The truth about fish oil (and what works better)

Whether it is a newspaper, or a drug company or a supplement company, they all love a sensational headline.

From the wonder drug to cure all, to the supplement that will change everything, deep down, we all want a silver bullet to sort everything out (with very little effort on our part).

Thus, we are all prone to falling for clever marketing poking our vulnerable subconscious.

The drug companies love a “statistically significant” risk reduction, which turns out is clinically totally meaningless.

But the supplement companies can be prone to this too, albeit it selling non lethal supplements rather than drugs.

Omega 3 is one supplement that I personally feel is somewhat overhyped (plus taken out of context) and is taken when people can just eat oily fish 1-2 times a week.

This study was set up to see if it could reduce blood pressure and thus reduce risk in patients at risk of heart issues by analysing RCT’s.

The conclusions are:

Thus we can read that, and it would be easy to assume the blood pressure was brought down from high to normal (like a drug might do).

But what does the actual data show? Let’s check the full results and not just read the abstract.

As you can see 2-3 grams of EPA/DHA from fish oil reduces systolic blood pressure by an average of about 3 mm hg and diastolic by about 2 mm hg.

Let’s pretend your patient sees the GP and they have passed the arbitrary level of 140/90 mm hg (used to be a 100 plus your age back in the day didn’t it?!?).

Is a drop of 3/2 mm hg going to stop the use of medication?

100% no, never, ever, they are still going to whip out the prescription pad, tick some boxes and claim their bonuses.

The reality is, this level of change, while it might be statistically significant, is clinically meaningless.

The reality is blood pressure going up is a symptom, and partly a symptom of getting older. If you are 70 years old and over, if you have 120/80 BP, you are genetically blessed.

Most people, as they get older, the arteries naturally get a little harder and the pressure inside goes up a little. Hence we used to recognise this, and it was 100 plus your age for systolic pressure.

There are, of course, a million and one lifestyle things that can affect it, from insomnia to stress to coffee and on infinitum.

But what can we do a neuro-mechanical practitioners do to help?

The fewer drugs my patients take, the better.

One of our core commandments in the CCCN course is

That means we can do one thing and have multiple effects.

Could we give one supplement that reduces pain, increases energy, improves sleep, reduces anxiety and depression, and reduces blood pressure?

Funny you should ask, because yes, there is, it is called magnesium.

On the blood pressure front, we can get a meaningful reduction.

But let’s be clear, the elevation of blood pressure very high is always a complex thing with multiple factors. Do not expect magnesium to totally reduce it with a terrible lifestyle in place.

Yes, it can really help and by reducing pain, giving better sleep, less anxiety/depression and more energy – thus, they have a fighting chance at improving their lifestyle – it is really hard to exercise and make good food choices when you are permanently tired.

Magnesium is a great way to break the vicious cycle.

Remember we generally want to use magnesium in conjunction with vitamin B6 as B6 allows magnesium to get into the cell, that is why we have the magnesium PLUS product, 150 mg of magnesium citrate and 15 mg active B6 (P5P) so you can use it as a stand-alone product.

Remember the mechanism of magnesium is it blocks the receptor of the main excitatory neuro-transmitter GLUTAMATE, thus calming your nervous system down.

But it gets even better because GLUTAMATE becomes you main inhibitory neuro-transmitter GABA, but only if you have enough vitamin B6.

How cool is that!

Now, do you see why we, on the CCCN course, are so obsessed with magnesium and B6?

I wrote about it here before:

https://lessons.academyofchiropracticnutrition.com/why-magnesium-b6-are-a-marriage-made-in-heaven/

We also have the one-a-day multi essential that has a huge 35 mg of B6, for really chronic patients, we combine the one-a-day multi with x1/3 daily of the magnesium PLUS to give a juicy 80 mg total.

Thus FYI mimics many of the doses used in research studies which often go up to 100 mg daily. It is worth noting the RI/NRV is 1.5 mg.

For regular patients, we use the multi with simple magnesium citrate.

The chart below is from the magnesium infographic, which is attached.

We have 100% control over our supplement doses, and we use the latest research plus years of testing patients in the clinic to be able to focus on one thing: RESULTS for neuro-mechanical practitioners.