I was sitting this morning thinking about what I was going to write to you, and I thought back to the reasons I write to you and the reasons you would want to read it.
The reason is simple. I want to make you as healthy as you can be. I’m flattered that people put their confidence in me to do that job, and I want to do the best I can for you to make that real.
And when I think about making that a reality, I ask myself what’s most important. There’s anti-aging, getting you fit… and then there’s this one.
The problem today is that we are burdened with this horrible crippling continuous inflammation. If you live in the modern world, you’re inflamed. Our bodies are not meant to live in the environment we created and it causes a reaction.
So you, me, and everyone else we know are inflamed.
What can we do about it?
Omega-3s are incredible in what they do for your cells. They stop the formation of inflammatory molecules called cytokines and promote anti-inflammatory processes. This gives you a healthy heart, a fast healthy brain, and the ability to beat inflammation.
Nature has built us to depend on omega-3s… but we don’t get those anymore. In fact, we get inflammatory omega-6s in much greater quantities through man-made foods like farmed fish.
Until recently I had – at best – an imperfect way to give my patients the quantities they needed.
The protocol I recommended was a mixed bag. I had them take cod liver oil because of its vitamin D content, olive oil for its omega-3s and Sacha Inchi oil as a source of source of ALA (which the body converts to EPA and DHA).
The trouble was that none of those give you enough pure DHA. And it’s DHA that really gives you a lot of the best benefits of omega-3’s, especially for your brain.
Want to prevent foggy memory and loss of focus? DHA keeps the messages in your brain moving fast and accurately. It signals your brain to have healthy function and quick thinking.
And DHA is tremendously beneficial for healthy inflammation in your brain, and keeps brain cells alive.1
Low DHA is also a marker for brain aging. The famous Framingham Study shows us people with lower DHA levels have smaller brains and do worse on tests of visual memory, function, and thinking.2
DHA is also the main nutrient that helps your brain grow new branches and renew and rejuvenate itself, so you can keep your brainpower and sharp thinking.
Problem was, we really had no way of delivering DHA to your brain cells.
The old forms of omega-3 didn’t have enough DHA. They were good for your heart because of the EPA. But it meant you were missing out on the benefits of DHA directly to your brain.
Old fish oil just couldn’t get to all the places it needed to go. It didn’t have the power to penetrate because it can’t cross the protective blood-brain barrier. Neither could the first products that had more DHA, like krill oil.
But today, we’ve been able to crack that nut. We’ve been able to make sure the DHA in krill oil is attached to its naturally occurring partner … the world’s strongest antioxidant.
Now we can ensure the DHA in krill oil keeps its attached astaxanthin. This carotenoid CAN cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver DHA’s benefits to your brain cells.
In fact, in order to get a U.S. Patent, krill oil and astaxanthin had to be proven to cross the blood-brain barrier.4 That means krill oil with astaxanthin gets DHA deep into the body tissues that need it most.
Another rich source of DHA is calamari oil. It’s got even more DHA than krill oil, so I always wanted to find a way to use it. But even if you eat calamari you’re not getting very high concentrations of oil. So we’ve been struggling for some time with how to get this high DHA from squid oil.
Now we’ve solved that. I’ve found a unique Squid that lives off the coast of South America in the pure waters of the Southern Pacific. After the oil is distilled it’s over 65% DHA5 – the highest concentration of DHA I’ve found yet.
And we can make its high DHA even more penetrating by mixing it with krill oil, which is the best-absorbed DHA.
I found a study that backs this up. It was published in the journal Nutrition Research and it compared fish oil, krill oil and olive oil to see which one’s omega-3s would be better absorbed. They randomly assigned people to get one of the three, and then looked at the results. In just 4 weeks the people taking olive oil had a 2.9% increase in omega-3.
The people taking krill oil had their omega-3s skyrocket by 178%.6
In fact, I imagine this is part of the wisdom of nature… these two sources of DHA, krill and squid, are both food for some of the smartest ocean mammals.
Now we can get DHA like they can. With calamari and krill oil, you can flood every cell in your body – and your brain – with the world’s most penetrating omega-3 and get all of DHA’s brain and heart support.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1. Bazan N, Musto A, Knott E. “Endogenous signaling by omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid-derived mediators sustains homeostatic synaptic and circuitry integrity.” Mol Neurobiol. 2011;44(2):216-22.
2. Tan Z, Harris W, Beiser A, Au R, Himali J, Debette S, Pikula A, Decarli C, Wolf P, Vasan R, Robins S, Seshadri S. “Red blood cell ω-3 fatty acid levels and markers of accelerated brain aging.” Neurology. 2012;78(9):658-64.
3. Cao D, Kevala K, Kim J, Moon H, Jun S, Lovinger D, Kim H. “Docosahexaenoic acid promotes hippocampal neuronal development and synaptic function.” J Neurochem. 2009;111(2):510-21.
4. Tso et. al. “Method of Retarding and Ameliorating Central Nervous System and Eye…” U.S. Patent: #US5527533, Assignee: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
5. Hwang L, Liang J. “Fractionation of urea-pretreated squid visceral oil ethyl esters.” Journal of the American Oil Chemists‘ Society 2001, Volume 78, Issue 5, pp 473-476.
6. Maki K, Reeves M, Farmer M, Griinari M, Berge K, Vik H, Hubacher R, Rains T. “Krill oil supplementation increases plasma concentrations of EPA and DHA in overweight and obese men and women.” Nutr Res. 2009;29(9):609-15.