death from any cause death from cardiov vastral disease death from cancer death from all remaining causes and we're seeing the higher the omega-3 level the lower the risk of death but the Omega-3s are protective across a wide V variety of outcomes which all manifest at the end of the day and lower risk for for dying welcome to the Seamon podcast today our guest is Dr William Harris Dr Harris is one of the world's leading experts on the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids he has a PHD in human nutrition from the University of Minnesota and he has authored over 300 Publications on fatty acids Omega-3s and fish oil Dr Harris welcome to the show thank you very much great to be here yeah I'm happy to speak with you and uh you've you've done a lot of research about Omega-3s and you're very well known in a space so I'm happy to discuss with you about all things Omega-3s because you know I think like fish oil and core liver oil were one of the first supplements that I as a child knew about in terms of like okay these things have health benefits and I always like to say even like you know even your Grandma knows that fish oil or like Omega-3s are good for you or that they have health benefits so so uh yeah I guess we can start like you know this knowledge has been around for like decades we can start with like okay what's the understanding about the health benefits of Omega-3s you know now in the early 202 20s yeah well I we thank you for mentioning grandmothers um back in the day when kids used to be given cod liver oil boy it went back into the easily in the 1940s um and before they didn't know anything about omega-3 they knew cod liver oil was good for vitamins A and D and that's why they gave them um they didn't realize they were also giving the benefit of the Omega-3s which were discovered some 20 years 30 years later um so anyway there was an upside still tasted rotten but you know that's part of being a kid I guess you got to suffer through that um so where we are today 2024 um on the health benefits of Omega-3 there are as you know and as you've talked to your your um audience before there are many uh stretching from cardiovascular disease uh which is a large field um and endothelial the health of the blood vessels throughout the body um we've looked at risk for death we we do a lot of studies nowadays looking at blood levels of Omega-3 and how they relate to Future disease outcomes and so we've been looking at the big one dead uh death from any cause death from cardiovascular disease death from cancer death from all remaining causes and uh we're seeing the higher the omega-3 level the lower the risk of death uh of course everybody dies eventually so you you got a say risk for death in a window of time you know certain between this time and that time between this age and that age um but the Omega-3s are protective across a wide V variety of outcomes which all manifest at the end of the day and lower risk for for dying uh cognitive benefits we we're seeing again people with the higher omega-3 levels are lower risk for developing dementia which is a big deal these days um and just a variety of other diseases so high omega-3 is really good for about every system you can think of right and uh why is that so like so as I you know understand then some of these Omega-3s they're not necessarily considered essential um or they more like conditionally essential uh but uh like what are some of the like reasons why you see such yeah like a consistent finding that you know people who have higher blood omega-3 levels they have lower risk of you know heart disease and mortality so what are like I guess the mechanisms that give those effects right and and that's that's always the next question down um you know I suppose we should Define omega-3 when I'm talking about omega-3 I mean the longchain Marine derived EPA DHA those Marine excuse me those Omega-3s um not so much the plant ala which probably is the essential omega-3 fatty acid EPA and DHA are as you suggested conditionally essential meaning they're nutrients that you don't have to have in your diet to live and reproduce but they are nutrients that when in the diet and higher levels give you better health outcomes uh it's a little bit different than the classic meaning of essentiality in nutrition where where if you haven't got it you you're dead um and that's not the case if you haven't got it in your diet you're dead yeah because we can make EPA and DHA to some extent and probably to a sufficient extent to allow you to live and reproduce and and the best evidence of that is simply looking at cultures that are vegetarian or vegan where they consume no EPA and DHA pre-formed but they consume ala and they're still with us so um anyway just to clarify EPA and DHA really are give additional health benefits when they're higher levels um but they are not considered classically essential uh what's their mechanism of action that's probably easiest to boil that down into anti-inflammatory if we want to pick one one mechanism there are others because the Omega-3s uh have an interesting effect on heart rate for example uh they actually lower the resting heart rate a couple of beats a minute because they affect the affect the autonomic nervous system the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic which drives your heart rate um and you know if if if people are allotted a certain number of heart beats per life and you slow down the heart rate uh you see how you might extend your life uh that's a very simplistic way of looking at it but the the the effect on heart rate uh is kind of underappreciated and is not probably driven by any inflammatory or anti-inflammatory effect it's more about how the cells respond to sympathetic and parasympathetic U input to the tissues so that that's another part of the mechanism I think um they lower triglyceride levels which has been known for many years uh when in high doses doses of two three4 grams a day of EPA and DHA that's not probably the primary mechanism by which most people derive benefit from omega-3 though two primary lipids we talk about what's your lipid levels we're talking about triglycerides and cholesterol and within the cholesterol family we're talking about you know the good cholesterol the bad cholesterol LDL lowdensity lipo proteins highdensity lipo proteins uh and the Omega-3s don't really lower the the LDL which is considered the the bad particle um they can have a little effect on raising the good particle but we don't really know if that's part of their beneficial effect or not so the heart disease uh risk reduction comes down to most of the anti-inflammatory effects and lowering triglyceride and endothelial effects on the blood vessels right endothelial effects on blood vessels relaxing them the blood vessels are are a little more relaxed they're not as stiff uh reduce risk for hypertension uh which is one of the major risk factors of course for heart disease so they they play a pretty deep role in biology um down in the cell membrane is where a lot of the action happens which is hard to for people to picture sometimes I which understand um but the cell membrane is extremely important uh part of the cell we think of the nucleus and the DNA and all that stuff is really important but the cell membrane is what determines what goes in and what goes out and uh just like at your house if the trash builds up inside the house it's a mess and that can happen in a Cell too so the Omega-3s help move things in and move things out appropriately I want to take a quick break to let you know that you can now get my new book the longevity leap on Amazon it contains 24 chapters ranging from the biology of Aging to all the major chronic diseases such as heart disease kidney disease neurod degeneration and I also cover over 70 clinically relevant biomarkers for chronic diseases and their optimal ranges you can get the book from the link in the description well even if it's not considered essential it still has so many like you know health benefits that you would you would be foolish not to like you know consume it or not consider it uh quotequote ESS in that sense because yeah I think a good term for it is bioactive they they are active biologically and that's important but there are a lot of molecules that are bioactive that are not necessarily essential nutrients which is maybe a fine line for some people but um yeah when you're when you're trained in nutrition you learn to think about those words in in that light gotcha so uh yeah you also you mentioned this omega-3 levels in the blood which which I think is you know called omega-3 index and you can also one of the Pioneers in uh I guess popularizing this this uh biomarker so um yeah can you talk about what it is and what does it reflect and yeah what's like is there any like Optimal levels for it and how do you measure it sure oh a lot of good questions yeah the omega-3 index is a a metric or a blood test that we' developed about 20 years ago now and we originally proposed that the omega-3 index was a risk factor for death from heart disease in the same sense that high cholesterol is a risk factor high blood pressure is a risk factor we said High a low omega-3 is also a risk factor and that people should be measuring it so we came up with this thing called the omega-3 index which is the amount of EPA and DHA and the sum of those two in red blood cell membranes so the red blood cell of course is the easiest cell to get a sample of it's in your blood obviously so any any blood sample is going to collect red blood cells and they are when we analyze the membranes of the fatty acids the membrane fatty acids in red cells we can create a ratio EPA and DHA to all the other fatty acids and that's so that's a percent so the omega-3 index is expressed as a percent of the total fatty acids in a red membrane that are EPA and DHA and typically ranges from a low of maybe 3% in very low 3 and a half% we see that in vegans uh up to uh Japanese uh older Japanese people eating very traditional diets of 9 10% uh so that's the range 3 to 10 to we we like to think that the optimal range is between 8% and 12% somewhere in that range is is really optimal the average level in the US and Europe is roughly five five and a half maybe um and then as mentioned uh cultures that eat very little fish have very little very low levels under 4% so uh that's the range of the omega-3 index it's a test that's that we can run on a dried blood spots so people can prick their finger at home put a drop of blood on a card and mail it to the laboratory and then we'll give them back the their omega-3 index and a variety of other fatty acid measures uh we get from the blood gotcha yeah so I I like to like or it's it's fortunate to have like a biomarker for you know a supplement or like a a food that you're like eating because most supplements you don't know if it's going to work you know you take whatever supplement that's out there like I guess like you know this other popular antiaging supplements like Reser drol or enin or something like you know you could measure like your enery levels and see if it works but but uh most other supplements don't have a specific biomarker to check okay are you in the optimal range and if it's working whereas with Omega 3s you actually have you know a biomarker that you can track relatively easily and see okay how do you pair up with uh you know what we know is associated with like reduced risk risk of mortality and what's better for overall longevity right right that's that's I think the the real value of the omega-3 index is a it's a very well documented and validated biomarker of your omega-3 status which is largely driven by how much EPA and DHA you eat uh but not not 100% uh there's certain some there's some biological variability underneath it because you do synthesize a little bit of it um yourself but uh and there's probably differences in the individual people's rate of absorption when they take an omega-3 supplement or they eat a piece of fish that's got omega-3 I'm sure there are genetic factors that there's a long chain of events from mouth to cells uh that are mediated by lots and lots of different proteins and um there are undoubtedly genetic differences and how people respond in terms of the omega-3 index to a Omega three supplement so right to your point if you only want if you want to know what your level is in your situation you measure the omega-3 index and if you're low you increase your omega-3 intake and the index will go up is there any risk for this like healthy user bias with this U marker so what I'm saying is like you know if you generally eat uh you know non westernized diet or like you eat less junk food and you exercise a little bit more is do you have would you have like a better omega-3 index result which would you know then I guess make it l cost by omega3 like I'm just playing like Devil's Advocate because yeah some some of the like other markers like you know if you just are healthier overall then your biomarkers will be generally better and uh if you what I'm asking is again like does the omega-3 index is it only affected by your omega-3 intake or is it affected by like other like healthy LIF habits as well uh not that we know of not really uh it's it's driven by I mean the question that you're asking is a good one and it's one that comes up a lot in uh research where we're looking at omega-3 levels predicting certain disease outcomes and people will say well having a high omega-3 that's just a a marker of a healthier diet so it really it's the healthy diet not the omega-3 that's doing the action that's actually the mechanism well think that's true uh We've we've adjusted many of our analyses we adjust for healthy lifestyle we adjust for the intake of other nutrients we adjust for exercise we adjust for smoking alcohol intake uh all these things body mass index things like that um and still the Omega-3s are predictive so it's not they're not operating via these other healthy lifestyle factors um and so yeah you can e a very healthy lifestyle and if you don't eat any more omega-3 than you eating in a crappy lifestyle your omega-3 index is not going to be higher yeah like I've I've seen that from my own example as well that you know so I've you know never been kind of overweight or anything like that I've been healthy pretty much for you know 10 years or something and I measured my omega-3 index first time like over a year ago and uh it was something like maybe 6.6 or something like that which you know isn't like inherently bad or it's not it's not very bad but it's not like it's not in the optimal range either so I started taking like larger amounts of these Omega-3 supplements whereas in the past I actually haven't taken them you know regularly and it got up to 9% uh so which is you know more optimal from what we know so yeah like the only difference I or the biggest change I did make was just increase the omega-3 intake whereas you know my other lifestyle factors were pretty much the same as as before yeah that's a very common story but very very simple Story I mean it's you know exactly what to do if your omega-3 index is low just eat more yeah pretty simple but is there like how far do the benefits go like U so you mentioned that you know 8 to 12% is kind of the upper end um and I would imagine that yeah Japanese people might have you know 10 12% so is there because you know when I've looked at some of the studies then then I I didn't find a lot of like studies about 12% and the health benefits so so like do people who have 12% do they already have um lower risk of mortality even compared to people who have 8% uh and 10% or is it like does it Peak at 8% to the benefits it's a great question so do you really kind of max out it so say say you're at 10% you get better benefit of being a 15 um short answerers we don't know because there are you know count them on one hand how many people in this world have omega-3 levels that are that high uh very little study has been done of those people so we even up to 12% is very very uncommon um actually just over 8% uh maybe 95% of Americans and Europeans are are below that % Target so asking what's going on at 12% or 15% is is a question that's it's not Beyond potential research but it's there's no research that I know of at this point that shows that you get even more I think you're you get diminishing benefits diminishing returns as they say there's a point Beyond which more omega3 is not going to help you you've done all you can do in that regard um that would be true for any nutrient gotcha so if someone is like you know 8% then they can feel pretty good about it they can feel pretty good yeah now there there is one study from Japan that uh we looked at some years ago where they looked within a you know basically looked between 8 10 11 12% uh in a a cohort of older Japanese and there was a actual reduced risk for some cardiovascular outcomes in people who are 11% on average compared to 8% so I I think there is I think again it's a diminishing return you get most of the bang for your but going from 5% to seven or eight% and then you get a little bit more a little little bit more each additional P but but it isn't much okay yeah that makes sense um and yeah like you know if it well at least like with a supplement it doesn't require that much efforts you know whereas with exercise you you see the similar thing that okay you get most of the benefits by just going from sedentary to some physical activity and uh and doing a bit more than that but you know being a very like Pro aete already starts giving diminishing returns whereas with the Omega-3s I would imagine just taking a supplement you might increase the dose or something it might it might be like doesn't require extra effort in that sense you might just have to take a double dose or right right yeah and there's and as far as we know there's really no no substantive risk to health from having an omega-3 index of 8 9 10% right so that's that's a good thing to yeah but what about the opposite on the lower end so yeah if you have three to 4% then um what does it mean essentially well that's always the place you don't want to be when we do these studies comparing the highest levels to the lowest levels the lowest levels are always around that three and a half or 4 per. those are the people that have the worst outcomes whether it's total mortality whether it's uh cardiovascular mortality whether it's dementia uh any of these outcomes are worse we always compare to the lowest level and the lowest level is always worse off of anybody uh so that's definitely where you don't want to be and uh how how much of that effect is because you know people who have lower omega-3 index they are generally on like a worse diet well again we we we do our best to control for that to to say this is independent of all these other factors uh so statistically you can do that whether it you never it's never perfect uh the best way to do it was with a of course a randomized control trial but nobody's going to do a randomized control trial with a placebo in and people and and give it to them for 20 years and see you know or does this help because some some of these studies that will conclude that Omega-3s don't work are maybe four or five years long and they started when people in their mid-60s and so to conclude that Omega-3s don't work for a b or c whatever outcome you're talking about is is an incorrect statement I mean it's it's correct in the context in which it's made but that context is always lost the context is okay maybe one gram a day of Omega-3 doesn't help if you're 65 years old you've already got heart disease you've already got diabetes and we're going to see what it does in four years and it doesn't change your health like well okay no surprise okay but that doesn't mean r large Omega-3s don't help in in decades of of life where you keep your omega-3 index high and you never develop these diseases um that's the important point we're not treating Omega-3s as a drug we're treating them as nutrients right yeah like you would just always be better with 8% yeah right exactly I mean the Japanese on average uh live about 4 and a half years more than Americans do um and they have the higher you know omega-3 index is roughly 80 to 90% higher than the average American now is that the only reason I can't say that's the only reason they live longer uh but it's interesting to think because the Japanese also know are known to have higher uh rates of blood pressure higher high blood pressure they smoke more they're under more stress and yet they live longer oh really wow yeah so is it the Omega-3s well I think omega-3 is at least part of the story and Europeans as well like I do know that Europeans smoke a lot more than Americans but they didn't know the Japanese smoke a lot more than yeah and you know Mediterranean that is pretty high in fish as well well it certainly can be it does there are versions of the there are so many versions of the Mediterranean diet it's it's a little hard to say exactly what diet that is but you you're right in general you would think that fish would be high in the Mediterranean diet yeah but what about you know if a person is generally healthy like you know they exercise they're lean they don't have blood pressure and diabetes those things U but they have a omega-3 index of 6% or you know four or 5% uh you know I guess the answer is still that they would be better off by having at 8% but is there like any any studies about uh what do do what's th what's those people's uh risk profile yeah um we're just starting a study right now um in looking at the health risk in a group of vegans of vegetarians of pescatarians which pescatarians are people that are vegetarian except that they only me meat they eat is fish MH and then what we call omnivores you know people who eat anything um and the omega-3 index goes the it's the lowest in the vegans next the lowest in the vegetarians next in the omnivores and highest in the pescatarians which makes perfect sense U and so we're going to be looking at uh long-term outcomes so that the the question you're kind of asking and question we're interested in too is let's say you're eating a vegan diet and you're you're healthy in a lot of ways your your body weight is normal you exercise well uh you have low blood pressure uh is that enough to protect you from dementia cardiovascular disease when you get older or do you still need higher omega-3 to protect you we really don't know yeah that would be interesting to find those results um so yeah how do you then increase the uh we know the optimal level to you know you know what the you what to measure and what's the optimal level so how do you um increase it so like first is it possible to reach an omega-3 index of 8% with uh just diet and uh if you do supplement then like what are some of the doses yeah people use yeah it answer first question yes it's possible to do it with diet Alone um if you just ate an oily fish like salmon or or mackerel Herring sardines albor tuna all the these types of fish that are high in omega-3 if you uh had you know one serving a day uh that would definitely give you it would probably give you on the average of about a gram gram and a half of EPA and DHA per day which would put you in the and that's what we've seen in general to move from a 4% omega-3 index to 8% on average takes about 1,500 milligrams of EPA DHA uh and so that can be done with supplements that could be done with fit or combination so it's it's very achievable it doesn't take heroic Measures to get up to 8% MH and uh 1,500 milligrams per day so how DHA not not a fish oil right right right how much how much are you getting from let's say 100 grams of you know salmon or something like that oh you're getting roughly a gram th000 Mill okay so that's not that much yeah it depends on the obviously a lot of things U salmon used to be farm salmon which is more and more the most common uh used to have higher omega-3 now it's down to again a gram a gram and a half per serving uh because they're switching out fish oil in the food for salmon for other oils uh still salmon is still a very good choice um just because it used to be better doesn't mean it's not good now yeah and from the supplemental sources then yeah like the EP ad combined 1500 milligrams per day right right and we like to we like to recommend both of them together because they come that way always together in nature um some people want to just take DHA or just EPA and I don't really recommend that um I don't think that's the optimal way to go uh from a nutritional point of view do these uh EPA and DHA do they have like distinct effects on the body like or do they have synergistic effects or pretty synergistic U when they when people have studied EPA alone or DHA alone at the same dose same grams per day in the same people actually DHA is probably a little bit better as an anti-inflammatory and a lipid lowering triglyceride lowering agent um it's it's not a huge difference but it tends to be a little better than EPA but EPA is good too so got I think together is what you really need to look at yeah and uh if you are taking supplements then there are like a few different types out there you know there's fish oil Co liver oil even like some of the plant-based ones ALG oil you have a kill oil as well so uh yeah like are they all equal in terms of uh raising your omega-3 index and like the health effects or they or do they have like different different like effects yeah and you mentioned C liver oil and fish oil those both are triglyceride base or the the Omega-3s are contained in in we call triglycerides or molecules that have three fatty acids per molecule one of which is usually omega-3 uh those oils are the best absorbed there's also a lot of supplements now that are called restructured Tri or re reesterified triglycerides they are concentrated in omega-3 but there the Omega-3s are still in the chemical form of a triglyceride and those are the best absorbed uh Omega-3s in in phospholipids like in krill oil are also very well absorbed uh it's the one that's not so well absorbed is an ethylester Omega-3s which is what the pharmace iCal products are vaspa and in the US laesa omore and in the rest of the world those are ethylester products uh it's not that they're not good they're fine but they just need to be they're best taken with food so you have some uh food in your stomach and in your intestine that will stimulate all the absorptions all the all the systems for absorbing fat um or or stimulate after a meal and that's what you need to absorb the e poers right so the triglycerides triglyceride form is the best and uh the best the best form right how how does one know which type of supplement it is well it's good question usually it'll say somewhere on the label uh if it's an ethylester it'll say it if it's if it's a KR oilbased product it's going to have it's going to be phospholipid based phospholipid and some triglyceride kind of a mix it's Krill oils is less refined in a sense it's a more of a mixture of lots of different chemical forms um and if it's a restructured triglyceride who the the producer because it costs more money to actually produce that product that takes more chem more chemistry uh they're going to be charging a higher price typically than the standard fish oil and they'll want to put on their label you know this is a re reesterified triglyceride or restructured highly concentrated triglyceride so that should be on the label got you've also heard you know a lot of talk about these fish oil and Omega-3 supplements being uh rancid and um oxidized because they're like these Pol unet fats with very um vulnerable bonds so like what do you think about that like um I know there's much of it I don't think that there's I think people are really trying very hard to uh scare consumers into buying a higher Purity product when the standard products are not going to hurt anybody they're not they're not so oxidized or so rancid or anything that it's going to cause any adverse Health effect uh the Omega-3s and even the cheapest what we call an 1812 product a 30% omega-3 uh those products still raise the omega-3 index just fine you just need to take more pills it's just lower concentration of Omega-3 per capsule but I'm not worried about um all the hype about about oxidized or rancid I think that's and it's true that the Omega-3s are what we call highly polyunsaturated meaning lot they have lots of double Bonds in the molecule but that doesn't in and in in a test tube they will oxidize pretty quickly but you're you're not putting them in a test tube you're putting them in your body and your body has a myriad of antioxidant systems to protect these important double bonds and so those in Vivo in your life in your body the Omega-3s are not susceptible not not highly susceptible to oxidation any more than other fats yeah I actually see yeah like one study from 2012 like random control trial where they gave this highly oxidized fish oil for a week and uh it didn't change inflammation status um but it did raise the omega-3 index so yeah like you know that even if it's like super oxidized the fishal it doesn't appear to in the short term at least you know cause inflammation in a body and if you look at the you know broader amount of evidence then you know Omega-3s are pretty known to just be anti-inflammatory in a lot of clinical trials right right yeah but you would you know generally still want to opt for like the best product that you can like afford and what you think would be let's say more suitable for you so like yeah like what are your like recommendations if someone is looking for a okay I want to try to get Omega-3s as a supplement when I try to increase my omega-3 index so what are some best practices from like a yeah choosing the best product um I guess my advice would be look for a Tri glyceride based product look for a product that gives you excuse me somewhere 500 to 700 milligrams of EPA DHA per capsule not pres serving sometimes P sometimes the fish oil manufacturer will Define a serving and they'll Define it as two or even three capsules and they'll put how much omega-3 is in that serving um but you need to look at how much is in each capsule so if you're a aiming for 5 to 700 milligrams vpa DHA per Capsule that's that's a very good product um and so and there are several out there that are like that gotcha and you wouldn't like care that much about the form the triglyceride or eer or um or also yeah like if it's contaminated with like heavy metals or anything like that yeah heavy metals are not a problem for fish oils because the heavy metals are are found typically associated with proteins not with lipids so when you extract the lipids or the fats from fish or from fish oil from uh cotton like liver oils things like that you leave all the heavy metals behind and the lipids go over here it's like water and oil don't mix okay and the heavy metals tend to be in the water part uh so I'm not concerned about heavy metals at all in fish oil supplements gotcha right what about fish in general then if you're eating fish from the sea yeah I mean that's that's a more complicated question um I think people have been far more concerned about Mercury than it needs to be um we've people are are are very scared or of course some people like like to scare people some agencies enjoy this um by getting giving you the idea that all fish is contaminated with Mercury that's not true there's maybe four or five different species that are um relatively high in mercury that pregnant women should avoid and babies but in general uh most of the salmon mackerel Herring sardines are all very very low in in Mercury and the studies we've done we've looked at u a wide Road did a metaanalysis of studies that looked at fish intake reported fish intake in pregnant women all all around the world 20 30 40 different studies and then they looked at the uh outcome for their children mental health outcomes for their kids like IQ things like that and we found that the across the board the more fish the mom ate regardless of how much mercury was in the fish regardless of how much mercury was in the fish the higher the fish intake the better the cognitive outcome for the baby so it's Mercury does not uh counteract The Beneficial effects of Omega-3 and it's it's it's it's it's I think it's just way overplayed how much fear people are in I mean pregnant women are the people the ones that should be eating fish if anybody and they're scared away from it by these concerns about Mercury that I think again are overblown yeah guess yeah you know fortunate you can also me measure your heavy metals from the blood if you're concerned with with that yeah right right right what do you think about alga oil so uh I've seen that it also effective in raising EPA and ha yeah Al oil is is it's a triglyceride ultimately it's it's algae uh for certain specific species of micro one one celled unicellular algae not seaweed we're not talking about seaweed this is about a very small micro algae uh that will make naturally make EPA and DHA um and those are isolated and they they grow them uh in big Vats or big open ponds anyway uh isolate the oils from them and sell it as an algae oil and it's fine um that's pretty much what fish eat uh it's more expensive it's it's a lot more work but there's nothing they're very good sources of Omega-3 yeah so vegans should definitely take alil yeah and b12 yeah they have a standard vitamin that's found just in animal products yeah um maybe we can talk a little bit more specifically about um you know some some of these various chronic diseases that have been seen to benefit from Omega-3s so like heart disease obviously is one of the you know leading killers in the world right and uh there has been like a pretty long history of you know fish consumption being linked to lower risk of heart disease as well as uh these uh clinical trials on Omega-3 supplements as well so U yeah like how effective is or like how effective is yeah Omega-3s both from like the dietary source as well as supplemental source for um I guess uh for for people who have or who are like who want to prevent heart disease and also if they already have you know some some elevated risk factors yeah um yeah it's hard to put a number on it um we certainly see that risk for death from cardiovascular disease is about 20% lower in people who have a well actually 35% lower from one of our studies uh at one meta analysis 35% lower risk for dying from heart disease uh if you got an omega-3 index over8 compared to under four uh so you know what does that turn into what's your absolute risk um top of my head I don't remember absolute risks um relative risk is what we like like to talk about when I say 35% lower it's all things all else being equal the people who have the higher Omega-3s are at lower risk um but if it's important to look at Absolute risk too um and absolute is really what what what are your chances of dying of heart disease well it's probably probably one in four people will die of heart disease um how many people will die prematurely of heart disease in the sense of like in their 50s or 60s you know maybe one in 20 one in 30 uh those are absolute risk Val vales and the omega-3 reduces both absolute and percent risk relative risk uh but it's it's it's a little hard to put a specific number on particularly you know fish eating versus non-fish eating um that's a little more complex because when you're eating fish there's other things you're not eating and it is is it just the benefit of the eating the fish or is it the benefit of not eating what you would otherwise have been eating instead of fish uh those two factors play together and are both both good for your health um but it it's much clear to look at omega-3 supplement studies and in the you know still The Meta analyses when you look at all the data over all the last 40 years omega-3 supplement use still is associated with lower risk for death and cardiovascular lower card lower Mi rates um lower total mortality so all of that's still good gotcha yeah like uh so the effects have you know antiinflammatory reduces triglycerides and endothelial function support MH right uh what about I think I've even seen like that smokers who uh have a higher omega-3 index they have a lower risk of death uh if they have a higher omega-3 index yeah yeah we we we published that in Framingham uh large observational study in the US we found that people who were the most at risk for death so between age of 65 and 75 take that window of time people at most risk for death uh were the people were people who reported smoking and had a low omega-3 index like three or 4% uh the people who were the least likely to die in that window are the people that did not smoke and had the highest omega-3 index which makes sense also and then if you were one of those crossover people you smoked but you had a high omega-3 or you didn't smoke and you had low omega-3 they were in the middle now their risk was was U not as bad as the smokers with the low omega3 and not as good as the ones who had the high omega-3 didn't smoke so that all makes sense uh it do doesn't mean that omega-3 if you're a smoker you can take omega-3 and erase the effects of smoking um I wouldn't want to propose that I think it's obviously far better to quit smoking um but at the end of the day if you can if you can get your omega-3 up it's going to help even if you're a smoker right and the do is there like a higher dose for people who have heart disease or is it the same um you mean do they need a higher dose to get a same omega-3 index not necessarily uhuh not not for the omega-3 index but for like what it's like if they take a higher dose do they have a lower risk compared to like a lower dose uh yes uh again nobody has done that kind of study where you actually give you know two or three or four different doses of Omega-3 to people and look at the that would be a that would be a very long hard expensive study to do um typically you get omega-3 or nothing or placebo and not a there's no dose response studies um we do know there's dose response on the omega-3 index the higher the dose again it levels off after a while there's a point Beyond which you really don't get much more impact on the omega-3 index once you're up to probably four or five grams a day which hardly anybody takes yeah what about uh like Alzheimer's and neuro degeneration so Omega-3s are very important for the brain as well and there is a link between higher omega-3 index and reduced risk of dementias right so um yeah what can you tell us about that yeah that's an interesting story because it also brings in another nutrient um basically B vitamins because if you're low in B vitamins folic acid B12 B6 um you tend to have a higher level of of another chemical in your blood called homoy and high homosysteine is also a risk factor for dementia and people have seen in a couple different studies that Omega-3s will lower risk for dementia if you have a low homosysteine if youve got a high homosysteine the Omega-3s don't work so you really need a good nutrition on your B vitamins and the omega-3 to get the the total benefit gotcha and the do like people who have already like some aspects of new Ro de generation would supplement in Omega-3s like alleviate any of those symptoms or um would it like probably not probably not yeah I I that's very it's very tough to turn back dementia just more like preventive side it's prevention we're talking about prevention here yeah right makes sense um right so so uh another you know essential fatty acid as well or essential fatty acids for you know overall health and it's considered essential like omega-6 fatty acids and they also like have interesting story with Omega-3s so uh yeah you you hear a lot that okay Omega sixes are bad for you and Omega 3s are good for you and you always need to eat more Omega-3s and less Omega sixes so uh yeah what's the story story I don't believe it I think the uh studies we've done and many other people have done with the the primary omega-6 fatty acid in the diet is called linolic acid it's an 18 carbon two double bond omega-6 fatty acid it's it constitutes roughly 50% of of like corn oil or soybean oil would contain roughly 50% linolic acid um it's and it is unquestionably an essential fatty acid in the real sense of the word um and so we we really need linolic acid the argument is how much do you need uh and it's true that there is some competition between the omega-6 pathway and the omega-3 pathway but at the end of the day if you actually look at relationship between blood levels of omega-6 fatty acid linolic acid so if you just measure linolic acid levels in the blood it buries across people we've looked at that recently um and just published a study on that and looking at the people with the highest blood levels of linolic acid meaning the highest intakes in the long run because you can't make it you can only eat it so people who have the highest levels in their blood are the people that have greatest intake they are uh significantly lower risk for total Mort death from anything death from Total Mor uh total or from cardiovascular disas or cancer um and again that was just published uh it's being published right now and and that's a study we did in the UK biobank and about 250,000 people where uh we we knew the Omega 6 levels minic acid levels and this is just confirming what's been seen by other people in other settings um because we had done a study uh in collaboration with the 20 or 30 other groups uh looking at omega-6 L Lake acid levels in many many different studies and pulling it all together not just doing in one cohort like the UK biobank but all around the world same story the higher the linol lake acid levels in the blood the lower the risk for cardiovascular disease and lower the risk for diabetes um which is very interesting so I I don't buy the uh linol Lake acid as bad for you story I don't buy the the Omega 6 Omega-3 ratio is a being a meaningful metric for anybody whether it's in your food or in your blood uh I think the the problem with most most people in the west is they haven't got enough omega-3 it's not an omega-6 problem it's an omega-3 problem and so to get distracted and thinking you can Contra you you can uh reduce your risk for these bad diseases by fixing your ratio by eating less Omega 6 that's going to be counterproductive it's going to increase your risk for these adverse outcomes based on the studies we've done um what you need to do if you want to correct your bad ratio is to take EPA and DHA that will correct your ratio uh but that's the right way to do it and that's why I think we like the omega-3 index is about EPA and DHA it's not about Omega 6 fatty acid because what's missing is EPA and DHA it's the linolic acid the omega-6 is not something you need to worry about so yeah that's very interesting because you know I would imagine most people's biggest dietary source of Omega 6 fats are you know processed food I would imagine I don't think you know most people are eating cold PR cold pressed canola oil or some nuts and seeds and those things so like yeah how do you like reconcile that because or did you control for that you can't blame the omega-6s for the adverse effects on health of processed foods right right I mean there's other problems with processed foods uh and what basically what you're not eating uh is part of the problem but just because omega-6 fatty acids are in process doesn't mean the omega-6 fatty acids are harmful in fact it looks like they're helpful um but I I wouldn't I'm not advocating eating lots of processed foods I I don't have to advocate people do it anyway uh right uh you know but to the extent that a diet highend processed food is harmful and I think there's good evidence that it is that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the omega-6 fatty acids that are doing it or even contributing to it yeah what I mean is that you know if they found in that study that higher linolic acid in the blood and I think it's also they found it in adapost tissue people who have higher linic acid they have a lower risk of mortality but you know because most people get the linolic acid from processed food so how how how how can that result uh well make sense oh well it it it makes sense because if if people were eating processed foods without the lenol acid they'd be even more soft okay so Thea the omega-6 in the processed food is one of the good things that they're getting from their processed foods um they're but and it it's counteracting whatever the other things the bad things whatever they are um which are dragging you down the omega-6 is I think are lifting you up so that at the end of the day you get a mixed effect um it's it's best of course to eat a healthy diet and you get omega-6s from uh like seeds nuts and I don't mean olive oil and canola oil because they're very low in Omega 6 nowadays safflower and sunflower are very very low in Omega 6 in order to get rid of trans fats people have gotten created low omega-6 oils which when hydrogenated produce less trans fats and that's a good thing to get trans fats out of our oil supply but if we do it at the at the expense of lowering our linolic acid intakes it may be a net no it might not be a net good effect right um yeah so uh is there any like amounts like we know that kind of approximate amounts for Omega 3s and we have a marker to measure so uh with Omega 6 is like is there too much like could you get too much and uh and what like amounts to probably I think the average uh American or maybe European is eating about six to 7% of their calories as linolic acid and most most health health organizations recommend somewhere between 5 and 10% of your calories come from ltil Lake acid well people don't know how to calculate that you know you know uh that that's very difficult to do so you know you look at how many grams of lolic acid is that per day and then for men it's something like 16 for women it's something like 12 uh grams and even that's hard to know where you going to get that uh there have been studies giving 30 40 50 grams of omega-6 lolic acid and that's that's too high there's no point in doing that that's Way Beyond anybody's recommendations and if there are adverse effects in diets like that that's fine I I agree that's not anything like what's any being recommended going up to 10% of calories um is probably the best place to be we haven't uh We've thought about at Omega Quant which is the company we have that measures the OM the fatty acids we thought about putting out a A or making a linolic acid index in a way because we think it's healthy we think that the evidence a lot of evidence together shows that people at the highest end of linol Lake acid levels in their blood are doing better in the long run healthwise uh so it would make sense to have a tests for that um we we keep running into this problem that you raised is this this unfortunate urban legend that linolic acid is bad for you um and so we're we're still kind of dancing around whether it makes sense to offer this test because of the push back of what I think is uninformed uh critics um could be unpleasant so anyway that's that's ongoing discussions right yeah I think it's one of the uh problem of mechanisms versus you know outcomes that mechanistically the the fish is oxidized and it can cause inflammation but in the real world yeah like even the very oxidized fish oil doesn't cause inflammation in the human body um and I guess yeah with the lolic acid as well it can get something like that that you have same story yeah mechanisms and if you actually look at the outcomes and then it's a bit of a different story because right that's the thing people will look at mechanisms they'll look at inflammatory markers and things like that what they're not looking at is a whole host of things they don't even know to look for yeah it's a big black box in there and if you measure five things that you know higher linola acids maybe linked to five bad things what about the F 45 other good things that you didn't measure you don't know you just don't know so that's why we think looking at outcomes is the important question are you living or you dying do do you have disease or you do not and we don't care about the mechanism at this point at this point we want to say it looks to me like the higher levels of these Omega-3s and linolic acid all point to a healthier longer life so let's do it and we'll worry about mechanisms later but we're not going to be able to really explain every every mechanism that the Omega-3s or Omega sixes are involved with because it's far too complicated yeah but the but uh Omega-3s are more important in that sense that most people are we're missing right we're we're more deficient we put it that way far more deficient in the omega-3 EPA DHA than we are in Omega 6 yeah most people probably don't need to like deliberately start increasing their Omega 6 they're probably most people don't I I think they should not intentionally reduce their omega-6 but whether that means intentionally increase it probably not uh as you say most people are in in kind of that 5 to 10% of energy level which is which is good the big problem for them is the lack of EPA DHA yeah and don't get distracted on the omega-6 side when the real problem is the omega-3 gotcha and there's also like Omega 9 out there so yeah yeah what's is there any research about that well Omega 9 fatty acids are you know a lot of it in our diet LOL OIC acid is is the name of the primary one um but we make that we can synthesize that from sugar or from protein or um there's no no dietary NE necessity for the omega-9 fatty acids okay gotcha I've seen like in some of the I guess food products they have made with high OIC whatever oil right right and even like if I'm not mistaken then the OIC acid actually increases the an an oxidant like antioxidant potential of the oil so like high OIC acid olive oil is more protected against oxidation and uh heat and those things if I'm and that's fine uh that what what's missing there is the fact that it's holic uh means it's low linolic low omega-6 so whether that makes it a good oil or bad I think is debatable in the long run right yeah and and olive oil as well we can talk a little bit about olive oil it's not directly related to Omega-3s or anything but uh yeah it's also one of the fats that's you know very commonly linked to lower risk of heart disease and mortality yeah and I'm not you know that is debatable um but that's probably beyond what we want to talk about today um and whether it's the Omega 9 fatty acids in olive oil there's very little omega-6 or the 50 other compounds that are carried along in olive oil that are beneficial we don't know I mean I'm not olive oil is fine it's good thing to take uh but we don't know exactly which are the you know this polyphenols that are in the oil or not maybe that's what's beneficial about a not not a fatty acid more other com compounds so it's dangerous to be labeling one food healthy without knowing all the components that you're talking about yeah right um while we're talking about yeah like the inflammation or like they protecting against oxidation so like storing Omega threes we should mention that about as well like you know you should store it IDE like in a fridge right no you don't have to um it doesn't hurt to store it in the fridge by any means but the the gelatin capsules that encapsulate them are impervious to oxygen so there's not going to be any oxidation that happens I mean you don't store them out on a dish in the sunlight that doesn't make a lot of sense um in your window sill but keeping them in a dark bottle just on on on um at room temperature is fine gotcha okay um yeah well it's been great talking with you and uh we got a very good um like a master class on Omega 3s and Omega 6s so uh yeah where can people learn more about you and your work um I think you can uh you can just look up my name and go to my go to Just William S Harris and you can if you put that in a Google search it'll go to PubMed and my papers are all there um plus if you can look at Omega Quant that's our our company that does blood testing Omega quant.com um there's stuff about there and also we have a I started a fatty acid Research Institute about four years ago and you look up the fatty acid Research Institute uh there's a lot about me there as well nice great I we'll put the links in the show notes and my last question is what's this one piece of advice or habit that you I wish you adopted sooner uh well if if I hadn't gotten to omega-3 when I was you know in my what was it my early 30s um that's something I'm I'm glad I did um so I'm 75 now and still feeling good still doing work um can I blame it on the Omega-3s I don't know um I I'll take it I've got an omega-3 index of 10 and have had for many years so that's uh something I try to keep up um probably if I if anything I would have started exercising earlier I was a little bit averse to it for many years but picked it up the last 20 years wow that's good and how much omega-3 are taking for the 10% I take I take about 1,400 milligrams EPA and DHA per day okay in then eat fish periodically not as often as I should but pretty often okay all right well yeah thanks for coming to the podcast yeah you're welcome good talking with you good questions yeah thank you looking forward to more studies in the future they're coming all right have a nice day I'll see you around thank you take care byebye all right that's it for this episode make sure you check out my new book the longevity leap on Amazon I'd also appreciate if you share this episode with a friend or family member other than that my name is SE stay tuned for the next episode stay empowered