Comment by voytec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by voytec | Hacker News Reader

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"Omega-3" is as vague and underdescriptive term as "marihuana". We're better educated now and we can focus on the eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) where it comes to Omega 3. And we can point at THC, CBN, CBD or any of the 100+ other cannabinoids present in cannabis flowers when we describe "marihuana", "weed" or "pot".

And there's a reason behind my local pharmacy offering THC-focused or CBD-focused pot, and my local supplements store offering DHA-focused and EPA-focused softgels, produced by the same company and under the same brand. How these these products act varies by active substances content and the person. Both "Omega 3" and "marihuana" are dumbed-down terms, meaningless when it comes to studies or papers.

There's a ton of studies on nih.gov about EPA's potential as an antidepressant, misaligned with DHA-related articles on the subject, that I could link. But I can say - purely anecdotally - that I removed psypost.org feed from my RSS reader a few months after ChatGPT became public.

The specific supplement used in this research [0] was equal parts DHA and EPA (no ALA, which is the third main Omega-3.) Determining whether the effect is specific to one of the Omega-3's or general to the class would be an expected subject of further research, as would seeing if the effect holds outside of the lab mice model.

There's a whole lot of work between this study and anything actionable other than for planning further research to confirm and better understand the effect, and whatever more general problems psypost.com may have, reporting the source of the effect as "Omega-3" is both consistent with the paper and not overly general given the actual facts.

[0] Linked from the story, but: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235228952...

I think there's a practical distinction between the kind of term "omega-3" is vs the kind of term "marijuana" is.

You mostly only find THC/CBD/etc in marijuana; and we mostly only consume marijuana to get those particular active ingredients into our bodies. So you can forget about "marijuana" as a category for describing those compounds, and just speak of the compounds themselves — measure marijuana strains by the presence of those active ingredients; extract and purify one particular active ingredient and sell it; etc. Doing this doesn't lose you anything; in fact, it's a pure win, as the use of precise language gives people a tool to leverage to more precisely ask for the effect they're looking for, and gives suppliers a tool to more precisely describe what they're selling.

While the omega-3 constituent compounds can be treated this way, they are not solely a thing we extract or synthesize to put in precise-molarity-per-dose pills; they're also a thing found in food. Many different foods; with most of them being foods people eat for reasons beyond just getting omega-3s in their bodies. In other words, the "omega-3" constituent compounds are nutrients.

And many of these omega-3-containing foods — fish, for example — aren't carefully cultivated species that have known ratios of the omega-3 constituent compounds that could be put on the label of the food-product. Rather, the ratio of those constituent compounds is pretty much random per individual food item. One salmon at the grocery store has omega-3 fats which happen to be high in DHA, while the next salmon beside it in the same cooler display is higher in EPA. All you can in general about a food product — all a supplier can say, and all a food shopper can generally expect to look for — is a food that is "high in omega-3s."

As long as people are interested in optimizing their health in a loose manner by eating "healthful foods" — rather than taking specifically-formulated supplements — I don't expect they'll let go of the generic categorical term "omega-3." When it comes to food, "it contains omega-3s" is almost always the tightest bound you can put on the "nutritional value" of a given food.

I'm not so sure about the incertitude you speak of about omega-3s content and ratios in food.

In fact while in Japan I used to specifically select my bags of dried sardine (niboshi) and mackerel cans by the content of EPA and DHA, clearly indicated in mg per 100g. Every such products had these indications with content varying by brands.

I guess that if you master your process you can ensure and advertise a consistent quality.

Processed fish products are a bit different from a large chunk of a single fish, in terms of the promises that can be made.

The problem with large, wild-caught fish, is that different fish are going to be living in slightly-different regions, or migrating through given regions at slightly-different times, and so eating different things; and so will have more or less of any given nutrient coming from those things in their bodies.

If you're catching large swarms/schools of fish, all the fish in a given school will be mostly identical in their nutritional content. And so, if you're doing some bulk operation like canning or drying, and you're doing it on fish that swarm/school and get caught as whole swarms/schools (such as sardine or mackerel) — then, for each catch delivered to your plant by a fishing vessel, you can take a few samples from that catch to get a sense of the average micronutrient values of that catch; and then you can store these catches separately, titrating together the different catches into each processed mixture, to achieve the a steady nutritional value in the result. (This is roughly the same thing that e.g. orange juice companies do with the truckloads of oranges they buy to achieve a consistent output juice product.)

But if you're just buying e.g. one salmon, then it came through an entirely different logistics pipeline to get to you — either an "independent" one where a small-time fisherman sold some fish directly to a local fishmonger, who then sold it directly to a local grocer, a few fish at a time; or a "big chain" one where a stream of flash-frozen fish from fishing vessels is being just-in-time streamed out to various grocery stores. (This lack of a fan-in processing step for raw large fish is also why grocers end up with so much mislabelled fish; the guy who works at a fish processing plant near the fishery will recognize all the fish that fishery tends to pull out of the water; but there's no similar expert in the meat department of a random grocery store in Idaho — in fact, that person might not even know which fishery the fish they're receiving came from!)

High quality EPA was the only thing that universally worked for a family member with depression. Tried changing sources one time and felt the difference in about 2 days. Got back on the previous source and back out of depression.

What was the EPA source/supplement, if you don’t mind?

Costco: Krill Oil

https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-krill-oil-500mg%2C...

I had been under the mistaken impression that DHA was only interesting inasmuch as your body inefficiently turns it into EPA.

DHA and EPA have distinct roles in the body.

Both are necessary for most people, especially for males and for older people, because the inter-conversions between the various omega-3 fatty acids are done inefficiently by humans.

The other omega-3 fatty acids do not have known functions, except as sources of DHA and EPA, after an enzymatic conversion.

"Omega-3" is to "cannabinoid" in your analogy. "Marihuana" would be on the level of saying "Fish Oil".

You're right. Thanks.

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