Comment by maxboettinger
5 months ago
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!
This really is a good use for Perplexity. I suggest a prompt along the lines of "what is the pubmed indications for what somebody should take for omega-3 or n3 pufa for X". This way your pull the primary research and you can have a conversation to your needs.
With that written, generally the literature indicates that somewhere around 1-2G daily of EPA/DHA is in the range of what is fringe mainstream. There is a lot of variance around this and a lot of debate. For example, you'll get a debate about the ability of the body to convert 22 EPA into 24 DHA, so some will push DHA as the preferred source for the body.
The range of 1 to 2 g daily of DHA+EPA has been suggested based on the daily consumption of 2 g or more that is typical for populations like the Japanese, who include a great proportion of marine food in their diet and who appear to derive health benefits from this.
I agree that for now there is no better evidence about which is the optimal daily intake.
Quantities about 10 times less than this might be sufficient to avoid any obvious signs of nutritional deficiency, but are unlikely to be optimal.
The capacity of converting ALA from vegetable oil into DHA and EPA may vary a lot between humans and it is typically lower in males than in females and also lower in older people than in young people.
The less risky choice is to ensure that you eat enough DHA+EPA. Perhaps one does not need 1 to 2 g of DHA+EPA daily, but eating it is unlikely to be harmful, while not eating it carries definite risks.
If you lean at all toward evolutionary biology, You tend to pay attention to the idea that earlier man had a diet which had a much higher ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6.
I would add that vegetable oils probably are not the ideal solution just beyond the idea that you need to extend the carbon chain up to something that can be used for your body in some type of pharmacological type role. The modern western diet has a ratio of somewhere around 15 to 20 to one in terms of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Virtually every vegetable oil will continue to drive that ratio toward a imbalance toward Omega 6.
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There’s a study that 3g is needed to move triglycerides and HDL in a good direction. I did that under a doctor’s direction and it worked as intended. Didn’t do anything for my cholesterol otherwise which is one of the confounders in some of the studies. Sometimes people get better LDL, sometimes not. vLDL improved markedly but maybe I was just taking better care of my diet between tests.
I don’t mind taking them so I kept the Omega 3s and started taking others for my LDL issues.
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Ask Claude Opus to search, verify, source and then quote back passages and provide a link back the information for the supplement and any particular health needs and start reading.
Keep modifying the prompt until you don't need to review it as much, but still review it. I have a pretty long one like this now and it almost doesn't seem real. Still double check what it returns. It's easy enough to take the retrieved studies to your doc for verification too .
For example, if targeting the brain, levels can be much higher.
Magnesium Threonate crosses the blood brain barrier, which is great, leaving Magnesium Biglycinate for the rest of the body.
Would you mind sharing your prompt?