The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
smokers that had the high level, like smokers that were taking their fish oil or eating fish or whatever it was they were doing to get them up to 8%, they had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with the low Omega-3 Index.
Every Sunday: the week’s new conflicts and verdict changes — and nothing else.
Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
Having a low omega-3 index is more strongly associated with all-cause mortality than smoking.
we do know that smoking actually lowers the omega-3 index smokers have lower omega-3 index and non-smokers from other studies and it could be because of the hyper oxidative state of a smoker's blood that could actually destroy omega-3s potentially or they just don't eat fish oil they don't eat fish that's the other explanation
we do know that smoking actually lowers the omega-3 index smokers have lower omega-3 index and non-smokers from other studies
if you're a smoker and you have a low omega-3 you you're 50 you know over the 10 years of study your 10 years of study your 50-50 chance of living you're going to die a 50 chance of dying if you have a low omega-3 and you're non-smoker it's not so bad your your risk of death maybe is 30 over the um if you're a smoker and you have a high omega-3 that's the other flip side but you're a smoker your risk is kind of like having a low omega-3 being a non-smoker and then if you've best case you don't smoke and you have a high omega-3 your odds of dying are like 10
so it's in a way having a low omega-3 is like being a smoker from a but i don't mean to say that taking omega-3 erases your risk of being a smoker don't want people to think you can do that oh i keep smoking i just take some fish oil i'm good that's not not the deal
But smokers that took omega-3, that had high omega-3 indexes did not have that same low life expectancy. But here's the really interesting thing is that the smokers that took high omega-3 had the same life expectancy as the non-smokers with low omega-3.
So, in a way, low omega-3 was like smoking, you know, for your life expectancy.
if you look at the orange here that was a smoker with a high omega-3 had the same life expectancy as a non-smoker with low omega-3
low omega-3 index a low omega-3 index of four percent or less was comparable to actually smoking
So I would say when you get the omega-3 index measured, most people in the United States have an omega-3 index of less than 5%. And what Bill has shown from multiple studies is that people that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of 4%. So, 4% versus 8%.
The omega-3 in smokers that had a high omega-3 index, so they were smoking, but they were also eating a lot of fish, supplementing with fish oil. They had an 8% omega-3 index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega-3 index. In other words, smoking was like being deficient in omega-3.
the very very top curve the green curve people live the long if they had the 8% omega-3 index and they were non-smokers and the very very bottom curve the red one was people that were smokers and had a low omega-3 index 4% so those they had the the lowest life expectancy
if you look at the orange and blue curves they're I they're completely overlaid on top of each other so people that had a I high omega-3 index but smoked had the same life EXP expectancy as people that didn't smoke but had a low omega-3 index
people again with an 8% omega-3 index had a 5-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a 4% omega-3 index
Smokers with a high omega-3 index have the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega-3 index.
people with a high omega-3 index have about a 5-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low omega-3 index. And this is after correcting for all these confounding variables.
So what Bill and his colleagues did was they took this Framingham cohort and they took the people with the high omega-3 and the low omega-3 index and they said, "Okay, I want to look at these individuals and I want to specifically look at smokers versus non-smokers with a high and low omega-3."
You know, low omega-3 is like smoking when it comes to at least our overall life expectancy.
People that live the shortest life expectancy is what you would expect. Smokers with a low omega-3 index. That's red. So, they're dying sooner.
But what's so fascinating is that when you take the smokers that actually have a high omega-3 index, they have the exact same life expectancy as the non-smokers with a low omega-3 index.
When it comes to cardiovascular disease risk, that's an exponential increase. Like you, it doesn't take much. And that is because, you know, the damage that the tobacco smoke is doing to the endothelial cells and the inflammation that's being generated really really bad for cardiovascular health. Um, and so if you look at individuals that have the highest life expectancy, that would be in green, they were non-smokers with a high omega-3 index. They live the longest.