Dhru Purohit Show - The Mind-Blowing Science of Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Heart Health, Brain Health and Longevity with Dr. Bill Harris

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and Momentous. What if there was one key nutrient that could help improve your health, increase longevity, reduce chronic inflammation, and even reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s? You’ve probably heard of this crucial nutrient: Omega-3! But did you know that over 90% of the population has suboptimal omega-3 levels?  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Bill Harris, a world-renowned researcher, to discuss the decades of research he has conducted on omega-3s, and its correlation to longer life spans, reduced rates of depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer’s, and reducing chronic inflammation. Dr. Harris shares that omega-3 is one of the most researched nutrients and one of the top three nutrients that can drastically improve our health. Dr. Harris shares his findings on what to look for in consuming quality fish, supplements, optimal levels, and how to test your levels via the OmegaQuant Institute. William S. Harris, PhD, FASN, has been a leading researcher in the omega-3 fatty acid field for 40 years. He has over 300 scientific papers on fatty acids and health, has been on the faculty of three medical schools, and received 5 NIH grants to study omega-3. He co-authored three AHA statements on fatty acids and heart health. As the co-inventor of the Omega-3 Index (and other omega-3 blood tests) and founder of OmegaQuant Analytics, Dr. Harris has been ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide based on the impact of his research.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Harris dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Higher levels of omega-3’s lead to a longer life (2:30 / 2:30) Omega-3s are in the top three nutrients that can improve our health (5:12 / 5:12) Mindblowing research on smokers and the protective nature of omega-3s (9:21 / 8:00) High levels of omega-3s and their correlation to reducing the risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s (18:31 / 17:11) The research behind omega-3’s and reducing chronic inflammation (22:42 / 21:22)  The average omega-3 levels versus optimal levels (24:55 / 23:35)  What are EPA, DHA, and ALA, and the sources of each (35:02 / 31:46)  How much fish consumption is optimal, and what kind (43:01 / 39:39) Testing your levels via the Omega-3 index and optimal ranges (46:49 / 43:27) Algae-based oils and their impact on levels (56:04 / 52:34) Choosing the right fish oil and general dosage (59:15 / 55:54) Timeframe to reach optimal levels (1:15:30 / 1:12:26) Why the omega-3s aren’t being tested for and prescribed by every doctor (1:24:25 / 1:21:04 ) Also mentioned in this episode: Testing via OmegaQuant Fatty Acid Research Insitute  This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and Momentous.  Start the New Year off right and dial in on your sleep. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order. Optimize your Omega-3 levels by choosing a quality fish oil made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, megathrease are in every cell, every miscell membrane. They do good things everywhere by about 15 different mechanisms. They do it. The thing that really counts largely comes down to anti-inflammatory. They put the brakes on. They soften the inflammatory response. And I think that plays out in dementia, plays out in cardiovascular disease. Today on the podcast, we're talking about one of the most important nutrients and supplements.

you could slash should be consuming for your health and longevity. And the thing is, even though we have so much data on this key nutrient, the vast majority of people out there are not getting enough. But I promise you, today's episode is going to help fix that. Hi, everyone, Drew Brod here. This week's guest is Dr. Bill Harris. And he's here to talk to us about the latest mind-blowing science around omega-3 fatty acids.

When it comes to our health, longevity, heart health, brain health, and even pregnancy, and why these omega-3 fatty acids easily top the list of the top five supplements most everyone should be taking. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Bill Harris, who knows a thing or two about this topic. He's been a leading researcher in the omega-3 fatty acid fuel for over 40 years. Not only that, he has over 300 scientific papers on fatty acids and health, the vast majority focusing on omega-3s. Dr. Bill Harris has also been on the faculty of three medical schools and has received five NIH grants to study the topic of omega-3s. He is also the co-inventor of the Omega-3 Index and the founder of the testing company, Omega Quant

Analytics, which has had a massive impact on My Health Evolution. Dr. Bill Harris has been ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide based on the impact of his research. And I promise you, after he talks about the latest science on omega-3 fatty acids today, you're going to get excited to make this nutrient and potentially a supplement a top priority in your life. Dr. Bill Harris, welcome to the podcast. You know, we were chatting. I was sharing that a lot of my listeners are very interested.

And it's their goal to live to 100 and maybe beyond. but it's not just about lifespan, it's about health span. They want to be healthy along the way. And something mind-blowing that I've learned from following your work over the years is that getting enough omega-3s in our diet is a huge part of that. In fact, you've shared previously that people that have higher levels of omega-3s in their blood are less likely to die an earlier death. To me, that's mind-blowing.

I'd love for you to expand on that. Sure. Great to be on your show. Thanks for the invitation. Yeah, that particular finding, we were part of a large collaboration of a bunch of, we'd call cohort studies. A cohort is just a group of people that gets recruited in a certain area, like in Boston or in London or whatever. And the investigators will draw blood samples at the beginning of the study, and then they just keep in touch with these people over the years to see how they do, the diseases they develop. And then we look backwards and we look at omega-3 levels in the blood from when they started the study and see what the diseases happened,

who died, who didn't die, things like that. So the paper you're talking about, we looked at omega-3 levels in something like 150,000 people, 18 different cohorts. And we put it all together and we looked at the people at the highest omega three levels, the highest 20% versus the lowest 20% and those that had the highest 20% were like 10 to 15% less likely to die during that period of time that we follow them up. Obviously, you wait long enough, everybody dies. Okay. Just so everybody's clear.

Just to be clear on that, right. This is not immortality we're talking about. But it does seem to make you live, higher omega-3 is associated. I have to be careful. I'm not saying the effect of omega-3 is to make me live longer because we haven't done that intervention study, supplementation study. And nobody ever will do that study. But all the evidence is pointing to the association between high omega-3 and longer life, healthier life, better health span, as you said. You know, that study is the tip of the iceberg, but there's so much more that's there.

and in your 40 years of working on this, 40 years plus now, right? 40 years plus now, doing this research, 340 plus papers on omega-3s, today's interview is really designed to highlight and champion this research to help people understand what I feel I understand, but I want everybody to understand. And you tell me if this is factually correct in the way that I understand it, that when it comes to the most studied nutrient, that are out there and their connection with actually moving the needle in improving our health,

omega-3 is in the top three or four of those nutrients. Is that correct? That is definitely correct. Yeah, I think if we look at the top nutrients that have had scientific research papers published on them, you've got vitamin D, folic acid, and omega-3. And omega-3 has only been on the radar since the last. late 70s. And I'm talking about all the history of medical publications, okay, back into the 1800s. Vitamin D has been known for many, many more years. So has folic acid. Follic acid got a lot of

interest, of course, when it was figured out that it related to birth defects. So any event, omega-3 has gotten a lot of attention, and it's one of the top three, it's one of the top five molecules in, you know, add aspirin, add prednisone, add other medicines and how much research they've had, penicillin. It's one of the top five or ten molecules that's been studied in the history of medicine. So therefore, would it be fair to say that if you care about your health, again, this is based on the literature, there's not the causality, there's the association that's there, if you care to live to as long as your genetic potential is designed for and not just live long, but live a healthy life, you want to seriously be paying attention to omega-3s in the form of getting

it regularly in your diet through fish and then also supplementation. Is that a fair statement? That's a fair statement. That's the reality, right. Fish is a great way to do it. You got to pick the right fish. you've got to be consistent with it. But it's very doable. But most people will not be doing it. So they'll take supplements. And dietary supplements of omega-3, EPA-D-H-A are definitely fine for increasing your blood levels and your tissue levels. This episode is brought to by bi-optimizers.

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of looking at some of this data. And this is something that I wrote about last week in my newsletter. And when I was telling friends about this, their minds literally were blown because they could not imagine how this was possible. You're going to explain to us what might be going on. So, I'm sitting down. I feel like I'm the unofficial hype person for Omega 3 and your research. So that's how I'm excited. Keep it going. So Omega 3 is so powerful that even smokers who had the highest level of Omega 3 index

were actually more protected than non-smokers who had the lowest level of Omega-3s in their blood work. Is that accurate? And can you explain what the heck is going on? Yeah. Okay. You know, so, right, to back up, that's a study we did as part of what's called the Framingham study. It's a big, very famous cohort that a lot of research has been done in. And we looked at the omega-3 levels in the blood with these people.

And then we looked at how long they lived, you know, from the time we screened. I think they're about 65 years old when we screened them when we measured their omega-3 levels. And then we followed them up for about 10 or 12 years. So between, say, 65 and 75. Some people died, some people didn't, right? Some people were smokers, some people weren't smokers. And we did all the statistics and found that the people who lived the longest were non-smokers and had the highest omega-3 levels. Okay.

And contra that, the people who died the soonest, most likely to die were smokers and those with the lowest omega-3. And in the middle, I think Azaria you're kind of talking about, If you had high omega-3 and we were a smoker, you had about the same risk of death as if you were a low omega-3 and non-smoker. It's kind of in the middle. So they were roughly equivalent in a way in terms of risk prediction. I've got to be careful with this. Because some people will take this and say, okay, all I got to do is eat more fish, take some fish oil pills, and then the smoking I'm doing right now is not going to bother me. I wouldn't go that far.

But we all have some sense of how increase, how much smoking increases your risk for bad outcomes. And I just want to get people to realize that the omega-3 level is kind of in the same category. It's on the other side, of course. Or I guess you'd say a low omega-3 is kind of like being a smoker in terms of your risk. But fair enough, that's good way to explain it. That's fair enough. And, you know, I mean, you're a researcher. You work with the team that's there, but you're also a human being. When you came across these findings, was there a party that was like, no freaking way. Is this the actual truth? Was there some party that literally like, I keep on using the word mind blown, but this is actually where I feel it's it's so supposed to be used. Was your mind blown in these findings? It was. I mean, when I first saw that graph come back from our biostatistics people and showed the lines, the death lines, so to speak. and showing that the omega-3s basically were so basically canceled out the smoking in terms of effect on.

I was amazed, too, but they said trust us, so I trust them. But it's a pretty cool finding. It's pretty cool finding, and we're just beginning to peel back the layers of the onion of how powerful omega-3s are. Let's keep the train going a little bit. You sent me some fantastic studies. And I feel like a big part of my job as a podcast host, who's not an expert in health, but is trying to highlight the people who are like yourself and your team, is that half of my job is just helping people understand the problem and the potential in the first place.

Then we can talk about what to do about it, right? But if you don't get how bad the problem is, or if you don't understand the true potential, If I tell you or you tell the audience, rather, what to do, how much supplements to take, how much fish they should be eating, which we're going to be covering that. It comes in this year. You're excited about it for a day, excited about it for a month, you forget about it, and then people move on with their lives. That's why we're taking our time to really tease this out so that people understand. I want to talk about mental health and brain health for a second. I had mentioned to you that I owe so much to your work because growing up being vegetarian

and then being vegan for a while and not realizing that I was significantly low in omega-3s, the light-bulb moment that I had was doing an omega-quant. There was a practitioner and a friend who said, hey, you've been vegan for a little while. Why don't we test you and see, or you could even order this test yourself, which I have the link below. People can go to OmegaQuant website. And I did this. And it came back and there's this whole phrase that says test, don't guess. And I was guessing that everything was good. But mentally I wasn't feeling as sharp. I was feeling a little bit of what I would call depressive episodes, even though I wasn't diagnosed. And my omega-3 levels came back significantly low. What do we know about omega-3s and depression

or mood? Yeah. It's a great story. And I assume if you were a typical vegan, you were below our like 4% in that red zone. And that's not a good place to be. What do we know about omega-3 and depression and anxiety? And this is, yeah, there's been quite a bit of research in the area. And it's mixed. And part of the blessing, the mixed blessing of having so many studies done on omega-3 is that Some of them turn out like you think they are. Some of them don't really find a relationship or an effect. Hardly ever is there a bad outcome, so to speak. So it's either positive or neutral. But in the area of depression, supplementation studies have shown some benefits on increasing or rather decreasing symptomatology of depression. Those studies can never be really very long. They're not years long. which is what you'd really want. For that kind of perspective, we look at blood levels as blood levels predicting risk for developing dementia or, I mean, depression.

And those typically show higher levels of omega-3 associated with lower risk for developing depression. Okay, that makes sense, too. There's been some evidence that EPA might be a little better for depression than DHA. the two long chain omega-3s in fish. So maybe we could get in that if you want to. But there's certainly a link. I mean, is the omega-3 supplementation going to do just as well as an antidepressant?

Maybe not. But we're talking about nutrition here. We're not talking about it. Usually it helps with the drug, taking them together. But there's strong evidence. You know, like you said, I'm a scientist and I get, I try not to get too emotionally excited or too. I don't want to speak beyond the data. So I see, because I'm aware of studies where they didn't see an effect of Omega 3.

And, of course, studies that do see an effect. So I have to be a little balanced. The thing is with Omega 3, and this goes across all of our discussions, They are completely safe. Completely safe. There is no downside to taking omega-3s, and there's lots and lots and lots of potential upsides. Some strongly confirmed, some strongly suggested.

But when I look at risk-benefit ratios to anything you do in life, if the risk is virtually zero and the benefit is potential and strong, I think it's a favorable ratio. So I go for it. Well, that's how I looked at it with myself. And seeing that my omega-3 index was so low, I thought, okay, let me start to include fish to my diet.

Now, this is an N of one personal testimonial, but I try to be transparent with my audience about my own journey and also tell them that this is an anecdotal testimony. But I'm going to share it anyway. When I started eating fish and supplementing with fish oil, my brain, I felt finally turned on after almost a couple years of it feeling progressively like, I wasn't exactly like my cheerful, upbeat self. That's my own testimony. I have a few other friends that have gone through that.

And I look forward to one day, you know, more research that's available, whether it's through your group or you inspiring other people to work on this, where there might be more conclusive results that are there. Yeah. But like you said, what matters is what happens to you. Exactly. Exactly. Right. And, you know, people can try this. Maybe they'll start eating fish and they don't feel any different. Okay, no harm, no foul. But the odds are it's going to make a difference and it made a difference, particularly if you start really low like you did. What about Alzheimer's and dementia? Do we have any more data that shows a more protective impact on these two very scary diagnoses when it comes to omega-3s?

Yeah, we do. And we just published a couple of weeks ago, maybe a large study, looking at, again, that what we typically do, Omega 3 levels in the blood, DHA, I believe, was our primary focus on that one, and looked at risk for developing dementia or Alzheimer's disease. This was in a large group of people in England. And we found the same story we found in other, and others have found too, the highest people with the highest levels of omega-3 at the beginning of the study, which is typically put people in their 50s, 40s or 50s when these studies start. The risk for developing dementia is reduced. And, you know, nobody's going to prevent Alzheimer's disease. They're not going to prevent dementia. They're going to put it off until you die of something else. That's the best you can ever hope for. People talk about preventing the disease. It's not what they mean is delaying the disease. And, And that's what we all want to do. That's increasing your health span, right? And so the omega-3s are certainly strongly linked with a reduced risk for developing. And so since we have no treatment,

whatever, for these debilitating conditions that we all know about and we all fear more than we fear heart attacks by and large, definitely take more omega-3 to help reduce your risk for that. that's that's a no-brainer pardon the pun it's the best brainer that you could do it's the best brainer if you care about your brain health there you go uh let's go to a few other areas inside of the body and things that people struggle with high blood pressure is one of those things that so many people struggle with today yeah and there's often um advice that's given okay you care about your blood pressure primary one that's shared with individuals, you know, drinking a lot of water and making sure you're hydrated and also not having too much salt in the diet and sodium in particular.

Right. The challenge that I have, the little beef that I have is that with sodium in particular, most of the sodium and salt that people are getting in their diet is coming from ultra-processed food. It's not from the sea salt that we decide to add to a little, you know, great piece of salmon that we're cooking. It's hidden. It's bread rolls and these other. the things that are ultra processed in the diet. But nonetheless, to bring it back to it,

lowering blood pressure and the impact of omega-3s. What can you tell us about that? Yeah, in that category, the studies have looked, the ones that have been most effective have used pretty high intakes of EPA, DHA, maybe three to four grams a day, which is, you know, the typical American, just for perspective, typical Americans eating that's not taking a fish oil supplement is getting maybe 0.1 to 0.2 grams a day of EPA, DHA, you know, 100 to 200 milligrams a day in their diet. And we're talking about doses here that I just mentioned for blood pressure in the 1,000 to 2,000 milligram a day, which is a very easy to get dose. But it's a higher dose than maybe just triglyceride lowering.

might give you, which we might talk about later. It's doable. It's a minor. It's not a major effect on blood pressure. It's a sign that your blood vessels are healthier. Your blood vessels are more compliant, more flexible, more able to respond to the heart pushing all that blood out. You don't end up with the high blood pressure. So it's good for blood pressure as well as a variety of other things we'll talk about here. Any study that I didn't mention that strongly drives home the evidence around omega-3s and its association with positive outcomes in the body. I know there's so many to choose from, but if there was one or maybe two that I didn't

highlight that really drove it home for the audience, anything that you want to mention? Yeah, I mean, I think what we hear so much about is inflammation, chronic, low-grade inflammation from our diet and our lifestyle and pollution in the air. All these things are pushing our bodies toward a kind of a chronic inflammatory state. And I think the thing that we've seen with omega-3 is that how do they work, people say. And it's kind of complicated to explain how they work. It's not like a drug that has just one target and bang, you can say this drug fixes that thing. Omega-3s are in every cell, every myth cell membrane.

they do good things everywhere and by about 15 different mechanisms they do it but the the thing that really counts that it maybe largely comes down to anti-inflammatory they are just they they put the brakes on they soften the inflammatory response and i think that plays out in many plays out from dementia plays out in cardiovascular disease uh probably plays out in the way the um even the blood is a little bit thinner when you take more omega-3. So you're less likely to clot in a bad place. That's also part of the good benefits. So inflammation is the one word I would use to describe all the benefits of omega-free. And we saw that in Framingham, in our cohort that we looked at, we looked at 10 different blood markers of inflammation. And we correlated those blood markers with the omega-3 level.

and for every one of them higher omega-3 lower inflammatory marker it's just it's just been shown so many times it's uh there's no question about it anymore give us a sense of how and i know you don't like the word deficient because deficiency implies something incorrect but give us a sense of how much this key nutrient is missing from our diets especially here in north america Yeah, yeah. And because I'm trained in nutrition, in nutrition you learn that to be deficient, there's like being deficient in vitamin C. You have scurvy. Okay, your teeth fall out. All right. Really bad stuff happens. Vitamin D and rickets, your bones bend and break real easily. Well, deficiency in the omega-3 is not that stark. It's a long-term subtle thing. So I'd say insufficiency.

is a pretty maybe a little bit better term. But in the United States, if we look, ask how many people or what percent are what I would call suboptimal? And optimal, I will say, is an omega-3 index, which we'll talk about of over 8 percent. We're talking about 90 to 95 percent of people. Are not optimal. They are, but to be not optimal is not necessarily to be deficient. It's to be suboptimal. You could be better and you could be up in a zone that's protective.

The average omega-3 level in America is roughly five and a half, maybe. If you throw it across, we're working on a project right now to kind of define the omega-3 index of every country in the world we can figure out. And Canada, United States, we're sort of in that intermediate zone where you're not awful. you're not all vegans, but you're not optimal like the Japanese are, where they're on average, they're 9 or 10 percent omega-3 index, which is great. So the vast majority of Americans, people in Western diet, it's not just Americans, people who do not eat fish every day, like some cultures do, Japan, South Korea. They have really high omega-3 index because they eat fish a lot. Was there ever a time here specifically in North America that you think we were in our more optimal range?

If you look at dietary patterns, you know, excluding out native populations, were we ever at a time where we would be at a much higher omega index? And part of that is asking what have been the factors that have led to us having lower omega-3s on average in our diet? Is it just simply the absence of fish? Or have we prioritized other things like ultra-processed foods that have crowded out a lot of the good things? This episode is brought you by Momentus. Taking care of your brain is as important as taking care of your body. One of the easiest things that you can do to keep your brain healthy is to supplement your daily diet with high quality EPA and DHA, which is something I've been doing for years.

EPA and DHA are the most important types of omega-3 fatty acids. They support cardiovascular health, improve muscle and joint recovery, reduce exercise-induced inflammation, and help your body absorb key nutrients. They're also vital for your cognitive function and boosting the production of your brain's gray matter throughout your life. Unfortunately, not all omega-3s are created equal. Some fish oils are contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals. That's why I choose Momentus Omega 3 for purity, potency, and sustainability.

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is exactly what's in the product. And now, Momentus is available for you. If you're like me and you want to take supplements that are made and used by the best in the world, go to live momentous.com and use the code dh-h-R-U for 20% off omega-3 and all of their best in-class products. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-M-T-O-U-S-LivMomenus.com with the code D-H-R-U. That's me, Drew, for 20% off today. Yeah, I think it's both and. I think definitely the lack of fish in the diet.

And, you know, historically, there were certainly people on the coasts were much more dependent upon the food that comes right out of the sea because we didn't have refrigeration. We couldn't transport things around the country. You had to eat what was there. And there was a lot of fish on the coasts. So I suppose that omega-free levels, that we've been able to measure them 100, 200 years ago in coastal populations would have been higher. But not necessarily in South the country.

Dakota, where I am. I don't really know that we ever were, certainly as a country, high in omega-3. People have been tried to raise concerns that omega-6 fatty acid intake has come up over the time. I don't think that's been a reason why we have low omega-3. And we can talk about omega-6 later if you'd like to. But at this point, again, if you don't eat fish very regularly, you're not going to have a high omega-3 level. It just doesn't happen. What's the relationship between omega-3s triglycerides and generally, you know, these markers like triglycerize, HDL, LDL, how do you think about omega-3 and their influence on those? Yeah, the, I think, I think, one of the first effects of omega-3 that was discovered, and we were part of the discovery of that in the late 1970s, early 80s, was that omega-3s are particularly effective in lowering one of the blood fats called blood triglycerides. So the other one is cholesterol. This is the blood. Omega-3s don't lower cholesterol.

Never really have. At least in the good, well-controlled studies, you don't see a lowering in cholesterol. But you will definitely see a lowering of triglycerize. And that's because the omega-3s will block the production of those molecules in the liver so they don't get sent out in the blood. So you reduce the levels. That's a good thing. Then the other things are LDL cholesterol, what some people call bad cholesterol. I hate to use that term because it's the bad particles. It's not bad cholesterol. Cholesterol is cholesterol. It's neutral. But LDL particles, which carry a lot of cholesterol, are not affected by fish oils intake. HDL particles, the good particles, their levels can be raised a little bit by fish oil.

So that's actually lowering triglycerides helps raise the HDL. They're kind of on a seesaw in a way. So you'll definitely see an improvement in the lipid profile, but don't expect to see your cholesterol level go down to start taking fish oil. I know you said it was complicated and it is complicated. But on a cellular level, if you were explaining this to, let's say, a sixth grader, an eighth grader, if we were able to see inside of the body, which we are, obviously we have, you know, we have different medical tools that enable that to happen.

When fish oil, omega-3s enters into the body on a regular basis, what's its impact on the cell? Like, what is it actually doing on the cells in our body? If we would try to make it easy to understand, even though I know it's incredibly complicated. It's complicated. Yeah, I think a reason, there's metaphors, there's analogies for it. I think people have often used the fact that fish oil is an oil. Then you think about oil in your car and having enough oil in the engine to lubricate all the cylinders as they go up and down. If you're low on oil, you're going to have a lot of friction.

And that's going to create heat. That's going to create, that's like inflammation. So I think that's one way of looking at it that if you're low on omega-3, you're essentially kind of low on oil. And your cells are going to, there's just going to be friction. There's going to be inability to respond. Like every cell has to respond to the outside environment. and it's a very finely tuned, finally designed system.

And if the cell membrane, which is really the most, almost one of the most important parts of the cell, the membrane which decides what goes in, what goes out, that is very much dependent upon the fluidity of that membrane is important and the flexibility of that membrane. And if you have too little omega-3, the membrane just doesn't operate well. And so you get garbled communication.

between the outside and the inside. And so things just don't go well. Indeed, they definitely don't go well when we especially so many Americans being in that bottom cohort of people that are incredibly insufficient and don't have enough of mega-3s. Yeah. Talk to our audience a little bit about EPA and DHA. And let's expand a little bit more from a mega-3's top line to going into a little bit more about EPA and DHA and why it's a little bit more about EPA and DHA and why it's a bit more.

important to understand these two uniquely. Yeah, and let me start with ALA, the plant omega-3, which you were very familiar with as a vegan, of course. That is a form of omega-3 fatty acids. It's kind of like a poor second cousin in a way. It is strictly speaking, it has the right last name. Omega-3 is correct, but the first name is wrong. Alpha-Linolentic, it's a precursor, a poor precursor to EPA and

DHA, which can be made from it, but not very well at all. And you get very low levels. So to get EPA and DHA, which are the two that are in fish oils or in marine animals, they actually start in the oceans where they're made. To get those two, you really have to eat them preformed, meaning in seafoods. You mentioned a few of them, salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, anchovies, Albuquer tuna is a good one as well. So those are all great sources of EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA have different roles in the body. They're different chemical structures, very similar, but slightly different.

And they are made in each one of them is made into other molecules by different enzyme systems in the body that have anti-inflammatory or other beneficial effects. I always think, I never recommend that people just take EPA or just take DHA because they come together naturally in fish, always together. They're in fish oils always together, unless you process it strongly just to remove one or the other. And I don't see any point in that. I think the smartest thing to do is get roughly, you know, 50, 50, 40, 60 percent EPA and DHA in the supplement. that's kind of the range that it'd say in fish. And so that's, I think, the best way to go. You touched on it a little bit, but I'd like to come back to it because when I was

vegan, one of the things that I would talk about with people, because I was just repeating what I had heard, is that I would tell people, well, there's plenty of animals that don't eat fish and they're able to be successful. Talk to us about why human beings in particular are. are really bad at converting ALA into the necessary molecules to be able to turn into the same impact that you get from fish or fish oil supplementation. Yeah, that's a great question. So deer and buffalo and parrots and all kinds of other animals don't eat fish, right?

How do they live? And it's a reasonable question. And why is Omega-3 so important for humans? And apparently not for horses, which are, you know, vegetarian, vegans. And tell you the truth, I've never thought about that. It's a great question. And how you answer it, I think every animal is designed, you know, most all these animals we think about live in the natural environment in which they were designed to be.

Humans are not. We can create our own food. transport our own food. Deer and, you know, ground squirrels don't do that. They're eating the natural environment they're designed and built in such a way that they have their cells work in given the food that they are set up to eat. But humans, we can avoid, we eat not just by necessity, we eat by taste, we eat by culture. And again, we can process food. in a way that no other animal can do. And so that has all, I think, led to humans needing or being low in this particular kind of food.

You know, you think about back to cavemen and what did they used to eat, a mixture of plant and animal, for sure. And they were probably eating fish. I mean, you've got to, if you're going to have a civilization that grows up, you've got to be by water. You have to be by a river if you're not on the coast. Even being on the coast is not very helpful because he can't drink seawater. You've got to be by freshwater. And there's always fish, always fish in water. And so fish has been there ever since humans ever appeared on this planet. And they've been part of the diet. And I think the fact that we've got so out of balance now

It's just a function largely of what food industry can do and produce for our taste, and whatever tastes good, we go for it. And if it's cheap, we go for it. So I know that's a, I'm dancing around your question because I don't know. No, no, that's a great answer. And I mean, really what I fundamentally hear you partially saying, and anybody that's read the work of you've all know our Harari in the book Sapiens understands that there was a concentrated period where the human brain exploded in size. And we were able to do things that our,

you know, certain relatively close ancestors and DNA, other species were not able to do. We were able to tell stories. We were able to do make tools. We were able to create civilization. And a big part of that, at least the going theory is it was our ability to concentrate calories. and not spend so much time digesting raw food all day and leaves and being able to get nutrients in concentrated forms. So if we want to maintain this ability of our human brain, we have to make sure that we did the things that most likely we evolutionary had access to. And it seems that fish was a big part of our diet prehistoric. I agree. Fish was a big part of our diet, right? And learning, you know, nobody else can handle it can do fire. We can do fire. No other animal

how to handle and use fire. And it's a huge deal. I mean, we would have no metallurgy. We would have no machinery if we couldn't figure out how to melt metals, smelt ores with fire. Never mind the cooking side of it, too, which opened up, made some nutrients more accessible from foods that we would not otherwise derive the nutrients. So fire maker, it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. You know, if you go to Times Square, or any other public place, Hollywood Boulevard, I'm located here in Los Angeles, and you ask a random group of people, sort of man on the street interview style, and you say, hey, you know, do you eat a healthy diet? You know, the average person comes back to you and says like,

yeah, yeah, I try to be healthy because everybody has a different definition of what healthy means to them. For one person it might mean, they only smoke one pack of cigarettes a month. For another person, it means instead of having three Coca-Cola a day, they have one and one diet Coca-Cola a day. Right, right. Everybody has a different definition. And I've seen the same thing goes with fish. And you've talked about this in your work.

You have instrumentally talked about how important it is to both consider fish intake and especially from the right fish as well as supplementation. But let's talk about the fish and the dietary side of it. How much fish do we need to be eating if we want to be optimal, which is what my audience and I are looking for? Yeah, right. And the first question is, what kind of fish before we talk about? Because there is a wide variety of omega-3 richness or lack of richness in fish. On the low end of omega-3 in fish, you've got things like telon.

and cod and perch and bass and like a lot of lake fish, shrimp, almost nothing. They're lobster, almost nothing because these are very, very low fat, protein rich types of animals, foods. And if there's very little fat, even if 50% of the fat is omega-3, which it's not, if there's hardly any fat there, you don't really get much omega-3 when you eat a serving. Those kinds of fish don't count for what we think about telling people, we mean oily fish. And when we say oily, it's always kind of an odd expression. But people hopefully will realize fish that are like salmon, like sardines, like mackerel, herrings, you know, and anchovies.

I don't know who anybody eats anchovies straight up, you know, other than maybe on a Caesar salad or on a pizza. But anyway, anchovies are very rich. One of the good sources of fish oil is anchovy. So there are certain kinds of fish that are very good, some kind that are pointless, useless. And so when we talk about how much oily fish do you need to eat, we take salmon is the best example. You can get about a gram, gram and a half of omega-3, EPA-D-H-A, from a standard-sized serving of salmon. So that's a lot. So if you did that every day, if you ate salmon every day, then you would not need to take any supplements. Like they do in Japan, Korea, you were mentioning.

Right. Exactly. Right. And not that they eat salmon every day, but they eat such a wide variety of different kinds of fish, including the rich oily fish, tunas, things like that. So one or two servings, one serving a day of those kind of things, people usually take record. recommend you like the American Heart Association two oily fish servings a week. I don't think that's enough. That's better than most people can do or do do, but it's not enough, which is why I think we need supplements. We did a study, I think you may be referring to it, looking at the omega-3

index in like 3,000 people that sent in blood tests to our laboratory for analysis. And we asked them. Do you take a fish oil supplement? Yes, no. How often do you eat oily fish as a main course? So those are pretty rough questions. I mean, not very precise, but they're not bad. And we found that the only group of people that had an average omega-3 index at 8%, which we think our target, are people that reported three times a week eating oily fish and taking supplements. So that's a ballpark idea of what you got to do to achieve an optimal omega-3 index. It can be done all with supplements. It can be done all with fish.

I like to see the mix myself. And that's what we observed. Now, before we get into supplementation, dues and don'ts and all the things that you've learned around that, I want to just take a moment here to talk about testing. I shared that in my story, I was seeking out and I was open to testing because I didn't feel good. And I've found personally that most people in my life that are serious about getting their omega-3s in the optimal zone are often individuals that have at least gotten a baseline because we can all guess and think we know how much fish we're eating. but then when you get back blood work and a rapport and it shows you where you're at, it's a light bulb moment that goes off.

And another part of that there is that it's not just about, and you've highlighted this in your work so often, I've heard you say this on other people's podcast multiple times. It's not about for one day, one week, one month, getting our omega-3s in the optimal zone. It's getting them in, or as close as we can, to the optimal zone and keeping them there, ideally, over the course of our lifetime. That's where the most protective aspects come from having omega-3s in our diet.

So talk to us about testing and some of the work that you guys have done to make this more accessible. How do you get a test? And when you get that report back, what shows up on that report? Sure. The test that we developed about 20 years ago now, it's called the Omega-3 Index. It's a blood test. It reports the amount of EPA and DHA that are in the membranes of your red blood cells that circulate in your blood.

Of course, about half of your blood is water plasma. About the other half is red blood cells. So it's very easy to get samples of red blood cells. And the red cell is a example of kind of a surrogate for the other cells in your body that you can't get a sample of. So we'd like to measure red cell omega-3. We proposed back in 2004, and we still believe today that a EPA, DHA content of 8%, say 8 to 12%, approximately, very few people have anything higher. that range is the optimal range for the omega-3 index most people are like I said earlier 90, 95% of people are below that 8% in America. But we think that's it's an achievable target. It's a safe target. You can do it with supplements. You can do it with fish. So 8% is the target. The way we do the test, we analyze blood for some clinics, doctors offices, and they send us blood tubes.

and we isolate the red blood cells themselves and analyze them. But most of the time, we use the dried blood spot method where we send a little kit to your home and you open it up and you've been through this. Clean your finger, poke your finger with a little lancet, get a drop of blood, put it on a card, and put it in the mail and send it back to us, and we send you a result. And in that result, we'll tell you what your omega-3 index is on kind of, you know,

a standard red, green, yellow, scale everybody uses. And we'll give you some suggestions. Exactly. So if your omega-3 index is, say, at 5%, which is pretty typical, we have a calculator on our website that you can link to

and put in your 5% index, and then it will tell you how much omega-3 EPA-D-HA you probably should try to eat additionally, how much you should increase if you want to get up to 8%. And that is the, that's data we've got from other studies that we've reduced to an equation that says most people who are at 5% need about another 1,000 milligrams a day of EPA and DHA to get average 8%. That's a good place to start. So that's part of the report that you get back from

OmegaQuant or lab. there are other levels of testing that I think to me that's the most important test to get is the omega-3 index that's the basic that's the cheapest thing that we we offer which is around 50 bucks for that test and but you can if you want you can get higher more information um omega-3 amegas ratios EPA D-H excuse me EPA-AA ratios trans fat ratio I think that's kind of important too The trans fatty acids are the ones that we don't want to be eating, the ones in donuts and pastries. So we can measure that in your red cells, and we report that. The third level of tests we'll call our complete test, which gives you like around 24 different fatty acids, your blood levels,

and where they rank relative to the general population where you are. So that's the complete test. But for my money, you know, 80% of the bang comes from the Omega 3 index. Get that first. That's the most actionable one, I think, of all of our tests. Yeah. You know, there's this term or this phrase that people use, which is, you know, don't step over dollars to pick up pennies.

And I often get asked as a podcast host, even though I tell everybody, look, I know I'm Indian and you think I'm an expert. or a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. I just get to talk to so many of them, but people will ask me, what is the next longevity supplement? What is the next thing that they should be doing? And especially in the last couple of years, as I've had a chance to talk to incredible people like yourself, I'm like, guys, it's not about something new. The basics. If we just did those, which again, I would say 99% of people aren't even doing the basics, that right, is an opportunity to maximize what we already know works in the literature, and omega-3s is one of

those. So I have no formal affiliation with you, your company. I just want everybody to know. I've written about Omega Quant in the past before. I'm not an affiliate. I'm not anything. I'm just such a big fan because it made a difference in my journey. And the more that I've learned, it's about as a friend of mine, Max Lugavir says, you want to major in the majors. And you don't want to major in the minors. There's a thousand things that we could all be doing for our health, but why not double down on the ones that we know can significantly move the needle forward? So that's why I really wanted to get a chance for you to talk about the company and the testing. And I appreciate you sharing that. We'll have the link in the show notes that's there.

Now, continue. Great. Thank you. And you're right. I just have to echo what you said. And I love your little your dollars and pennies thing. I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, I stole that for somebody. It's so easy to get distracted, but a million little supplements or, I mean, if you look at the big things, exercise is a huge thing. Huge. Huge. And people won't do that. Why bother with all the other stuff if you won't even move?

Just move. I mean, that's half the battle. Eat less, move more. And that solves so many of our problems and take more omega-3. Yes, definitely. And I want to say, I have empathy. for people who are focused on minor things. I was definitely one of those people.

When you get into the world of health and you're not trained and you don't have a background like you and your team do where you really know how to go through the nuances of the literature and speak with authority, it's easy to get excited about random things that you think will make a difference and that might help other people. And sure, they might have helped you, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be across the board, the biggest thing that moves the needle forward for other people. So I want to go on record that I've gotten things wrong in the past, that I've majored in minor things,

and I'm working on recorrecting that and taking my audience along with me. One of those ones has been exercise. I've been on a strength training journey over the last two years since I turned 40 and realizing that I was under muscle and how muscle is so protective for all aspects of our health, including helping me to improve my metabolic health. So I got it wrong. I have empathy for other people who got it wrong.

in the past. I did the best that I knew how, and I'm working on correcting that by having people like you on my platform. So thank you. That's great. That's great. And it's great advice. Good for you. So I want to continue down this story because we talked about the dietary side. We talked about testing. Let's talk about supplementation. But first, again, because I was an individual and I have no problem with people being vegetarian, vegan. I have many of my family members, many of my friends. But one of the comments that I often hear from my vegan friends around fish oil is, oh, it's all good. I don't need to get an omega-3 test done or I don't need to be taking fish oil. I'm taking an algae-based oil. Do these algae-based fish products move the needle forward?

I actually don't know the answer to that. So I'd love for you to chime in. Yeah, yeah, they do. If it's an algae-based EPA and DHA, again, I kind of mentioned that, you know, Omega-3s are born in the ocean, and they're born inside the cells of these single-celled, what we'll call plankton, zooplankton, phytoplankton, just tiny, tiny little organisms that will take sunlight and sugar and make fatty ass, make omega-3s. And then they formed the basis of the food chain. So some companies years ago figured out which specific species of these little micro, we're not talking about seaweed here.

This is microalgae is not seaweed. Microalgae is something you don't eat, but they can be grown in a big vat. They can be fed sugar. They can then produce omega-3s, and then the company will harvest them and take the EPA and DHA out that they're making and put it in a pill. And it's exactly the same stuff that's in a fish oil pill. So I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is people taking alpha linoleic acid from flaxseal, or chia seed oil or things like that and thinking that they're getting the good omega-3s when

they're not. Great explanation. Thank you for that. Let's talk about standard fish oil that's there. What are some of the do's and don'ts when it comes to choosing the right fish oil? And then if you could remind us again about dosage that generally is regarded as safe for people. I mean, the whole thing is safe, but generally is some of dosage that.

That's going to help most listeners of this podcast start moving in the right direction, even if they didn't test necessarily. Yeah, right. And then to that point, I really want to recommend people test before they start supplementing. Because they're, I mean, it's not the end of the world. If you say, I know I'm going to be bad. I'm not going to be awful. So I'm going to take some pills before I do my test.

Fine, you know. But get some kind of baseline. It's good to know what the effect on your body is of the supplement you're taking. And it's also exciting to cut you off. It's exciting to see, wow, I started here. And then in a period of time, which is going to be my question after you answer this, I got to hear. That's empowering.

It's empowering to know that you have agency on your health and that with focus, you can make a huge difference in something that's so key for our health. So let's start with. First is 50 bucks, right? everybody can scrounge up $50 for the most part we can de-prioritize things we can not eat out one night and why not dedicate this to your health so 50 bucks the test that i think i did was 100 bucks we included a little bit more information or 99 dollars right around there either one is a great option to get started on so testing and you'll get the recommendations that are that are there and now

let's get into the do's and don'ts around fish oil supplementation Sure. First of all, there are several forms. Obviously, walk into a drugstore, Walmart, Costco, whatever, and you're going to see lots of different types of Omega-3. And it's very confusing to people. I think the most important thing is to look at the label and buy the product that's got, well, I would say the most EPA and DHA per capsule, those are going to be the most expensive. The ones that, I mean, one of the cheaper things like at Costco is something like 1,200 milligrams, it says on the front, 1,200 milligrams of fish oil, but it's only got 300 milligrams of EPA and DHA. So it's only 25% of that pill is omega-3. The other 75% is not omega-3.

It's just other regular fats. That's a cheap product because you aren't getting much omega-3. It doesn't take much concentration to do that. I mean, it's not bad. It's better than nothing, obviously. But the ones I look for are the ones that are typically in a triglyceride form as opposed to what's called an ethylester form. And ethylester is the form that most of the omega-3 drugs are in. And they do that just so they can concentrate the omega-3s in a pill. But you don't need to do it that way. I think the triglyceride form is a better form. Another good form is a we'll call krill oil. which comes is a phospholipid form, another natural lipid. And so that's a great source of omega-3 as well. But look for the amount, you know, you want to get, if you're going to aim for, say, 1,000 milligrams a day, find a pill that maybe gives you 500 milligram per capsule.

So you can take two pills a day and you're going to get 1,000. If you're going to get something that's only got 300 milligrams, you're taking you know, three to four pills a day. And the more pills you have to take, the less likely are to take them. So those are some of the do's and don't. You don't need to, you don't need to refrigerate fish oil. You don't need to freeze it. Freezing it is not going to make a burp go away or prevent a fishy burp. Taking it with food helps reduce that. It's always good to take omega-3s with food because it's, get all those digestive juices flowing from the food. that helps with the absorption of the omega-3 fatty acids.

So that's always a good idea. If you're taking in ethylester, you absolutely have to take it with food. The triglycerizer, phospholipid, is not so critical, but it's always a good idea. What other do's and don'ts? Don't chew them, okay? That's always a bad idea.

Let me ask you a question. A few follow-up questions on this. Number one is in a global supply chain, in major categories of food, I've written about this, olive oil is a prime example. This has happened in honey. Naturally, as many different countries and different manufacturers get into the production of something, especially something that would be considered a premium product, there can be a degradation in sourcing and even sometimes fraud that might be coming into play.

we know this is pretty well documented with olive oil. A huge percentage of the world's olive oil is cut with vegetable oil or mislabeled or deodorized agents or other things in low quality oil. And it's not necessarily extra virgin. And there's a bunch of guidelines that are out there on how to find high quality olive oil to maximize the benefits. Is any of that at all, the themes of that, is that at all an issue in the world of fish oil that you've seen in your experience? Not as much. Not as much as what you're describing for olive oil. It's harder to do that with fish oils. And when people do surveys, they walk into a big super store and buy 10 different bottles of fish oil.

And then they go home and, well, they don't go home. They go to their lab and analyze it for omega-3 content. And they look at oxidation products, things like that, or mercury. and by the way, you won't find mercury in any fish oil pill. Mercury, if it's there at all in the fish, and that's pretty rare, actually, it's going to be, it's going to go away when they separate the oil from the water and the flesh. So the oil doesn't have any mercury in it. But anyway, people will measure omega-3 content of different fish oil types,

and then they'll write a paper on it and say, you know, X percent of these met their label claim. and most of the time, they're pretty close to their label claim. They're not far off. There's always variability batch to batch. Rarely does anybody have any of the oxidation products, breakdown products. If they do find it, that's what makes news. But when they do the studies and everything looks great, then they never gets on the news, of course, because it's not news. It's what you'd expect.

So I'm not worried. I don't go out of my way to get really, really high-end, really, really pure fish oils because those are so much more expensive. And honestly, I don't see the point because you're getting something, I mean, even some of the stuff you can get at the big box stores. Again, I get the higher concentrated forms, not the low concentrations. But those products don't worry me. They provide the omega-3s in a safe and pretty well-standardized form. And, you know, it sounds like as an extrapolation of that, correct if I'm wrong, you know, I have some resources.

A lot of my podcast guests to podcast listeners, you know, typically if you're listening this podcast, there's some resources, you know, you're not fighting for basic aspects of food on the table. You care about longevity. you're willing to reprioritize your budget, even if you're not wealthy, you're willing to take the things where you previously might be spending money on alcohol or clothes or other things that may not be there. And people are shifting. You see this across the board. They're shifting these resources to health experiences, the basics of life that actually make us feel good and live longer.

So I opt for personally, just like I would choose wild caught salmon. I opt for. I opt for. for fish oil that comes from, you know, what is being labeled, whether or not it's the case. I mean, these are companies that I trust, wild caught. And my thinking is that if we're supposed to be eating fish, because that's what we're designed to do, and that's one of the things that helps us with our omega-3 and the optimal levels, I would err with caution, even if I know that the omega-3 and the EPA and D-H-H-A ratio is equivalent in both, I'd rather be eating fish. that are eating what they're meant to be eating in a wild caught source versus eating farm-fed

fish that are eating a combination of wheat, feed, corn, ground-up fish, and maybe other processed foods that are part of feed. That's just what's required that's there. But I feel like you would say, look, you can do that if you have the ability, but a few caveats. And tell me if this is correct. The caveats is the harder we make it for people, the less likely they're going to do it. and they're going to not end up getting all this omega-3 in the first place.

Right. Right. So if it's so hard, if it's expensive, fine by you, Drew, you can eat wild caught, but what about the person who's just trying to even get the basics? Is that your argument? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you look at farm-raised salmon, for example, that 10, 15 years ago got a bad rap because it had high levels of PCBs and things like that.

That's all been cleaned up. that was, that was a wild extrapolation of the data anyway back then. But anyway, farm fed salmon has got about as much omega-3 as wild-caught salmon, because that's how much they feed them. And it's less than it used to be, to your point, they're starting to feed them other vegetable oils to supplement the calories, that fish oil. Fish oil is getting expensive because of podcasts like this.

They can't feed it to the fish. They're finding new ways to make Omega-3s for fish food. But, you know, if you avoid, if you're not going to eat salmon because he can't afford wild-caught, you know, Coho. And so therefore you can be a hamburger. That's, you're not winning anything. You know, buy by the cheaper type of salmon or, you know, canned salmon's great. Albuquer tuna is great. are really good sources of omega-3, of course, sardines.

Some people love them. You know, I can't say I'm one of them. But, yeah, I think you've got to be smart about it. And don't let a little bit of a downside here stop you from doing the right thing. I mean, that really plays out, I think, and you haven't asked about pregnancy and omega-3 and mercury and all that. But the FDA did a huge disservice to American women by telling him to, to, to, not eat more than like 12 ounces of fish because they're worried about the mercury. And that has driven so many women, pregnant women, away from eating any fish at all,

which they, to their detriment, because the DHA is really important for babies' development. They're so afraid of a whisper of mercury in a fish that they will avoid all the benefits just because they're afraid of that. I mean, we published a paper last year looking at the relationship between cognitive outcomes and babies and kids and fish intake. And regardless of the mercury in the fish, high or low, made no difference. The more fish you ate, the higher your IQ in the kid. And, you know, I'm a bit of a, I'm not standing on a soapbox, but I feel like it. Because that I think was a real disservice to scare people away.

it's kind of the same category you're talking about, scaring people away from something that's really good because of some tiny little risk, whether it's financial risk, your pocketbook or here in this case, it's worried about mercury. So don't worry about the mercury. Eat the fish. Eat the oily fish. They're very, very low in mercury anyway. So, yeah. Thank you for that. we work. No, no, no, that was perfect because this is why the audience is here. They're trying to, on their road to 100 and maybe even beyond, we don't know. Yeah. But more important than that, a true healthy health span along the way, they're trying to separate what matters and what doesn't. They're trying to separate signal from noise. And sure, we can get so deep in the weeds

on any particular subject, and there's a lot of people that are out there that want us to get really deep in the weeds. But for most people, they're putting attention into their health and wellness journey and hitting the basics, like getting enough omega-3s so that they have enough energy to give love and attention to everything else in their life that matters, including their spouse, their kids, their grandkids, their community, their local church group, whatever you care about, starting a business, writing a novel, being there for people, community service. We don't want our health to get in the way of those things. And how we do that is we have to put as much of it on autopilot and ease as possible when it comes to these healthy

habits. So your soapbox is allowing people to make that decision and say, you know what, I was really worried about this thing. But the truth is, how many times did I really actually have fish in the last month. How many times did I really actually consistently take my fish oil supplement? And if I wasn't even hitting those basics, maybe it's time to just double down and focus on the basics. So thank you for your soapbox moment. You're right.

You know, one of the thing that you've highlighted in addition to certain at-risk communities, you mentioned women who are pregnant, avoiding fish because concerns around mercury, etc., vegans who again, if they're not intentional about supplementation and you cleared up that there are vegan supplements people can take to move the needle forward. You've also mentioned another group that's out there in your work in the past and that's military groups that are there. Talk to us about that community, which is often an underserved community when we talk about health conversations. What do those communities have to be thinking about, you know, because they're not vegan, at least the vast majority of them are not vegan, but why are they at risk for

low levels of omega-3s inside of the diet. Because of what the military feeds them. That's why. I mean, and just to back up, but the two groups that have the lowest omega-3 levels in our experience, in our research, are veg soldiers deployed in Iraq, is when we did the study.

But it was pitiful how low the omega-3 levels were in those soldiers. And you're right. They're not vegans. It's not because they're choosing that. It's just the military. is not feeding them a healthy diet. And I know the military is writ large, knows about this, is concerned about this, and wants to do something about it exactly what they're going to do, I don't know. They have some kind of aversion to supplements in the military. So people are

trying to come up with enriched foods that you can feed to people in the military that will give them omega-3. And those products are out there. But it's been a shame that people who ought to have the sharpest executive function, the best physical shape, the best resistance or resilience are not being fed optimally. And I'm sorry about that, but it's the way it was. Hopefully it's not the way it still is. I feel like there should be a whole campaign. I know I would want to donate to it in my audience as well. Let's get good quality fish oil in the hands of, you know, military.

and also probably, you know, some veterans as well, too, who have been deficient for extremely time. Oh, yeah. Right. Right. And truck drivers and airplane pilots, you know, and people who, you know, you don't want to have sudden cardiac arrest if you're driving a truck or flying an airplane. Except you got another guy in the airplane cover for you. In the truck, you don't. Anyway, that's just another little pet peeve of mine that these people that drive these rigs on these highways.

pretty crappy hell. Well, thank you for highlighting that. It's important. You know, those communities are often overlooked and everybody deserves health. And so hopefully people are listening that can make an impact in those respective communities. And if you do or you know of initiative, reach out to me. We'll feature it on the podcast. One thing about fish oil that I wanted to come back to, let's say, you know, you have a 40-year-old male who is or female, right?

And you're around that age. and you've not been intentional about your fish oil. You've not been intentional about getting fish in the diet. You're not vegan, but you're on the lower end of the omega index that's there once you test. Can you give us some version of a range that if people were being reliant on fish oil primarily, you know, they're still eating the same amount of fish, but maybe they're not going crazy on eating a lot more fish? How long could it typically take, knowing that every person's different, their chronic stressors,

their inflammatory load, these all could play a part in it. But how long have you typically seen it take somebody to now start to work their way towards, you know, at least the direction of optimal and then optimal? Yeah, yeah. We typically say that if you're going to start to move your needle, and again, I say pick an example, an omega-3 index of five, and you want to go to eight, that takes about 1,000 milligrams a day. And it takes, it will take you about three to four months before you will actually hit a new steady state where it's going up slowly, slowly, slowly, as the red blood cells get incorporated with omega-3. It takes time. But then after around three or four months, you're going to be where you're going to be. And that's the time to retest to see where you are at that point, to see how well you absorb the whatever product you're using.

Is it really working for you or not? Or do you need to take more or not? So it's really, we're not talking about years. We're not talking about days. We're talking about three or four months. So 1,000 milligrams a day from fish oil, right? That has an equal balance around 50-50 or 40-60, EPA, DHA, thousand milligrams a day.

And then retest after a four-month period to see how you're doing now. Yeah, yeah. And again, I think so many people miss the point. They see a thousand milligrams on a label of the fish oil pill, not realizing that that's the fish oil, that's not the omega-3. Right. You need to look at the label, see how much omega-3, EPA, D-HA you're getting, and then get a thousand of that, which might take three thousand milligrams of fish oil to get 1,000 milligrams of EPA-D-H. if it's a cheap product. Once somebody has moved into the optimal category of their omega-3 index, and again, you can test for that, link in the show notes, what are the recommendations there to stay there,

knowing that we're all dealing with all sorts of different stressors, especially as we age, our sleep patterns change, our body composition changes, you know, women who are going through perimenopause, menopause, there's all sorts of different stressors that are there. Now, is the recommendation to stay at 1,000 or for those high achievers or those teachers' pets that are out there that want to really double and triple insure on something like Omega 3. Is there any benefit or recommendation to bumping that up over the years? Any thoughts on that?

Well, yeah. First of all, just because you get up to a 1,000, up to 8% by taking 1,000 milligrams, it ain't going to stay there if you stop taking it. That's number one. Number one. So you can't, you're not, you're not getting cured of low omega-3 by taking a bunch now and fixing your level. Everything's turning over all the time. So you got to keep going with it. Whether you need to be at 9%, 10%, 11%, 12% omega-3 index, we don't really know. There is some, partly because there are so few populations or people around the world that have levels that high, we're really can't study them. You've got 20 people that have an omega-3 index of 16, what are you going to do with them? I mean, you can't do a big study on those folks. So, I mean, there's some

evidence from Japan that even within the Japanese framework, having an omega-3 index on, say, 11%, 12%, is associated with a little bit lower risk of cardiovascular disease than having one at 8, 7, or 8%. So I think there's some evidence that higher is better to a point, but I don't see any point going behind above 12% of omega-3 index. So anywhere 8 to 12, I think it would be great. You know, back to your point, you know, let's just get up to 8 first. That would be great. If you can do that and maintain it, that's spectacular. If you want to be in the top 1%, then you can push it if you want to.

but I'm not going to guarantee you're going to get any more additional benefit above the 8%. This might be an annoying question to you, and you could say skip, and I'll cut it out of the podcast. Do you share it all where you stand on the index? And do you share it all? Because I'm sure people ask you, how much fish oil do you take on a daily basis in addition to the fish you eat? Yeah, my omega-3 index, the last time I measured, is around 10%. Kind of in that zone. we use my blood here at the laboratory to, you know, we always run a high and a low control

blood of omega-3. So mine is a high, and I got to keep it high. Just for the business to keep going. No, it's good. And I do about 1,400 milligrams a day, VPA, DHA, two pills, 700 milligrams each. I don't eat fish as often as I should. You know, I think everybody says, that I try to eat, you know, once or twice a week I'll eat salmon. I wish I did more, but one, you know, grandchildren, life, you know, gets in the way. So that's kind of what I do. Are is, can you be too young for a parent to inquire about your omega index? When you're thinking about how important it is for women and pregnancy and the IQ of a baby's brain, do you recommend that parents or grandparents who are listening that want to have the healthiest child

possible do you recommend that they look at the child's omega-3 index well we we recommend that pregnant women look at there we we have an omega quant we have a test called the it's a pregnancy test it's it's a dj specific not EPA and dHA dha specific red cell dHA And that level we target is 5%. Above 5% is good. And this is, it's probably even better above 5%. But we set this 5% target for pregnant women based on evidence that women above 5% don't have an increased risk for premature birth.

So premature birth is kind of a big deal. Now, it would be omega-3. Low omega-3 does predispose, below 5%, predispose, predispose, I mean, it's no guarantee by any means, but they're higher risk for premature birth under that 5%. So that's pregnant women. Babies, children, not much experience there. People have not done many studies that would inform you as a what is the healthy, what's the optimal level of omega-3 index for a 5-year-old? I don't know. Eight percent's not going to be bad. Six percent's going to be great. You know, I'd probably aim for something like 6% in a kit, just to get started

early in life, but I don't know, I can't point to evidence for that. That's just a gut feeling. But I would not necessarily feel like you have to push an 8% target in a 5-year-old or even a 10-year-old. but if you get them used to taking either eating fish optimally or taking supplements, it's going to be better for them in the long run. You know, almost all the research we do is adults. And so that's where we have our experience. You know, Bill, I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast as we're winding down here, you know, 40 plus years of research in this area,

an entire company that you've built that has really highlighted and put the importance of omega-3s on the map, 340-plus papers on omega-3s, I've heard you say in a previous interview that you're really doing your best to try to get the medical community to wake up to this. You know, people who are listening to this podcast are like, okay, so this individual who seems extremely smart and obviously knows. what he's talking about, why isn't every doctor asking me or testing my omega-3 levels? If we have so much information about how important omega-3s are, why is it not part of the standard practice of care for regular doctors to go and order this on a normal blood blood panel and talk

to their patients about the importance of fish in their diet and as well as fish oil supplementation if they need it. Yeah. That's a persistent goal of mine and a persistent frustration of mine. And I sense it in your voice as well. There, if, if you could just get the medical community, whatever that is, to see this data and realize, put two and two together and say, we really ought to be testing. That's why we formed Omega Quant in the first place was to have a test available for doctors to use because there was nothing back then. Now there are some big labs will offer omega-3 tests. Part of the complexity of this is they aren't measuring red blood cell omega-3. They're measuring say plasma levels of omega-3, which is a different number and a different target value.

And it gets confusing for doctors if there's two or three different ways of expressing the omega-3 status, and they don't know which one is the right one, and they say, oh, just, you know, eat a healthy diet, you know, and take these pills and take these drugs, right? So it's been a challenge. I suspect that they will come when it eventually reaches the level of making, make it into the recommendations of particularly primary care doctors that they measure. vitamin D got in there. Vitamin D's measured commonly, and it's not because we're worried about rickets.

It's because there was so much noise about it. And there was an easy test with one answer, not four different ways of expressing like vitamin D levels. With omega-3s, there are multiple ways of expressing it, and it's confusing. So that's a strike against us, I'm afraid. We like the red blood cell-based metric. We think it's the most stated. steady, long-term measure compared to plasma.

But even if you go to your labs, some of your labs, like the big lab core, Quest, they will do omega-3 testing, but it'll be in a plasma and you get a different number. But that's better than nothing. And it's a step in the right direction. But I am frustrated that we can't get a uniform endorsement for omega-3 testing in the medical community. Well, it's through the work and effort. Anybody who studies even a little bit of history, especially the history of medicine and the major advancements, they know that so much of what has kept us healthy today that is now taken for granted came from years, decades, sometimes centuries of researchers continuing to do the work and sounding. the alarm. You mentioned trans fats earlier. We wrote a whole profile on Fred Kumero and his work

that took decades for decades. Transfats are now, for the audience that's following along, that didn't see this newsletter. Transfats are known to be the most damaging fat that's out there. Their toxicity level, their association and connection to cardiovascular disease. Like, it's so clear. And we had the literature, we, the larger collective, we, the researchers that we're doing, it and it took years for the FDA for people to pay attention and finally outlawed and even now still there's workarounds and ways to kind of get hidden trans fats that are there right and i see you bill as somebody you and your team as being those individuals that are fighting to make sure that this is no longer something that people have to hear about on some random podcast that's out there but it's

something that's baked into their medical care. And to that, our entire country in the world really owes you. And me, on a personal level, owe you a huge debt of service. So thank you for your work. Your kind. I appreciate it. And thanks for this chat. It's been a lot of fun.

Bill, where can people go to continue to follow you and your work? And also, your daughter's work too, right? It's a family business as well. Is that understood? Yeah. She's a PhD nutrition like I am, and she's very involved with the kind of early life, pregnancy, early, you know, early development stuff. So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun having her on board. Stay in touch with OmegaQuant.com.

I started a research organization called the Fatty Acid Research Institute. Pretty clever name. and Fari, F-A-R-I, people can find stuff about me there too. I'm bad at the standard social media stuff. I just, I don't know, just haven't gotten into it. You know, posting every other day is something I'm doing. But anyway, those two websites, Bill at Omega Quant is my email. People want to contact me.

That's fine. I'm happy to respond to questions. Do it all the time. So anyway, that's kind of how you contact me. Well, Dr. Bill Harris, thank you again. Thank you for your work. Thank you for making a difference in my life. We'll have a link to all those items you mentioned in the show notes.

Please, audience, go get tested. If you care about longevity, this is one of the things that's going to help you move the needle forward. It did for me. And thank you again, Dr. Bill Harris, for being on the podcast. Thank you, Drew. Enjoyed a lot. Best of luck. Hi everyone, Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter.

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