Ep. 19: Jacob M. Hands—What's Wrong With Fish Oil (Chocolate too!?!)?

Tucker Goodrich: Debugging Life

Introduction

What about fish oil? Is it a problem due to oxidation and contamination? Is it beneficial to health as many claim or is it a PUFA that’s bad for your health?

Jacob recently published an analysis of various fish oils with the team at Consumer Labs, looking at oxidative toxicity and purity of a wide variety of commercially available fish oils.

We discuss omega-3 and health, fish oils and oxidation, the science of seed oils and health, and, as a bonus, the problem with chocolates.

This is definitely a bit of a geek fest, so let me know if you have any questions.

Guest info

Jacob Hands, MD candidate and consultant for Consumer Lab on quality control and testing of supplements, and consultant to Rhonda Patrick, MD, of Found my Fitness.

Consumer Lab https://www.consumerlab.com/

Found my Fitness https://www.foundmyfitness.com/

Biography:

“Medical student passionate about patient care, research, and emerging therapeutics.

“M.D. Candidate at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-hands-3622619b/

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Looking to fix your diet by getting rid of seed oils?

Check out the Seedy app!

https://www.seedyapp.com/

Tucker Goodrich

Substack: https://tuckergoodrich.substack.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TuckerGoodrich

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/tuckergoodrich0

Apple podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tucker-goodrich-podcast/id1617481825

Spotify podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wVZ3TnRjGsa1cP2gzWY0y

Podcast: https://sites.libsyn.com/408758

Blog (deprecated, but still a lot there!): http://yelling-stop.blogspot.com/

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Show Notes

Hands, J. M., Anderson, M. L., Cooperman, T., & Frame, L. A. (2023). A Multi-Year Rancidity Analysis of 72 Marine and Microalgal Oil Omega-3 Supplements. Journal of Dietary Supplements, 0(0), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/19390211.2023.2252064

This is the only human study I’m aware of showing harm from eating marine foods. The Japanese and the Eskimos do not suffer from infertility, so I think this gentleman must have been doing something wrong.

“I lived for 100 days on nothing but marine animal food (seal, fish, crustaceans and molluscs) and water; weights of all food were recorded….”

“In seminal fluid, the total amount of prostaglandins decreased significantly and small amounts of the [Ω-]3-series appeared; spermatozoa became immobile and then disappeared.”

Sinclair, H. M. (1981). The Relative Importance of Essential Fatty Acids of the Linoleic and Linolenic Families: Studies with an Eskimo Diet. Progress in Lipid Research, 20, 897–899. https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-7827(81)90167-3

Goodrich, T. D. (2022, April 13). The Folate Experiment [Blog]. Yelling Stop. https://open.substack.com/pub/tuckergoodrich/p/the-folate-experiment

Goodrich, T. (2021, October 19). What Is The Most Fattening Food? [Blog]. Yelling Stop. https://tuckergoodrich.substack.com/p/what-is-the-most-fattening-food

Mozaffarian, D., Hao, T., Rimm, E. B., Willett, W. C., & Hu, F. B. (2011). Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Women and Men. New England Journal of Medicine, 364(25), 2392–2404. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1014296

Zong, G., Liu, G., Willett, W. C., Wanders, A. J., Alssema, M., Zock, P. L., Hu, F. B., & Sun, Q. (2019). Associations Between Linoleic Acid Intake and Incident Type 2 Diabetes Among U.S. Men and Women. Diabetes Care, 42(8), 1406–1413. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc19-0412

Johns, D. M. (2023, April 13). Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result: Could Ice Cream Possibly Be Good for You? The Atlantic, 5/2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/

Pearce, N. (2011). Epidemiology in a Changing World: Variation, Causation and Ubiquitous Risk Factors. International Journal of Epidemiology, 40(2), 503–512. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyq257

Huang, Z., Sun, S., Lee, M., Maslov, A. Y., Shi, M., Waldman, S., Marsh, A., Siddiqui, T., Dong, X., Peter, Y., Sadoughi, A., Shah, C., Ye, K., Spivack, S. D., & Vijg, J. (2022). Single-Cell Analysis of Somatic Mutations in Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells in Relation to Aging and Smoking. Nature Genetics, 54(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01035-w

Jacob’s Discussion Notes

Topics to cover

1. Omega-3 paper –
   1. Overall, our results revealed that 68% (23/34) of flavored and 13% (5/38) unflavored consumer Ω3 supplements exceeded the TOTOX upper limit set by the Global Organization for EPA and DHA (GOED) voluntary monograph standard of ≤ 26, with 65% (22/34) flavored supplements and 32% (12/38) unflavored supplements failing the PV upper limit of ≤ 5 and 62% (21/34) flavored supplements exceeding the p-AV upper limit of ≤ 20.
      1. What’s important is that peroxide was still significantly different in those with added versus non added extracts (0.04) almost double the PV
   2. How does fish oil metabolize?
      1. Peroxides, then aldehydes (Ω-3HHE & Ω-6 HNE, etc.)
      2. Why do I think it probably doesn't matter?
         1. 2 big studies – in the first study, after seven weeks of supplementation with 8 grams of oil per day, the authors found no signs of oxidative stress in any of the groups after looking at nine different measures (4-HHE, 4-HNE, 8-iso-prostaglandin F2α, alpha-tocopherol, total glutathione, glutathione reductase, glutathione peroxidase, catalase, and C-Reactive Protein) of oxidative stress in the blood and urine 4. This study demonstrated that high dosages of highly oxidized fish oil do not induce oxidative stress in our bodies.”
         2. “The second study was conducted by the same group and used the same study design, but looked at four additional markers of oxidative stress related to vascular inflammation (intercellular adhesion molecule 2 (sICAM-2), soluble vascular adhesion molecule 1 (sVCAM-1), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and oxidized LDL cholesterol) 5. Again, no impact on these markers was found with consumption of abnormally oxidized fish oil.” BUT
         3. point to consider is that may have adverse effects on lipids

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/oxidised-fish-oil-does-not-influence-established-markers-of-oxidative-stress-in-healthy-human-subjects-a-randomised-controlled-trial/32EB4869D3012F6E44FD23A7D25D7F7E

Would want to point out that ICAM and VCAM does

2. How should I think more generally about oxidized oils?
   1. First of all, let’s go over fats and how that works – note that we don't have 15 desaturase which would convert 06 to 03 – what’s going to be the broad point? Each 06 and 03 come with anti-inflammatory elements, one is just less inflamm
      1. Notice that AA derived eicosanoids products such as lipoxins actually follow https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC164223/

2. Something sympathetic for you – Nicolantino et al. argue 06 is a driver because oxidation products of LA are high in atheromas https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000898 – why is this not replicated in most of the systematic analysis?
   1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8924827/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20an%20inverse%20relationship%20between,CHD)%20risk%20%5B9%5D. (granted this FBG and other markers of coronary disease increase etc)
   2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6029721/ (more linolenic = less diabetes)
   3. https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4697
   4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408398.2022.2056867 (linear LA = less CHD)
   5. More LA less CVD https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4334131/
   6. LA inverse AA positively associated with diabetes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S026156142030008X
   7. Cochrane style review unclear https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723079/
   8. Cancer risk? Minimal except maybe prostate cancer https://www.nature.com/articles/s41416-020-0761-6
3. More to the point, there is no evidence that even giving straight ARA still unclear up to 1 gram https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/systematic-review-of-the-effects-of-increasing-arachidonic-acid-intake-on-pufa-status-metabolism-and-healthrelated-outcomes-in-humans/6A0167CBF8EC148B4855C25D002E4AC4
   1. Even if metabolized, the oxidative derivatives can do cool things
   1. would other oils increase oxidative stress? Maybe https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/217/1/012055

(source) https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/other-nutrients/essential-fatty-acids

4. Is the body made to deal with oxidative stress?
   1. What is the evidence that the mouse model is valid? Note Scandinavian SNPs associated with rancid consumption
   2. Changes in MDA are unpredictable and highly oxidized meals can generate low MDA etc not easy to say that
   3. Omega 3 attenuates effects of oxidation and increases parameters of oxidative stability https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31563611/
2. Chocolate
   1. Cadmium is toxic lol but here it data on recruiting pro-inflammatory macrophages in artery https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27156912/
   2. Lead also bad for various reasons
   3. Lets go over levels, why prop 65 exists versus what an IRL is and 2.2 8.8 mcg/day means in any context

If you have any questions about sources for things discussed please ask in the comments.