Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. DEPRESSION & AGING, WHAT CAN BE DONE, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 634 Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our degreed …
Written by Dr.Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at carcidiacono@invitehealth.com In our last blog we completed our lupus discussion. This week we will be discussing another autoimmune disease called psoriatic arthritis. Psoriatic arthritis is a type of arthritis that occurs in individuals …
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Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer, at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. † [00:00:34]
*Intro Music*
Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Welcome to part three of my podcast episodes. Krill or fish oils, pick one and take it. I’m reviewing different reasons why it is so important. Truly, for your health, the health of your brain and your heart, but also your muscles. I didn’t even go into bone health and many other reasons why it’s important to take one of these supplements just to ensure that you’re getting sufficient levels of the nutrients in fish oils. And the reason I, I opt personally to take Krill oil is there’s additional benefit, the benefits are actually amplified because there’s additional ingredients in the Krill oil versus the fish oils and not to mention there are other significant aspects, significant advantages actually to taking Krill because it’s easier to swallow. You don’t get the fish burps, it’s easier to keep fresh and there’s really a pretty good archive of research. And as new research coming out all the time about the benefits of fish oils and Krill oil. So the name once again is Krill or fish oils, pick one and take it. I prefer Krill oil. My name is Jerry Hickey, I’m a nutritional pharmacist, I’m also the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. You can find all of the Invite Health podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts for free that is, and you can also just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and listen to any of these. There’s hundreds of them at this point performed by different health professionals. You can also find Invite at Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Invite Health. So I really want to get into this because now we’re going to go into studies about the heart and a lot of them will be with fish oils, but Krill will accomplish the same thing. This is the journal Pharmacological Research. So we’re going way down memory lane. This is 1999, September 1999, so we’ve known about these benefits for many decades. And they’re looking at the DHA specifically in fish oils, DHA is one of the major fats in fish oils and krill oil, and it’s very good for the brain. It’s also very good for the heart, it’s good for the eyes, it’s good for your muscles and bones. It’s good for women’s breasts, it’s good for the colon. It’s just fantastic for the liver. It’s looking at fish oils close to 200 milligrams of DHA per day, reduced the risk of dying, the rate of dying, the rate of dying after a heart attack by 50%. And there was a very strong correlation that fish oils in general reduce thrombosis. In other words, because they’re anti-inflammatory, they help prevent improper blood clotting. Now, they’re not really a great blood thinner. In fact, they’re pretty poor blood thinner. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t depend on fish oils as a blood thinner, you’re better off with a low dose aspirin. We don’t call them baby aspirins anymore because they can cause damage to children if there are particular viruses, nerve damage. We call them low dose adult aspirin. So you’re better off taking a low dose adult aspirin to help prevent blood clots. But fish oils work in a different way because they’re anti-inflammatory. They’re not directly thinning the blood, they’re just helping prevent thrombosis by reducing the inflammation that might trigger a blood clot that can lead to a stroke or heart attack. And fish oils also, of course, reduce triglycerides and they help prevent cardiac arrhythmias. This is all coming out of that study in 1999. We knew even before that of these benefits, so this is The Lancet. † [00:04:18]
[00:04:19] The Lancet is sort of the British version of the New England Journal of Medicine, and it’s the March 2007 edition. And they said there’s epidemiological and clinical evidence. Epidemiological means they’re looking at large population studies, and clinical evidence means they actually did a study specific to fish oils and they said the increased intake of n-3 long chain fatty acids, now that’s interesting. The terminology for fish oils, there could be n-3 fatty acids, they could be a long chain fatty acid, EPA, DHA, fish oils, there’s all different names. They protect you from mortality related to coronary artery disease. So, I mean, there’s so much evidence. So, this is Kobe University, Kobe University. They tested the long-term effects of EPA and a prevention of major heart related events from our age of coronary events and patients with elevated cholesterol. So, they’re looking at Kobe University, by the way. So, in Japan, they’re looking at 18,645 patients with elevated cholesterol. So, their cholesterol’s typically 251 mg/dl. Another way to say that it would be above 6.5 million moles per liter, there’s different ways of saying these terms, that’s how medicine is. You know, you’re stuck with all these terms and they’re looking at statins versus statins, plus fish oil EPA over a five-year period. So, they looked at sudden cardiac death, they’re looking at cardiac arrest, they’re looking at fatal heart attacks and survivable heart attacks, non-fatal heart attacks. They’re looking at unstable angina, which is very dangerous. That’s when you’re not getting enough blood flow to the heart. They’re looking at the need for heart surgery and stenting or angioplasty or bypass surgery or grafting, and they found that adding the EPA from fish oils onto a statin, reduced the death of fatal heart attacks by 19%. That’s above and beyond any benefit from a drug. And they reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease. And I mean, it was reducing LDL cholesterol, a major factor in cardiac events. It was preventing unstable angina; it was preventing nonfatal heart attacks. It was, all of this was reduced in a group that was getting the EPA, which one of the fish oils, one of the oils in fish oils and Krill oil added to a statin. Now, let’s just talk about sudden cardiac death. Sudden cardiac death kills anywhere from 250 to 350,000 Americans each year. What happens? They have cardiac arrest. This happened to that football player on the Buffalo Bills about six weeks ago. And this is what killed Elvis Presley’s daughter. What’s her name? Priscilla Presley. I don’t keep up with that stuff, I’m not big into like you know, celebrities. So, but it killed Elvis Presley’s daughter. And so cardiac arrest is usually a byproduct of having heart disease, something some kind of damage to the heart. But it can also happen from like an accident, like severe trauma to the chest and the heart stops beating. The problem is only about 8% of the people who suffer with this, the heart starts to beat again. So, it kills over a quarter of a million Americans each year. There’s many, many scores of studies that fish oils reduce your risk of sudden cardiac death by a very solid figure. So that alone, never mind the additional benefits for the brain and the eyes and the muscles and the bones, etc. That alone makes it consequential for taking a fish oil supplement. I mean, there’s true benefit there. So, this is the Journal Nutrients. The Journal Nutrients March 2010, it’s the Department of Preventive Cardiology, Ludwig Maximilian University, that’s in Munich, Germany. Never met them, never been to Germany. I always wanted to go there, especially Munich and the Black Forest area. That’s on my kind of bucket list, except I expect to live for many more years. I’ve got a very long time to complete my bucket list, I believe. So, here’s what they state, sudden cardiac death is responsible for 15% of all deaths in Western countries. And that increased intake of the fish oil or the krill oil fats, the EPA, DHA protects us from sudden cardiac death and other major cardiac events, according to an analysis of data by this group. † [00:09:27]
ICYMI:KRILL OIL, OR FISH OILS. PICK ONE AND TAKE IT. INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 624>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:09:29] So this is the British Medical Journal December 2008, and they looked at 12 studies. They did a meta-analysis where they grouped all these studies, so it’s all different researchers and thousands of people. It’s 32,779 patients. Fish oils decreased the risk of sudden cardiac death up to 48% and reduced risk of dying from any cardiac cause up to 31%. So, I mean, listen, we know that aspirins help protect you and there’s evidence that statins help protect you and ACE inhibiting drugs help protect you from all these things. But fish oils really important, and I have to add, at this point, certain things reduce the amount of fish oils in your body. Statin drugs, believe it or not, there are certain nutrients that are important for your brain and your heart. And statin drugs take them out of the body for one reason or another. So one of them would be Ubiquinol, the active form of CoQ10, statin drugs to reduce the amount of ubiquinol in the body, you actually need additional Ubiquinol if you’re on a statin drug because it gives the brain and your eyes and all your high energy organs like your pancreas and your liver and your skin and your kidneys, but especially your heart and your muscles, gives them energy, endurance and stamina. So here you’re taking a drug for the heart and it’s reducing a major nutrient that’s important for the heart called Ubiquinol. So, if you’re on a statin drug, you have to take Ubiquinol. If you’re on statin drug, you have to take lutein, lutein is important for your vision and your brain, your memory. If you’re on a statin drug, you have to take fish oils. Statin drugs, reduce the amount of fish oils in the body. So instead of just taking a regular amount of fish oils, if you’re on a statin drug, you actually need more than the general population would need. There’s something called the omega three index, it’s the amount of fish oils on your red blood cell versus all the other oils. And you want it over 8% because that’s really where you get the heart and brain benefits for fish oils. You can have that test done, it’s a blood test. So, reducing the risk of dying from heart attacks and strokes and arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death and all of these other things, even if you’re on a statin or aspirin or an ACE inhibitor or one of these fancy drugs, you really should be on fish oils. † [00:11:56]
[00:11:58] And like I said, I prefer Krill oil, I take three a day with my breakfast. But I do eat fish, I do eat fish, I eat fish several times a week. So, this is the Mayo Clinic proceedings, I’m kind of a Mayo Clinic kind of guy, you know, you see the kind of the Mayo Clinic in competition with the Cleveland Clinic. And I’ve seen some things out of the Cleveland Clinic that just didn’t sit right with my knowledge set. So, I’ve always kind of been biased towards the stuff that comes out of the Mayo Clinic. I just have more confidence in them than the Cleveland Clinic and what can I tell you? So according to the Mayo Clinic proceedings, December 2019, Fish Oils Reduce Cardiovascular Events. This is the University of Queensland School of Medicine in New Orleans and University of South Dakota School of Medicine and St Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute. So, fish oils reduce cardiovascular events. What’s a cardiovascular event? Could be sudden cardiac death, it could be a cardiac arrest, which is kind of like a heart seizure. It could be an arrhythmia, like atrial fibrillation when heart’s beating erratically and very rapidly and it could throw off a blood clot that ends you by causing a stroke. It could be a heart attack. I mean, it could be anything, anything with the heart. So, fish oils reduced cardiovascular events. They reviewed three randomized controlled trials, very large trials of fish oils on the occurrence of cardiovascular events, and here’s what they found. One trial had 8179 patients, most with coronary heart disease, which is the biggest killer in the world. The arteries in the heart clogged. The arteries are usually the biggest blood vessels, but the ones in the heart, they’re kind of small, they’re like a sippy straw that you get in a kid’s drink, you know, like the kid’s apple juice, they have that little sippy straw. So, when they get clogged, I mean, it’s very dangerous because there’s not really a lot of room for blood to get to the heart in the first place. You know, even though the heart’s pumping blood, the heart also needs blood. So, the arteries that feed the heart are getting clogged here and high doses of fish oils, especially EPA, reduced risk of major coronary events by 25%. So, the two other large recent randomized controlled trials, 840 mg a day of EPA and DHA, good quality fish oils, significantly, very significantly reduced risk of coronary heart disease, deaths and cardiovascular deaths and events. So, this is especially true in people who don’t consume fish because they’ve got to be very low on fish oils. And how much fish do you need to eat? You need two good servings, like eight ounces of fish twice a week. A lot of people don’t eat fish. I’ll tell you, there’s nothing that tastes better than a freshly caught fish. Like if you’re down in Florida and you could get those, what they call them, mangrove snappers or yellow snappers, I mean, you can’t hurt those fish, they are delicious. So, you know, if you don’t like fish, those are a good fish to look at, they taste delicious. † [00:14:58]
ICYMI: KRILL OIL OR FISH OILS, PICK ONE AND TAKE IT, PART 2. INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 625>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:14:59] So here’s more from the Mayo Clinic proceedings, January 2017. It’s Ann Arbor, Michigan, they’re up at EpiDStat Institute, and they’re looking at 18 randomized controlled human clinical trials and 16 prospective cohort studies. And this is examining fish oils and heart attacks, fish oils and sudden cardiac death, fish oils and anything related to your circulation and death and fish oils related to angina, which is a lack of blood flow to the heart and in patients with elevated triglycerides in these studies in a randomized controlled trials or with high LDL cholesterol. Fish oils really help prevent coronary heart disease risk. They just cut the risk of coronary heart disease and they significantly cut the risk of any coronary heart disease related event. Now, here’s, this really is like the verdict on fish oils. It’s a massive review, an unbelievably comprehensive review that was published recently in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It was published on December 28th, 2022, which is very recent. And they looked at all these supplements, all these supplements. You know, people say this is good for the heart and that’s good for the heart, so they said, you know, let’s cut through the nonsense. Let’s see what supplements are really good for the heart, which supplements have really top-notch evidence that they’re good for your heart. They’re important for your heart. So, they collated 884 randomized controlled human clinical trials that were included in their meta-analysis. So, they looked at many more studies on that. So, this combined the results from 883,000 people, I mean, that’s bigger than most cities. Now who performed this? Brown University. Brown University’s Ivy League. Right? And Mt. Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai is where my doctors are, it’s a great place, Mount Sinai in Manhattan. And they have, you know, Mount Sinai satellites now out in Suffolk County, Long Island, and down in West Palm Beach, Florida. So, you know, you can get to Mount Sinai doctors and they found that fish oils and folate and Ubiquinol are extremely important for your heart. Fish oils, if you had cardiovascular disease, a big killer, fish oils prevented you from dying from cardiovascular disease and they prevented you from dying from a heart attack and they prevented coronary heart disease related events. I mean, this is real data, they were preventing you from having a heart attack or a stroke or arrhythmias or dying from these things. Now, there’s many studies, many additional studies besides what they include in their review that show this. So fish oils, I’m going to rest my case there. I’ve got so many other studies. I’ve got so many other studies. In fact, very quickly, I’ll review a couple of more studies, but let’s just look at the other two supplements very quickly. Fish oils, I use Krill, very good for the heart. Ubiquinol, active version of Coenzyme Q10, very good for the heart. Your heart has a great demand for energy. It’s beating basically 80 times per minute, so that’s over 100,000 times a day. It’s pumping blood, so it never gets a rest, it needs a lot of energy. Ubiquinol is a source of energy, ubiquinol allows the heart to use sugar for energy so, and Ubiquinol levels drop with age. And if you’re on a statin drug, that further lowers your Ubiquinol level. And if you’re diabetic, you can’t create Ubiquinol out of CoQ10, Ubiquinol is the accurate version of CoQ10. So not only are fish oils or Krill oil important for the heart, Ubiquinol is important for the heart and so is folate, folate is a B vitamin in most multivitamins and b-complex, is they use a synthetic form called folic acid. The problem with that is not everybody can convert it into the active form, which is methyltetrahydrafolate. So, if you get a b-complex or you get a multivitamin, make sure the form of folate in there is methyltetrahydrafolate. It’s very important for reducing your risk of stroke and also reducing your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. I promised you several more quick studies on fish oil. So, let’s get to that, now we’re looking at like Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia and Parkinson’s dementia, that’s a new study. But many other studies really support these findings. So, it’s not the study is not existing in a vacuum and its results are supported by other studies. Fish oils reduce the risk of instant dementia. So, it’s reducing the number of people that are diagnosed with vascular dementia or frontotemporal dementia. It’s not the one that Bruce Willis was just diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. It’s in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, and they’re looking at 219,000 people over the age of 60 in the UK, and they followed them for approximately 12 years. I mean, fish oils reduced the risk of vascular dementia by 57%. Vascular dementia is a dementia in and of itself, but it’s also part and parcel of other dementias. So, here’s a meta-analysis from 2016. A meta-analysis means they took a whole bunch of studies and put them together. So, they have to make sure that these studies are well performed, and they are lacking bias and they report it properly. And the beauty of a meta-analysis, you’re taking all of these academic research institutions and you’re clustering together, you’re collating it together. So, you’re getting all different researchers and all different types of people. So, it’s 21 cohort studies, approximately a little over 181,000 people. Fish oils prevented cognitive impairment in people as they age. And fish oils prevented incident dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, so they were good for depression. They clip your mood ups of several points. So, you know, you really need to pick one and take it even if you’re eating fish several times a week. A lot of things lower the amount of fish oils in your body, and you want a good amount fish oils in your body like statin drugs, lower the amount of fish oils and aging lowers the amount of fish oils in the body for some crazy reason. So, you want to make sure you have enough, and by taking a fish oil supplement every day or a Krill oil supplement every day, it’s further insurance that you have enough fish oils. So, thanks for listening to my podcast episode. You can find all of our podcast episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. And if you could leave a review and also, you know, sign up, subscribe please, and it’ll be very helpful. You can also find Invite on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at Invite Health. I want to thank you for listening today and I hope to see you next time on another episode of InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Jerry Hickey signing off, have a great day. † [00:14:59]
*Exit Music*
Written by Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at carcidiacono@invitehealth.com Last week we started off our discussion of arthritis with osteoarthritis (OA). This week we will be looking at rheumatoid arthritis (RA). When most people think of RA they …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. KRILL OIL, OR FISH OIL. PICK ON AND TAKE IT- PART 2. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 625 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the …
Subscribe Today!
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. † [00:00:34]
*Intro Music*
Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:41] For many years, I’ve been collating and examining, analyzing and reviewing the data on both fish oils and Krill oil, and they’re pretty much interchangeable. I personally take Krill oil because there are other ingredients in it that are very good for your health, which fish oils do not offer. But I also eat fish. And if you look across the spectrum of benefits, there’s myriad benefits. And if you’re starting in the brain, there’s benefits from both Krill oil or fish oils for protecting the brain from some serious consequences, such as age-related diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, lowering inflammation on the brain, but also healing and rejuvenating the brain and affecting the way your brain functions. So, in a very good way, I mean, your brain is largely made out of fats, especially fish oils and collagen, a protein. I mean, that’s what makes up your brain for the most part. And B vitamins and phosphatides. We’ll go into this a little bit during the course of the episode. And I think these nutrients are so, so powerful and so important that I gave this episode a very simple name, Krill oil or Fish oils, pick one and take it. And by the way, when you take those, they’re fatty soluble, they should be absorbed better into your system if you take them with a meal because the little bit of fat in the meal boosts the absorption of these fatty substances. But these are good fats. You want these fats; you need these fats. You have to have these fats to survive, but also to thrive and a lot of things lower the amount of these fats in the body. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. Also, we’ll go into the dosages needed a little bit. In any event, welcome to my episode. I already gave you the name, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. You can find all of the Invite Health podcast episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to our website, invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at Invite Health. All of the information on this episode will be listed in the podcast episode description. So, let’s get going. I’m going to be jumping around a little bit because there’s so much to say and this is actually very exciting stuff for me. And, you know, I probably will wind up breaking this down to two or three episodes because, you know, I mean, who wants to listen to an episode longer than 15 or 20 minutes, really? † [00:03:18]
[00:03:20] So here’s JAMA Network Open, this is a very recent study. JAMA is the Journal of the American Medical Association, so this is a big time. It’s Tufts University, one of my favorite academic research institutions, which of course is up in Boston, Mass. The Indiana University School of Public Health, which is like a leading school of public health and the University of Kansas Medical Center and University of Iowa, plus other academic research institution. And they are grouping together two big similar studies on Krill oil and people with severe hypertriglyceridemia, so let me explain what that is. When you eat foods, your body converts these foods into triglycerides, and you burn them for energy. The problem is many of us are eating like a lumberjack, but we don’t exercise like a lumberjack, so we eat a big meal, rich in fats and carbohydrates. And then we sit behind a desk, or we watch our TV or on our laptop, so the triglycerides are not being burnt in your muscles for energy. So, they’re invading, they’re invasive, they invade your liver. They can be very toxic to your liver, they can lead to liver cancer, liver failure or just fatty liver disease. They’re toxic to the heart, they build up in the heart lead to all kinds of episodes like strokes. There’s even evidence that they can creep into your lungs and kidneys at this point, but we don’t know enough about that. So, and people, very high levels of triglycerides, they’re at risk of like pancreatitis and liver damage and heart attacks and strokes and heart disease. So, you want to get these down. So, they want to see, hey, is Krill oil functional just like fish oils? We know that there are prescription fish oils they use for hypertriglyceridemia, which means high triglycerides in the bloodstream, and they’re undervaluing the danger of triglycerides, the dangers of triglycerides. There’s a lot of value placed on the dangers of LDL cholesterol. And basically, also that’s because there’s drug companies making billions of dollars on drugs to treat high cholesterol. They really have to put more emphasis on triglycerides. You’ll see elevated triglycerides in people who drink a lot of alcohol like beer or wine, you’ll see it in people who are obese. You’ll see it in pre-diabetic, you’ll see it in diabetics, you’ll see it in people at a high level of a certain cholesterol called vldl. So, there’s a lot of things going on here. † [00:05:58]
[00:06:00] So they’re checking these two randomized placebos controlled human clinical trials, which are state of the art gold standard trials, identical. And in one of the trials, they use 71 United States based medical centers, and then the other one, they use 93 United States and Canadian based medical centers and also medical centers in Mexico. And the fasting triglycerides, because triglycerides go up after your meal. Cholesterol doesn’t change much after a meal, but triglycerides consume after a meal, 500 to 1500, so this is serious. And they were either on or not on statins and fibrates, stats are for cholesterol, fibrates are for triglycerides and the Krill Oil in a high dose versus placebo, a fake pill really made a difference. Now it’s worth noting that 52% of the subjects in the study were diabetics. It’s common for diabetics to have not just problems with blood sugar. You know, everybody knows that diabetes is a disease of blood sugar, but it’s not just a disease of blood sugar, it’s a disease of metabolism and energy and triglycerides and cholesterol and other issues, inflammation. So first of all, the Krill raised good cholesterol, HDL, between 2 to 5%, which is good because it’s hard to raise good cholesterol, even with a statin it’s hard to raise it, and it lower triglycerides, even the people on triglyceride lowering drugs, adding krill further lowered triglycerides by a further 20%. And it was very safe, and it lacked side effects. So, I mean, it’s a great it’s a great supplement. It’s really a great supplement. I take three every morning with my breakfast. † [00:07:39]
[00:07:42] So now let’s look at inflammation. A lot of people are inflamed, like if you’re eating a typical, what they call a typical American or typical Western diet where you’re lacking fresh fruits, you lacking vegetables, you’re eating a lot of super processed foods that are high in sugar, like donuts and English muffins and white bread and canned soups that you add, you know, oil or the powdered soups that you add water to, and all these things. And if you’re you know, if your diet consists of milkshakes and cheeseburgers, you’re inflamed, but you’re also inflamed, if you’re pre-diabetic, you’re inflamed if you’re diabetic. Almost every major disease has major elements of inflammation. And sadly, you become inflamed just by growing older. And we’re, we’re not talking about acute inflammation, acute inflammation, acute inflammation means sudden, like what, an infection or a, you know, a cough. Yeah, you’ll get inflamed from that, but it’s temporary. We’re talking about long term chronic low-grade inflammation, that’s very bad for the heart, the brain, your muscles, your bones, I mean it’s just it’s a disaster really. That’s a terrible for your metabolism. So, here’s the journal Neuroscience Research, August 2020 at Central Michigan University. And they’re looking at Krill oil and inflammation, and they’re looking specifically at inflammation related to a bad diet or inflammation related to growing older, because as we become older, I’m 69, as you become older, you get more and more inflamed. It’s just the way it is. You want to push back on that because the inflammation is a disaster for you. Krill Oil reduced inflammation in your body, that was related to a bad diet, you know, sugary foods, fatty foods, etc. not eating whole grains, not eating fruits, not eating vegetables, not eating legumes, you know, like beans and lentils and peas, you know, not eating mushrooms. It also reduced inflammation in the brain, this is something else that increases with age. So let me explain that. When you’re young, your brain has this powerful, readily available pool of antioxidants. And there’s a reason for that. Your brain is a super high energy organ just like your eyes, just like your heart. And it eats up 20% of the calories from each meal, that’s it’s only about £2, dry weight. So, think of that, this this compared to the rest of body. This is small this organ, the brain. And yet it’s grabbing 20% of the calories from each meal. That’s how high an energy organ it is, as a part of the process of using sugar for energy. It is a release of free radicals, and free radicals are toxic. So, these free radicals are pretty toxic, and they can damage cells that could destroy cells, they block natural processes in the brain. I mean, look at the diseases of the brain that occur with aging, late dementia, Lewy body dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease. A major part of each one of these as a cause and as part of the progression of it is inflammation. So, when you’re young, you have these great antioxidants in the brain like, like superoxide dismutase type one and superoxide dismutase type three and glutathione peroxidase, and they really snuff out, they do a great job of protecting the brain by snuffing out the free radicals because you need your brain long term. However, when you hit your mid-fifties, the level of these antioxidants, the pool drops like crazy, by the time you’re 65, it’s almost nil, it’s almost gone. So, Krill helps protect you from the consequences of that, because the inflammation is decreased in your brain by the Krill. The free radicals trigger inflammation that damage the processes in your brain, the pathways in your brain, the organs and tissues of your brain. Krill snuffs out that inflammation that gets into the brain very, very, very efficiently and it snuffs out this inflammation. But Krill does a second thing, it supplies, and that’s the fish oils in the krill doing that. † [00:12:00]
[00:12:00] But then there’s a second ingredient in Krill called phosphatidylcholine that also reduces inflammation on the brain. The brain loves phosphatidylcholine because it’s part and parcel of building the brain, building the nerve tissue in the brain, protecting the nerve tissue in the brain, and the thought process and memory process will go into that. That’s significantly important. When you talk about Krill, phosphatidylcholine, then there’s a carotenoid pigment, pinkish called astaxanthin, that’s in Krill, it also gets into the brain and protects the brain. There are certain carotenoids that get into your brain and eyeballs, astaxanthin, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta carotene, if it’s natural to a degree, they really help protect the brain, they really help the brain function properly. So, Krill supplies all these things, and it reduces that inflammation that would either be super toxic to your brain. But Krill does another thing, it creates an ingredient in the brain called a plasmalogen that acts as a bullet proof vest for your brain cells. So as the antioxidant levels drop, Krill reduces inflammation, restores some level of antioxidant activity, but also creates a bulletproof vest to protect your brain cells through these plasmalogens. Plasmalogens are made out of fish oils, choline, phosphotides, serine. They’re all in Krill, they’re all in Krill. So, it’s very, very good for that. † [00:13:18]
[00:13:19] So according to Central Michigan University, Krill oil has been proven to improve spatial memory, improve learning, reduce memory loss in older people, improve your mood. So, it’s good for depression. But there’s also other evidence from other academic research institutions that Krill and Fish oils reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, like 36%. I mean, come on. But Krill does other things too. And a little while I get into the phosphatidylcholine that’s in Krill, why it’s so key for health throughout the body. But let’s look at more data on what Krill can do for you. Krill helps with knee pain. There are good studies that Krill is good for inflammation and a major cause of the pain and damage in arthritis is from inflammation. So, this is Plus One which is a great American medical journal. This was performed by Japanese and Chinese researchers, mostly in Japanese arthritis clinics. It’s a placebo controlled, randomized human clinical trial. So, it’s a state-of-the-art human clinical trial again. It’s adults with knee pain, active arthritis, Krill. These people had less pain when sleeping, less pain withstanding. They had an improvement in range of motion. You know how much you can bend your knee without pain. So, here’s the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. These are researchers in Canada, once again, placebo controlled, randomized human clinical trial. Those are the only trials are used as evidence. And there has to be a number of similar trials to prove my point. In other words, there’s a number of trials that Krill is good for arthritis, knee pain, there’s a number of trials that krill is good for exercise and muscle health. There’s a number of trials are Krill is good for the heart, that Krill is good for the brain. So, none of these studies exist in a vacuum, they all have support. So once again, this is the Journal of the American College of Nutrition researchers in Canada. It’s 90 patients with inflammation and arthritis, and they had elevated CRP. CRP stands for C-reactive protein, it’s not a good thing. You always have a level of CRP, it’s a proxy for inflammation. We don’t know if CRP does have anything, does it hurt you or is it protective? We don’t know. But we know it’s a proxy for inflammation. So as inflammation goes up, so does the level of CRP in your blood. And when it’s too high, it really inflames the brain and it really inflames the heart and it increases the risk of stroke and heart attack and it clogs, it’s involved with clogged arteries. So once again, I don’t know if the CRP is doing that or the inflammation, It’s the inflammation for sure. So, within 30 days, Krill oil reduced CRP by 31%, while in the people on placebo, CRP actually increased by 25%. And within a very short amount of time weeks, Krill reduced pain scores by 30% within weeks and it reduced stiffness by 20%, and it improves functional impairment by 23%. That was within the first week. Within the first week it would improve range of motion and improved functional impairment and it was already helping reduce pain. And you know, Krill is good for your brain and heart, unlike the drugs for arthritis, some of those drugs, I can say they’re really bad for the heart. So here is, this is a different kind of study. † [00:16:58]
FISH OILS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR JOINTS & KRILL MIGHT BE SUPERIOR- INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 580
[00:16:58] Now we’re looking at muscle strength. We know that there’s many studies that fish oils are very good for muscle strength. The by the way, why do I prefer Krill to Fish oils? Well, the fish oils in Krill are more stabilized. They don’t go rancid as easily. They don’t go bad as easily as in fish oils, but they’re also better absorbed because they’re attached to phosphatides like phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, I mean, this improves their absorption, you get more into the bloodstream. So, I really like Krill and people don’t usually have those fish burps with Krill. The fish burps that you get with those large fish oil capsules. So, we know that fish oils are very good for your muscle. There’s a number of studies on that. If you look at the data, there’s plenty of data. So, this is the Journal of Clinical Nutrition that’s a good journal, it’s the University of Glasgow, which of course is Scotland, the University of Western Australia and Nottingham Trent University, which would be in England. And these are all people over the age of 65, it’s 102 men and women, but they didn’t exercise regularly, so they looked at the effects of Krill at baseline, which means before the, you know, at the very inception of the study, at six weeks into the study and six months into the study. So, they did a good job of observing what’s going on here. And they found that knee strength, they tested knee strength and giving Krill or placebo, did it have an effect on knee strength? Did it have an effect on their hands on grip strength? Research shows that in older people, those with stronger grip strength survive better. You know, you have to be strong, life is tough. You want to be strong. You want to be a tiger inside. You might act like a kitten on the outside, but you want to be a tiger on the inside, and Krill helps that, along with exercise, good diet, enough sleep, etc. So, six months supplementation with Krill oil, improved knee strength, improved grip strength and improved muscle thickness. That’s good because that’s one reason why Krill would be good for the knees, if you improved the strength of like your thigh muscles, etc. It stabilizes your knees, and it reduces your risk of falling. So, Krill increased muscle strength and muscle size and older people, and it was to a clinically important degree. Now, of course, you should exercise. I mean, I exercise all the time, I ride a bike, I lift weights, I do a lot of walking, I kayak when I have, I have availability, it’s really important. But Krill, it’s great, just like fish oils. They’re good for your muscles, with or without exercise. But they also reduce your risk of dementia. They will reduce your risk of sudden cardiac death. They’re great for the liver, especially the Krill, is fantastic for the liver. Just because I’ve got so much more to say, I’ve got so much more to say, so I have to break this down into like two or three parts. So, I want to thank you for listening to today’s podcast episode. You can find all of the invited episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. And you can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. I have a lot more to say about Krill, how it’s good for the liver, how it’s good for the brain, how it helps protect you from heart attacks. I mean, this is important stuff. So, we’ll try to cover all this, next week in the next episode that I do. Jerry Hickey signing off. And thank you so much for listening. † [00:16:58]
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