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

The higher the level of linoleic and the blood, the lower the risk for death over time. Lower risk for cardiovascular death, lower risk for cancer death, reduce 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-linoleic acid omega-6s, there you see higher levels of the non-LA are associated with increased risk for some diseases. Dr. Bill Harris is a professor and researcher and the president of OmegaQuant, focusing on human nutrition. His work is 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-linoleic acid, ALI. 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 measure 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 statutes like you get in olive oil, oleic acids, 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 Amen Clinics from all over the world for answers. With 11 clinics in major hubs, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, D.C., LA, 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 PhD in human nutrition from the University of Minnesota and did postdoctoral fellowship in clinical nutrition and lipid metabolism with Dr. Bill Conner 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 paper on Omega-3 fatty acids and brain blood flow. The take home was you want your Omega-3 index to be healthy if you want a healthy brain. Welcome. I have admired you and your work for a long time. Here at AIMON Clinics, we have used Omega-Quant, which is a fatty acid test, a blood spot test for a long time. How did you get interested in Omega-3 fatty acids? In Omega-3, I was told to get interested in my postdoc, Dr. Conner 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. 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. We didn't know if it was the animal-ness versus the plant-ness or the solid versus liquid. We didn't know why. Dr. Conner thought, "Well, let's use salmon oil because it's a liquid but it's from an animal." That was kind of cutting across. That was my first experience. We did a metabolic board 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 cup of salmon oil every day on top of two salmon meals a day. We loaded them up with Omega-3 in big time. It lowered cholesterol relative to the saturated fat diet, but so did the vegetable oil diet at the same time. The vegetable oil diet lowered cholesterol or raised cholesterol. To turn it out that actually takes saturated fat out of the diet, put anything in and your cholesterol level will go down. It's the saturated fat raises cholesterol. You take it out when you put in vegetable oil or vegetable oil doesn't make any difference. You're going to lower cholesterol. But, you know, fish oils never really were for lowering cholesterol. That's not what they do is lower triglyceride levels, which is another blood lipid. That was really the first 20 years of 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 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 Alacons. 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, just from the Physicians 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 independent? Yeah, cholesterol is not irrelevant. It's irrelevant to the Omega-3 story. And actually the Omega-3 is really a better predictor of risk for heart disease than cholesterol. So much of the Omega-3s are you measuring it for that? Well, we measured in red blood cell. We called the Omega-3 index, that's the name of the test that we developed in published in 2004. And it's the amount of Omega-3 EPA and DHA in red blood cell membranes. So, it's not a plasma level, it's not blood-red cells. Because the Omega-3 is hanging out in membranes, cell membranes everywhere. And the easiest membrane 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 place in the brain all over the place. And one of my colleagues in Canada just took, I think, 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. And there's a lot of other things that are in the brain, that's the number of the number of the cells that are in the brain. And the number of the cells that are in the brain is the number of the cells that are in the brain. 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, yeah, the average, what's the average level in Americans? Roughly 5%. So 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 vegans. And in US military deployed in Iraq. It was vegan for a while, it was terrible. It was terrible. I just didn't respond to it well at all. I'm sure my triglycerides were through the roof. It didn't really. Oh, really? Yeah, it didn't really want. Well, okay. It wasn't too many carbs and too many. Yeah, you can be vegan in a whole bunch of good ways and bad ways. Absolutely. So yeah, we saw the vegan levels of the average American is 5%, but the ideal is above 8%. And how much do you have to take as a supplement to achieve optimal? To go from there to about optimal, roughly about 1500 milligrams a day of EPA plus DHA. So you look at your tax sales and our mega three power to capsules 1,440 milligrams to a P.A. and 2-day. Because you see people taking lots and lots of them. I see people who think that taking 4 or 5 grams a day is great. Are there problems with that? No problems that we know of. It may be unnecessary. 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 a lot of side effects from it. No, no. What about people who 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 the mega three were done by Danish investigators in Greenland. Oh, Greenland is very popular these days. What's up? Today, very popular. Thank you. Yeah. So these two guys were in the 1970s found a group of Eskimos. I knew what's there that had very apparently had very little risk for acute myocardial infarction from heart attacks. But they ate terrible diets from the perspective of the 1970s. High fat, high saturated fat, high cholesterol, no fruits and vegetables. No re-earning. But they weren't having any heart attacks. This was a big puzzle. So these Danish investigators looked at their food, looked at their blood, found the omega-3 fatty acids in their brain, and quite high levels. And these Eskimos also had a tendency to bleed. And those bleak things like that. And so we in other showed that actually the plate you can inhibit platelet function, taking omega-3 platelets or the white cells that clot. But the effect of omega-3 is kind of like aspirin. 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 a 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 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. 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. 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. Those kind of people taking those kind of doses, that's where you see the increased risk for a fib. But the increase for the absolute increased risk is like 0.8%. So instead of your risk being 2% for having developing a fib like a complicebo, it might be 2.8% on visual. So it's a minimum. It's a pretty small. So for those people, then just the normal dose of 1.5 grams would be better? Doesn't do. Right. We've 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? I heart disease cardiovascular events, certainly. And we've actually shown that higher levels of a, excuse me, higher levels of omega-3 are associated with lower risk for stroke and for a fib. Interestingly, in the UK bio bank studies. Dimension. We've in several, we've 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 variety dementia as well. Interestingly, we also saw the same thing with a little lake acid, which is the primary omega-6 fatty acid. The higher levels of little lake 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 this 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-lilinic acid, ALI. 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 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, because something like that. But it's not. There are algil omega-3 products, but they're made from a single-cell, a single-cell algae microalgae, that design actually make EPA and DHA. It's the original source. So we have a vegan omega-3. Yes, it is. It is really good. And it's very high EPA. Yeah. Because most vegan sources of omega-3, it's DHA, but it's low. Well, it depends on the species of microalgae that some of them will 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, a VPA 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. I mean, there's certain biological variability in people, anyway, genetic. But most people are very strongly related to their intake. The omega-6s or both omega-300 omega-6 are essential fatty acids. That's the only fatty acids that are essential. The monoinsetwards, like you get an olive oil, a lake acid, it's 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 a central nutrient, like vitamin C and vitamin A. You're not converting it to anything else. Right. Exactly. And so the omega-6 is the primary, the hue, the gorilla in the room for omega-6 fatty acids called linoleic acid. It's very much like alpha linoleic acid. Both 18 carbon fatty acids, there are ones 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 chemistry textbook, you look at a picture of an omega- fatty acid, it's just a long chain of carbon atoms, hooked together by bonds. Right. 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 bar and the first, the first carbon in that chain is called the alpha carbon. And the last one's called the omega-carbon. Alpha and omega begin an end of the Greek alphabet, right? So if you go to the end, the omega-carbon, you count back three spots, that's the first double bond. And all omega-3 fatty acids, that's their last name. So they're called omega-3, or omega-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 the omega-carbon. And linoleic acid in the omega-6 family is by far in a way the major polyunsaturated fat we eat, we eat probably 15 grams a day of linoleic acid. That's part of the American diet, average intake. And we're consuming it as part of soybean oil. Corn oil. Corn oil soybean oil. Corn oil. Cotton seed oil. And it's not because we're just pouring that stuff on our food. It's just a reason process for many other friends. All of our process foods. Yeah, yeah. And that's what gets to be kind of confusing because you know, you know, bad process foods, ultra-process foods. And then you think, well, they have these oils. But on the other hand, when we look at omega-6 levels in the blood in framey ham, or not. Well, in framey ham as well as in the UK bio bank, which is now, you know, 450,000 people followed for 15 years for different health outcomes, the higher the level of linoleic and the blood. The lower the risk for heart disease, the depth. 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, linoleic acid is not in flammatory. So it's not in flammatory. 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 in flam- 10 different inflammatory biomarkers. And it's either no relationship or the higher the linoleic, the lower the inflammatory. So how did it get the reputation as being the inflammatory fat reaction? It started in the ratio of omega-3s and omega-6s. That's what got started in the 70s. That idea. Sort of like the whole blood is bad for you. Yeah, black head white head. If one's good, if one's gonna be bad, they are both metabolically handled by the same enzyme systems. And there are some metabolites of omega-6s that are pro-inflammatory. They do cause blood clotting and things like that. But there's some that do exactly the opposite to there's like 150 different metabolites that are made from the omega-6s and about the same from omega-3. And there's pros and cons. And 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. Exactly. But we've seen in studies where if you look at the linoleic acid as subcomponent of the omega-3s and their blood o-l-l-l-aic acid and risk for disease, we see favorable relationships. If we look at the non-linoleic acid o-l-aic 6s, there's like 7 o-l-aic 6 fatty acids in the blood. Little lach acid is far and away the highest one. Next one is a racodonic acid. And then there's a bunch of little ones. So if you look at the non-l-aic levels in the blood, there you see higher levels of the non-l-aic are associated with increased risk for some disease. So that's right. The AAEPA ratio. That's from that. Some people think that's important. Yeah, AA being a racodonic acid. 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. And that's the denominator. And it really drives the ratio. And so from someone who's listening, focusing on Omega-3s 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. 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. And we've always said brain and heart to hook together. Then I wrote a book called The Brain and Love and 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 in the retina is the testes. Interesting. So there's some reason for that. I think probably the little flagella. The little tail, the sperms have to swim upstream. You need some flexibility there. And they have to be smart. So your life gets better with better Omega-3 ratios? Yeah, we could go down there too, right? So 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 as 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 Omega-3. How do we make this easy for them? 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. And. Oh my God, you can't change what you don't measure. Holy smokes. So, inside of 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. You can't change what you don't measure. And when I do an Omega-Quant on someone, they change it if it's not healthy. Right. The information is important to them. It's no longer abstract. People can learn about their level. So OmegaQuant.com. They can learn how to get an Omega-3 fatty acid level. And I didn't mind. And it was 11%. Perfect. It was pretty good. I tapped two of our Omega-3 fatty acids. So here are the. Oh, thank you guys. Thank you. So you can 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. Right. So that's important. So know your level. And once you know your level, then you can manage it and get it up to that 8% by either eating more fish. So minimum of 8%. That's optimal. I think 8 to 12 is what we say is optimal. Okay. And that's kind of like the Japanese older now. Not today's Japanese, but historical Japanese. That's what I'll open on. Yeah. Right. I think the younger Japanese today are eating more Western foods. McDonald's. 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. [laughs] 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. So our friend Cyrus Rajee published an MRI study that showed people who ate grilled or baked fish at least once a week had more gray matter. And important areas of their brain like the hippocampus. And so your diet really matters. Now some people go, but what about the mercury and fish? And you know, megatre supplements, at least high quality supplements, they're filtered and screened. So I think that's the big difference for people who are worried about mercury. You're going to get less of it in a supplement. Right, you're going to get none in a supplement. I mean, that's the mercury's 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 moms 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, y'all spring. 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 those those advice that advice back in the year in 2000 for pregnant women to avoid ex fish, women just stopped eating fish. They didn't they didn't say, well, I'm not going to eat that one or that one. They'd pregnant women just said, I'm not messing with it. And the there was a documented drop in blood omega three levels in pregnant women after that. And so, I guess you said five. There's one of them see. It's not a small fish. Mercury, yeah, swordfish is one of the shark. Shark is one of them see that. Yeah, good tile fish. Tuna is another tile fish. Okay, I'm going to give it a lot of that. I mean, I don't know. Tuna, not really albacore tuna. White tuna's got a little more than the chunk pink, but still it's not. It's not a significant. It's not significant. The 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. I want to talk about something different. I want to go in a different fat direction. Sure. A different fat 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. 160? Under an association with homicide, suicide, depression, and death from all causes. And so many people are taking statins today. I have to fight with their cardiologists because they're trying to get total cholesterol is low as possible. And I'm like, this is not a good thing. 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, and any of that stuff. Nor about statins. I used the lecture on them back in the 90s, but not anymore. So I can't say anything pro-recogn about that. But it wouldn't be surprising. So if 60% of the solid weight of our brains is fat, then not even the non-water, getting healthy fat. So the new guidelines from the USDA doesn't demonize fat. No, the emphasized healthy fats. It doesn't get excited about limiting fat, although it still limits saturated fat. So maybe how people understand the difference between saturated, unsaturated, fat. And when you're choosing something to eat, you know, is the rib eye really worse than the chicken? Oh, that's a 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 in 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. I mean, you can't say anything from dairy. In a way, you can't solid it room temperature. Right. Like butter, you think about coconut oil butter. Coconut oil butter. Those are solid. So that's the general way of looking at saturated fats. Unsaturated fats are simply they have they're more liquid. Olive oil. Olive oils liquid. And then if you put olive oil on the refrigerator, it'll start to cloud up as 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, the lower the melting. So corn oil, soybean oil, safflower, sunflower, those oils, put them in the fridge, they won't. You don't have to storm 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 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 without trying to limit the fat. But don't, don't eat any more saturated fat than 10%. Well, pretty soon those are going to run into each other. Is there saying eat more of these kinds of foods? And then they say limit saturated. So they need some clarification? They need clarification. Yeah. Yeah, and they also didn't dump alcohol. Everything. The moderation. 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. And I suppose that varies by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is so interesting. We could do weeks just on fat. Just on fat. Just on fat. How important this is. Yeah, I would just say. 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, start start large calories and exercise. I mean, move more. Eat less. I mean, it's. Don't you think the quality of calories matters more? 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. Yeah, salad. Yeah, right. You have the same number of calories from each. Right. And the ones better than the other. Right. I could do 800 calories of Oreos and have a lot of inflammation versus. Yeah, yeah. That's right. There's always that. Exactly. And nutritionally, I think that's important to think about how much you eat just how much just don't overeat. It's to the fats are much more comfortable than just energy in general. Of course, I think we need to eat a lot more omega three than we do. And their countries are on the world to do. And they do better. The Japanese for example, they live four and a half years longer than we do. It's probably healthy. And fish is actually not the only source that if if I understand this right, grass fed me has more omega threes than commercial industrial raise industrial raise more would be true, but not enough. It would be like going from two milligrams per serving three milligrams per cent. So I mean, yeah, 50%. So that's not consequential source. If you're trying to get omega three, you need to go. Right. You have to eat EPA DHA really get omega deep fish. Yeah. And you know, grass fed beef that I mean, there's less fat in the grass fed. And you don't get the hormones. You don't get the right. Right. Right. Right. Right. There's a lot of other reasons. But it's not an omega three source. That's for sure. So that's that's 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 three. 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 eight percent. We think is is the optimal target. And hang on to that for you don't do it just for two or three years and think you're going to turn that ship around. It's it's a lifetime thing. Right. And start 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 it's 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 a mega three test and then you're going to up your omega three levels three or four months later. Don't do it in a week. Okay. So let me ask you 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 like. Yeah, I mean, there really isn't a feeling of really like you're having less pain or well, the thing my patients tell me is especially the women is they go to the hairdresser and the hairdresser goes your hair thicker. They go to get a manicure and they go your nails are thicker. Is that right? That's absolutely great great ideas for research. It is. I think this has not been studied. So 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? Maybe it would be hard. So there's a study from New Zealand where this is a 12 week study. Okay. 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 significant benefit. But what's interesting, I'd love your take on this. Because the research is actually pretty clear. You know Dr. Kid. Paris Kid was a 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 than 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-3 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. 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 got to recalibrate. I'm going this way. Well, that's a dead end. I got to go that way. And that's what's fun about, you know, YEPA in mental and brainness. What is depression? I mean, you said ADHD too. I wouldn't quite sure about that. But I don't know if that's necessary to the case for dementia. It's a different question. And I have a disease. I haven't seen the sort of separation in EPA and DHA. Well, I mean, watching your videos, we know that dementia starts decades. Decades before it. Decades. And that's why it's so hard study in the standard medical model of a randomized control trial. Or you give people omega-3 or placebo or something and watch them for a year and a half. And it's expected to have an answer. You know, 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 benefits. There's no downside. There's no downside. So what's the problem? So take the chance. All the epidemiologic evidence, 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? With food. Yeah. Because then you're not going to get the fish burps. That's true. And I'm sure I haven't had your product, but I'm sure it's high quality. You don't really get fish burps. But now it's with us. Now it's with us. Yeah. If you're taking an ethyl ester, the pharmaceutical omega-3 products are ethyl esters. So you can cram chemically. You can cram more omega-3 in one pill if it's an ethyl ester form. But those are poor leaves or if you don't take food. If you take just some anti-submig in the morning, blood levels don't go. So. So if your person 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 just, I'm not hungry in the morning. I take other medication in the morning that I can't eat with. So because I don't eat that early, I end up taking my fish oil later. Yeah. Which doesn't matter, right? No, I mean, we've done so. As 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 suggestion that there's benefit headaches. Yeah, because you would think if it's decreasing inflammation, it would help with pain. You would think, yeah, but there's different kinds of. I did a big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying about traumatic brain injury. What did you know? And no, they. Poor guys. Actually, brand new textbook out saying you can see CTE before people are dead with studies like SPAC that I do. So I'm very excited about that. But when we put our. so, bad brains, right? Plain football is a brain-damaging sports stop lying about it. But the exciting part of our study is. Well, 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. 3 grams of EPA and DHA. Good. 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. How many are you excited? It's a 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 are overweight. But they would say to us, my arthritis is better. And I had just attributed that to the omega-3s. But apparently there's not enough study. Well, arthritis. I mean, to your point about how do you feel? They last weight too. Well, I don't know about. These guys don't want to lose weight. They're football, but they. 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 their joints feel better. Yeah. 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, that's for sure. And that could be just decrease inflammation or. It's kind of a vague. There's nothing. It's like, not like scurvy when all of a sudden your teeth stop falling out. They just feel better when they wake up. They feel generally better. Yeah. I 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. You know, I think. Medically, I hope to see a test like omega-3 index and have to be that one. As part of a standard medical work, you really work up. Yeah, 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. It's been a hard sell 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, you know, 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. For anomega three tests, not the red blood cell one, but they. God bless them for doing anything. That's. 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. Not even algae. Land plant soybean. You can genetically modify soybean to have it produce higher, longer chain omega-3s. And it's. With roots, you can do it anywhere. And there's a variety of different cultivars that they're using now. But it's genetic engineers. You've got to get over the GMO thing. You know, I. You're going to have a whole tribe of people. Yeah, the same. Well, I don't know. GMO, I always say that it's always. It's bad. Well, you've got to take it on a case-by-case basis here. 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. 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. Do 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, throw in 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. That's expensive way of doing it. If you can get a crop, a seed crop, that actually would produce a omega-3 and you can harvest it and protect them from oxidation. You have a great source of this stuff. And it can be deodorized now and be put into all kinds of fortification of food, like adding iodine to salt. That's kind of a good powder source. Oh, omega-3s? There's some powder to omega-3. Things. Yeah. And there's some liquids that are completely transparent, clear, that they're completely homogenized and emulsified into what. You don't have to. Well, we have something called omega-3 power squeeze, which is just delicious. Oh, yeah. Right. It's like an orange flavor thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way for kids. Yeah, kids like that a little bit. Yeah, they like it. My grandkids love it. You're not just seeing one doctor. You're getting a team with over 50 specialists, including psychiatrists, naturopaths, nutritionists and therapists. We treat the whole you. Learn more at aemonclinics.com. Well-genus, this was so helpful. We're here with Dr. Bill Harris, who is the founder and CEO of OmegaQuant, the Omega-3 Index, a test we use. Here at Aemonclinics, I love when I get mine done. I take omega-3 power and it seems to work really well. I'm sure it's going to break my test. 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 review. You know, I always talk about know your important health numbers. You 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.