Max Lugavere

But there is a growing line of research linking higher levels of omega-3s in blood to reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease.

There was a study that found that those that were in the highest quintile of red blood cell DHA fat had about a 50% risk reduction for Alzheimer's disease.

And I can cite the study in the

um, in the description or in the comments on YouTube.

Um, that's a correlational study, but needless to say, the DHA fat is something that again, 90% of adults globally under consume in the United States, about 80% of adults under consume omega-3 fatty acids.

we tend to overconsume omega-6 fatty acids and we neglect omega-3s, and yet the omega-3 fatty acid DHA, docosahexaenoic acid, is one of the most important structural building blocks of the brain.

And now we have observational data linking, at least in red blood cells, which is, you know, getting a little bit closer than food frequency questionnaires, the levels of DHA in the blood to reduced risk by a pretty significant margin of Alzheimer's disease.

It's not to say that all you need to do is pop an omega-3 fatty acid pill and your risk is going to be slashed by 50%.

We need more evidence on that.

But mechanistically, the anti-inflammatory, the inflammation-resolving effect of omega-3 fatty acids, it all kind of, you know...

adds to the jigsaw puzzle of what, from a dietary supplement standpoint, or from a dietary standpoint in general, we might do to reduce our risk.

And omega-3 fatty acids are one of the, I guess, what I would consider to be a foundational supplement, especially if you don't consume adequate fish, which is one to two servings per week of fatty fish, oily fish, salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, and the like.

Now, the omega-3 fatty acids actually parlay into the next recommendation that I'm going to make.

Again, with the asterisk being that there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation, but there was a study, it was a seminal study in the dementia prevention space called the VITACOG trial.

And this was led by a researcher out of University of Oxford, I believe, by the name of David Smith.

And he found that for patients with mild cognitive impairment,

supplementing with a B complex, which included folate, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12, dramatically by about 50, up to 50% reduced the atrophy of the brain compared to placebo.

These patients had mild cognitive impairment, which is often considered a prodrome of dementia.

So like a form of pre-dementia, oftentimes people with MCI will then convert to dementia.

And of course, Alzheimer's disease is associated with widespread shrinkage of the brain.