Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil may help maintain muscle mass during periods of disuse atrophy.

“I think it's very reasonable to try to get your omega-3 intake principally from diet. However, I'm also open to the possibility that higher doses might play a more specific therapeutic role in some contexts. For example, the podcast I released last week with Dr. Chris McGlory highlights a unique category of effects, specifically preventing muscle atrophy, which the evidence so far seems to show are clustered around higher dosages that might be impractical to get from diet alone.”

“Omega-3 could reverse this phenomenon in disuse atrophy and sarcopenia.”

“It's anti-catabolic for sure. You can have a nutritional intervention that can affect disuse like that.”

“I was really interested to see how Omega-3s you know are influencing the response in that clinical setting not necessarily in just healthy younger people”

“because there's some evidence that may play a role in helping you maintain muscle mass you know it's called disuse atrophy”

“but um I I truly believe that Omega-3s are playing a role in especially in the disuse atrophy and as we're going to talk about in a minute sarcopenia and it's it's a shame that it's going to take such a long time to get that into the clinical practice you know yeah and I think you know I I the jury still to some degree is very much out you know we need more work and uh to really to to study how it may be working and also in the larger populations whether it's working but I think the first thing is Do no harm and you know if in my understanding as long as the supplements are good quality supplements or especially if you get it from food sources you know oily fish and there's good quality of proteins in there if you're going to increase your omega-3 content of your diet you know I don't really see too much harm in if you're using a quality supplement or you're taking it particularly from a food first approach with oily Fisher I think that would be a good idea all around you know especially if you're coming or you're recovering from surgery so sarcopenia as we age we lose muscle mass we lose strength this is called circopenia and there's all sorts of problems It's associated with the two to threefold increased risk of Falls frail the disability I mean on and on as you mentioned mortality um obviously protein intake resistance training most important here as as you've already mentioned but there seems to be emerging evidence that omega-3 fatty acids again EPA and DHA being the the major players here are playing important role so in the context of sarcopenia you know there's a there's a disequilibrium it's my understanding there's a disequilibrium between muscle catabolism and muscle anabolism so is there evidence that it can shift it towards anabolism in the context of sarcopenia yeah so there's certainly evidence it's definitely by no means a a short case so essentially the the the reality is that the older folks as they you know as we age um there is that uh anabolic resistance to protein ingestion that will contribute towards the negative protein balance that may lead to that Decline and that's independent from physical inactivity which would accelerate that natural biological decline so the first thing is I would always say that exercise particularly resistance exercise like I said at the very start you can't out nutrition physical inactivity you've you've really got to make sure that you perform an exercise and stick into the guidelines and especially resistance exercises as we know are very potent means to enhance or maintain skeletal muscle mass and strength but in terms of Omega-3s to supplement that approach um I think there is emerging evidence and I think the you know the the series of papers by pretending between a mitt endorphos group I think were the landmark papers in this field where you know they were the ones that did the the showing there's enhanced protein synthetic response to amino acid infusion with Omega-3s and they replicated that in in younger people and older people and that's like the landmark study that really got me interested when I was in Scotland and studying this um and and that was published in ajcn with Gordon Smith as the lead author and then you know you're looking at those data and if you look at the difference that the Omega-3s had on the point synthetic response you're thinking there's no way like that is that is huge and then they followed it up with a another study in younger people so I kind of led a lot of credence to it and then they followed up with a longitudinal feed and I think it was six months of two grams per day of EP and DHA and the changes there were quite significant I believe it was in I believe it was mass some more too sure strength and at that point you're like wow okay well now I need to see like that one lab it's a really strong lab very well respected high quality work but you know just to you know confirm you'd like to see other people do in the group well Stuart gray then published the paper with krill oil similar uh participant cohort similar duration and replicated what had been shown by patina mittendorfer's group so then you're thinking okay there's something really going on here um and then you know we've seen the protection against issues atrophy in young women so there's now this growing uh body of evidence that suggests that Omega-3s are anabolic and they seem to be anabolic particularly in in older adults not just from a pretty synthetic point of view but also from the”

“I I only the only other study that I'm aware of with this is is in rodents where they fed with a high fish oil diet and they're protected against disused atrophy in that context”

“it was the marine forms of Omega-3 so it was EP PA and DHA”

“omega-3 fatty acids seem to be beneficial so Dr Chris mcglory came on the podcast and talked about some of his research using high dose omega-3 so was about five grams a day which is um a little bit higher than what is prescribed for some people for different cardi metabolic reasons was able to prevent or cut disuse atrophy almost by 50% in in this case it was in in women”

“And what was found was that the the women that were given this omega-3 fatty acid supplement, it cut their disuse atrophied in half.”

“And then we're going to get into the muscle and talk about disuse atrophy when we're not using our muscles and how omega-3 plays a very unique role in helping prevent some of that disuse atrophy and why that's so relevant.”