DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: Can’t stand oily fish? Try seaweed instead for your essential Omega 3s

With flu season quickly approaching, it’s time to give your immune system a helping hand by replenishing your vitamin D levels.

But you might also consider an omega-3 supplement.

Recent studies suggest that this will not only strengthen your immune system, but also the health of your heart and brain.

Omega 3 is an essential fatty acid, meaning it is vital to our health, but unfortunately your body cannot produce it so the only way to get enough of it is through your diet (which is why it is called ‘essential’ named). ).

And this is where it gets complicated. There are several types of fatty acids in the omega 3 family, but the two most important are DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).

Among other things, they ensure that your brain cells remain healthy and continue to talk to each other.

In a study published last year in the journal Neurology, researchers from the University of Texas found that there was a strong link between levels of EPA and DHA in the blood and brain health.

After taking blood samples and brain scans from 2,000 middle-aged volunteers, researchers found that people with the highest levels of EPA and DHA did better in cognitive tests.

In addition, the volunteers who carried a variant of the APOE4 gene linked to a much higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, but who also had high levels of DHA and EPA, had less brain damage than those who did not.

These omega-3 fatty acids are brain-protective, although we don’t know exactly why.

One theory is that they are an important part of the membranes surrounding nerve cells (or neurons), or that they have powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

As Dr. Claudia Satizabal, who conducted the study, noted, “We show that if you increase your consumption of omega-3 fatty acids even slightly, you protect your brain.”

Unfortunately, the only real way to get high levels of DHA and EPA in your diet is to eat oily fish, seaweed or take a supplement.

There are other types of omega-3 fatty acids in walnuts and flaxseed, which your body can convert into DHA and EPA, but it can’t do so in sufficient amounts to make much of a difference to your health.

And that’s one of the reasons why the NHS recommends eating at least one portion of fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines or herring (think SMASH) per week. These are all good sources of DHA and EPA.

Now I’d happily eat oily fish every day of the week – kippers for breakfast, sardines on toast for lunch and salmon for dinner – but there are concerns about sustainability.

There’s also the fact that oily fish, because they eat other fish and store toxins in their liver, can contain low levels of pollutants that can build up in our bodies, so it’s best not to overdo it.

In fact, most Brits don’t eat anything close to the recommended amounts. A 2019 study found that only a quarter regularly eat oily fish, and that the groups that need omega 3 most (children, teenagers and pregnant women) eat the least.

Previous research from the University of Oxford found that 10 percent of children between the ages of seven and nine never ate fish and that the amount of DHA in their blood was less than half the recommended amount. Low DHA was linked to poor reading and memory.

If you are vegetarian, vegan or just don’t like fish, you can try eating seaweed.

Although it doesn’t contain as much omega 3 as oily fish, it has helped our ancestors sustain their livelihoods throughout the millennia.

A study recently published in Nature Communications by archaeologists from the Universities of Glasgow and York found that people in Europe, from Scotland to Spain, have been eating seaweed for more than 8,000 years.

One option is nori, the edible seaweed used to wrap sushi, or laverbread, a Welsh specialty made from laver, a type of seaweed, mixed with oats to form laver cakes.

I prefer to get my nutrients through food, but a review of more than 40 studies in which people were given supplements containing DHA and EPA, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in September 2020, found that they reduce the risk of a fatal heart attack by 35 percent .

As for how much to take, Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist and one of the authors of the 2020 study, recommends a supplement with both DHA and EPA, and at a dose of 1,000 to 2,000 mg per day.

Since I eat a lot of fish, I’m not sure if I need a supplement. I would like to know what my values ​​are, but current blood tests are expensive and labor intensive.

Scientists at McMaster University in Canada have developed a new test that they say is simpler and cheaper.

As soon as it becomes available, I’ll try it and let you know: watch this space!

So would YOU like to take this pill to stay slim?

We all know that losing weight is difficult, but losing weight is even more difficult. So over the years there have been many different approaches to tackling this.

One of the weirdest, but one that actually seems to help, is a poop transplant – from a slimmed-down version of yourself.

In 2006, researchers from Washington University in the US showed that if you took gut bacteria from an obese mouse and transplanted them into a lean mouse, the lean mouse would quickly gain weight, despite not being given any extra food.

This is because the bacteria from the obese mice were incredibly efficient at capturing energy from the food they ate.

Since then, small studies in humans have shown that a fecal transplant – from a lean volunteer with the treated feces introduced through an endoscope – can help people lose weight, but the effects don’t seem to last very long.

Now, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have come up with a new approach based on the insight that when obese people eat a healthy diet and lose weight, it can lead to beneficial changes in their gut microbes (microbiome).

But these changes do not last because we often revert to our old way of eating. And that’s where the new study comes in.

The researchers placed 82 obese, middle-aged volunteers on a low-calorie Mediterranean diet, during which they lost an average of 18 pounds (8.3 kg) over six months.

Their poop was then collected, analyzed, frozen, put into odorless capsules (‘crapsules’) and then stored for the following year: the volunteers were then given some of their own crapsules or a placebo pill every month.

So what happened? The first thing the researchers noticed was that the initial weight loss led to beneficial changes in the gut microbiome of most, but not all, volunteers.

Those whose microbiomes did not improve and those who took a placebo pill the following year gained some weight back, an average of 3.2 kg (7 lbs).

But the group that took the crapsules of their own beneficial bacteria not only kept the weight off, but lost a little more (0.6 kg or 1 pound).

This may sound like a laborious, expensive and messy way to maintain weight, but the hope is that it will help improve our understanding of the role of the microbiome and lead to better treatments.

In the meantime, your best bet to boost the “good” bacteria in your gut is to eat more fiber-rich foods like leeks and onions, whole grains and legumes, plus the occasional dollop of fermented foods like sauerkraut or kimchi.

They must taste better than I think a crapsule does.