Are Omega-3s and Linoleic Acid fighting for your health?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-18

[00:00:01]So, okay, I want to ask you a question.

[00:00:02]I'm going to take off my sort of podcaster for the audience hat and ask you some questions that are confusing me right now personally. So, there's a lot of evidence out there that um omega-3s have various benefits. EPA and I'm talking about EPA and DHA now when I say omega-3 just so everyone knows.

[00:00:19]Um a lot of evidence that supplementing omega-3s tends to have positive effects.

[00:00:24]We talked about some of those. I'm I'm convinced by that. I I eat a lot of omega-3s. I live in Seattle. I have salmon all the time. I've got cod liver oil in the fridge. I've got my I got my omega-3 index from you guys um which is probably higher than 8% I would hope a little bit um when I get my new results in. So, I'm on board with that.

[00:00:43]So, then we talked about the linoleic acid stuff and we said that there's some literature out there that says higher serum levels of linoleic acid correlate with good stuff basically and we got into it a little bit there.

[00:00:55]Here's where I get confused and this is a genuine question cuz I don't fully know how to think about this I don't think yet.

[00:01:02]So, we've got the observation over here that higher EPA intake is good. We've got the observation over here higher linoleic acid is good.

[00:01:11]When I look at the literature on these things, EPA intake tends to lower membrane levels of linoleic acid omega-6s and vice versa. So, how do you think about how do you square the circle here? Um I'm not sure I I know data that shows that taking EPA is going to lower linoleic acid levels.

[00:01:37]Um It could It could be. I mean, it's more often the opposite.

[00:01:42]It's more often a higher linoleic acid might lower EPA.

[00:01:47]Correct. Higher linoleic acid lowers EPA without increasing arachidonic acid which is a detail for the connoisseurs out there to think about but EPA supplementation obviously increases EPA DHA levels that's no surprise but it does tend to increase linoleic acid and arachidonic acid that's been seen in a number of human studies and in animals it's it appears that the same thing happens and they know that it's through effects on gene expression ultimately of some of these enzymes so I find some of these things confusing.

[00:02:18]Well right and I mean I'd be able to give you a good answer about that.