The WorThe Worst Supplement for Longevityst Supplement for Longevity

If you listen to many popular nutrition pundits today, you may get the idea that you should be supplementing with tons of fish oil. In fact, you should buy a fish oil factory and make a hot tub of fish oil according to some people. And you should just take a bath in that every single day. You should shower in fish oil and use fish oil on your hair or to clean your beard. Um, this is just all a tongue in cheek way of saying that many people in the health space seem to be saying that lots of fish oil is good. Graham, four grams, six grams, eight grams. I've heard people taking massive amounts of fish oil, this being Omega three enriched or high Omega three oils and touting this as a longevity hack saying that, Oh, you know there are studies from Asian countries and people that live a long time have major intakes of these EPA and DHA, these Omega three fatty acids. Therefore we should take a purified separated from the food matrix fish oil. And I think this is bollocks. This is wrong. And this is dangerous. And I will tell you why I want to start with a recent article or a, an editorial that summarized multiple articles from, uh, an issue of JAMA, uh, the journal of the American Medical Association. This is from March 16th, 2021. And I believe this one caused quite a stir as it, as it really should have. Because if you look at this title, Omega three fatty acids and atrial fibrillation, it's a little scary. And if you read this short editorial, you'll find that there are multiple trials. They state here, including the strength trial, 13,000 high risk patients receiving four grams a day of Omega three fatty acids, which is a combination of EPA and DHA or corn oil as placebo. Not excited about either of those things, but after a median of 42 months, no significant difference between the two randomized groups in the primary composite cardiovascular endpoint showing that, well, fish oil was just as bad as corn oil perhaps, but there was an increase in the risk of developing atrial fibrillation in the Omega three fatty acids compared to the corn oil group, which was 2.2% versus 1.3%. The P value was less than 0.001. There's a reduced trial of 8,000 participants that had a median followup of 4.9 years. And these same fish oils resulted in a 25% relative reduction in the primary composite cardiovascular endpoint compared to mineral oil. You wonder if the mineral oil was a bad thing or if the fish oils were potentially doing something good at the cardiovascular level, but there was a significant increase in atrial fibrillation. Again, the P was 0.003, 5.3 versus 3.9. In a third trial, Omemi 1,027 older patients found that there was again, an increase in the rates of atrial fibrillation. The P value was 0.06, perhaps not quite significant, but there was an increase versus corn oil and the vital rhythm study published in this issue of JAMA, this March 16th, 2021 issue of JAMA, 12,000 participants after a median of 5.3 years, the incidence of atrial fibrillation was 7.2 per 1000 persons and those taking omega-3 fatty acids, excuse me, versus 6.6 per 1000 and those taking the placebo. This P value was not significant, but again, there was an increase. They say to consider together data from these four trials suggest, but do not prove there may be a dose related risk of atrial fibrillation with omega-3 fatty acid intake at a dose of four grams per day. There was a highly statistically significant increase in risk, nearly a doubling with an intermediate dose of 1.8 grams per day. The increase in risk did not achieve statistical significance and with a standard daily dose of 840 milligrams per day, there was no apparent increase in risk, although the data were consistent with as much as a 24% increase in risk. So this is something to consider because there have been many people in the nutrition space interviewing omega-3 fatty acid, quote unquote, experts or proselytizers saying that four grams a day is completely normal. Perhaps eight grams a day would be better. And these doses have clearly been associated with increases in atrial fibrillation. So let's just be very clear from the beginning of this section of the podcast. Fish oil is bullshit. I would never take fish oil. Fish oil is a combination of EPA, icosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid. These are omega-3 polyunsaturated, long chain fatty acids and they are highly susceptible to oxidation. Your body can get plenty of these from meat. I'll say it again. Your body can get plenty of these fatty acids from meat. This is very clear. You do not need to eat fish, much of which is high in heavy metals to get these, nor do you need to supplement with fish oil. So I want to just highlight a couple of things here, and then I will clarify my stance on fish. Long chain omega-3 fatty acids in red meat. This is just a paper to corroborate the notion that meat contains DPA, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid and icosapentaenoic acid. And I believe that there, you can go into more detail in this paper if you'd like. There certainly is a human need for these omega-3s in the diet, but I believe you can get absolutely plenty of these from animal fats. Things like tallow are just fine. Egg yolks would be an abundant source of these though, as you'll see in a moment, I have not been eating a lot of egg yolks in my diet. I get asked about fish a lot. Paul, why don't you ever talk about eating fish? The reason I don't talk about eating a lot of fish is because fish is full of heavy metals and being a pescetarian is a sure and quick route to becoming heavy metal toxic. Tony Robbins, Howard Stern, even Joe Rogan had elevated levels of arsenic that he's talked about in this podcast. So be aware that being a pescetarian, being a pesco-vegetarian or including a lot of fish in your diet, you had better know what your heavy metal levels are of mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, et cetera, even shellfish, which I do like. I like mussels. I like clams. I like oysters. I like shrimp. These are sometimes even worse because they are benthic because they are bottom dwelling organisms and they're going to have quite high levels of heavy metals. So I do not eat a lot of fish. In fact, I can't remember the last time I ate fish, even though I live in Costa Rica, I may have had shrimp once in the last year and I certainly have not had salmon maybe in a few years. This is not to say that those foods cannot be a part of a healthy diet, but be aware that the more you eat them, the more you will need to check your heavy metal status and basing your dietary fats or your dietary proteins around them, I think is a recipe for disaster. As I said, you can get plenty of omega-3 fatty acids from animal meat and animal fat. And this is critical point. If you are not eating seed oils, if you are not eating omega-6s like linoleic acid, if they are low in your diet, then your body can make EPA, DPA, and DHA from the alpha linoleic acid, the ALA, which is found in tallow and animal fat. I'm going to show you my results from a little over a year ago that illustrate that very well. Before I do, I want to show you an article, which I think is quite interesting. We know that vegetarian diets pretty low in essential fatty acids. The title of this part paper is achieving optimal essential fatty acid status in vegetarians, current knowledge and practical implications. I'll summarize it for you. It's really hard for vegetarians to get essential fatty acids. You probably should just eat some meat or some tallow and do that. This is basically what we're saying here, because as we know, in many vegetarians or in people generally in the population, what you will find is that the conversion of ALA to EPA and DHA is really low actually. And that is because they are overloading their system with omega-6s. Yet another problem with excess omega-6s like linoleic acid in the human diet. I want to show you guys who are watching on YouTube, this pathway. I've done this many times. You can see that the omega-6s are on this side. The omega-3s are on this side. You start with ALA, alpha-linolenic acid. You have EPA and DHA here. DPA is here, docosafentanoic acid. That's another important one. Linolenic acid. This is the big one that I worry about. 18 carbon, omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid. And you can see that they share desaturase, elongase, desaturase, elongase, beta-oxidation. And this is an important thing because the more of these omega-6s you have in your diet, the less your body will be able to take this ALA, which is also present in tallow and animal fat, and convert that into DPA and EPA and DHA, which I think is a really important thing. So in vegetarians, in people in the general population, the conversion of ALA into DPA, EPA and DHA is pretty bad. But in those of us eating an animal-based diet, it's probably just fine because you are not overloading your body with omega-6s. This is my nutrient bowel from Genova. I believe this is from August of 2021. You can see that my ALA is moderate, but that my DPA and my DHA are great. And my EPA is quite high. At the time I was doing this, I was not even eating eggs, guys. The only source of fat in my diet is animal fat, things like tallow, high stearic acid tallow, either from Firestarter, like we make it hard in soil supplements, or from fatty steaks or hamburgers, this kind of thing. I wasn't eating the egg yolks and I certainly wasn't eating fish, and nor was I supplementing with a fatty acid fish oil supplement. So where am I getting these things from? Well, there's some EPA, there's some DHA, and there's some DPA in meat. And my body is probably converting a lot of this ALA into this EPA, which is quite high because my linoleic acid, as you'll see over here, is quite low because I don't include seed oils, et cetera, et cetera. I'll also point out that my stearic acid was quite high because I do have a lot of that in my diet. I eat a lot of tallow. I've done many talks in the past about the importance of this 18 carbon saturated fatty acid in the human diet, the way that it turns on mitochondria. And you'll note that my palmitic acid is quite low. This has been a marker in the past for some degree of insulin resistance in humans. It's a little more complicated than that, but I just want to point out my fatty acid analysis from Carnivore MD. I like showing you guys my labs from time to time and to illustrate that if you do not have excess omega-6 in your diet, do not have seed oils. In fact, I would argue potentially as humans, we should be thinking about this ratio. We should be optimizing stearic acid. So my diet often consists of organs from beef, grass-fed, grass-finished, regenerative, meat, fruit, honey, et cetera, et cetera. Just one more thing before I move on from the omega-3s, a paper, lipid peroxidation during, uh, omega-3 fatty acid and vitamin E supplementation in humans. If you did not know, uh, fish oil can oxidize as well. These results demonstrate that supplementing the diet with omega-3 fatty acids resulted in an increase in lipid peroxidation. Ooh, that's bad. As measured by plasma MDA, which is malonylaldehyde release and lipid peroxide products, which was not suppressed by vitamin E supplementation. Do you still think eating four grams, consuming four grams of fish oil a day is good? I hope not. I did a podcast with my friend Sivan Matosian, oh, a few months ago. And I told him during the podcast, I'm not a fan of fish oil. And literally in the middle of the podcast, he calls out to his wife and says, Hey, don't give the kids the fish oil this morning. That's right, Sivan. Don't give your kids fish oil. Just give your kids healthy fat from meat and organs. They will be great. If you've ever had heart, you'll know heart is a great source of fat. There's all this pericardial fat around the heart. That's what you need. That's going to be fine. I am not convinced by the hypothesis that humans evolved as semi-aquatic organisms or that fish were a key part of evolution. There are plenty of people all over the world, whether it's Native Americans, the Hadza, et cetera, who have essentially no seafood in the diet. If you're wondering about iodine, guess what? Meat has iodine as well. Dairy has iodine and egg yolks have iodine. So you don't even need fish for iodine as a human. If you want to include it, be careful of the heavy metals. Again, I'm giving you the high level. My intention is never to make the diet so restrictive or never to make a recommendation that is so restrictive that you can't do it anymore. But I will try and always be honest with you. I will tell you where my ideas are evolving. Most of these have been consistent over the last number of years. And it is important to consider the fact that these are the recommendations that I think are ideal. And I want to give you guys a perspective on that so that you can aim for those and not get confused and then do the best you can within that framework. Again, I will reiterate one more time. If you are not thriving, then you should question your assumptions. If you are thriving and kicking ass in all the ways, don't change a thing about your diet.