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Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

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101–110 of 168 posts

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#101
Anecdotally, I've read a long time ago that fish oil should help with sleep but I didn't start supplementing. Fast forward to this summer, I had big sleep problems, I couldn't keep a normal schedule and when I woke up I had terrible brain fog, took my like 2-3h in the morning to wake up properly and be able to function.

Then I started taking fish oil, I got it by the bottle because I've read pills could have rancid oil and I figured if I directly taste it I will know if it's fresh/well kept.

My sleep problems disappeared overnight.

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#102
post #43

I don’t understand the author’s reading of the literature they cite. They refer to “isolated studies” and then link to a systematic review of 25 studies. They also linked to the same review twice for both memory and attention, which I assume is a mistake, because the review only supports the claim about memory. But none of these studies are about “brain-boosting”. They’re about preventing or reversing cognitive decli…

why is it that no one wants to study the effects of nootropics?

I imagine there aren't many scientists who want to enable their own line of work descending into a doping arms race like some sports can in the absence of anti-doping regulations.

Edit: or if they do catch on to something, a moral panic breaking out and having to do drugs tests on the regular or something

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#103

There was a strange country where the pure Omega-3 "fish fat" was extremely popular, almost every child was fed this in childhood. Then these kids grew up. And they became tens of millions of idiots who put cans of water in front of TVs so that some charlatan would "charge" this water. So this Omega-3 is proven not to help the brain. It maybe even harmful. The second assertion has not yet been refuted. :)

>So this Omega-3 is proven not to help the brain. It maybe even harmful. The second assertion has not yet been refuted.

So I don't recollect all sources but it does appear that for people who understand the nuances ( of which there are not many) it indeed could be harmful.

One source: https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#104
post #49
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the argument would be that you don't know for sure whether your diet does provide all the nutrients your body needs, so supplements could be used to fill in any gaps. The assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely.

> The assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely. Not always. Fat-soluable vitamins (A, D, E, and K) will build up in fat tissue and can lead to toxicity.

You would have to take a lot of vitamin D supplements to cause clinical symptoms. Some people have done it, but as a practical matter the risk of hypervitaminosis D from regular multivitamin pills is virtually zero.

Whether those pills actually have any health benefit is a separate issue.

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#105
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the argument would be that you don't know for sure whether your diet does provide all the nutrients your body needs, so supplements could be used to fill in any gaps. The assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely.

That's the sales pitch for multivitamins and the like; they talk you into a problem but they provide the solution. Certain vitamins your body will dispose of safely (like vitamin C), but there's others that just build up until they kill you; there's the case of Xavier Mertz [0] who was theorized to have died from an excess of vitamin A after eating his sled dogs' livers. But the basic rule is: just eat normally / "a…

The question is one of optimization. There are arguably optimal doses of particular nutrients (i.e. Vitamin D) that would be extremely hard to achieve through "a balanced diet". Also most people do not and many can not eat a "balanced diet", as that requires a ton of effort to maintain.

To put it another way, if the benefits of exercise were available in pill form on grocery store shelves, everyone would be taking that pill. Saying "you could save some money by just exercising normally!" is making a lot of assumptions about what people are willing and able to do, and frankly you'd be a fool to waste time exercising if the benefits were achievable through a magic pill.

Supplements aren't quite that magical, but they make optimal, hard-to-achieve doses achievable, even on a bad diet. Granted they can also be misused, or doses can be so low/ingredients not bio-available such that they have no impact. They're a tool like anything else, and can be used correctly or incorrectly. Part of what bugs me about the meta-analysis saying "supplements don't reduce all-cause mortality!" is that they lump wildly different supplements with different make-ups, taken in different doses on different schedules from different starting diets with different amounts of discipline/regularity. Of course at a population level the number of people using them wrong probably outnumber the people who do their research and maintain a disciplined approach. Your average person has issues getting their car's oil changed and understanding the difference between synthetic and conventional oil. A skilled individual could properly apply and see benefits from supplements, just as a skilled individual could successfully change their own oil.

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You you can just buy cold pressed flax oil and supplement with that. ~30 USD for ~1L iirc and it has an absolute assload of ALA (omega3) Hemp seed oil is a good one for omega6 but usually people get enough 6 from diet and 3 is the one we need to boost to get the 3:6 ratio up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_ratio_in_food

I like flax oil, but it spoils very quickly. I have trouble going through 250ml before it goes rancid.

Do you keep it in a refrigerator?

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#107
post #81
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a shit ton of evidence supporting vitamin d3 to fight covid...

There's not, though. There's a ton of evidence that vitamin d _correlates_ with COVID outcomes, but this is vitamin d's superpower: it correlates with good outcomes for just about everything, but nearly every time there's a good high quality study, it turns out to not be causative. A bunch of those vitamin d and COVID studies were fraudulent. Vitamin d levels are an excellent marker of good health and they can help p…

There are multiple clinical studies showing that vitamin D supplements can be effective in fighting COVID-19. Some other studies have shown no effect, but overall there seems to be some benefit.

https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#108

One of the major problems translating "science to advice" is the need to specify a risk/reward model for the person being advised. If P(TheScience) = 0.01, but P(GeneralInjury|TheScience) = 0.00000000000...1, and P(GeneralBenefit|TheScience) = 0.5 .... then most people should do "what the science says". Of course there's P(MyBenefit|TheScience) and P(MyInjury|TheScience) which makes rendering general advise often imp…

What do you mean by P(TheScience) ?

The confidence we have that the relevant scientific prescriptions are true.

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#109

Anecdotally, when I first started taking (6 normal-strength pills a day) of fish oil in college, I quite unexpectedly noticed my "field of view" expanded when I was driving. Previously I'd been exclusively focused on a smallish area immediately in front my my car, but after a few months of Omega 3s, I noticed I was "noticing" and taking into account traffic that was much further down the street. Though I kinda suspec…

Interesting, I actually had an extremely similar experience, except it was when I first took ADHD medicine, and I noticed it most strongly while navigating through the city by foot. "Field of View" is a good sort of description for it though, it was like the amount of information I could passively perceive about my immediate surroundings just increased dramatically.

Re: Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

#110
post #83
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not, though. There's a ton of evidence that vitamin d _correlates_ with COVID outcomes, but this is vitamin d's superpower: it correlates with good outcomes for just about everything, but nearly every time there's a good high quality study, it turns out to not be causative. A bunch of those vitamin d and COVID studies were fraudulent. Vitamin d levels are an excellent marker of good health and they can help p…

Did you even do a single bit of research before boldly stating there is no research done on the supplementation? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35166850/ https://pmj.bmj.com/content/98/1156/87 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Yes. There's a ton. Most of it is horribly tainted by correlation effects. Let's consider one of the studies you cited above, which is an observational study from the VA hospitals:

"In the population of US veterans, we show that Vitamin D2 and D3 fills were associated with reductions in COVID-19 infection of 28% and 20%, respectively"

This sounds really awesome, right? Except -- you could also interpret this as "People who are following their doctor's recommendations, going to the pharmacy to fill their prescriptions, and taking them, do better". No kidding - they're probably also taking their other medications and being more generally medically careful!

This is completely consistent with the 99% of vitamin d-related results that show that it correlates with all sorts of positive outcomes.

The high quality interventional studies -- which are actually potentially able to demonstrate causality -- are generally negative. And the larger and better they are, the more likely they are to be negative. One of the largest was the CORONAVIT trial; it was, unfortunately, open-label, but it was large and randomized. (Note that you'd expect the open-label aspect to result in a stronger placebo effect, which .. well, given that they found no benefits, did not occur). https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071230

The vitamin d & covid horse is pretty dead at this point, which is basically the same as the "vitamin d & x" horse for most values of X other than diseases known to be directly caused by vitamin D deficiency. Which are serious and worthy of treatment. Just don't expect vitamin D to be a miracle cure on the basis of its correlation with everything positive.

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