How much do you take? Evidence-based dosage guidance for supplements is hard to find. Pointers to primary sources with empirically supported dose ranges for common supplements—magnesium, zinc, and multivitamins—appreciated!
With that written, generally the literature indicates that somewhere around 1-2G daily of EPA/DHA is in the range of what is fringe mainstream. There is a lot of variance around this and a lot of debate. For example, you'll get a debate about the ability of the body to convert 22 EPA into 24 DHA, so some will push DHA as the preferred source for the body.
I agree that for now there is no better evidence about which is the optimal daily intake.
Quantities about 10 times less than this might be sufficient to avoid any obvious signs of nutritional deficiency, but are unlikely to be optimal.
The capacity of converting ALA from vegetable oil into DHA and EPA may vary a lot between humans and it is typically lower in males than in females and also lower in older people than in young people.
The less risky choice is to ensure that you eat enough DHA+EPA. Perhaps one does not need 1 to 2 g of DHA+EPA daily, but eating it is unlikely to be harmful, while not eating it carries definite risks.
I don’t mind taking them so I kept the Omega 3s and started taking others for my LDL issues.
Six months will show if it’s working. If not I’ll go on a full dose of a statin.
Omega use and consumption in general can be one thing, and in many cases need higher consumption or timing, relative to the health condition or goal you need to support.
I would add that vegetable oils probably are not the ideal solution just beyond the idea that you need to extend the carbon chain up to something that can be used for your body in some type of pharmacological type role. The modern western diet has a ratio of somewhere around 15 to 20 to one in terms of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Virtually every vegetable oil will continue to drive that ratio toward a imbalance toward Omega 6.
Most European Caucasians would probably do better on a high omega-3 short chain poly unsaturated fatty acid diet. Like the omega-3’s from flaxseed. The change from gather cultures to farming culture changed the way we processed polyunsaturated fatty acids.
This set of domesticated plants does not appear random, because any more restricted set would have made impossible the substitution of the animal food used previously with plant seeds.
The seeds of cereals and of legumes together could provide an acceptable protein source, while the flax seeds could add the alpha-linolenic acid, which can be transformed by humans, with modest efficiency, into the needed DHA and EPA.
We know that the first generations of people who had become dependent of agriculture had serious health problems in comparison with their ancestors, which have become less severe after many generations, presumably after they have learned to better balance their diet and when those who have survived might have been better adapted to eating such food.
Nevertheless, regardless where you are located you do not know the properties of your genes, unless you do some very expensive study, by using various diets and monitoring how they influence the content in your blood of various substances, e.g. of DHA and EPA when eating various sources of omega-3 fatty acids, of vegetable or of animal origin.
In the absence of such a study, the safer hypothesis is that you belong to the people who are not efficient at the elongation of ALA into DHA and EPA, so it is safer to eat food with enough DHA and EPA, instead of eating food with ALA, like flax seeds or oil, and hoping that you belong to the people for whom this is good enough.
This is similar for a few other conditionally-essential nutrients, which can be produced by humans, but in most cases only in too small quantities compared to necessities, so it is safer to ensure that they are present in food, e.g. vitamin K2, choline, taurine, creatine.
Keep modifying the prompt until you don't need to review it as much, but still review it. I have a pretty long one like this now and it almost doesn't seem real. Still double check what it returns. It's easy enough to take the retrieved studies to your doc for verification too .
For example, if targeting the brain, levels can be much higher.
Magnesium Threonate crosses the blood brain barrier, which is great, leaving Magnesium Biglycinate for the rest of the body.