less than this might be sufficient to avoid any obvious signs of nutritional deficiency, but are unlikely to be optimal.
The capacity of converting ALA from vegetable oil into DHA and EPA may vary a lot between humans and it is typically lower in males than in females and also lower in older people than in young people.
The less risky choice is to ensure that you eat enough DHA+EPA. Perhaps one does not need 1 to 2 g of DHA+EPA daily, but eating it is unlikely to be harmful, while not eating it carries definite risks.
theologic · 1h ago
If you lean at all toward evolutionary biology, You tend to pay attention to the idea that earlier man had a diet which had a much higher ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6.
I would add that vegetable oils probably are not the ideal solution just beyond the idea that you need to extend the carbon chain up to something that can be used for your body in some type of pharmacological type role. The modern western diet has a ratio of somewhere around 15 to 20 to one in terms of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Virtually every vegetable oil will continue to drive that ratio toward a imbalance toward Omega 6.
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
It is true that early man specifically during the Ice Age, had a much higher omega-3 diet. But many of you are not genetically ice age people. I know I am because of my haplotype, which is K1.
Most European Caucasians would probably do better on a high omega-3 short chain poly unsaturated fatty acid diet. Like the omega-3’s from flaxseed. The change from gather cultures to farming culture changed the way we processed polyunsaturated fatty acids.
adrian_b · 51m ago
Flax was included in the first set of domesticated plants, together with the cereals barley, emmer wheat and einkorn wheat, and together with a few legumes, including lentils and peas.
This set of domesticated plants does not appear random, because any more restricted set would have made impossible the substitution of the animal food used previously with plant seeds.
The seeds of cereals and of legumes together could provide an acceptable protein source, while the flax seeds could add the alpha-linolenic acid, which can be transformed by humans, with modest efficiency, into the needed DHA and EPA.
We know that the first generations of people who had become dependent of agriculture had serious health problems in comparison with their ancestors, which have become less severe after many generations, presumably after they have learned to better balance their diet and when those who have survived might have been better adapted to eating such food.
Nevertheless, regardless where you are located you do not know the properties of your genes, unless you do some very expensive study, by using various diets and monitoring how they influence the content in your blood of various substances, e.g. of DHA and EPA when eating various sources of omega-3 fatty acids, of vegetable or of animal origin.
In the absence of such a study, the safer hypothesis is that you belong to the people who are not efficient at the elongation of ALA into DHA and EPA, so it is safer to eat food with enough DHA and EPA, instead of eating food with ALA, like flax seeds or oil, and hoping that you belong to the people for whom this is good enough.
This is similar for a few other conditionally-essential nutrients, which can be produced by humans, but in most cases only in too small quantities compared to necessities, so it is safer to ensure that they are present in food, e.g. vitamin K2, choline, taurine, creatine.
Moto7451 · 4h ago
There’s a study that 3g is needed to move triglycerides and HDL in a good direction. I did that under a doctor’s direction and it worked as intended. Didn’t do anything for my cholesterol otherwise which is one of the confounders in some of the studies. Sometimes people get better LDL, sometimes not. vLDL improved markedly but maybe I was just taking better care of my diet between tests.
I don’t mind taking them so I kept the Omega 3s and started taking others for my LDL issues.
iamben · 3h ago
Without hijacking the thread, may I ask what you took for better LDL? Always interested in heart health! Thanks!
FollowingTheDao · 3h ago
I take fish oil and eat seafood for this exact reason. I probably get 4 to 5 g of omega-3 a day at least. And that really moved all my lipids in a positive direction.
j45 · 1h ago
This is a great reminder, thanks.
Omega use and consumption in general can be one thing, and in many cases need higher consumption or timing, relative to the health condition or goal you need to support.
j45 · 1h ago
Ask Claude Opus to search, verify, source and then quote back passages and provide a link back the information for the supplement and any particular health needs and start reading.
Keep modifying the prompt until you don't need to review it as much, but still review it. I have a pretty long one like this now and it almost doesn't seem real. Still double check what it returns. It's easy enough to take the retrieved studies to your doc for verification too
.
For example, if targeting the brain, levels can be much higher.
Magnesium Threonate crosses the blood brain barrier, which is great, leaving Magnesium Biglycinate for the rest of the body.
64718283661 · 19m ago
Eat sardines. Good protein, high omega 3, high in other vitamins too.
Qem · 5h ago
> but you need to buy a fancy brand to avoid rancid oil or heavy metal contamination both of which ~null out the benefits
I didn't know about the rancidity problem, thank you. Knew about the contamination issue. To avoid it, I tried to source oil derived from sources lower in the food chain, either vegan algae oil, or krill oil. But krill oil is super expensive, when compared to fish oil, with lower levels of EPA/DHA per capsule. The problem with algae oil it's that those I've found contain only DHA. Not sure about the relative importance between EPA/DHA, although.
adrian_b · 4h ago
The so-called "algae" are not algae.
"Algae oil" is a marketing term that has been chosen for sounding better, especially to vegans, than "Schizochytrium oil" or "oil from stramenopiles".
Schizochytrium is an organism somewhat similar to a fungus, but which is not a fungus and it is distantly related to brown algae and diatoms (but unlike those, it is not an alga; it never had chloroplasts acquired by symbiosis).
The first cultivated strains of Schizochytrium produced only DHA, but now there are strains that also produce EPA. At least in Europe, you can easily find Schizochytrium oil that contains DHA + EPA in a 2:1 proportion. For most humans, especially for most males, both DHA and EPA are needed, because the capacity of interconversion between them is typically insufficient in comparison with what is needed.
However, even if it has become cheaper in recent years, Schizochytrium oil remains about 3 times more expensive than fish oil, per its fatty acid content. There are also many vendors that try to deceive their customers by selling diluted oil at about the same price as the decent vendors, therefore at a price many times higher per the fatty acid content.
In Europe, in recent years I have preferred Möller's Pure Cod Liver Oil, which is quite tasty, either alone or added to food. Using bottled oil is much better than using capsules. Besides being cheaper and not ingesting garbage capsules, tasting the oil makes certain that it neither is rancid nor has any suspect content. This is also true for Schizochytrium oil. Many decades ago, cod liver oil had a reputation of something that children were forced to eat, despite its bad taste. This is completely untrue nowadays, when the oil is made either immediately after catching or from fish that have been frozen immediately after catching, so the oil has not degraded and it retains a pleasant taste.
If Schizochytrium oil will become cheaper, i.e. with a price not more than double in comparison with pure cod liver oil, then I will switch to it, removing from my diet the only ingredient that is obtained by killing animals.
j45 · 1h ago
Reviews help move towards rancidity or away from it.
Some DHA/EPA is better than no DHA/EPA.
It's also worth seeing what people mix it with to help with the taste.
Since Omega-3 goes down well with fat and better absorbed and bioavailable, there's some options there potentially.
bobbylarrybobby · 2h ago
You can also get Omega-3 from algae oil (which is where fish get it) to alleviate concerns about heavy metal content. Algae may have heavy metals but should have less than any fish. I know nothing about this particular product, but they came up when I searched for it: https://www.norsan-omega.com/algae-oil/
JumpCrisscross · 5h ago
> I play chess a bit like sushi ginger for the mind - purge working memory with a short intense task to context switch
I use it as a stupidity meter. If I play a series of bad bullet games, I’m more cautious about my decision making that day.
trehalose · 3h ago
How long was your bullet chess elo stable at 850 (and how often were you playing) before this experiment began? I'm asking because the act of playing constitutes practice, which could itself cause a rise in your elo. Bit of a confounding factor there, potentially.
da02 · 5h ago
Your life sounds amazing. What other discoveries have you found? Do you publish anywhere online? (social media, Youtube, etc.)
storus · 5h ago
Omega-3 together with vitamin B2 repolarizes microglia from pro-inflammatory state to healing state, so no wonder your brain got a boost. Now, how can I tell if Omega-3 capsules are rancid?
adrian_b · 4h ago
If you buy bottled oil instead of capsules, you can feel its taste, so you can sense whether it is rancid or it has any other suspect taste.
Good omega-3 oil has a pleasant taste, there is really no need to eat capsules made from chemically-modified cellulose or who knows what other material that is not suitable as food.
The omega-3 oil can be mixed with whatever oil you add to your food, e.g. to a salad.
motoboi · 1h ago
Does normal (not rancid) omega-3 oil smells like fish? Or is that an indicator of rancid?
storus · 3h ago
Yeah, I mean if I open a capsule, I can tell. But without opening it, is there any way to tell it's rancid?
adrian_b · 3h ago
Like I have said, you can buy omega-3 oil as liquid in bottles, even if it may be harder to find than in capsules (but with online shopping it is very easy to find many kinds of such oil).
The pure oil is cheaper and you can feel its taste without having to break capsules. Moreover you do not have to ingest capsules made of dubious substances, besides the desired oil.
Once opened (but preferably also before) such an oil bottle should be kept in a refrigerator.
Some bottled oil includes flavors, e.g. lemon, which mask its natural taste. Unflavored omega 3 oil is preferable.
storus · 2h ago
I had a look but all of the oil bottles I could find in my area were flavored with tart/sour taste to mask rancidity, so no thanks.
smilliken · 3h ago
The best way is to open a capsule for each batch you receive to test it by taste, then store in the fridge.
mettamage · 3h ago
Playing chess as a baseline thing to know how your cognitive processing is seems like a good idea.
FollowingTheDao · 5h ago
I believe you. People really don’t understand how important omega-3 is for the transport and metabolism of neurotransmitters.
That would be a great solution, except that such foods are usually much more expensive than an equivalent amount of omega-3 oil.
Moreover, due to the great human stupidity of dumping everything where "it becomes the problem of others", now it has become the problem of everybody that what were previously among the healthiest foods, i.e. most food items of marine origin, nowadays carry significant health risks, due to possible mercury content.
Finnucane · 3h ago
But they do have the advantage of being, you know, food, and not just a bottle of oil. And you can't live on a bottle of oil. You'll still need to buy the food.
adrian_b · 2h ago
Yes, but where I live, in the middle of a continent, not on some sea coast, I can buy food that contains all nutrients, except omega-3 fatty acids, for a price at least 10 to 20 times less than if I would buy food of marine origin.
Adding to that food 10 milliliter of cod liver oil per day, which provides 2 grams of DHA+EPA, requires only the equivalent of 40 US cents per day.
With most capsules, one would need 5 or more capsules for this amount of oil, which would increase the price a lot. To create the sensation of a higher content of DHA+EPA, on many capsule boxes the quantity that is written is for a pair of capsules, not for one capsule. Therefore I consider capsules as more like a scam for increasing oil price than as a useful method of delivery, which is why I have stopped using them many years ago.
Looking right now on Amazon.com, it seems that the US prices for omega-3 oils are significantly higher than in Europe, at least double, the cheapest being labeled as dog food.
I wonder whether there is any difference in quality between those labeled as dog food and those labeled as human food, e.g. if the "dog food" oils are also tested for contaminants. Otherwise, the "dog food" oils seemed not only cheaper, but also better, being pure and unflavored, while the "human food" oils suggested by Amazon were either flavored or in capsules. Here in Europe, I see such pure oils advertised for children and pregnant women, instead of as dog food.
partiallypro · 1h ago
I do the same thing, except I subscribe to Thorne. I haven't noticed an uptick in perceived brain capacity, etc, but I can tell that my skin and hair are healthier. I started taking it because my cholesterol was all over the place and I desperately want to avoid taking a statin later in life. I'll be retesting that early next year. I've also started eating smoked salmon and canned sardines.
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
I’d really be interested in hearing what your heritage is, specifically on your mother side. If you read my other post, you’ll understand why I’m curious.
rainworld · 5h ago
Revealed: many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’
Kirkland Omega 3’s seem to be decent, hope they are.
reducesuffering · 5h ago
They are pitifully low in EPA/DHA per $
theologic · 4h ago
I highly recommend them as they test well for freshness, but if you aim to get around 2G of EPA/DHA, you'll need 8 capsules. To your point that's a lot of capsules if you don't like swallowing pills. Compare with prescription below:
Kirkland Signature Fish Oil provides 151.8 mg EPA and 119.1 mg DHA per tablet, totaling 270.9 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel).
Prescription Lovaza (Rx)* provides 465 mg EPA and 375 mg DHA per tablet, totaling 840 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel (Rx)).
Prescription Vascepa (Rx)* provides 960 mg EPA and <40 mg DHA per tablet, totaling ~960 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel (Rx)).
j45 · 4h ago
Thanks so much. Reducing the average 1600 decisions a day we apparently make is helpful.
It can be a lot of pills time wise as well.
j45 · 5h ago
Agreed, it’s why I’m taking multiples.
Open to other omega 3’s if there’s any recommendations.
theologic · 4h ago
Because of the issues with rancidity, I strongly prefer Costco because they churn through the stuff like there is no tomorrow. Their supply chains seem to be pretty straightforward from OEM to internal warehouse to to clearance. Just make sure to keep it refrigerated and move it from shelf to a cool place in a timely fashion period.
j45 · 1h ago
That's a useful consideration, thanks.
I think I recall hearing something like that but promptly forgot when I realized I had to eat them by the handful per day.
Still appreciative that something like this can be relatively accessed anywhere in a pinch or starting out.
j45 · 5h ago
Appreciate the anecdata. There could have been a bit of a deficiency compared to baseline.
I have heard of that brand too - quality matters.
Omega 3 containing sufficient DHA is studied to reduce inflammation in the brain as well has help with other cognitive processes.
Another one I had read is the insulin spike after a meal can be lowered significantly by having one omega-3 with each meal.
I’ll try to circle back with a few of the studies.
bongodongobob · 5h ago
Eh, I could see it. When I look at my rating graph it's really easy to correlate with life events. Bad stuff at work, rating drops. Went on vacation, goes way up etc. Just being in a bad mood will fuck up my game, so I def think it's very possible it did affect your game that much. Not to mention that that level of chess is very volatile. A 2200 player would definitely not see the same effects.
Aurornis · 2h ago
This is a small study (n=1005) that only included children age 6-8. The way they're shotgunning a long list of nutrients against a list of eye parameters screams p-hacking to me, so I wouldn't get excited about this result.
Omega-3 and fish oil stories always attract a lot of impossibly positive claims, but real-world studies are rarely as good as the anecdotes.
I would also caution people that fish oil isn't entirely benign to supplement with, despite common wisdom suggesting it's risk-free. Fish oil supplements can induce depressive-like symptoms in some people and high dose fish oil is a known trigger for mania in certain people with mood disorders. You can find countless puzzled posts from people wondering why fish oil is making them feel bad: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+fish+oil+m...
These outcomes are unlikely, but watch for them. It's really sad when someone is taking high dose fish oil because they're desperate for depression relief and all of the influencers say it's good for depression, then months later they run out of pills for a few days and are surprised that they feel better.
Before I get accused of exaggerating anecdotes, there are also randomized clinical trials with an order of magnitude more patients than this study that show a slight increase in depression, opposite of the expected reduction in mood disorders: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787320
theologic · 1h ago
First, I am not trying to object to your point, but I do wanna point out this is a classical problem with the medicinal field. In that they show an outstanding inability to understand how to actually process data in light of survivorship bias. Do we know survivorship bias is here in your large study? Obviously not, but it is a strong concern. And one of the classic reasons these studies are very poor at establishing clear causation.
So, lets start by framing the study differently:
1. 10% drop out
2. 6-7% in the non-Omega3 get depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population
3. 6-75 in the 0mega3 depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population
My first question is, "Do we think that depressed people are more likely to follow a rigorous protocol for making sure they are highly adherent to taking their Omega-3s, or do we think that this group would tend to drop out of the study?
To me my hypothesis is clearly that depressive people tend to be less adherent. This seems intuitively obvious to anybody that knows anybody with depression. At the very least, this should be a massive red flag. The study assumes those missing participants are “missing completely at random,” rather than systematically related to the key outcome: depressive symptoms.
If participants who developed new or worsening depression were more likely to leave the study (a real possibility in mood research), the results would disproportionately reflect those who stayed well—not those most at risk. The study does acknowledge in its methods that follow-up missingness was treated as random and that participants administratively censored were presumed “missing completely at random.” However, this assumption ignores the real-world possibility that depressive symptoms themselves most likely drives dropout. Without targeted analysis of why people left, the null results risk underestimating any true link between omega-3 and depression prevention, making this a textbook example of unaddressed survivorship bias in clinical trial design and reporting.
Aurornis · 21m ago
If depressed patients were more likely to fall out of the study, that implies that the actual outcome was worse because the dropout group would include disproportionately more people who got depressed.
esbranson · 2h ago
> Cтатья отсутствует в базе
I was unable to access the OP's source, but I do want to point out there are several ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids with different nutrient characteristics. Thanks be to Chat G for banging this out, but I like many people have had this drilled in.
ALA (α-linolenic acid, 18:3 n-3) is an essential fatty acid. It's nutritional role is primarily as a precursor to the other ω-3 PUFAs, humans can elongate and desaturate ALA into longer-chain ω-3s (EPA, DPA, DHA), but the conversion efficiency is very limited (<5% to EPA, <1% to DHA for most people). ALA cannot be converted from EPA, DHA, or DPA. Sources are primarily plant oils (flaxseed, chia, walnuts, canola, soy). If this is your only source of ω-3 PUFAs, you're unhealthy.
EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid, 20:5 n-3) is (conditionally) essential. Its role is anti-inflammatory, a precursor for resolvins, cardiovascular protection, eye and brain signaling, and a precursor to DHA synthesis in limited amounts. Sources are marine foods (fatty fish: salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies).
DHA (docosahexaenoic acid, 22:6 n-3) is (conditionally) essential. Its role is as a major structural lipid in the retina, brain, and neural tissues, visual function, cognitive development, and neuronal membranes. Sources are marine foods (same as EPA) plus algae oils.
DPA (docosapentaenoic acid, 22:5 n-3) is an intermediate between EPA and DHA. Don't know. Sources are fish and red meat (esp. grass-fed ruminants).
In practice EPA, DHA, and DPA conversion from ALA is too inefficient, so direct dietary sources (fish, seafood, algal oil) are the meaningful way humans obtain enough EPA/DHA. That's why nutrition guidelines (WHO, FAO, NIH, EFSA) often treat EPA + DHA as conditionally essential, especially for infants (where DHA is critical for retina and brain development) and for populations with low fish intake.
Eat fish. As always, a balanced and diverse diet is a key requirement for health. For those who don't know, sardines are less fishy than tuna (hardly at all IMO), cheap, widely accessible, and pretty sure they have low mercury risk.
bilsbie · 5h ago
I just can’t imagine how you’d remove healthy user bias from a study like this.
amai · 1h ago
If that would be the case, why is myopia on the rise in Asia, where people eat a lot of fish?
hellojebus · 5h ago
This reminded me of the Knowledge Project podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick on certain biomarkers, including omega index as an indicator for longer life span.
Have not read the underlying study but given that it is a generic nutrition and vision study, this seems like a clear case of p-hacking. At best it could be a "here is something that might merit future research".
They find that one of the nutrient factors studied is positively correlated with improved vision at p=0.01. https://xkcd.com/882/
cyberax · 49m ago
My anecdata: I have a moderate case of dry eyes, so I tried fish oil and then vegan omega-3 supplements. They did nothing whatsoever.
IPL and RF treatments eventually helped, though.
JumpCrisscross · 5h ago
How much was the highest-quartile group consuming?
simianwords · 4h ago
Hi any trusted review of Nordic Natural's fish oil please?
savorypiano · 6h ago
This should be studied across different populations, not just one which is known for myopia.
FollowingTheDao · 5h ago
I disagree, I think they need to study specific populations for specific diseases associated with different diets. If you study this across population where this doesn’t matter as much then they will say omega-3 has no effect on nearsightedness, which is bad for the population that needs omega-3.
Omega-3 saved me from the fate of my family, dying from a heart attack before I was 50.
And I see this need in my genetics, specifically FADS1 FADS2 polymorphisms that make me need higher chain omega-3 fatty acids like from seafood.
j45 · 5h ago
Agree. Omega 3 is well studied.
Things don’t have have to be proven universally for every human, but omega 3 seems pretty universal.
whatever1 · 3h ago
Compare Chinese and Indian myopia frequencies. One country loves fish the other is mostly vegetarian.
amai · 1h ago
Is that a joke? The myopia rate in China is much higher than in India:
China's myopia rate is 31%: 400 million of its 1.3 billion people are myopic. The prevalence of myopia in high school in China is 77%, and in college is more than 80%.
A study indicated that the prevalence of myopia among urban children in India of aged 5 to 15 increased from 4.44% in 1999 to 21.15% in 2019.
Both of these cultures are genetically adapted to the foods they need. So comparing these populations will not reveal anything about myopia in certain populations.
whatever1 · 3h ago
Why? Who died of Myopia and did not pass their gene to the next gen ?
gs17 · 3h ago
You wouldn't die "of myopia", you would die because myopia means you didn't see things that might be hazardous.
FollowingTheDao · 2h ago
I’m sorry you’re missing my point. If a culture grows up eating a lot of long chain poly unsaturated fatty acids, and then suddenly they stop, then the myopia develops.
In populations that depend on a very heavy vegetarian diet, which is comprise primarily of shortchange, polyunsaturated fatty acids, they might have other issues not related to myopia when they go off of their traditional diet.
Myopia in my opinion is a result of the industrialization of food.
nemo44x · 4h ago
Omega 3 helps manage triglycerides which when high make managing insulin difficult which results in the liver putting more glucose in the blood. This can create poor vision as high glucose damages eyes.
Wonder if this is related.
fortran77 · 3h ago
I hate to sound like one of those "Do Your Own Research" types, but as far as I can tell, there are only a few supplements that have repeatedly shown _some_ benefits in peer-reviewed replicated studies for general health:
Vitamin D, Omega 3, and possibly Magnesium and Creatine.
So I stopped taking a daily multivitamin and I just take modest doeses of these 4 supplemements every day.
theologic · 1h ago
By the way I've been extremely interested in this for years. While I take more supplements than what anybody probably should take, I give almost everybody that will listen this exact advice-- With the exception of creatine. Creatine is an interesting case, and I would say that it is less clear than the other three but I have been taking it for years and the latest research does make it look very promising. What is clear is virtually nobody gets the amount of magnesium that they should.
Aurornis · 3h ago
> Vitamin D, Omega 3, and possibly Magnesium and Creatine.
Vitamin D supplementation is mildly helpful for those with low baseline levels. However the benefits have been exaggerated across the internet and podcasts. A lot of studies show no measured reduction in things like frequency of respiratory infections ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38178229/ for example, which funnily enough had the Vitamin D3 treated men getting more respiratory infections).
Omega 3 has also been greatly exaggerated. Later large scale studies have shown minimal to no effects.
Magnesium is another one that can be helpful for those who are deficient, but due to the long duration within the body a lot of the supplement fanatics who consume large doses of magnesium might be getting too much over time. Gwern did some self-experimentation where magnesium might have possibly been net negative over time: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium
Creatine is the latest trend. If you believe the latest trends you need to consume a huge amount daily and it will fight off everything from depression to low energy. This is another one where the most impressive studies are all very small, but the larger the study the less impressive the results. The influencers only talk about the small, impressive studies, of course.
theologic · 1h ago
It turns out that the vast majority of the USA POPULATION, which I think we have some of the best data for, is magnesium deficient or 50%. The issue is basically vitamins are a catalyst, and is very difficult to justify putting more catalyst into any type of chemical equation. So overdosing on magnesium doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
By the way, I also love Gwern.
alphazard · 2h ago
> I hate to sound like one of those "Do Your Own Research" types
The culture is slowly coming to terms with empiricism.
If a supplement doesn't provide a benefit (as in you notice when you forget to take it), and it doesn't affect a biomarker that you measure and care about, then don't take it. Simple as.
moduspol · 3h ago
It may depend on what you count as a supplement. Fiber and protein are pretty good to supplement, though obviously you can also get them from diet. And testosterone (at least for males), though not without side effects.
yalok · 6h ago
Summary from GPT (wow, not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health):
Omega-3 fats seem to protect against myopia, while saturated fats seem to increase the risk. Other nutrients didn’t show clear effects.
Foods high in saturated fats (risk foods)
• Fatty meats: beef, lamb, pork, processed meats (sausages, bacon)
• Dairy: butter, cheese, cream, whole milk, ice cream
• Baked goods: pastries, cookies, cakes made with butter or shortening
• Fast foods: fried chicken, burgers, pizza
• Coconut and palm oil products (though plant-based, they’re high in saturated fats)
So the takeaway is: More fish, nuts, and seeds may help protect children’s eyes, while too many fatty meats, butter, and fried foods may raise the risk of myopia.
angiolillo · 5h ago
> wow, not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health
The importance of dairy is overblown, especially in the US where the dairy industry funds a lot of school nutrition initiatives. I helped out around a cousin's dairy farm as a kid but eventually discovered that I'm part of the ~2/3rds of the world population that doesn't digest dairy well.
You'll get calcium as long as you eat some white/navy beans, tofu, kale, okra, collards, broccoli raab, chia, or even "calcium fortified" foods.
alphazard · 4h ago
There has historically been a lot of flawed research about saturated fat. Sugar and fat together is always fattening, and being obese comes with a lot of risk.
> Summary from GPT
This whole post is filled with bad implicit advice. No one should stop eating meat to make their eyesight better. No one should add canola oil to their diet as a source of Omega 3.
adrian_b · 3h ago
Yeah, also soybean oil would be as useless as canola oil.
Among vegetable oils, flaxseed oil is the best source of ALA, while also walnut oil and hemp oil have decent amounts.
However many humans, especially many men, have a too low capacity for elongating ALA into DHA and EPA, so they may remain deficient in omega-3 fatty acids even when eating decent amounts of ALA from flaxseed oil or the like.
Because you normally do not know your own biosynthetic abilities, it is less risky to eat fish oil or Schizochytrium oil, instead of flaxseed oil.
AstroBen · 5h ago
> not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health
Non-fat dairy. Greek yogurt + walnuts + berries
j45 · 5h ago
Low/no-fat cheeses are available too.
The kitchen is a pharmacy.
rsync · 4h ago
"... wow, not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health ..."
A disappointing level of knowledge and sophistication in this late, 21st century era.
Your bone health is almost entirely correlated to the load bearing exercise and gravity stress that you put on your musculoskeletal system.
Fine optimizations to your diet (just like fine optimizations everywhere in life) are only sensible after you've taken care of the big, macro factors.
ac29 · 54m ago
> Your bone health is almost entirely correlated to the load bearing exercise and gravity stress that you put on your musculoskeletal system.
This is a somewhat bold claim.
I have literally zero dairy in my diet or calcium fortified alternatives. My best estimate is that without supplementation I would get 20-50% of the recommended calcium intake. Is your suggestion that lifting weights is better than a calcium supplement for bone heath in this case?
privatelypublic · 5h ago
Milk/cheese is hardly the best/only source of calcium.
FollowingTheDao · 5h ago
Although high omega-3 with saturated fats may protect against the effect of only a diet high and saturated fats.
If I was not on my phone, I would look up the studies on this. :)
I bought some and started taking it and my 1:1 bullet chess ELO jumped from 850 to ~1070 over the next couple weeks.
I play chess a bit like sushi ginger for the mind - purge working memory with a short intense task to context switch. I intentionally don't study openings or anything so I can use it as a benchmark for mental horsepower with a reasonably slow drift in the baseline from 'actually learning chess'.
My friend says this effect is way too big to actually attribute to the vitamins and it has to be placebo etc but I'm thoroughly enjoying the idea that omega-3 Nick would win 3/4 bullet matches against deficient Nick.
https://www.chess.com/member/nickparkerprint/stats/bullet?da...
Heavy metal contamination is classically not a problem because the fish oil is distilled. My guess is your researcher friend has fallen victim to the marketing of the pharmacological industry-- Although I do want to indicate they do have value, probably not the 500 percent markup that they put on what in essence is a generic product.
Some natural fish oils are not distilled and do have this problem-- These are normally marketed as natural or cod liver oil or something that should hit your radar pretty quick. Your friend's concern about rancidity is clearly a problem And pretty well understood by people for years if you have any familiarity with chemistry. Omega threes get their name from the fact that you have a weird bend on the end of a long carbon molecule. This is susceptible to oxidation. This is true for any Omega 3 molecule regardless of its length Or it's sourcing.
This includes omega-3 "drugs" like Vascepa (pure EPA) and Lovaza (EPA and DHA combination).
Fortunately in testing, they have not found widespread issues with rancidity, although they definitely have found pockets. My normal suggestion to everybody is by a high volume manufacturer that you know is tearing through the product quite rapidly. My top suggestion is Costco. Then make sure you keep your fish oil in the refrigerator, and churn through it on a regular basis.
You're not getting as much fish oil from sashimi as someone taking concentrated pills every day. However, whether or not it matters is a different story. The benefits of fish oil appear be inversely proportional to the size of the study (as in this 1000-person study that has some hints of p-hacking) so I wouldn't worry about it.
Approximately 50-60% of brain weight is made up of lipids, of which about 35% consists of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Of the omega-3 PUFAs present in the brain, DHA accounts for more than 40% of total omega-3 PUFAs in neuronal tissue, especially in gray matter.
Now I know this is slightly different than the OP, but I consider the primary reason for incorporating Omega3 in your diet is specifically to give your brain the basic building blocks that it needs to create the right structure. And the issue is you have to eat Omega-3. It's not something that you can manufacture: you can take a shorter chain and potentially increase the length of the carbon to get it all the way up to an EPA or DHA, but even this falls off as you age. So I don't consider taking flaxseed oil a good idea.
Without spending a long time on this, Long term supplementation I believe we can come up with an extremely strong line of evidence that suggests it helps neurological and emotional health. Now while there may be other benefits, this one is so massive and so clear to me, this is the reason that you want to make sure that you get this basic building block.
What is clear the western diet for the most part is severely lacking in in Omega-3 (or often called N3 PUFA in research), therefore if you're not thoughtfully measuring what you take in, you very well possibly could be running low especially considering that there is a significant Sigma in terms of what people need to have a healthy brain.
So now let's talk about the food supply. The problem is virtually every fish in the world has mercury higher than what you want. The only fish that looks like it has an acceptable level of mercury is salmon in certain geographies such as Alaska. My guess is you're actually eating some type of farm raised salmon, And I would have concerns unless you exactly understand the sourcing.
Without getting into the details, It is phenomenally difficult to come up with clear guidelines for biological humans that have wild diversity in terms of genetics and how your body processes food stuff. If anybody tells you they absolutely know the right dosage for you, immediately you should call BS. The data is way too far ranging to suggest a simple and clear case of what any individual needs.
Now keeping that in mind, I would suggest that most people probably need around one gram worth of EPA slash DHA in their diet basically forever. Depending upon your genetics maybe you could go down to half of this.
This is not a number you should guess at, and with things such as perplexity, You can find out how much EPA and DHA you are taking in in your salmon. You should be able to find out the number of ounces and talk to the cook about what they are serving. And 100 grams of salmon depending upon if you're eating clean salmon which has lower levels of EPA/DHA or farming salmon which has more oil but normally is dirtier, you should see somewhere between 1 to 2G.
Bodybuilding forums are always like 10-20 years ahead of cutting edge research in terms of off-label uses for things, hyper-efficient non-mainstream protocols, etc. Granted they're also 10-20 years ahead in terms of BS generation.
But I've learned a ton of useful things about nutrition from HN. It helps that nobody knows anything about nutrition anyway.
This heart disease risk along with psychiatric problems my family, including suicides led me to getting my genetics. Once I had them, it became clear how much I need long chain poly unsaturated fatty acids and specifically higher omega-3 than the normal European Caucasian population.
This is primarily because of polymorphisms I have in two genes FADS1 and FADS2.
Currently, I pretty much eat negligible amounts of short chain poly unsaturated fatty acids. The major components of my diet are cold water seafood, and muscles and oysters. Plus a lot of seaweed (this is from another prism I have, I am a FUT2 non-secretor. I also eat a very low amount of carbohydrates.
Now I’ve had serious psychiatric problems in my life. Three attempted suicides, for hospitalizations, and I was on a ton of medications. But guess what, I’m no longer on any medication‘s, my blood pressure has normalized, and my lipids are normal. And I can’t count the other of other minor bothersome symptoms I’ve had that have vanished.
No, I am a huge outlier, but I am also sort of a canary in a coal mine. Because while I am extremely sensitive to deficiencies of omega-3 fatty acids. Anyone who does not get at least the minimal amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids will end up having health problems. Whether you need long chain or short chain polyunsaturated fatty acids is going to depend on your genetics.
My genetic haplotype is K1, which is uncommon for Europeans to have. The dates back to over 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age. I also seem to have a lot of finish heritage, which I can possibly trace back to the Sami people who are a very high fat high omega-3 diet.
But anyway, you’re right, this is not a number. You should guess that because omega-3‘s can really thin out peoples blood. I need this but for other people this might be a huge problem.
As I understand it the fish oil only has it because the fish consumes the algae, also.
However I started taking creatine this summer to help with my recovery from running now that I'm older. I will say I feel it's done more for my cognitive function than the omega-3 did.
Huh, did you also have to get any laser surgery done to get rid of them totally? My research always indicated that once you had floaters, they were basically just there forever and your brain just learned to work around them.
Blepharitis is just the worst.
My diet does lack seafood overall. While I love salmon my family doesn't. If we eat seafood it's mainly catfish and shrimp though, as we are in Louisiana.
Wouldn't wild caught have more heavy metals?
With that written, generally the literature indicates that somewhere around 1-2G daily of EPA/DHA is in the range of what is fringe mainstream. There is a lot of variance around this and a lot of debate. For example, you'll get a debate about the ability of the body to convert 22 EPA into 24 DHA, so some will push DHA as the preferred source for the body.
I agree that for now there is no better evidence about which is the optimal daily intake.
Quantities about 10 times less than this might be sufficient to avoid any obvious signs of nutritional deficiency, but are unlikely to be optimal.
The capacity of converting ALA from vegetable oil into DHA and EPA may vary a lot between humans and it is typically lower in males than in females and also lower in older people than in young people.
The less risky choice is to ensure that you eat enough DHA+EPA. Perhaps one does not need 1 to 2 g of DHA+EPA daily, but eating it is unlikely to be harmful, while not eating it carries definite risks.
I would add that vegetable oils probably are not the ideal solution just beyond the idea that you need to extend the carbon chain up to something that can be used for your body in some type of pharmacological type role. The modern western diet has a ratio of somewhere around 15 to 20 to one in terms of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Virtually every vegetable oil will continue to drive that ratio toward a imbalance toward Omega 6.
Most European Caucasians would probably do better on a high omega-3 short chain poly unsaturated fatty acid diet. Like the omega-3’s from flaxseed. The change from gather cultures to farming culture changed the way we processed polyunsaturated fatty acids.
This set of domesticated plants does not appear random, because any more restricted set would have made impossible the substitution of the animal food used previously with plant seeds.
The seeds of cereals and of legumes together could provide an acceptable protein source, while the flax seeds could add the alpha-linolenic acid, which can be transformed by humans, with modest efficiency, into the needed DHA and EPA.
We know that the first generations of people who had become dependent of agriculture had serious health problems in comparison with their ancestors, which have become less severe after many generations, presumably after they have learned to better balance their diet and when those who have survived might have been better adapted to eating such food.
Nevertheless, regardless where you are located you do not know the properties of your genes, unless you do some very expensive study, by using various diets and monitoring how they influence the content in your blood of various substances, e.g. of DHA and EPA when eating various sources of omega-3 fatty acids, of vegetable or of animal origin.
In the absence of such a study, the safer hypothesis is that you belong to the people who are not efficient at the elongation of ALA into DHA and EPA, so it is safer to eat food with enough DHA and EPA, instead of eating food with ALA, like flax seeds or oil, and hoping that you belong to the people for whom this is good enough.
This is similar for a few other conditionally-essential nutrients, which can be produced by humans, but in most cases only in too small quantities compared to necessities, so it is safer to ensure that they are present in food, e.g. vitamin K2, choline, taurine, creatine.
I don’t mind taking them so I kept the Omega 3s and started taking others for my LDL issues.
Omega use and consumption in general can be one thing, and in many cases need higher consumption or timing, relative to the health condition or goal you need to support.
Keep modifying the prompt until you don't need to review it as much, but still review it. I have a pretty long one like this now and it almost doesn't seem real. Still double check what it returns. It's easy enough to take the retrieved studies to your doc for verification too .
For example, if targeting the brain, levels can be much higher.
Magnesium Threonate crosses the blood brain barrier, which is great, leaving Magnesium Biglycinate for the rest of the body.
I didn't know about the rancidity problem, thank you. Knew about the contamination issue. To avoid it, I tried to source oil derived from sources lower in the food chain, either vegan algae oil, or krill oil. But krill oil is super expensive, when compared to fish oil, with lower levels of EPA/DHA per capsule. The problem with algae oil it's that those I've found contain only DHA. Not sure about the relative importance between EPA/DHA, although.
"Algae oil" is a marketing term that has been chosen for sounding better, especially to vegans, than "Schizochytrium oil" or "oil from stramenopiles".
Schizochytrium is an organism somewhat similar to a fungus, but which is not a fungus and it is distantly related to brown algae and diatoms (but unlike those, it is not an alga; it never had chloroplasts acquired by symbiosis).
The first cultivated strains of Schizochytrium produced only DHA, but now there are strains that also produce EPA. At least in Europe, you can easily find Schizochytrium oil that contains DHA + EPA in a 2:1 proportion. For most humans, especially for most males, both DHA and EPA are needed, because the capacity of interconversion between them is typically insufficient in comparison with what is needed.
However, even if it has become cheaper in recent years, Schizochytrium oil remains about 3 times more expensive than fish oil, per its fatty acid content. There are also many vendors that try to deceive their customers by selling diluted oil at about the same price as the decent vendors, therefore at a price many times higher per the fatty acid content.
In Europe, in recent years I have preferred Möller's Pure Cod Liver Oil, which is quite tasty, either alone or added to food. Using bottled oil is much better than using capsules. Besides being cheaper and not ingesting garbage capsules, tasting the oil makes certain that it neither is rancid nor has any suspect content. This is also true for Schizochytrium oil. Many decades ago, cod liver oil had a reputation of something that children were forced to eat, despite its bad taste. This is completely untrue nowadays, when the oil is made either immediately after catching or from fish that have been frozen immediately after catching, so the oil has not degraded and it retains a pleasant taste.
If Schizochytrium oil will become cheaper, i.e. with a price not more than double in comparison with pure cod liver oil, then I will switch to it, removing from my diet the only ingredient that is obtained by killing animals.
Some DHA/EPA is better than no DHA/EPA.
It's also worth seeing what people mix it with to help with the taste.
Since Omega-3 goes down well with fat and better absorbed and bioavailable, there's some options there potentially.
I use it as a stupidity meter. If I play a series of bad bullet games, I’m more cautious about my decision making that day.
Good omega-3 oil has a pleasant taste, there is really no need to eat capsules made from chemically-modified cellulose or who knows what other material that is not suitable as food.
The omega-3 oil can be mixed with whatever oil you add to your food, e.g. to a salad.
The pure oil is cheaper and you can feel its taste without having to break capsules. Moreover you do not have to ingest capsules made of dubious substances, besides the desired oil.
Once opened (but preferably also before) such an oil bottle should be kept in a refrigerator.
Some bottled oil includes flavors, e.g. lemon, which mask its natural taste. Unflavored omega 3 oil is preferable.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16963244/
Moreover, due to the great human stupidity of dumping everything where "it becomes the problem of others", now it has become the problem of everybody that what were previously among the healthiest foods, i.e. most food items of marine origin, nowadays carry significant health risks, due to possible mercury content.
Adding to that food 10 milliliter of cod liver oil per day, which provides 2 grams of DHA+EPA, requires only the equivalent of 40 US cents per day.
With most capsules, one would need 5 or more capsules for this amount of oil, which would increase the price a lot. To create the sensation of a higher content of DHA+EPA, on many capsule boxes the quantity that is written is for a pair of capsules, not for one capsule. Therefore I consider capsules as more like a scam for increasing oil price than as a useful method of delivery, which is why I have stopped using them many years ago.
Looking right now on Amazon.com, it seems that the US prices for omega-3 oils are significantly higher than in Europe, at least double, the cheapest being labeled as dog food.
I wonder whether there is any difference in quality between those labeled as dog food and those labeled as human food, e.g. if the "dog food" oils are also tested for contaminants. Otherwise, the "dog food" oils seemed not only cheaper, but also better, being pure and unflavored, while the "human food" oils suggested by Amazon were either flavored or in capsules. Here in Europe, I see such pure oils advertised for children and pregnant women, instead of as dog food.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/17/revealed...
Kirkland Signature Fish Oil provides 151.8 mg EPA and 119.1 mg DHA per tablet, totaling 270.9 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel).
Prescription Lovaza (Rx)* provides 465 mg EPA and 375 mg DHA per tablet, totaling 840 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel (Rx)).
Prescription Vascepa (Rx)* provides 960 mg EPA and <40 mg DHA per tablet, totaling ~960 mg EPA+DHA (Softgel (Rx)).
It can be a lot of pills time wise as well.
Open to other omega 3’s if there’s any recommendations.
I think I recall hearing something like that but promptly forgot when I realized I had to eat them by the handful per day.
Still appreciative that something like this can be relatively accessed anywhere in a pinch or starting out.
I have heard of that brand too - quality matters.
Omega 3 containing sufficient DHA is studied to reduce inflammation in the brain as well has help with other cognitive processes.
Another one I had read is the insulin spike after a meal can be lowered significantly by having one omega-3 with each meal.
I’ll try to circle back with a few of the studies.
Omega-3 and fish oil stories always attract a lot of impossibly positive claims, but real-world studies are rarely as good as the anecdotes.
I would also caution people that fish oil isn't entirely benign to supplement with, despite common wisdom suggesting it's risk-free. Fish oil supplements can induce depressive-like symptoms in some people and high dose fish oil is a known trigger for mania in certain people with mood disorders. You can find countless puzzled posts from people wondering why fish oil is making them feel bad: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+fish+oil+m...
These outcomes are unlikely, but watch for them. It's really sad when someone is taking high dose fish oil because they're desperate for depression relief and all of the influencers say it's good for depression, then months later they run out of pills for a few days and are surprised that they feel better.
Before I get accused of exaggerating anecdotes, there are also randomized clinical trials with an order of magnitude more patients than this study that show a slight increase in depression, opposite of the expected reduction in mood disorders: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787320
So, lets start by framing the study differently:
1. 10% drop out 2. 6-7% in the non-Omega3 get depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population 3. 6-75 in the 0mega3 depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population
My first question is, "Do we think that depressed people are more likely to follow a rigorous protocol for making sure they are highly adherent to taking their Omega-3s, or do we think that this group would tend to drop out of the study?
To me my hypothesis is clearly that depressive people tend to be less adherent. This seems intuitively obvious to anybody that knows anybody with depression. At the very least, this should be a massive red flag. The study assumes those missing participants are “missing completely at random,” rather than systematically related to the key outcome: depressive symptoms.
If participants who developed new or worsening depression were more likely to leave the study (a real possibility in mood research), the results would disproportionately reflect those who stayed well—not those most at risk. The study does acknowledge in its methods that follow-up missingness was treated as random and that participants administratively censored were presumed “missing completely at random.” However, this assumption ignores the real-world possibility that depressive symptoms themselves most likely drives dropout. Without targeted analysis of why people left, the null results risk underestimating any true link between omega-3 and depression prevention, making this a textbook example of unaddressed survivorship bias in clinical trial design and reporting.
I was unable to access the OP's source, but I do want to point out there are several ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids with different nutrient characteristics. Thanks be to Chat G for banging this out, but I like many people have had this drilled in.
ALA (α-linolenic acid, 18:3 n-3) is an essential fatty acid. It's nutritional role is primarily as a precursor to the other ω-3 PUFAs, humans can elongate and desaturate ALA into longer-chain ω-3s (EPA, DPA, DHA), but the conversion efficiency is very limited (<5% to EPA, <1% to DHA for most people). ALA cannot be converted from EPA, DHA, or DPA. Sources are primarily plant oils (flaxseed, chia, walnuts, canola, soy). If this is your only source of ω-3 PUFAs, you're unhealthy.
EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid, 20:5 n-3) is (conditionally) essential. Its role is anti-inflammatory, a precursor for resolvins, cardiovascular protection, eye and brain signaling, and a precursor to DHA synthesis in limited amounts. Sources are marine foods (fatty fish: salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies).
DHA (docosahexaenoic acid, 22:6 n-3) is (conditionally) essential. Its role is as a major structural lipid in the retina, brain, and neural tissues, visual function, cognitive development, and neuronal membranes. Sources are marine foods (same as EPA) plus algae oils.
DPA (docosapentaenoic acid, 22:5 n-3) is an intermediate between EPA and DHA. Don't know. Sources are fish and red meat (esp. grass-fed ruminants).
In practice EPA, DHA, and DPA conversion from ALA is too inefficient, so direct dietary sources (fish, seafood, algal oil) are the meaningful way humans obtain enough EPA/DHA. That's why nutrition guidelines (WHO, FAO, NIH, EFSA) often treat EPA + DHA as conditionally essential, especially for infants (where DHA is critical for retina and brain development) and for populations with low fish intake.
Eat fish. As always, a balanced and diverse diet is a key requirement for health. For those who don't know, sardines are less fishy than tuna (hardly at all IMO), cheap, widely accessible, and pretty sure they have low mercury risk.
https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/dr-rhonda-patrick/
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They find that one of the nutrient factors studied is positively correlated with improved vision at p=0.01. https://xkcd.com/882/
IPL and RF treatments eventually helped, though.
Omega-3 saved me from the fate of my family, dying from a heart attack before I was 50.
And I see this need in my genetics, specifically FADS1 FADS2 polymorphisms that make me need higher chain omega-3 fatty acids like from seafood.
Things don’t have have to be proven universally for every human, but omega 3 seems pretty universal.
China's myopia rate is 31%: 400 million of its 1.3 billion people are myopic. The prevalence of myopia in high school in China is 77%, and in college is more than 80%.
A study indicated that the prevalence of myopia among urban children in India of aged 5 to 15 increased from 4.44% in 1999 to 21.15% in 2019.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia
In populations that depend on a very heavy vegetarian diet, which is comprise primarily of shortchange, polyunsaturated fatty acids, they might have other issues not related to myopia when they go off of their traditional diet.
Myopia in my opinion is a result of the industrialization of food.
Wonder if this is related.
Vitamin D, Omega 3, and possibly Magnesium and Creatine.
So I stopped taking a daily multivitamin and I just take modest doeses of these 4 supplemements every day.
Vitamin D supplementation is mildly helpful for those with low baseline levels. However the benefits have been exaggerated across the internet and podcasts. A lot of studies show no measured reduction in things like frequency of respiratory infections ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38178229/ for example, which funnily enough had the Vitamin D3 treated men getting more respiratory infections).
Omega 3 has also been greatly exaggerated. Later large scale studies have shown minimal to no effects.
Magnesium is another one that can be helpful for those who are deficient, but due to the long duration within the body a lot of the supplement fanatics who consume large doses of magnesium might be getting too much over time. Gwern did some self-experimentation where magnesium might have possibly been net negative over time: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium
Creatine is the latest trend. If you believe the latest trends you need to consume a huge amount daily and it will fight off everything from depression to low energy. This is another one where the most impressive studies are all very small, but the larger the study the less impressive the results. The influencers only talk about the small, impressive studies, of course.
By the way, I also love Gwern.
The culture is slowly coming to terms with empiricism.
If a supplement doesn't provide a benefit (as in you notice when you forget to take it), and it doesn't affect a biomarker that you measure and care about, then don't take it. Simple as.
Omega-3 fats seem to protect against myopia, while saturated fats seem to increase the risk. Other nutrients didn’t show clear effects.
Foods rich in omega-3 (protective foods) • Fatty fish: salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna, herring, anchovies • Seafood: oysters, mussels • Plant sources: flaxseeds, chia seeds, walnuts, hemp seeds • Oils: flaxseed oil, canola oil, soybean oil • Fortified foods: some eggs, dairy, or juices enriched with omega-3
Foods high in saturated fats (risk foods) • Fatty meats: beef, lamb, pork, processed meats (sausages, bacon) • Dairy: butter, cheese, cream, whole milk, ice cream • Baked goods: pastries, cookies, cakes made with butter or shortening • Fast foods: fried chicken, burgers, pizza • Coconut and palm oil products (though plant-based, they’re high in saturated fats)
So the takeaway is: More fish, nuts, and seeds may help protect children’s eyes, while too many fatty meats, butter, and fried foods may raise the risk of myopia.
The importance of dairy is overblown, especially in the US where the dairy industry funds a lot of school nutrition initiatives. I helped out around a cousin's dairy farm as a kid but eventually discovered that I'm part of the ~2/3rds of the world population that doesn't digest dairy well.
You'll get calcium as long as you eat some white/navy beans, tofu, kale, okra, collards, broccoli raab, chia, or even "calcium fortified" foods.
> Summary from GPT
This whole post is filled with bad implicit advice. No one should stop eating meat to make their eyesight better. No one should add canola oil to their diet as a source of Omega 3.
Among vegetable oils, flaxseed oil is the best source of ALA, while also walnut oil and hemp oil have decent amounts.
However many humans, especially many men, have a too low capacity for elongating ALA into DHA and EPA, so they may remain deficient in omega-3 fatty acids even when eating decent amounts of ALA from flaxseed oil or the like.
Because you normally do not know your own biosynthetic abilities, it is less risky to eat fish oil or Schizochytrium oil, instead of flaxseed oil.
Non-fat dairy. Greek yogurt + walnuts + berries
The kitchen is a pharmacy.
A disappointing level of knowledge and sophistication in this late, 21st century era.
Your bone health is almost entirely correlated to the load bearing exercise and gravity stress that you put on your musculoskeletal system.
Fine optimizations to your diet (just like fine optimizations everywhere in life) are only sensible after you've taken care of the big, macro factors.
This is a somewhat bold claim.
I have literally zero dairy in my diet or calcium fortified alternatives. My best estimate is that without supplementation I would get 20-50% of the recommended calcium intake. Is your suggestion that lifting weights is better than a calcium supplement for bone heath in this case?
If I was not on my phone, I would look up the studies on this. :)