Consumer Labs offers as a subscription service testing of various vitamins Including fish oil. They perform a great service, and I think it's economical in terms of determining if what you're buying is really what you want.

Heavy metal contamination is classically not a problem because the fish oil is distilled. My guess is your researcher friend has fallen victim to the marketing of the pharmacological industry-- Although I do want to indicate they do have value, probably not the 500 percent markup that they put on what in essence is a generic product.

Some natural fish oils are not distilled and do have this problem-- These are normally marketed as natural or cod liver oil or something that should hit your radar pretty quick. Your friend's concern about rancidity is clearly a problem And pretty well understood by people for years if you have any familiarity with chemistry. Omega threes get their name from the fact that you have a weird bend on the end of a long carbon molecule. This is susceptible to oxidation. This is true for any Omega 3 molecule regardless of its length Or it's sourcing.

This includes omega-3 "drugs" like Vascepa (pure EPA) and Lovaza (EPA and DHA combination).

Fortunately in testing, they have not found widespread issues with rancidity, although they definitely have found pockets. My normal suggestion to everybody is by a high volume manufacturer that you know is tearing through the product quite rapidly. My top suggestion is Costco. Then make sure you keep your fish oil in the refrigerator, and churn through it on a regular basis.

I also started taking the Sports Research omega-3 capsules early this year. Seems the consensus for taking any omega-3 is that it's single-source and wild caught which is why I chose that brand. My biggest benefit has been my eyesight with way less floaters.

However I started taking creatine this summer to help with my recovery from running now that I'm older. I will say I feel it's done more for my cognitive function than the omega-3 did.

How much do you take? Evidence-based dosage guidance for supplements is hard to find. Pointers to primary sources with empirically supported dose ranges for common supplements—magnesium, zinc, and multivitamins—appreciated!

I believe you. People really don’t understand how important omega-3 is for the transport and metabolism of neurotransmitters.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16963244/

How long was your bullet chess elo stable at 850 (and how often were you playing) before this experiment began? I'm asking because the act of playing constitutes practice, which could itself cause a rise in your elo. Bit of a confounding factor there, potentially.

> but you need to buy a fancy brand to avoid rancid oil or heavy metal contamination both of which ~null out the benefits

I didn't know about the rancidity problem, thank you. Knew about the contamination issue. To avoid it, I tried to source oil derived from sources lower in the food chain, either vegan algae oil, or krill oil. But krill oil is super expensive, when compared to fish oil, with lower levels of EPA/DHA per capsule. The problem with algae oil it's that those I've found contain only DHA. Not sure about the relative importance between EPA/DHA, although.

I used to take Nordic Naturals EPA Xtra for a long time in the past and when taking them I'd sometimes have days when my thinking was unusually fluid and clear, something I have never experienced while taking my current brand of Omega 3 (the European Moller's Omega 3 Extra). (There could definitely be other reasons too besides Omega 3 intake.)

The Sports Research Triple Strength capsules just like the Nordical Naturals have much more EPA than DHA (but the ratio is different), so I might give these a try too.

Another piece of personal anecdata related to Omega 3, is that I recently started taking most of it with dinner, and my sleep subjectively feels slightly better than when I used to take them earlier in the day.

Revealed: many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/17/revealed...

> I play chess a bit like sushi ginger for the mind - purge working memory with a short intense task to context switch

I use it as a stupidity meter. If I play a series of bad bullet games, I’m more cautious about my decision making that day.

I do the same thing, except I subscribe to Thorne. I haven't noticed an uptick in perceived brain capacity, etc, but I can tell that my skin and hair are healthier. I started taking it because my cholesterol was all over the place and I desperately want to avoid taking a statin later in life. I'll be retesting that early next year. I've also started eating smoked salmon and canned sardines.

You can also get Omega-3 from algae oil (which is where fish get it) to alleviate concerns about heavy metal content. Algae may have heavy metals but should have less than any fish. I know nothing about this particular product, but they came up when I searched for it: https://www.norsan-omega.com/algae-oil/

Appreciate the anecdata. There could have been a bit of a deficiency compared to baseline.

I have heard of that brand too - quality matters.

Omega 3 containing sufficient DHA is studied to reduce inflammation in the brain as well has help with other cognitive processes.

Another one I had read is the insulin spike after a meal can be lowered significantly by having one omega-3 with each meal.

I’ll try to circle back with a few of the studies.

Your life sounds amazing. What other discoveries have you found? Do you publish anywhere online? (social media, Youtube, etc.)

Omega-3 together with vitamin B2 repolarizes microglia from pro-inflammatory state to healing state, so no wonder your brain got a boost. Now, how can I tell if Omega-3 capsules are rancid?

Playing chess as a baseline thing to know how your cognitive processing is seems like a good idea.

Eat sardines. Good protein, high omega 3, high in other vitamins too.

Or just eat foods that have it.

Eh, I could see it. When I look at my rating graph it's really easy to correlate with life events. Bad stuff at work, rating drops. Went on vacation, goes way up etc. Just being in a bad mood will fuck up my game, so I def think it's very possible it did affect your game that much. Not to mention that that level of chess is very volatile. A 2200 player would definitely not see the same effects.

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First, I am not trying to object to your point, but I do wanna point out this is a classical problem with the medicinal field. In that they show an outstanding inability to understand how to actually process data in light of survivorship bias. Do we know survivorship bias is here in your large study? Obviously not, but it is a strong concern. And one of the classic reasons these studies are very poor at establishing clear causation.

So, lets start by framing the study differently:

1. 10% drop out 2. 6-7% in the non-Omega3 get depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population 3. 6-75 in the 0mega3 depressed, which is now down to 90% of the population

My first question is, "Do we think that depressed people are more likely to follow a rigorous protocol for making sure they are highly adherent to taking their Omega-3s, or do we think that this group would tend to drop out of the study?

To me my hypothesis is clearly that depressive people tend to be less adherent. This seems intuitively obvious to anybody that knows anybody with depression. At the very least, this should be a massive red flag. The study assumes those missing participants are “missing completely at random,” rather than systematically related to the key outcome: depressive symptoms.

If participants who developed new or worsening depression were more likely to leave the study (a real possibility in mood research), the results would disproportionately reflect those who stayed well—not those most at risk. The study does acknowledge in its methods that follow-up missingness was treated as random and that participants administratively censored were presumed “missing completely at random.” However, this assumption ignores the real-world possibility that depressive symptoms themselves most likely drives dropout. Without targeted analysis of why people left, the null results risk underestimating any true link between omega-3 and depression prevention, making this a textbook example of unaddressed survivorship bias in clinical trial design and reporting.

Happened to me, already read all of these reddit comments. Fell into a massive depression the day after starting supplementation, extreme hopelessness. Had to stop, went away after a few days.

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Is that a joke? The myopia rate in China is much higher than in India:

China's myopia rate is 31%: 400 million of its 1.3 billion people are myopic. The prevalence of myopia in high school in China is 77%, and in college is more than 80%.

A study indicated that the prevalence of myopia among urban children in India of aged 5 to 15 increased from 4.44% in 1999 to 21.15% in 2019.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia

Both of these cultures are genetically adapted to the foods they need. So comparing these populations will not reveal anything about myopia in certain populations.

I disagree, I think they need to study specific populations for specific diseases associated with different diets. If you study this across population where this doesn’t matter as much then they will say omega-3 has no effect on nearsightedness, which is bad for the population that needs omega-3.

Omega-3 saved me from the fate of my family, dying from a heart attack before I was 50.

And I see this need in my genetics, specifically FADS1 FADS2 polymorphisms that make me need higher chain omega-3 fatty acids like from seafood.

By the way I've been extremely interested in this for years. While I take more supplements than what anybody probably should take, I give almost everybody that will listen this exact advice-- With the exception of creatine. Creatine is an interesting case, and I would say that it is less clear than the other three but I have been taking it for years and the latest research does make it look very promising. What is clear is virtually nobody gets the amount of magnesium that they should.

> Vitamin D, Omega 3, and possibly Magnesium and Creatine.

Vitamin D supplementation is mildly helpful for those with low baseline levels. However the benefits have been exaggerated across the internet and podcasts. A lot of studies show no measured reduction in things like frequency of respiratory infections ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38178229/ for example, which funnily enough had the Vitamin D3 treated men getting more respiratory infections).

Omega 3 has also been greatly exaggerated. Later large scale studies have shown minimal to no effects.

Magnesium is another one that can be helpful for those who are deficient, but due to the long duration within the body a lot of the supplement fanatics who consume large doses of magnesium might be getting too much over time. Gwern did some self-experimentation where magnesium might have possibly been net negative over time: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium

Creatine is the latest trend. If you believe the latest trends you need to consume a huge amount daily and it will fight off everything from depression to low energy. This is another one where the most impressive studies are all very small, but the larger the study the less impressive the results. The influencers only talk about the small, impressive studies, of course.

> I hate to sound like one of those "Do Your Own Research" types

The culture is slowly coming to terms with empiricism.

If a supplement doesn't provide a benefit (as in you notice when you forget to take it), and it doesn't affect a biomarker that you measure and care about, then don't take it. Simple as.

It may depend on what you count as a supplement. Fiber and protein are pretty good to supplement, though obviously you can also get them from diet. And testosterone (at least for males), though not without side effects.

> wow, not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health

The importance of dairy is overblown, especially in the US where the dairy industry funds a lot of school nutrition initiatives. I helped out around a cousin's dairy farm as a kid but eventually discovered that I'm part of the ~2/3rds of the world population that doesn't digest dairy well.

You'll get calcium as long as you eat some white/navy beans, tofu, kale, okra, collards, broccoli raab, chia, or even "calcium fortified" foods.

There has historically been a lot of flawed research about saturated fat. Sugar and fat together is always fattening, and being obese comes with a lot of risk.

> Summary from GPT

This whole post is filled with bad implicit advice. No one should stop eating meat to make their eyesight better. No one should add canola oil to their diet as a source of Omega 3.

> not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health

Non-fat dairy. Greek yogurt + walnuts + berries

Although high omega-3 with saturated fats may protect against the effect of only a diet high and saturated fats.

If I was not on my phone, I would look up the studies on this. :)

"... wow, not sure about avoiding cheese & milk - sounds risky for calcium/bones health ..."

A disappointing level of knowledge and sophistication in this late, 21st century era.

Your bone health is almost entirely correlated to the load bearing exercise and gravity stress that you put on your musculoskeletal system.

Fine optimizations to your diet (just like fine optimizations everywhere in life) are only sensible after you've taken care of the big, macro factors.

Milk/cheese is hardly the best/only source of calcium.