Inconsistent findings in omega-3 health benefit studies may be due to reliance on self-reported dietary intake, which is less accurate than measuring blood levels.

“I've absolutely seen patients who eat one serving of fish a week and need four mega EPA DHA and it's the same brand so it's not a brand issue they'll take a you know mega dose four capsules a night of the big stuff and you might get them up to 7% and then I've seen other people who eat fish twice a week and they walk around at 9%”

“but since then studies have been inconsistent in showing the health benefits for omega-3s this may be partially due to differences in steady design especially when they rely on people self-reporting how much fish they ate people often misjudge how much or how often they eat a particular food and the amount of omega-3s and fish can vary quite a bit too but blood levels can provide a much more accurate measure of how much omega-3s a person actually eats”

“probably an even bigger variability is the variability uh in response to taking an omega-3 so we look at the delta the change in omega-3 index at different with different dosage groups and it can be you know on average it's a very nice the higher the dose the higher the omega-3 index but if you look at the individual display across those increases some people on the set on a 1800 milligrams of epa dha that might go up from an omega-3 index to four to four point three others might go up from four to eight i mean it's just huge variability”

“yeah right and this is something we we don't understand yet um there is quite a bit of background variability”