Why You Need Higher Doses of Omega-3s Than You Think
OmegaMatters: Episode 56
Hosts: Dr. Bill Harris & Kelly Patterson
Guest: Dr. Barry Sears
About this episode:
In this episode, Dr. Barry Sears, researcher and best-selling author, walks Dr. Bill Harris and Kelly Patterson through how his early work on eicosanoids led him to investigate omega-3s as a way to regulate inflammatory pathways. His central argument is that omega-3s are only one part of the equation: controlling insulin through diet is also important. That combination ultimately became the foundation of his “metabolic engineering” approach and the Zone Diet.
A major theme is the distinction between reducing inflammation and resolving it. Sears describes EPA as particularly important in pathways that can help turn inflammation down, while DHA plays an important role in generating mediators involved in resolving—or “turning off”—inflammation. He argues that adequate omega-3 status, alongside insulin control, provides a more comprehensive approach to managing inflammatory metabolism.
The conversation then moves into brain health and neurological injury, including Sears’ experiences with high-dose omega-3 interventions in ADHD and traumatic brain injury. He and the hosts discuss EPA versus DHA, omega-3 dosing, the Omega-3 Index, and the persistent concern that high-dose omega-3s increase clinically significant bleeding risk. Importantly, many of the therapeutic claims and very high doses discussed here are Sears’ interpretation of the research and clinical experience, rather than general treatment recommendations.
The episode also connects these ideas to GLP-1 drugs and modern metabolic health. Sears argues that part of the benefit of GLP-1 therapies comes from reduced hunger and calorie intake, which affects metabolic signaling such as AMPK. Kelly adds an interesting nutritional angle: people eating substantially less while taking GLP-1 medications may need to pay particular attention to nutrient intake, including protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and essential fats such as omega-3s.
The big takeaway: Sears makes the case for viewing omega-3s not as an isolated supplement, but as one component of a broader metabolic system involving diet, insulin, inflammatory signaling, inflammation resolution, and omega-3 status. The discussion ultimately challenges the idea of treating chronic disease solely through individual drugs or nutrients and instead explores how nutrition might be used to influence the underlying metabolic environment.
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Kelly Patterson: Welcome to Omega Matters, where we talk everything fatty acids. I’m Kelly Patterson, along with Dr. Bill Harris. And today our guest is Dr. Barry Sears. Dr. Sears is a researcher, author, and the pioneer of metabolic engineering, specializing in dietary control of inflammatory hormones. Originally a biotechnology researcher who invented lipid technologies still used in modern cancer drugs and mRNA vaccines, dr. Sears shifted his focus to study how dietary fats regulate inflammation. In 1995 he introduced these principles to the mainstream with his number one New York Times bestseller, The Zone, and he has since authored numerous books on everything from cellular metabolism to omega-3 fatty acids, including the Omega Rx Zone and the Resolution Zone, selling more than six million copies worldwide. Dr. Sears, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, thank you for the opportunity.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, great. Great to have you, Barry. You’ve been a major force in this field for a long time. I think we’ve… When did you first get into omega-3? Can you remember?
Dr. Barry Sears: Actually, about 1982. That’s when the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for understanding the role of eicosanoids. And prior to that time, most of my work, as Kelly pointed out, was in terms of cancer drug delivery systems, using lipid technology to improve the therapeutic index of cancer drugs, which wasn’t too hard since they’re incredibly low and still are. But once that Nobel Prize was awarded, it became obvious to me that there was a potential, if you could basically manipulate these eicosanoids that have a great impact across the entire spectrum of medicine. And diving a little deeper into the subject, we think of eicosanoids being bad. They’re inflammatory, very powerful pro-inflammatory hormones. But a few of them are actually very powerful anti-inflammatory hormones. In particular, one called PGE1.
So I figured that perhaps it’s possible to basically increase the levels of PG-1, you would have a new way of approaching all sorts of inflammatory diseases across the spectrum. So that led me into the area of looking at fatty acids because of the fact is I was looking at to increase PG-1, I had to prevent the formation or at least reduce the formation of arachidonic acid. And that key factor was basically controlling the enzyme delta-5 desaturase. And one inhibitors of that enzyme were fish oils. So I said, “Ah, easy peasy. If I just use enough fish oil and jack up the precursor of PG-1, I can use a push-pull mechanism to increase the levels of PG-1 and I’ll too get the Nobel Prize.” Well, 40 years older, I haven’t got that.
Dr. Bill Harris: Not yet.
Dr. Barry Sears: But it gave me an opportunity to move away from working with rats, which basically wasn’t a lot of fun, with humans. Because now you had a food product that you could basically try out your theories to say, “What if? What if you could change the levels of inflammatory mediators in the body? Would you see a benefit?” So your first aspect is saying, “Who to recruit?” Well, you could say, “I’ll get sick people.” Well, I wasn’t quite sure how successful it would be, so I looked the other direction. I worked with world-class athletes, because they live in a world of inflammation by choice. So if I can improve their performance, then I felt pretty good that I could basically now use that same technology to affect people who are not quite in the prime shape of their metabolic life.
So that’s how we got started into the area of looking at manipulating eicosanoids. And it worked great for athletes. My first test group were the Stanford University swim team that won seven gold medals in Barcelona in the 1992 Olympics. Pretty good for one country. Extraordinary for one university. And worked with a number of elite athletes for a number of years and with incredible results.
Dr. Bill Harris: What did you do with the Stanford team?
Dr. Barry Sears: Yes. And when you started working with basically real people, then all of a sudden things are going haywire. They say what was working great for the athletes was not working well for the individual. So I had to go back and start scratching my head and say why? Well, one, athletes are basically a finely tuned metabolic machines. Most of us are not. And I searched deeper in the bowels of the MIT library, I found the answer, that to really control that delta five desaturase you need the EPA, no question about that. But you also have to control insulin. Insulin is a stimulator. So I need to have a two-pronged approach. One, have enough EPA, and two, be able to control insulin, which led me to invent the Zone Diet. Then I had basically a one-two punch that could be applicable to both world-class athletes and everybody else.
Dr. Bill Harris: Wow, wow, that’s cool. And for those world-class athletes, did you give them high dose EPA during their training or something? Or how would that play out?
Dr. Barry Sears: Oh, I’d get that during their training and basically throughout the competition, because we’re looking to basically build the levels in their body. Because if you’re an Olympic athlete, all your years of training come down to maybe 30 or 40 seconds. Either you’re in the right spot or you’re not. So you had to get the body ready for that moment. And also basically by increasing or decreasing the levels of inflammatory eicosanoids, they can recover faster. Train better, recover faster, perform better. Bottom line, you basically see improvement.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. What is your feeling on DHA? You were talking a lot about EPA.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, DHA in terms of eicosanoids doesn’t play much role. But in terms of the other side of the coin, the resolution of inflammation, it plays a major role. So again, we always talk about two sides of inflammation. We want to turn it down, but then we also want to turn it off. And now the DHA becomes incredibly important in turning it off.
Kelly Patterson: Can you talk a little bit…
Dr. Bill Harris: Go ahead, Kelly. Yeah.
Kelly Patterson: Oh, no, can you talk a little bit more about that relationship between the eicosanoids and insulin and sort of what insulin, what role insulin plays there?
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, what insulin does is to activate the enzyme delta-5 desaturase that converts the fatty acid dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid into arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid is the bad boy. You need some, but not too much. So unless you’re basically having adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids, usually of relatively high levels of EPA, and simultaneously controlling insulin, you’re going to have a hard time controlling your metabolism and you’ll probably still remain in inflammatory state. So the old saying, it takes two to tango. You need the omega-3 fatty acids and you’ve got to control insulin.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, interesting. So the Zone Diet was more about controlling the insulin. It was less of a focus on omega-3 per se? And Zone?
Dr. Barry Sears: Yes.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, okay. And without going too much down that rabbit trail, describe the Zone Diet for us and what it does for insulin.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, what the Zone Diet is, is basically a unique combination of macronutrients coupled with calorie restriction. Now, why is this important without going to the details of… It’s because it controls the master switch of your metabolism. That’s called AMPK. And once you control AMPK, then basically you bring more of the entire metabolic network under control. So it is a calorie restricted diet, but one without hunger. I’ll use my example of my Olympic athletes, swimmers. None of them ever consumed more than about 2,500 calories per day.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, even sweating-
Dr. Barry Sears: They say, “Oh my God, I need 10,000 calories a day.” No, you don’t. But if you control basically your hunger, you’re able to now basically activate that AMPK and that gives you a secret advantage. In fact, the World Doping Association has banned drugs that increase AMPK.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, really?
Dr. Barry Sears: It gives athletes an unfair advantage.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, really? Even if you do it nutritionally?
Dr. Barry Sears: No, not if you do it nutritionally, but if you take a drug-
Dr. Bill Harris: Just drugs. There are drugs that do it too.
Dr. Barry Sears: Exactly. And now we can take this one step further. If activating AMPK makes you perform better, will it basically treat chronic diseases? Well, yes. Will it make you live longer? Yes. So again, looking at metabolism for this very more of a systems-based aspect, omega-3 fatty acids are incredibly important, but they work much better if you’re controlling basically the hormonal responses generated by the diet.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. Interesting, interesting.
Kelly Patterson: Can you talk a little bit about just the structure of the diet and how that controls hunger as effectively as it does?
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, the key is really the hormone glucagon. Now, you’ve heard of GLP-1 drugs?
Kelly Patterson: Of course. Who hasn’t?
Dr. Barry Sears: Yeah. They say they do everything. They make you lose weight. They treat diabetes. They treat heart disease. They treat liver disease. They’re miracles. Well, it turns out why they’re miracles is because they basically stop hunger. And if you’re not hungry, you don’t eat as many calories. And if you don’t eat as many calories, you make more AMPK. And that’s why it treats all those chronic diseases.
Dr. Bill Harris: Interesting. But there are drugs designed to skip all that and just stimulate AMPK, yeah?
Dr. Barry Sears: Then you have a problem because if you stimulate AMPK, then the other controlling factors of metabolism get depressed. So you need to maintain a zone, a balance of AMPK and the other primary of really anabolic transcription factor, which is mTOR. So maintaining that balance of AMPK and mTOR becomes the key to getting all of the benefits of GLP-1 drugs without the side effects.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. Interesting, interesting. Unfortunately, you can’t make as much money selling a diet as you can a drug.
Dr. Barry Sears: That is true. That is true. And-
Kelly Patterson: A little more work.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, it is. And that’s the problem. Now I go back to my area of drug delivery technology. It is work. It takes a lot of effort. Olympic athletes say, “Whatever I need to do to win a gold medal, I’ll do it.” Most of us saying, “Okay, can I just take a drug once a month?” Well, maybe once a week. But anything more than that, basically compliance drops off like a rock. So again, that’s why you’ve been using my drug delivery technology from the old days to make food products that all that is built into it. So it makes the compliance are easier to do. One of the studies as we did publishing this technology was type two diabetes. And within six months, the complete remission.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, wow.
Dr. Barry Sears: In terms of GPL-1 drugs, the best remission you get in terms of type two diabetes is about 18%.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, really?
Dr. Barry Sears: Now these humans were basically treated like lab rats. All the foods were given to them. They were not allowed to think. And when they didn’t think, goodbye type two diabetes.
Dr. Bill Harris: So people are the problem.
Dr. Barry Sears: Always the case. Always the case.
Dr. Bill Harris: Always a truism, really. Hey, let’s bring it back to… I think the first place that I ran into you was your research on traumatic brain injury. And you got in with the Julian Bales and did a lot of early work on that. Can you catch us up on that field, [inaudible 00:14:00] the omega-3s play?
Dr. Barry Sears: This was the Sago mine disaster occurred in 2006, where 13 miners were a bit trapped in a mine explosion and trapped in a carbon monoxide atmosphere for 41 hours. No human being had ever lived in a carbon monoxide atmosphere for 41 hours. And when they finally broke through to the trapped miners, 12 of the 13 were dead. One was barely alive. When they took him out and did an MRI scan, much of the white matter was gone. So that night I got a call from Julian. He had read my book, the Omega Rx Zone, and said, “Do you think omega-3 fatty acids might help this miner survive?” Well, the reason why, because the governor of West Virginia told him, say, “This man must not die.” So I said, “Of course.”
Now, we’d already published a study with children with ADHD, and we were giving them about 16 grams of omega-3 fatty acids per day. About 10 grams of EPA and about 6 grams of DHA. And they’re already taking their appropriate doses of their drugs to treat the ADHD. And within four weeks, you saw a dramatic improvement in their ability for cognitive function. And this correlated very nicely with the change in the ratio of arachidonic acid to EPA in the blood. We then repeated the same study with our Italian partners and got the same results. So we already had some background to answer Julian’s question, say, “But I give 16 grams, he’s going to die.” I said, “He’s not going to die. We’ve already completed and published two studies. And the fact is that…” “Well, he might bleed to death.” I said, “There’s no data that omega-3 fatty acids cause bleeding.” He says, “Okay, I’m desperate.” So I airmailed some of the liquid fish oil out and they put it into his feeding tube.
And in the next couple of days, you can start to see that blood levels changed dramatically. And at the end of 30 days, he was discharged from the intensive care unit and put into a rehab hospital. So we maintained the same levels of the omega-3 fatty acids, 16 grams a day, and basically switched it from basically putting into a feeding tube to putting it in a teaspoon. And 30 days after in the rehab hospital, he went home. He was normal. I say, “Well, maybe it was a miracle.” Well, it turns out… And then Julian started putting calls out to all the other neurologists in the country saying, “If you have somebody who meets the criteria, we’ll send the oil out to you. Let’s see what happens.” Like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland say, “Let’s put on a play.”
Dr. Bill Harris: You’re dating yourself, my friend. You’re dating yourself here.
Dr. Barry Sears: So every case, they basically improved one after another.
Dr. Bill Harris: And what were the conditions that a neurologist would say, “I need high dose omega-3” for? I mean, not just being in a mind disaster, right?
Dr. Barry Sears: No. Yeah. If you have ADHD, it was a good one. And that was our studies were children with ADHD. And we got to keep on doing… Yes, Kelly.
Kelly Patterson: Oh, yeah. Just with regard to ADHD, obviously diagnoses are increasing pretty rapidly. We see a lot of kids being diagnosed with ADHD. What do you think the mechanism is there for ADHD to be helped by omega-3s, and is it something that parents should be pursuing for kids?
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, I would say yes, based on the published clinical study. Why would it be useful of ADHD? It’s a brain disorder. It’s a neurological disorder. Fish oil is brain food. Always has been. Always will be.
Dr. Bill Harris: Right, right, yeah. Good point. And then the neurologists, I mean, outside of… You somehow got the traumatic brain injury, which I always think it was as a acute event, not a carbon monoxide poisoning thing. But is that true? Does it also work when you have a car accident and you get your head whacked?
Dr. Barry Sears: Yes. And again, we were taking all comers. And every time, if you give an adequate dosage, you see results. Now that’s a traumatic injury, but let’s take traumatic injuries that occur over a period of time, like that in terms of NFL football players. We had a great number of people we worked with who had the beginnings of CTE, and basically they also resolved their abilities. And then we looked at other disease states like major depression. One of the first studies was done in 1999 at Harvard Medical School. They gave, again, this case, 10 grams of omega-3 fatty acids. And in a placebo controlled study, all the benefits. They said, “It must be the DHA. It must be the DHA.”
Well, then they did a study with DHA, nothing, zippo. And because we know that both EPA and DHA get into the brain at the same rate. But for some reason, EPA is oxidized. Is it oxidized to give energy? Probably not, because you don’t see that much increase in terms of the mitochondrial output. But I believe that the EPA that gets in the brain is oxidized to resolve it. To act almost like an invisible shield to resolve any inflammation in the brain so basically your brain function remains at a higher level.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, so when they measure brain EPA, as you imply, there’s not that much there per gram of brain, but there’s quite a bit of DHA, so people have dismissed EPA in the brain, but you’ve got a different idea about that.
Dr. Barry Sears: Exactly. And that’s why all the studies of using omega-3 fatty acids on neurological disease have always used very high levels of DHA, and they’ve been pretty consistent that they’re saying nothing’s happening.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, right, right. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Hussein Yasin published a study with two grams of DHA trying to essentially slow or prevent dementia. And didn’t work even though the DHA levels went up in the cerebral spinal fluid. But you think he might have picked the wrong omega-3.
Dr. Barry Sears: I’m sure he did. And the reason why I say that, not being flip, is saying that, yes, that’s why all the studies which are used mixed EPA and DHA and high levels of EPA in that mixture have seen consistently consistent and really striking results.
Kelly Patterson: And adequate dosing is important as well, right? I mean, two grams is probably not enough even if it were EPA and DHA.
Dr. Barry Sears: Exactly. You give a placebo dose, you will get placebo effects. Now we go back to the omega-3 index. This is why the omega-3 index is so important, in my opinion. It’s the best marker of the ability of the body to make resolvents. This is really one of the secrets of omega-3 fatty acids. Yes, you want to reduce inflammation, but you want to make those resolvents that turn it off. And that’s why I always use the omega-3 index as an indication, do you have enough omega-3 fatty acids in the blood to increase resolvents in every organ of the body, including the brain?
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. What kind of level of omega-3 index do you like to recommend for your people?
Dr. Barry Sears: 12.
Dr. Bill Harris: 12. Okay, great. You’re right, that’s top of the line. Exactly.
Dr. Barry Sears: So that’s why the time comes, say, let’s use high dose, let’s find out. No one’s going to bleed to death. But if you don’t use a therapeutic dose, you’re not going to see consistent results, and therefore everybody says omega-3 fatty acids don’t work. Nothing could be further from the truth. They’re incredibly powerful if you give the right dose.
Dr. Bill Harris: If you give the right dose. That’s been a problem forever, right, exactly. Yeah.
Kelly Patterson: The bleeding concern, especially with regard to brain injury in the clinical world, it’s been a nagging falsehood that is hard to get rid of. A lot of clinicians are still to this day very reticent to give high dose omega-3s or unfortunately omega-3s at all because of concerns over bleeding risks that have been proven time and time again.
Dr. Barry Sears: You’re quite right. The data is quite clear. You’re not going to bleed the death by taking high dose omega-3 fatty acids.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, right. And it has been a very, very stubborn, very stubborn obstacle. Started out with those Eskimos in Greenland, right? Jörn Dyerberg and Bang and nosebleeds and all that stuff, and it just got stuck. I mean, we know that the blood is thinned a little bit by omega-3, even high dose omega-3, but it doesn’t produce anything clinically significant in terms of bleeding.
Dr. Barry Sears: I agree. And that’s why people just ignore the literature. They say, read the literature. Say, no, no, in my heart, I know I’m right. As a consequence, in terms of a great number of people who could be aided by omega-3 fatty acids are being really denied treatment that is incredibly safe and incredibly powerful.
Dr. Bill Harris: Amen, right. What kind of stuff are you working on these days? Are you still working on brain stuff or branch out from that? What’s your current work?
Dr. Barry Sears: My primary thing is really trying to unravel the mysteries of metabolism. And that cuts across to all organs and therefore all diseases. And to put it into a system that’s usable. As I said earlier, the most remarkable drug in the 21st century have to be GPL-1 drugs. They seem to do everything. And why? Say, “I don’t know.” They seem to say, but say, “Let’s find out.” And that’s why the thing that’s remarkable about GPL-1 drugs is they stop hunger. That’s the first sign. And if you stop hunger, you consume less calories.
Dr. Bill Harris: That’s right.
Dr. Barry Sears: You consume less calories, you activate AMPK. Then you begin to affect every chronic disease state. That is the secret. So there’s nothing secret about the GPL-1 drug per se. The secret is if you can tolerate the side effects, which are significant, that’s why half the people quit after one year, then you have the key to controlling your metabolism, which is key to controlling your health future.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. What kind of side effects are seen with the GLP-1 agonists?
Dr. Barry Sears: Usually GI side effects. Those are the most obvious. However-
Kelly Patterson: Nausea, constipation, yep.
Dr. Barry Sears: But with long-term use, others are going to be coming about. Remember the old drug fen-phen. It stopped… I’m not hungry, I’m losing weight. But if you basically now, you got to take time for basically the primary side effect, primary pulmonary hypertension to manifest itself. And say, how do you treat primary pulmonary hypertension? A double heart/lung transplant.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, that’s pretty serious.
Dr. Barry Sears: So again, with the GLP-1 drugs, I know this is true of all drugs, as you get larger and longer term use in the population, problems will basically arise.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, I’m sure they will.
Dr. Barry Sears: But again, but they have given an insight, I believe. They say how you can use the diet. Omega-3 fatty acids, high dose, and also basically be able to control hunger through calorie restriction or have calorie restriction without hunger and put those two together. They give you a powerful tool to treat virtually every chronic disease state associated with metabolism, which is virtually all of them.
Kelly Patterson: I think it’s going to be so important… I’m a dietician by training, and I think it’s going to be really important for these GLP-1 patients… My big concern when people can tolerate the side effects is because their appetites are so low is nutrient loss, and omega-3s are one of the first things. People don’t get enough of those baseline when they have their normal appetites. And when people are not eating nearly enough, not getting enough vitamins and minerals of most important urgent need, but also omega-3s, I think people are going to even continue to under eat those a lot. So I think for patients that are taking those, that’s going to be something that’s really important, is plugging those holes, filling those gaps in their diet, especially when their appetites are decreased.
Dr. Bill Harris: Protein intake is down, muscle mass. They lose lean muscle mass instead of… In addition to fat.
Kelly Patterson: RT and fiber, essential fats.
Dr. Barry Sears: All these are important. That’s why I view the future of medicine as really basically being driven more by the diet and using drugs to treat any residual symptoms. Today we have it backwards. We use the drugs to treat the symptoms, but we don’t address the underlying problem, which are basically nutritional, and I won’t say deficiencies, but basically disharmony. And the two biggest problems is over-consumption of calories, because we do that to basically depress AMPK and under consumption of omega-3 fatty acids. Without those, you can’t turn down and turn off inflammation.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, interesting. Let me switch a little bit to just omega-6 fatty acids in general. I know you’ve mentioned arachidonic acid’s a bad player. We’ve published some work recently looking at linoleic acid levels in the blood and prospective cohort studies looking at blood levels of linoleic and risk for death, total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, cancer mortality, and we find higher levels of linoleic acid are associated with better outcomes. Do you separate arachidonic from linoleic? I mean, how do you think about the family?
Dr. Barry Sears: Again, it’s basically the conversion of linoleic acid into arachidonic acid. So the linoleic acid by itself is almost like an innocent bystander. But if you basically are having parts of your diet, such as a diet low in omega-3 fatty acids, or a diet that generate lots of insulin, then those omega-6 fatty acids will give rise to increased arachidonic acid, and now you’re in a boatload of trouble.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, yeah. At least in those studies we were also looking at arachidonic acid blood levels as a predictor of outcomes. And we really didn’t see… I mean, it wasn’t a good guy, it wasn’t a bad guy. It was kind of neutral. And I’m not sure, how would you interpret that?
Dr. Barry Sears: I would take one… I may go back and look at the data and look one other parameter. And this would be the ratio of arachidonic acid to EPA. And because this is a very sensitive parameter of basically the intensity of inflammation. And this is why I like to use that one, basically look at the intensity, but I like to use the omega-3 index as your ability to resolve the residual inflammation.
Dr. Bill Harris: Sure, because that includes the DHA or primarily DHA. Right, right. So resolution from the omega-3 index, EPA, AA ratio, or the reverse for stimulation of inflammation.
Dr. Barry Sears: Exactly. So you want to turn it down and then you want to turn it off.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, yeah. Great. It makes a lot of sense. Well, Kelly, have you heard anybody giving 10 to 15 grams of EPA and DHA lately besides Barry? Barry and his weird friends?
Kelly Patterson: I have. My interest in omega-3s came from the brain injury space when I worked for the military, and we were recommending doses above 10 grams a day for post-concussive patients. And the reason I bring up the pushback is because we got lots of pushback from physicians who were like, “Hey, this guy just had a head injury and you want to give him something that’s going to make him bleed?” And really pushing back against that was very… It was frustrating because we had good data to say that it wasn’t a bleeding risk. So that’s a space where there are a lot of practitioners out there who are using that, especially in the brain injury space, in the military space, for sure. I think in sport, as you mentioned, in football, in these sports where athletes are at really high risk for repetitive concussion, CTE, using a little bit lower doses for preventative measures and then very high doses after someone experiences a concussion.
I’m definitely in sport, military, we see that happening more. But I think in the clinical space, it’s spotty. It depends on where you are. If you’re talking about in hospital-based care, I think that’s catching up. It’s been a while since I worked in an ICU, so I’m not as up on that now. It may be a little bit more common but certainly wasn’t 10 years ago.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. What do you think, Barry? Is it getting more common?
Dr. Barry Sears: No.
Dr. Bill Harris: Do you hear about it? No.
Kelly Patterson: Sadly.
Dr. Bill Harris: Short answer.
Dr. Barry Sears: Mythology sometimes are very hard to kill. And Kelly’s quite correct. The data doesn’t support this mythology. Yet basically it’s so strong that it prevents any type of studies being done. Why? They say, “What if something goes wrong?” Say, “What if something goes right?”
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, right. So things are going wrong anyway, all right. That’s why we’re doing this.
Dr. Barry Sears: So one of the struggles that I’m sure that, Bill, you faced over the years is saying, try to get to the optimal levels of the omega-3 index and say, “It’s going to take a lot of fish oil.” Say, “Well, either people don’t like it or it’s going to kill them.” Well, if they don’t like it, then basically accept a lesser quality of life. So it’s just a constant uphill push. But all you can do is basically try to do the studies, present them, and try to refute the mythology the best you can. It’s difficult, it’s difficult. And it’s painful than knowing that these omega-3 fatty acids can be a very, very powerful adjunct to treating any chronic disease state.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, wow. Yeah, we could get that message across, that would be… And boy, we need to think about… We’re not, at FARI anyway, we’re not really doing randomized trials anymore. We’re doing more observational stuff where intakes like that are not anywhere on the horizon. But I guess what I need to do is just keep the back of my head that when people ask me what kind of dose should I use, and that happens occasionally, I need to push up my recommendations into the area you’re talking about.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well and I then think all of your studies that you’ve done over the years demonstrate on the Omega-3 index, the higher the Omega-3 the better the clinical results. So I say, “Well, what’s the upper limit?” Say, “Well, we only find out by experimentation.”
Dr. Bill Harris: Right, right. And that’s what we always say is we say 8 to 12% is sort of our optimal range. People say, “Well, is higher going to be bad for me?” I say, “Well, we just don’t know. We haven’t got the research up there. It could be better, could be neutral.” I mean, it could have leveled off at that point. We just don’t know.
Dr. Barry Sears: I’d say it’s basically more like super good.
Dr. Bill Harris: It probably is. That would be the best guess. I think you’re right. Yeah, we ought to expand our recommended range, but we really need more evidence and more data. I need to… Well, you probably haven’t got blood… Well, maybe you have blood studies or blood levels from those high dose studies?
Dr. Barry Sears: No, we throw them out after the study.
Dr. Bill Harris: I know. Yeah, understand. Exactly. We’re done, yeah. Great, well, and tell us about your lab, your company. Catch us up on that.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, my company is actually… I started one of the first biotechnology companies in the United States back in 1976 to use fossil lipids to regress preformed atherosclerotic lesions. And from there, I’ve moved into cancer drug delivery and then moved into basically high dose omega-3 fatty acids and now metabolic engineering. So all from the standpoint of trying to say if you can discover the mysteries of metabolism, how they work together, then we can go back to basically looking at food as a drug. Just like, again, Hippocrates said, let food be your medicine, let medicine be your food. So it’s more true today than ever. And the GLP-1 drugs has shown how powerful a drug can be if it can basically change metabolic levels. I feel, I think the data supports it, that you can do the same with aggressive use of nutrition. You have to reduce calories without hunger, and you have to have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
Dr. Bill Harris: You think people who are on GLP-1 should be taking high dose omega-3?
Dr. Barry Sears: They should be, because as Kelly pointed out, I guarantee you they’re deficient in intake of omega-3 fatty acids.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, true. Almost by definition. For eating less.
Kelly Patterson: They probably weren’t eating enough to begin with.
Dr. Barry Sears: There’s a recent study that asked the question, how much EPA… I’m using I just want… How much EPA does the average American today consume? 35 milligrams. That’s not very much.
Dr. Bill Harris: No. And that’s the average. I bet the median is zero.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, I’ll go at least probably a little above zero, but not much. And it’s probably even more of a case of our children. And I’ll make a wild guess that our increasing levels of neurological problems in childhood are due to basically decreasing levels of omega-3 fatty acids and increasing levels of insulin. Now add that to basically a diet that we have a lot of omega-6 fatty acids, I think is a pretty explosive combination virtually to guarantee a tremendous amount of neurological problems.
Dr. Bill Harris: Neurodivergence, I think is the term now. Yeah, right.
Kelly Patterson: And a lot of studies in children are even worse than studies in adults when it comes to dosage. They’re so low. And it seems a lot of research is just not giving high enough doses to kids. So we’re not seeing the results that would be, I think, if those dosages were more adequate, we higher.
Dr. Barry Sears: Well, and that was our analysis with the children of ADHD. They were giving the optimal dosage and they were being followed by one of the top psychiatrists in terms of ADH in terms of the country, Ned Hallowell. But once we gave them the high dose omega-3 fatty acids, it’s as if you turned on a switch.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah. Did he publish that? Did you guys publish it?
Dr. Barry Sears: Oh yes, yes. We published this in 2007.
Dr. Bill Harris: In seven, okay. Okay, I need to look that study up. Do you know who’s first author?
Dr. Barry Sears: I think it was Ned’s colleague. I’ll send you out the article.
Dr. Bill Harris: Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I’d really like to read that. We get a lot of questions about ADHD, don’t we, Kelly?
Kelly Patterson: We do. We do. It’s a very popular topic.
Dr. Barry Sears: And if one, the basically that we’ve done and replicated the studies in Italy, same results and say it’s very rapidly taken care of if you can maintain the adequate levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood.
Dr. Bill Harris: Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, I think we’ve covered a lot of good stuff here. Thank you again for joining us.
Dr. Barry Sears: Oh, it’s my pleasure. And again, I want to congratulate you and your team for the excellent work you’ve done over the years. It’s made my life much, much easier.
Dr. Bill Harris: Well, that’s what we try to do, make everybody’s life easier. I’m glad we were successful for one person’s life anyway. Thanks, Barry.
Dr. Barry Sears: Thank you very much.
Kelly Patterson: Thank you so much, Dr. Sears.
Dr. Barry Sears: Take care now, bye-bye.
Dr. Bill Harris: Bye-bye.