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What Next? Adding Fish Oil

Having reached the end of my experiment, I didn’t have any next step already planned out. So I did a quick regroup last night and decided I’d add fish oil to the mix, since it’s been promoted to be beneficial to one’s cholesterol profile.

It will end up being a bit of a late start, since I had my blood drawn December 4th, but I still ought to be able to get almost 30 days of taking it before the next screening.

So my modified supplement schedule will look like this:

• Slo-Niacin (500mg morning, 500mg night)
• Chromium Polynicotinate (200mcg morning, 200mcg night)
• Policosanol  (23mg night)
• Vitamin C (2,000mg morning, 2,000mg night)
• Fish Oil (2,400mg morning, 2,400 mg night)

I’ll continue with resistance training 3 days a week, cardio 3 days a week, and my current diet.

Here’s the skinny on fish oil:

The omega-3s in fish oil do not work like statins, which selectively lower only one kind of “bad” cholesterol, called LDL.  It’s believed that the omega-3s in fish fat reduce the risk of strokes, sudden cardiac death, and second heart attacks by doing four things:

1. Lower blood triglyceride (fat) levels.
2. Raise levels of “good” (HDL) cholesterol.
3. Lower levels of all non-HDL cholesterol
4.  Reduce risk of arrhythmias (conditionally, and not consistently)

It has been documented that fish oil can raise levels of LDL cholesterol slightly in people with high blood levels of triglycerides. This slightly negative impact is insignificant when seen in the context of all of the effects that omega-3s exert on blood fats, blood cholesterol, arterial inflammation, blood stickiness (platelet aggregation), and other relevant risk factors for cardiovascular disease

How Omega-3s affect cholesterol

Omega-3s don’t lower cholesterol in the way statin drugs are designed to do. In fact, omega-3s often raise levels of LDL cholesterol slightly in people with high triglyceride levels. But this is not in itself a cause of concern. 

Omega-3s tend to lower levels of all non-HDL types of cholesterol. This effect of omega-3s is very significant, for three reasons:

1. Non-HDL cholesterol includes all of the cholesterol carried by oxidation-susceptible — hence, plaque-promoting — lipoproteins, not just LDL
2. Having high blood levels of all non-HDL cholesterol predicts risk of arteriosclerosis better than high LDL levels alone do;
3. After LDL-lowering treatment goals have been reached, reduction of total non-HDL cholesterol is a recommended secondary treatment target in patients with high blood triglyceride levels (200 mg/dl or more).

Triglyceride levels, blood stickiness (platelet activation), and vulnerability to arrhythmias are equally powerful predictors of the risks of heart attacks, sudden cardiac death, and strokes … and fish oil is proven to reduce all of these risk factors substantially.

Most of the cholesterol in the blood comes not from foods, but from the liver, where it is created in response to signals from the body: signals influenced by dietary fats and many other factors.

Dietary cholesterol and saturated fats are not inherently artery-clogging substances, but both become problematic in the context of the average American diet, which is imbalanced deeply in key respects:

• A low ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids
• High sugar-starch intake
• Insufficient intake of foods high in heart-protecting fibers, vitamins, minerals, and the polyphenol antioxidants abundant in tea, cocoa, and colorful fruits, vegetables, and wild salmon. (Salmon’s red-orange color comes from astaxanthin [ass-tuh-zan-thin]: a uniquely powerful carotene-class polyphenol antioxidant.)

The vast preponderance of evidence indicates that the heart disease epidemic afflicting Americans has little to do with their intake or blood levels of cholesterol. Instead, the evidence points to the American diet’s dearth of anti-inflammatory, anti-arrhythmic omega-3s and wildly excessive intake of pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids — from cheap vegetable oils (corn, soy, safflower, cottonseed, canola) used in home/restaurant cooking and in packaged foods — trans fats (from hydrogenated oils), sugars, and refined corn and wheat starches.

The reason why high blood levels of “good” HDL cholesterol are the newest measure of heart-health is that HDL cholesterol spirits excess LDL cholesterol out of sticky blood, thereby keeping it from being oxidized and/or sticking to arterial lesions.

And arterial lesions are also caused in large part by the chronic lack of dietary omega-3s and excess of dietary omega-6 and trans fats: an imbalance that promotes wear-and-tear damage to arteries, plaque build-up, and clot formation.

Research shows omega-3s reduce heart-related deaths about as effectively as statins:

• Omega-3s reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death – the cause of half of all heart-related deaths.
• Omega-3s cut the risk of second heart attacks and consequent death or disability substantially.

Omega-3s have been shown to decrease the risk of death from all causes, almost as much as statins. 

So lets see if 30 days of taking fish oil has any effect on my numbers.

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