Dear Friends,
One of the supplements that we believe almost all our clients should be taking daily is an omega-3 supplement with both EPA and DHA, which are the most important omega-3s.
Over 50 years of research has shown that fish oil and omega-3 supplements can help the body in numerous ways – and this work is ongoing and very active.
In this letter, we’re going to cover three of the latest findings from this research.
The first is yet another way the omega-3s may support heart and cardiovascular health, the second study looked at omega-3s and bone health, and the last study was related to longevity, and how omega-3 fatty acids may help slow the aging process from a biological perspective.
More Heart & Cardiovascular Support
As you may know, science has identified numerous ways omega-3s can help heart and cardiovascular health.
Omega-3s can help you maintain already-healthy triglyceride and blood pressure levels, support healthy blood flow and help promote a healthy inflammation response in the body, which helps protect blood vessels from damage as we age.
A recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition explored another promising way that fish oil may support cardiovascular health. It relates to reducing the number of small structures circulating in blood called vesicles.
If you’re not familiar with vesicles in the body, that makes two of us – I only thought vesicles occurred on the skin.
For example, a blistering rash is made up of vesicles – small sacs filled with liquid. But insides our bodies, cells use small vesicles to support many physiological functions – both inside and outside of cells.
Like so many other substances in the body – balance is key.
When you have too many vesicles circulating in your blood, it can increase the likelihood of unwanted blood clots, which can impede blood flow and contribute to a serious cardiac event.
This is why circulating vesicles are getting a lot of attention among researchers as a potential biomarker of cardiovascular health.
In this study, researchers from 4 universities in the United Kingdom looked at the impact of taking fish oil supplements, versus eating either white fish or oily fish on levels of circulating vesicles over 12 weeks.
42 adults who were 54 years old on average participated in the study.
The researchers found that only those taking fish oil supplements significantly improved vesicle counts and experienced a positive effect on blood clot formation capacity.
Why Did the Fish Oil Supplement Group Benefit Most?
The scientists were curious why eating the fish – particularly the oily fish – didn’t have a significant positive effect.
They concluded that most of the positive effects on the reduction in circulating vesicles was primarily due to the EPA omega-3 fatty acid, and the fish alone did not provide enough EPA to produce a significant effect.
Many people debate what’s the most important omega-3 fatty acid, EPA or DHA. We think they’re both important and help in different ways.
Based on the work so far, it appears EPA may be more valuable for maintaining healthy circulating vesicle levels. More needs to be done, but this research adds to the science library on omega-3s and heart and cardiovascular health.
Omega-3s and Bone Health
The second study we’re going to discuss today was published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition and investigated the relationship between omega-3 consumption and bone health.
In case you don’t know, bone health is another area scientists are exploring to see if omega-3s can help, specifically with respect to preserving bone density and promoting healthy bone turnover.
Bone turnover occurs as your body is constantly shedding old bone and forming new bone.
One of the first studies that caught our attention in this area was conducted by NASA on astronauts in space. It’s not unusual for astronauts to experience a loss in bone density, which is a consequence of exposure to weightlessness in space.
As you may know, when bones get “stressed” (in a healthy way through physical activity), it stimulates your body to add bone mass. That’s why being active and engaging in strength training is important for bone health.
Astronauts don’t experience this is space, which hurts their bone density. NASA did find that higher intake of omega-3s seemed to reduce some of the loss in bone density while the astronauts were in space.
In this new study, researchers analyzed data from 8,898 adults over 50 years old, focusing specifically on estimated omega-3 intake and bone health. They found a significant association between omega-3 intake and better bone health – with a catch.
The benefit was more pronounced on those under age 60.
When you think about why that may be, it’s often said that for women, typically the 10-year period after they transition through menopause is when the greatest loss of bone density occurs.
A woman is still susceptible to bone density loss after these years, but often the greatest rate of change occurs in this 10-year period.
So if you think back to the protective effect of omega-3s on the astronauts, perhaps this helps explain why the bone health impact for those under age 60 would be more apparent.
As more research is done, hopefully the answer becomes clearer.
Potential “Longevity” Support
The third study investigated how omega-3s can positively impact the aging process – a hot area of research.
An example of this was a recent review of omega-3 studies, that concluded the evidence “overwhelmingly” supports the beneficial effects of omega-3s on the length of telomeres.
Telomeres are a marker of biological aging you may have heard about – maintaining the length of telomeres is important to keep cells alive, and the science suggests omega-3s can be very helpful in this regard.
Another study recently published in Frontiers in Nutrition looked at the effects of omega-3s on a collection of 9 biological aging blood markers.
This data is used to calculate a measure called PhenoAge – which compares your biological age based on the blood markers to your actual chronological age. The goal here is to have a lower biological age score than your chronological age, which may indicate you’re aging more slowly.
In this study, the researchers used data collected from 20,337 adults from 1999 to 2018 and calculated their PhenoAge scores.
As part of this, the researchers found omega-3s had a positive effect on scores up to 1.1 grams of daily omega-3 intake, at which point, improvements leveled off.
In other words, there was no further benefits seen in this study from greater omega-3 intake, above 1.1 grams daily.
My perspective is the beneficial result seen on these blood markers isn’t too surprising given the many body systems omega-3s has been shown to positively impact in research over the last 50 years.
As you can see, you have a lot of good reasons to increase omega-3 intake from diet and supplements.
When choosing a good quality fish oil supplement, factors you should consider are potency, purity, sustainability, and bioavailability (i.e. maximizing absorption of the omega-3s into the bloodstream).
We believe we check all these boxes with our TrueOmega-3 supplement. You can find out more on TrueOmega-3 here.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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