Change Your Brain Every Day - OMEGA-3 and Brain Health: The Science from a Leading Expert with Bill Harris

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

You may have heard about Omega-3s and how they play an important role in our overall health, but exactly are Omega-3 fatty acids, and what functions do they play in reducing inflammation in our bodies? In this episode, Daniel and Tana Amen are joined by Dr. Bill Harris, developer of the Omega Index, for a discussion on all things Omega-3. In this episode, you will learn about: •The difference between Omega-3 an Omega-6 •The difference between EPA and DHA forms of Omega-3 •How Omega-3s prevent inflammation in the body •How to text your own Omega-3 levels, and the target range you should aim for •Common sources of Omega-3, such as fish oil and plant-based versions •Omega-3 supplementation

The higher the level of linoleic in the blood, the lower the risk for death over time. Lower risk for cardiovascular death, lower risk for cancer death, reduced risk for dementia. We've seen in studies where if you look at the linoleic acid, we see favorable relationships. Higher levels of linoleic better. If we look at the non-Lanolac acid, omega-6s, there you see higher levels of the non-L.A. are associated with increased risk for some diseases. Dr. Bill Harris is a professor and researcher and the president of OmegaQuant. on human nutrition. His work has focused on the role of omega-3 fatty acids

as they relate to cardiovascular disease and neuropsychiatric disease. Just to define what we mean by omega-3, there's a plant omega-3 which is called alpha linoleinic acid, a la. It's a part of soybean oil, but it's not the really most effective omega-3. The stuff that's important is EPA and DHA from fish, seafood, marine sources. What we base are in the blood is the levels of that. It correlates very strongly with how much you eat. Both omega-3 and omega-6 are essential fatty acids. mono and statuards like you get in olive oil, oleic acid's not essential. Let's just take a moment and educate our audience on the difference between omega-3s and

omega-6s because a lot of people think. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. People come to A.man clinics from all over the world for answers. with 11 clinics in major hubs, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, D.C., L.A., Miami, New York, Orange County, Seattle, San Francisco, and Scottsdale. Expert brain care is closer than you think. Visit amenclinics.com. Welcome to change your brain every day. Today we're going to talk about everything you need to know about omega-3 fatty acids. One of my favorite topics.

We are here with Dr. Bill Harris, who is an internationally recognized expert on omega-3 fatty acids and how they can benefit patients with heart disease, which of course how they can benefit patients who have brain problems. He obtained his Ph.D. in human nutrition from the University of Minnesota and did postdoctoral fellowship in clinical nutrition and lipid metabolism with Dr. Bill Connor at the Oregon Health Sciences University. He has more than 300 publications related to fatty acids, including omega-3s in the medical literature and was an author on two American Heart Association scientific statements on fatty acids. Dr. Harris is a professor in the Department of Medicine at Sanford

School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota and the president and CEO of Omega Quant. It's important to know, Dr. Harris and I published together a paper on omega-3 fatty acids and brain blood flow. And the take home was you want your omega-3 index to be healthy if you want a healthy brain. So welcome. It's so good. I have admired you and your work for a long time. And here at Amen Clinics, we have used omega-quant, which is a fatty acid test, a blood spot test for a long time.

for a long time. So how did you get interested in omega-3 fatty acids? In omega-3, I was told to get interested in my, during my postdoc, my Dr. Connor in Oregon, assigned me to, I was fresh out of my PhD, and he assigned me to look at the effects of salmon oil on blood cholesterol, blood lipids. Because back in the 70s, we knew saturated fats, hard fats. animal fats raised cholesterol levels, and we knew that vegetable oils, liquid oils, lowered it. But we didn't know if it was the animalness versus the plantness or the solid versus the liquid.

We didn't know why. So Dr. Connor thought, well, let's use salmon oil because it's a liquid, but it's from an animal. So it was kind of cutting across. So that was my first experience. We did a metabolic ward study, recruited a bunch of folks around the campus, fed them three meals a day, for a month in three different phases, saturated fat diet, polyunsaturated vegetable oil, and salmon oil. We gave them about a half a cup of salmon oil every day

on top of two salmon meals a day. So we loaded them up with omega-3 big time. And it lowered cholesterol relative to the saturated fat diet, but so did the vegetable oil diet do the same thing. But the big thing- The vegetable-oil diet, lowered cholesterol or raised? Lowered. And it turned out that actually if you just take saturated fat out of the diet, put anything in,

and your cholesterol level will go down. It's the saturated fat raises cholesterol. So you take it out, whether you put in fish oil or vegetable oils, it doesn't make any difference. You're going to lower cholesterol. But fish, you know, fish oils never really were for lowering cholesterol. That's not their, what they do is lower triglyceride levels, which is another blood lipid. But that was just the, that was really the first 20 years in my research was in the effects of fish oils. on lipid and lipoprotein metabolism.

And then about 25 years ago, we got interested in measuring blood levels of omega-3 as a marker of intake, how much you're eating, and then looking for the predictive value, the importance of having high omega-3 in terms of risk for a variety of diseases. So I kind of became, instead of a lipid biochemist, more of an epidemiologist.

So looking at, again, relationships between blood levels of omega-3 and outcomes. And that's where we started. We actually got started based on a study that was published by a group from Harvard in 2002, where they found people, this was from the physician's health study, and they found that high blood omega-3 was a strong predictor of low risk for sudden cardiac death in these doctors.

And is that independent of their cholesterol level? Completely. Completely independent. Yeah, cholesterol is not irrelevant. It's irrelevant to the omega-3 story. And actually, omega-3s are really a better predictor of risk for heart disease than cholesterol. And how much of the omega-3s are you measuring it for that?

Well, we measure in red blood cell. We call it the omega-3 index. That's the name of the test that we developed and published in 2004. And it's the amount of omega-3, EPA and D-H-A in red blood cell membrane. So it's not a plasma level. It's not blood. It's red cells. Because the omega-3s hang out in membranes.

Cell membranes everywhere. And the easiest memory to get to is a red blood cell. And what percentage of the brain is omega-3 fatty acids? Yeah, that's a good question. It varies by section, like, you know, place in the brain all over the place. But one of my colleagues in Canada just took, I think it was six or eight complete human brains and homogenized each one and actually measured how much omega-3 is there. Because there's a lot of water, there's a lot of protein, there's a lot of other fats.

But I think it's in the neighborhood of it doesn't really mean anything to people, four or five grams of omega-3 per brain. You know, what does that do? It's hard to get your head around that. The DHA really is the principal omega-3 that's in the brain. And the other, there's an omega-6, that's the partner called a racadonic acid. Those two are the major polyunsaturated fatty acids in brain tissue. And they really don't move very much by supplementation in adults.

So when you talk about the index, what is the average, if there is an average, supplementation an average adult should take to achieve that, the optimal level. Good, good. Yeah, the average, what's the average level in Americans? Roughly 5%. So it means 5% of the fatty acids in a red cell are EPA and DHA. And how much do you have to take to achieve that? Well, the average American eats about 100 milligrams a day. So hardly any. That's sort of, actually the lowest we've seen have been in veg and in U.S. military deployed. She was vegan for a while and was terrible. It was terrible for me.

I just didn't respond to it well at all. I'm sure. My triglystorides were through the roof. Oh, really? Yeah. It did not work well. Well, okay. I was eating too many carbs and too many.

Yeah, you can be vegan in a whole bunch of good ways and bad ways, right? Yeah. Absolutely correct. So, yeah, we saw the vegan levels around. So the average American is 5%. Five and a half. But the ideal is above 8%. Eight percent.

Eight percent, right? And how much do you have to take as a supplement to achieve optimal? to go from there to about optimal, roughly about 1,500 milligrams a day of EPA plus DHA. So you look at your capsules. And our omega-3-power, two capsules, 1,40 milligrams of EPA and DHA. Because you see people taking lots and lots of them. I see people who think that taking four or five grams a day is great. Are there problems with that?

No problems that we know of. It may be unnecessary. You know, just about every system, there's a plateau you reach where you further higher levels that you don't get any additional benefit. But there aren't like a lot of side effects from it. No, no. What about people say don't take them if you're having surgery because of bleeding? That's one of those urban legends you just cannot get rid of.

Because the earliest studies with Omega-3 were done by Danish investigators. Greenland. You know, they found these. Oh, Greenland's very popular these days. Let's not. Today, very popular. Thank you. Yeah. So they, these two guys were in the 1970s, found a group of Eskimos, Inuits there that had very, apparently had very low risk for acute myocardle infarction from heart attacks. But they ate terrible diets from the perspective of the 1970s, you know, high fat, high saturated fat, high cholesterol, no fruits and vegetables. Right. No reality.

No. But they weren't having any heart attacks. And this was just a big puzzle. So these Danish investigators looked at their food, looked at their blood, found the omega-3 fatty acids in their, and quite high levels. And these escapables also had a tendency to bleed, nose bleats, things like that. And so we and others showed that actually the plate you can inhibit. bit platelet function taking omega-3. Platelets are the little white cells that clot.

But the effect of omega-3 is kind of like aspirin. Okay. It's not a big effect on bleeding time. But from those early experiments, the idea came that you'll bleed if you're on omega-3. Paper after paper after paper after review said, no, no, no, it doesn't, even if you're on a blood thinner. It doesn't increase your risk for bleeding.

And what about for things like that? Like, I've heard people say, if you have a-fib, you shouldn't take too much. A-fib is the current issue with omega-3. Yeah. And, no, the good studies show that if you have a-fib, you can still take omega-3. The issue that's come up is if you're taking high doses of omega-3, like three or four grams a day. Right. And you're a person, at least the randomized trials that have been done.

If you're people with high risk for cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, etc., people, Those kind of people taking those kind of doses, that's where you see the increased risk for a fib. Okay. But the increase for the absolute increased risk is like 0.8%. So instead of your risk being 2% for developing a fib like on placebo, it might be 2.8% on fish oil. So it's pretty small. So for those people, then just the normal dose of 1.5 grams would be better? Doesn't do.

Right. The studies we've seen, those doses. don't raise risk rate. Okay. Yeah. So what health benefits of omega-3s are strongly supported by that evidence, and which ones are still debated? Heart disease, cardiovascular events, certainly.

And we've actually shown that higher levels of omega-3 are associated with lower risk for stroke and for AFib, interestingly. in the UK Biobank Studies. Dementia, in several, we just published, you got a paper except that today, that in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, looking at risk for early onset dementia before age 65 and omega-3 levels and found what we always find

is that the higher, people that have the highest levels of omega-3 are the lowest risk for developing early onset and garden for our own. variety dementia as well. Interestingly, we also saw the same thing with linoleic acid, which is the primary omega-6 fatty acid. The higher levels of linoleic acid in the blood, the lower the risk for dementia. So let's just take a moment and educate our audience on the difference between omega-3s and omega-6s because a lot of people think, oh, Omega-6s are pro-inflammatory, like corn oil, not good.

Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory, so that would be good. But it's more complicated than that. But let's try to educate them on what does the science say about both omega-3s and omega-6s? So just to define what we mean by omega-3, because there's two classes, there's the plant omega-3. which is called alpha linoleinic acid, ALA, that really is the primary omega-3 in the American diet because it's a part of soybean oil. And there's a lot of soybean oil consumed in America.

So that's the most omega-3, but it's not the really most effective omega-3. The stuff that's important is EPA and DHA from fish, seafood marine sources, algae. I mean, not, when I say that, people always think seaweed or something like. But it's not. There are algal omega-3 products, but they're made from a single-celled, a single-cell algae, microalgae that's designed to actually make EPA and DHA.

It's the original source. So we have a vegan omega-3 that is really good and it's very high EPA. Yeah. Because most vegan sources of omega-3, it's DHA, but it's low. It depends on the species of microalgae that some of them will be. make DHA, some will naturally make EPA. And you can blend the two together if you want to to get both. But there are vegetarian sources of Omega 3 now of EPA, DHA. And most of what I talk about is EPA and DHA. That's really what we measure in the blood is the levels of that. It correlates very strongly with how much you eat.

I mean, there's certain biologic variability in people anyway, genetic. But most people very strongly related to their intake. The omega-6s are the other, both omega-3 and omega-6 are essential fatty acids. That's the only fatty acids that are essential. The mono-incetriots, like you get in olive oil, oleic acids, not essential. You can make it from sugar. So essential means you cannot make it in your body. You have to consume it. Right.

Right. From a nutritional point of view, you can't make it so it's an essential nutrient, like vitamin C, vitamin C, vitamin A. You're not converting it from anything else. You're not converting it from anything else, right? Exactly. And so the omega-6 is the primary, the huge gorilla in the room for omega-6 fatty acids called linoleic acid. It's very much like alpha-linolinic acid, both 18 carbon fatty acids. One's got three double bonds. One has two double bonds. One's omega-3, one's omega-6. And the omega-name comes from the chemical structure. It's not just kind of cool. It's because when you look at the,

in a chemistry textbook, you look at a picture of fatty acid, it's just a long chain of carbon atoms, hooked together by bonds. Sometimes there's double bonds. If it's a polyunsaturated fatty acid, it's got two double bonds at least. And if the first double bond at the far end, the first, carbon in that chain is called the alpha carbon, and the last one's called the omega carbon. Alpha and omega, beginning and end of the Greek alphabet, right? So if you go to the, if you go to end the omega carbon and count back three spots, that's the first double bond in all omega-3 fatty acids. It's their last name. So they're called omega-minus-3 or omega-minus-6, which is the linoleic acid.

And you can't interconvert them. You can have to have both in your diet. You can't make one from the other. So that's where the omega name comes from. It's from this omega-carbon. And linoleic acid in the omega-6 family is by far in a way the major polyunsaturated fat. We eat probably 15 grams a day of linoleic acid as part of the American diet, average intake. And we're consuming it as part of soybean oil?

Corn oil, corn oil, soybean oil, peanut oil. Coconut, cotton seed oil. And we don't, it's not because we're just pouring that. stuff on our food. It's just a ingredient and so many of those foods. It's in everything. It's in everything. All like all processed foods. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what gets to be kind of confusing because you think, you know, you know, bad processed foods, ultra processed foods. And then you think, well, they have these oils. But on the other hand, when we look at omega three, omega six levels in the blood in Framingham or not, well in Framingham as well as in the UK

Biobank, which is now, you know, 450,000 people followed for 15 years for different health outcomes, the higher the level of linoleic in the blood, the lower the risk for heart disease, death. I'm just start with death. The lower the risk for death over time. Lower risk for cardiovascular death, lower risk for cancer death, lower risk for all other causes of death. And now we again just saw that reduced risk for dementia as well with higher linoleic acid.

So it's not inflammatory. It's not pro-inflammatory? No, it's not pro-inflammatory. And that's another paper we just published. We looked at the correlation between levels of linoleic acid in the blood and 10 different inflammatory biomarkers. And it's either no relationship or the higher the linoleague, the lower the inflammatory numbers.

So I wonder how did it get the reputation as being the inflammatory fatty acid? Is it a ratio of omega-3s and omega-6s? That's what got started in the 70s, that idea. Sort of like the whole fat is bad, Yeah, black hat, white hat, one's good, one's got to be bad. They are both metabolically handled by the same enzyme systems. And there are some metabolites of the omega-6s that are pro-inflammatory. They do cause like blood clotting and things like that. But there's some that do exactly the opposite too. There's like 150 different metabolites that are made from the

omega-6s and about the same from omega-3s. And there's pros and cons. And there's pros and cons. The balance is just amazing. You can't get your head around it. But to say all omega-6s are the same. So the omega-6-Omega-3 ratio assumes... It's like saying all cholesterol is the same. Well, the same idea. Okay.

Exactly. The same idea, right. But we've seen in studies where if you look at the linoleic acid as a sub-component of the omega-3s and their blood-linolac acid and risk for disease, we see favorable relationships, levels of linoleic better. If we look at the non-Linolate acid omega-6s, there's like seven omega-6 fatty acids in the blood. Lillac acids far and away the highest one. Next one's arachidonic acid. And then there's a bunch of little ones. So if you look at the non-L-A levels in the blood, there you see higher levels of the non-L-A are associated with increased

risk for some diseases. So that's right, the AA-EPA ratio. That's what you see. Some people think that's important. It's kind of, yeah. A.A. being arachidonic acid. A is acidonic omega-6. EPA, omega-3. Right. And that ratio will go up and down as the omega-6 doesn't change very much in the biology.

Omega-3s go up and down. That's the denominator. And it really drives the ratio. And so from someone who's listening, focusing on omega-3, can help focus and improve your health, especially when it comes to heart disease. Yes. But if your heart's not right, your brain's not right.

That's right, right. The brain uses 20% of the, it's 2% of your body's weight, but uses 20% of the blood flow in your body. So if your heart's not right, your brain's not right. We've always said, right, brain and heart, they hook together. Then I wrote a book called The Brain and Love, then I'm like, your heart's not right, your brain's not right, your genitals aren't right. Well, then we can get to, interesting, one of the highest tissues in omega-3 content after the brain is, and the retina, is the testes.

Interesting. So there's some reason for that. I think probably the little flagella, the little tail, sperms have to swim upstream. You know, you need some flexibility there. And they have to be smart. You know where they're doing. So your love life gets better with better omega-3. ratios.

Yeah, yeah, we can go down that road too, right. So, so to, but to really have easy takeaways, because I think a lot of the people listening, this could get really complicated. I know. So to make it a simple takeaway, what do they need to do? And what do they need to, like, for the average person who doesn't have a degree in biochemistry, how do we make this easy for them? Like, what is the ratio?

What should they be doing? How do they just? Yeah. Well, first of all, I think people need to know their, level. Right. Oh my God, you can't change what you don't measure. Holy smokes. Who said that? Where have I heard that before? I think actually it was a famous business person. You can't manage what you don't measure. Can't change what you don't measure. And when I do an omega quant on someone, yeah, they change it if it's not healthy. Yeah. Right. The information is important to that. It's no longer

abstract. It's not abstract. And people can learn about their level. So omega quant. They can learn how to get an omega-3 fatty acid level. And I didn't mind, and it was 11%. So it was pretty good. I take two of our omega-3 fatty acids. So here are the one free to guys. So you catch up to see if you're still doing a good job. You got to keep taking the omega-3s to keep the level up.

Yeah. Because if you don't take it, it's essential. It goes right back down. Exactly. Right. So that's important. So know your level. And once you know your level,

you can manage it and get it up to that 8% by either eating more fish. So a minimum of 8%. That's optimal, I think, 8 to 12, as we say is optimal. Okay. And that's kind of like the Japanese, the older now, not today's Japanese, but historical Japanese. The sort of Okinawan. Yeah, yeah, right. I think the younger Japanese today are eating more Western foods.

And so it's not going to be good for them in the long run. So 8% is a target. and it can be done with supplements. It can be done with food. You don't have to use supplements to do it. Just got to be committed to sardines. What if the key to overcoming your pain isn't just in your body, but in your brain. My new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain,

offers strategies I've used with thousands of patients to break free from physical and emotional pain. and reclaim focus, energy, and peace. Healing is possible, and it starts with your brain. Pre-order my new book now and receive special bonus gifts at change-your-brain, Change Your Pain Book.com. So our friend Cyrus Raji published an MRI study that showed people who ate grilled or baked fish at least once a week had more gray matter in important areas. is their brain like the hippocampus.

And so your diet really matters. Now, some people go, but what about the mercury and fish and omega-3 supplements, at least high-quality supplements there, filtered and screened for all of those things. For people who are worried about mercury, you're going to get less of it in a supplement. You're going to get none in a supplement. I mean, the mercury is water-soluble oils separate from water. You don't get the mercury. And you don't really get, there's only four or five fish that you get any significant amount of mercury from.

We've been on a bit of a campaign from the child development point of view. We did a big meta-analysis of papers looking at mom's intake of fish during pregnancy. This is like 32 different studies where they've looked at how much fish mom ate, regardless of what kind, regardless of mercury content. And then we looked at the IQ of the kids. And the higher, I think if you looked at the lowest fish intake versus the highest fish intake, it was like a seven point IQ difference for the kids. Yospring. And mercury had no effect.

There was no relationship. The mercury has been oversold, over, I think it's been. When the FDA came out with those advice, that advice back in 2000 for pregnant women to avoid X-fish, women just stopped eating fish. They didn't say, well, I'm not going to eat that one or that one or that one. They're pregnant women just said, I'm not messing with it. And there was a documented drop in blood omega-3 levels in pregnant women after that. So let me guess.

You said five? Is one of them swordfish? Oh, you mean the mercury? Yeah, swordfish is one of them. Shark is one of them. Sea-bouts? Yeah. Good.

Tile fish. Tile fish. Okay. I wouldn't have even thought of that one. I mean, I don't, you know, tuna. Not really, albacore tuna. The white tuna's got a little more than the chunk pink, but still, it's not a problem. It's not significant.

Mercury's, I think, the fear of that has really caused people to avoid foods that are much better for their brains. I'm so happy to hear that because I love sushi. Oh, yeah. Great. Oh, absolutely. Right. Something different. I want to go in a different fat direction.

Sure, sure. For fan direction? High cholesterol, generally not a good thing for your heart. Low cholesterol. Not good for your brain. There's actually a whole group of studies that show under total 160. Under 160, okay. under an association with homicide, suicide, depression, and death from all causes.

And so many people are taking statins today. And I have to fight with their cardiologists because they're trying to get total cholesterol as low as possible. And I'm like, this is not a good thing. But what about hormones? Yeah, but I mean, right. Do you have a thought on that? I'd like to see those studies.

I've gone away from cholesterol for the last 20 years. I have not paid much attention to LDL, HDL, any of that stuff, nor about statins. I used a lecture on them back in the 90s, but not anymore. So I can't say anything pro or con about that. But it wouldn't be surprising. So if 60% of the solid weight of our brains is, fat than...

Not eight in the non-water. Getting healthy fat. So the new guidelines from the USDA doesn't demonize fat. It doesn't... No, they emphasize healthy fats. It doesn't get excited about

limiting fat, although it still limits saturated fat. So maybe help people understand the difference between saturated, unsaturated, sure, fat. And when you're choosing something to eat,

you know, is the rabbi really worse than the chicken? Oh, that's a great, great question. It's not the meat, it's the fat in it, right? That's the issue. It's just not the protein. Proteins are both good. And then there's obviously a big push for more protein.

the new guidelines, which is probably okay. It's a good thing, I think. What's controversial about the guidelines is they recommend butter and full fat dairy, which are saturated fat, meaning saturated fat, well, you can't say it from dairy, in a way you can't, solid at room temperature. Right. Like butter. You think about coconut oil butter. Coconut oil butter. Those are solid. I mean, so that's the general way of looking at saturated fats. Unsaturated fats is simply they have, they're more liquid. Olive oil. Olive oil is liquid. And then if you put olive oil in the refrigerator, it'll start to cloud up because it'll be, it's not, it's got some, doesn't have many polyunsaturated fats. The more double bonds in these molecules, the more

polyunsaturated, the more liquid it is, the lower the bowl, the lower the melting. So corn, oil, soybean oil, safflower, sunflower, those oils, put them in the fridge, they won't, they'll, you don't have to store them in the fridge, but they will not get cloudy. They will not start to solidify out. But the new guidelines are a mixed bag. I'm writing a review right now with a bunch of other people on, or commentary about them. We like this, we like this, we like this, but that's really confusing to say, eat more full fat dairy, more meat with, you know, without trying to limit the fat. But don't eat any more saturated fat than 10%.

Well, pretty soon those are going to run into each other because they're saying eat more of these kinds of foods. And then they say limit saturated. So they need clarification. They need clarification. Yeah. And they also didn't dump alcohol. I would have completely dumped alcohol. What they say to moderate or something like?

whatever that means. Yeah, everything in moderation. Absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. But, you know, I mean, because I look at brains all day long, and alcohol is an incredibly common part of my practice when people have probably more than they should. I suppose that varies by, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is so interesting. We could do weeks just on fat. just on fat. And how important this is. Yeah, I would just. What do you think? You've been doing this like me a long time. If you could tell our audience the top three or four recommendations that you have learned

as a nutrition scientist, what would they be? Wow. Calories. I mean, if we start large, calories and exercise. I mean, move more, eat less. I mean, it's just... Don't you think quality of calories matters more, though? That helps, that helps.

I mean, right. But then that gets real fuzzy, what the quality of calories are. I mean, if I'm having Cheetos versus salad, the salmon. Right, you have the same number of calories from each, right? And the one's better than the other, right? Right, I could do 800 calories of Oreos

and have a lot of inflammation versus... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, right, there's always that, exactly. So nutritionally, I think that's important to think about how much you eat, just how much you just don't overeat. It's simple. To the fats, I'm much more comfortable than just, you know, energy in general. Of course, I think we need to eat a lot more omega-3 than we do. And their countries around the world that do, and they do better.

The Japanese, for example, they live four and a half years longer than we do. And probably healthier. It's actually not the only source that if I understand this right, grass-fed meat has more omega-3s than commercially industrial raised. Industrial raised. More would be true. But not enough. It would be like going from two milligrams per serving, three milligrams per cent.

So I mean, it's 50% more. So it's not a good source. It's not a good source. If you're trying to get omega-3, you need to go. Right. Right, you've got to eat EPA, DHA, to really get omega-3. You have to eat fish. Yeah, and, you know, grass-fed, beef, I mean, there's less fat in the grass-fed.

And you don't get the hormones, you don't get the- True. Right. There's a lot of other reasons. A lot of other reasons. But it's not an omega-3 source. Okay. That's for sure.

So that's my, that's the horse I've been riding for a long time. It's the one thing I do is you need to get more omega-3. And that's, it's a very clear message, I think. And again, knowing your blood level will motivate you to take the right steps to get your levels up to the 8% we think is the optimal target. And hang on to that for, don't do it just for two or three years and think you're going to turn that ship around. It's a lifetime thing. Right. I mean, started at minus nine months.

Yeah, we tell people that about probiotics, too. I mean, there's a lot of things that you have to, it's maintenance. It's maintenance, right. You know, you don't go to the gym once and think you're done, right? Right. How long does it take to get your level healthy? Yeah. The average lifespan of, or the lifespan of a red cell is about four months.

So we like to look at, if you do an omega-3 test and then you're going to up your omega-3 levels, three or four months later, don't do it in a week. Okay, so let me ask you, so three or four months to get the levels where you can see it in a lab. But let me ask you, what about the benefits? Like, when do you start to see the actual benefits? Oh, that's, I mean, because you don't feel it. Yeah, I mean, there really isn't a feeling of low.

Really? Like if you're having less pain or... Well, the thing my patients tell me, especially the women, is they go to the hairdresser, and the hairdresser goes, your hair's thicker. They go to get a manicure, and they go, your nails are thicker. Is that right? That's absolutely. Great ideas for research.

I mean, this has not been studied. And that would be interesting. It would be very important. But do you have less pain? Do you have less brain fog? Do you have less depression? Do you have? And how long would that take?

That would probably take years. Really? Before you'd feel that? Before you'd feel that. But it would be hard. So there's a study from New Zealand where this is a 12-week study. They gave one group of depressed people, Prozac, 50% improvement. They gave them omega-3 fatty acids, another group, 57% improvement. And then another group they gave both, 88%.

improvement. And so 12 weeks, they saw a significant benefit. But what's interesting, I'd love your take on this, because the research is actually pretty clear. You know Dr. Kidd. Paris Kidd was our chief scientist for a long time. And when I first told him this, he didn't believe it. And then he kept reading the research that giving EPA is more effective.

for patients with depression and patients who have ADHD, then DHA. And they've actually compared them head to head. And I'm like, why would that be? Anti-inflammatory? I mean, you don't have to actually have the omega-3s in the meat of your brain to have benefit in your brain. I see. Because there can be anti-inflammatory effects of EPA. So that's the anti-inflammatory portion?

Probably. Okay. I mean, in fact, DHA produces anti-inflammatory molecules as well, different ones than EPA. But you're absolutely right. The surprise, because the brain is so much DHA, that you'd give DHA and make the brain better. And the depression studies anyway didn't show that. So that's what's fun about research. You just don't know what's going to happen.

And you've got to recalibrate. Okay, I'm going this way. Well, that's a dead end. I got to go that way. So, and that's what's fun about, you know, why EPA in brain? Well, it's depression. I mean, and you said ADHD too. I wouldn't quite sure about that.

But I don't know if that's necessarily the case for dementia. It's a different question. It's a different question. And I don't, I haven't seen the sort of separation of EPA and DHA. Well, I mean, watching your videos, we know that that just starts decades. decades before. Decades before. And that's why it's so hard to study in the standard medical model of a randomized controlled trial.

Or you give people omega-3 or a placebo or something and watch them for a year and a half. And expect to have an answer. You've got to do it for years and years and years. And it's a matter, because you're never going to do the study, nobody's going to do that study. It was going to fund it. You just have to trust it. And you know that omega-3s are safe. So that's, I mean, there's the benefit.

There's no downside. There's no downside. So what's the problem? So take the chance. All the epidemiologic evidence, the population evidence points to benefit. So. If you take omega-3s, is it better to do it with food or without? With.

Or does it matter? With food. Because then you're not going to get the fish burps. Well, that's true. And I'm sure I haven't had your product, but I'm sure it's high quality. really get fish burps. Not with ours. Not with ours.

Yeah. If you're taking an ethylester, the pharmaceutical omega-3 products are ethylesters. So you can cram, chemically, you can cram more omega-3 in one pill if it's an ethylester form. But those are poorly absorbed

if you don't take food. If you take them just on empty stomach in the morning, blood levels don't go. So if you're a person who is intermittent fasting, because I've had this conversation with a lot of people in my community when I post, Why aren't you taking them? You should be taking them in the morning

because I don't eat in the morning. Because I'm not hungry in the morning. I take other medication in the morning that I can't eat with. Right. So because I don't eat that early, I end up taking my fish oil later. Which doesn't matter, right?

No, I mean, we've done so you can take, you can take it. If you look at how much you take in a given week, whether you take it every day, take the same amount in two slugs a week, same blood level. So you don't even have to take it every day. fat. I mean, fat's very, very slow turnover.

How about with pain? Do omega-3 fatty acids help with pain? That's not well-studied. There's been, look at headaches. There's been some suggesting that there's benefit headaches. Yeah, because you would think if it's decrease in inflammation, it would help the pain. You would think, yeah, but there's different kinds. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying about traumatic brain injury and football. No. And now they're...

Four guys. Actually, brand new textbook out saying you can see CTE before people are dead with studies like spec that I do. So I'm very excited about that. But when we put our... So, bad brains, right? Playing football is a brain damaging sport. Stop lying about it, it is. but the exciting part of our study is we wanted to see if we can make bad brains better and we did

80% of our players got better what we did is we put them on a great multiple vitamin high dose high quality fish oil so it was three grams of EPA and DHA and a brain boost that worked in six different ways. And that was it, except told them that they were drinking or overweight. It's like, come on, you got to get your body healthy. 80% better. Very excited. It's the season? Two to six months. People were rescanned two to six months later. And cognitively, they were better. They had better blood flow to their frontal lobes. A lot of them lost a lot of weight. But they would say to us, my arthritis is better. Oh, yeah. And I have. And I, had just attributed that to the omega-3s. But apparently there's not enough study for that.

Well, arthritis. I mean, that, you know, to your point about how do you feel? Well, I don't know about these guys don't want to lose weight if they're football. But feeling omega-3, that's, I think, if I hear anything, I never hear about going to nail salons and stuff. But I hear about people just feel like that their joints feel better. Yeah. And sometimes sometimes people aren't even, they're not even super articulate and can't define it, but they're like, I just feel better. Yeah, yeah. And that could be just decrease inflammation or it's kind of a vague. There's nothing. Yeah. It's like not like scurvy when you all of a sudden your teeth stop falling out, you know. They just know that they just feel better when they wake up.

Generally better. Yeah. So that wouldn't necessarily take years. Yeah. That would I think take months. What do you see for the Omega 3 story 10 years from now, 20 years from now? If you had to predict based on your decades of research. Well, I think medically, I hope to see a test like the omega-3 index and have to be that one as part of a standard medical work, yearly workup. I mean, it is a risk factor for a variety of things. It's a very modifiable risk factor. It's a very safe, you can safely modify.

You don't have to take drugs. And that would help tremendously if it would just get into the medical community. That's been a hard cell because it's nutrition. Which is so interesting to me because we know how important nutrition is. If we give pregnant mothers prenatal vitamins that contain fish oil, why is this even a discussion? We know nutrition matters. It's very confusing. It is confusing. And there's so much inertia. I mean, I'm not telling you anything. You've been down this road dealing with your colleagues. But that would be one of my hopes. in 10 or 20 years that this is a much more standard.

And there's a few labs that offer this thing, offer an omega-3 test, not the red blood cell one, but they, you know, God bless them for doing anything. I'm happy with that. I think we're going to have omega-3 sources that don't require killing any fish that will be grown from plants. They're doing...

Like algae that we talked about. Well, not even algae. Land plants, soybean, you can genetically modify. soybean to have it produce higher longer chain omega-3s and it's grow it with roots you can draw anywhere and there's a variety of different cultivars that they're using now but it's genetic engineers you got to get over the GMO thing you know you're gonna have a whole tribe of people there I don't know GMO I say it's always you know it's bad you can kind of take it on a case-by-case basis here, you know, something, if a genetically modified product produces an oil that has more

omega-3 in it, don't worry about the oil. It's going to be safe. It's okay. In any of that, I think we're going to get to where we have, there's such a demand for omega-3. There's such a need for it all over the world. We can't do it despite, we take all the fish out of the sea. We can't do it. Algae is one way to do it where you can, you know, just build an incubator in Arkansas, you know, and throw on a bunch of sugar and throw these bugs. in and they make omega-3s, it's pretty crazy. But that's kind of a high, it's expensive way of doing it. But if you can get a crop, a seed crop,

that actually would produce omega-3, and you could harvest it and protect them from oxidation. You have a great source of this stuff. And so it can be put, it can be deodorized now and be put into all kinds of, like fortification to food, like adding iodine to salt. Is there any good powder source of omega-3? There are some powdered omega-3.

thinks yeah yeah that can be um and there's some some liquids that are completely transparent clear that they're completely homogenized and emulsified into the wood and you get a you don't have well we have something called omega-3 power squeeze which is just delicious oh yeah right it's like An orange-flavored thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way for kids.

Yeah. Kids like that. Yeah, they like it. My grandkids love it. Yeah. At Aeman Clinics, you're not just seeing one doctor. You're getting a tea. With over 50 specialists, including psychiatrists,

naturopaths, nutritionists, and therapists, we treat the whole you. Learn more at Amenclinics.com. Well, goodness, this was so helpful. We're here with Dr. Bill Harris, who is the founder and CEO of OmegaQuint, the Omega-3 Index, a test we use. Here at Eamon Clinics, I love when I get mine done because I take Omega-3 power and it seems to work really well. I'm probably going to break my test. Break my test with your blood. You're listening to Change Your Brain every day.

Go to OmegaQuant.com. Learn more about Dr. Harris. subscribe, leave us a comment, question, or a review. And, you know, I always talk about know your important health numbers. Your Omega-3 Index is one of the most important health numbers you can know. And if it's low, you can do something about it right away. Thanks for watching.