Erythrocyte omega-3 index, ambient fine particle exposure and brain aging | Hacker News Reader

Erythrocyte omega-3 index, ambient fine particle exposure and brain aging

n.neurology.org

94 pointsbookofjoe52 comments

Fish oil seems to be one of a very small set of supplements that's proven itself to be more than hype. If this article piques your interest, or if you're interested in brain health in general, I'd definitely suggest reading more about it.

Sometimes I wonder how much more happy and productive the world would be if everyone put a bit of regular effort into brain health. 30-40 minutes of cardio 3x/week + fish oil supplementation seems like a big easy win on that front.

It's important to also reduce your omega-6 intake if you can, it's really about the ratio of those two polyunsaturated fats. Look for foods with a high omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.

You could just eat some oily fish once a week too. It's tasty when you finally get it right, I promise.

Another nutrient great for brain health is B12.

... high being roughly around 11 for n6/n3. As always with supplements (if that's how the omega-n3 is taken) more does not equate with better.

> Another nutrient great for brain health is B12.

Why? I'm very sensitive to supplements and usually notice effects immediately even on humble doses but B12 (I've tried 100%-20'000% RDA cyanocobalamin pills) doesn't feel doing anything I could notice. The combo of dish oil + B12 seems preventing menstrual pain in ladies though.

If you're not vegan and you eat at least one serving of meat a day, (or if you're taking a multivitamin) you're probably already getting all the B12 your body can use, and supplementation is unlikely to have much effect.

Souce? I don't think the RDI is a maximum, you can have quite a bit more B12 and still get benefits. When I have time I'll update this with my own search, but maybe you're more educated on this topic than I am.

Typically negatives with overuse only exist with the supplements in my 1 minute glance. This is common amongst many different supplements actually. If you eat actual food you get full, so it prevents too much nutrition from being an issue. I don't think B12 is really something your body will reject, we are able to efficiently filter out any extra with minimal load on the kidneys & liver.

Skip the Cyanocobalmin. Enough people have problems metabolizing that form, and it also shouldn't be consumed solo.

Cheap and effective B Complexes exist that use better forms of the various vitamins exist; only lazy manufacturers still use stuff like Cyanocobalmin. A good multivitamin should also be covering your B need as well, I ended up making a short list of good multis, and Life Extension 2-per-day Capsules ended up being the least expensive of ones that made the list... you pretty much have to go to Thorne and pay more to get better.

Have you tried fish (eat wild-caught)? Mackerel is tasty if you don't like salmon. Those two are both very oily, you can eat one or two servings a week and get enough omega-3. B12 is present in any animal product usually so I recommend eating more meat, cheese or other dairy. You really need the full B spectrum, but B12 in particular is the one to focus on.

I am not an expert, experts may disagree for other reasons, but I do know my math and read the studies for my own benefit.

> Have you tried fish (eat wild-caught)? Mackerel is tasty if you don't like salmon

I like both, salmon especially. But I don't like the prices: fish prices vary wildly between countries and are too high for everyday consumption in many of them.

> Those two are both very oily, you can eat one or two servings a week and get enough omega-3

Now this becomes interesting. I thought one has to get a relevant dose of every nutrient every day.

Yeah I'm from Canada so fish prices are very high here--I generally eat beef which has a great ratio, and avoid omega-6 laden foods. Sometimes I actually need to eat omega-6 heavy foods if I get too much of 3 I think, it's all based on taste for me.

It's very expensive to have a healthy diet, unless you only eat a small selection of foods.

But what about microplastics and various other man made contaminants that are increasingly present in fish?

Go for Omega-3 sourced from algae, that's where the fish get it from. The algae are grown artificially, so you avoid both pollutants and participating in the destruction of our oceans.

I take Opti-3 [1], it had the highest (DHA + EPA) / price ratio last time I checked. Not affiliated, just a fan.

[1]: https://www.vegetology.com/shop/opti3-omega-3-epa-dha

You're getting far more microplastics in your diet just from interaction with packaging and household materials than what you're going to get from an ocean-caught fish.

The issue is really with dioxin, you need to source your fish from somewhere where they are fed properly and there's no pollutants like dioxin.

Do you have a source for that claim?

Nope, but given the prevalence of plastics in human households, packaging materials and the fact that we literally eat with plastic forks and straws and drink from plastic cups...I'd say you're getting a lot more plastic in your diet than a wild salmon off the Alaskan coast.

That doesn't intuitively make sense to me. I'd say for 90% of the packaging of various products I consume, the plastic has been wrapped around the product for a very short time.

I imagine consuming something that has involved multiple steps of digestion of plastics is probably not the same.

It's a bit like comparing water that I put in plastic container a few days ago to water that's been bottled and sitting there for weeks or months.

I'm not saying there's a difference there, just that at least intuitively it seems that way to me. so a source for such a claim is pretty crucial.

B12 is good but also known to accelerate certain cancers

I'm not an expert, but I don't imagine any study that could be designed that would determine this to any practical degree of certainty--B12 is correlated with so many other risk factors, like smoking for example. People with healthier brains possibly take more risks, but it's just a vague guess too.

My understanding is that fatty fish consumption is linked with health benefits, but for the most part omega-3 supplementation fails to reproduce these benefits. Perhaps it's due to other nutrients (selenium?) or perhaps the omega-3 gets oxidized or rancid too easily when purified out.

It's often the case that you need to consume some fat in order for your body to uptake certain nutrients. I'm not sure if omega-3 is one of them.

Most studies use very small doses.

In my experience the benefits are with what some would consider "megadoses", in the tens of grams range.

This is what Dr. Barry Sears, who's a specialist in this area, uses with trauma patients. It's extremely effective at reducing inflammation and brain repair.

The problem with mega doses is that it becomes expensive quickly. 3 grams omega3 daily example.

Importantly, fish oils are not the only source of decent omega3/omega6 ratios. Walnuts are roughly 1:4, everyone knows about flaxseeds, etc. as someone else said, too, cutting back on omega6 sources is as important or may just offer greater correction toward the target ratio.

The plant omega-3s are short chain (ALA) wereas the health benefits come from the longer chain animal omega-3s. Our body has some ability to convert, but it varies from person to person. Some people (especially Men) may be unable to convert enough ALA to get the health benefits.

I used to consume a lot of flaxseed oil as a cheap source of Omega 3. But, then I heard on HN that Om 3 is not very bioavailable in that form. But, that's my only source of info on that.

It depends on what you're looking for I guess, my understanding is:

There are 3 major omega 3 fats people mostly talk about, ALA, DHA, EPA.

ALA is transformed to DHA & EPA through different mechanisms in the body, whereas DHA & EPA are usually only found in other animal sources.

If you eat enough ALA (maybe more than recommended to increase probability of production?), your body will produce all the DHA & EPA you need.

I haven't read through this study yet but it may be interesting: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9637947/ It seems to indicate eating less saturated fat increases your ability to convert ALA ~5x

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016378271...

"table isotope methods have typically resulted in estimates of percent conversion of ALA to DHA being less than 1% of the ingested stable-isotope ALA, although estimates vary widely, ranging from 0–9.2% (Table 1). Also, there is typically no increase in plasma total lipid or phospholipid DHA when ALA intake is increased in humans (reviewed in [10], [11]), supporting the conclusion that DHA synthesis from ingested ALA is not an efficient process in humans."

The very top analysis though shows:

"This review summarizes evidence that DHA synthesis from ALA can provide sufficient DHA for the adult brain by examining work in humans and animals involving estimates of DHA synthesis and brain DHA requirements. Also, an update on methods to measure DHA synthesis in humans is presented highlighting a novel approach involving steady-state infusion of stable isotope-labeled ALA that bypasses several limitations of oral tracer ingestion. It is shown that this method produces estimates of DHA synthesis that are at least 3-fold higher than brain uptake rates in rats."

So it seems it's not super efficient, but it's probably far more than sufficient, and we were under estimating how useful ALA is by 3x.

I would take nutritional advice and information on HN with a large grain of salt. Get some books on the material - there’s a lot of bad material out there though so get ready to do some homework.

In defense of myself, I just pointed out what could be found in a search of nutritional value information.

Fish oil (natural!) has longer fatty acids (FA) than plants. Must be processed from natural fish that feeds from algae (at least at some point in the food chain).

Regarding plant oils. Evening prime rose oil is good. Lots of gamma-linoleic acid.

> Must be processed from natural fish that feeds from algae

Why?

Because the long chain FA come from the algae, not from the fish...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6920940/

So your pond raised salmon may lack some of the benefits.

Walnuts and other nuts are often mentioned as sources but they're terrible compared to fish, and most importantly they contain a lot of omega-6, they are to be avoided if the objective is healthy.

Walnuts are also high in phytoestrogens, I believe, if you care about that stuff. Worth being careful

Is there any evidence of phytoestrogens affecting humans? I have some clue reason suggesting they might actually affect humans but I don't know of anything nearly credible.

>Phytoestrogen Content of Beverages, Nuts, Seeds,and Oils

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23141692_Phytoestro...

Counterpoint http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml for those who like to be contrary.

As a reminder, the supplements community has a great guy that runs a lab that checks for the content and, in the case of Omega 3, oxidization of supplements.

https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/fish_oil_supplements_rev...

You have to pay to read the reports, but you're paying access to a good lab that has accurate results, ran by a guy who very purposely has no industry ties. The dude drops bombs, when necessary, and he isn't afraid of idiots attempting to lawyer him.

> Based on prospectively collected and geocoded participant addresses, we used a spatiotemporal model to estimate the 3-year average PM2.5 exposure before the MRI.

In broad terms (not specific to PM2.5 exposure), I've heard that indoor air quality is often much worse than outdoor air quality. Is geolocation a good way to estimate PM2.5 exposure? I.e. is most of the variance in exposure captured by where you live, as versus stuff like how you cook, heat your home, whether you live with smokers, etc?

You can get a pretty cheap sensor that works well. I got a laseregg.

Indoors was consistently better for outdoors for pm 2.5....except when cooking. Then, pm 2.5 is often 20-100x worse. Exhaust fans help but are not nearly sufficient. Often opening all windows is required to even get the number down.

Co2 is higher indoors, you can measure that with a separate sensor. It is a proxy for various VOC’s which are harder to measure directly with consumer available devices.

Cooking will reliably send CO2 over the 3000 ppm threshold that my sensor can detect and report. I always use the extraction fan now.

Co2? You must have a gas stove.

Note that this effect doesn’t apply to stoves that don’t involve directly burning carbon. Normal cooking produces pm 2.5 but not co2.

Yep, natural gas. I feel so mixed about it. I grew up with electric, and the responsiveness of gas is wonderful. But piping an explosive substance into the house such that a leak can destroy this house and the neighboring ones is pretty dodgy!

I think there's something to be said for its energy efficiency (it doesn't suffer the same transmission losses, right?), although of course if you can get electricity from renewables, electric is better. Best would be having a local biogas digester.

I find it a little silly that you say "normal cooking" doesn't burn carbon. Normal cooking is over wood fire, don't you know. :-)

You can measure for yourself with a sensor[1]. In my experience all of those have an impact, but can be mitigated by things like a HEPA filter and using an exhaust fan while cooking.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566110

From my measurements, geolocation is probably the least important factor, unless you live in that one town in Chile or there's a wildfire burning.

However if you're studying a population, geolocation is going to be the easily quantifiable common denominator shared by large numbers of people.

Not sure if I'm getting enough omega-3 as a vegan but hopefully. Eat quite a bit of nuts, and ground flax every morning. I take an algae-oil supplement for EPA and DHA, but not sure if there's some other easy addition to my diet.

This is my biggest uncertainty with a vegetarian diet as well. Algae oil seems like the best bet but has much less DHA than fish oil, is more expensive and doesn't have as many studies yet from what I can tell.

It's that true? Opti-3 has lots of DHA + EPA.

That does look a lot better than the other ones I've come across, thanks for sharing. It is about twice as expensive as some of the other options I've found though, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-Supports-Health-Softg..., https://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-EPA-DHA-Odorless-Caps..., https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Naturals-Ultimate-Omega-SoftGe....

You are probably above requirements with those 2.

You could always go for pescoveganism.

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