Omega 3 Supplements don't improve Memory: Study
By Alice Park
Times Health.
The data has been building, slowly but surely, and now the strongest
study yet may finally dispel the myth that taking omega-3 supplements
can protect the brain from cognitive decline and dementia.
The connection between omega-3s, the fatty acids found most
abundantly in foods like fish, and brain function emerged from large
studies of people who answered questions about their diet and then
performed tests on things like recall, memory and executive thinking
functions. That data strongly suggested that people eating more
omega-3s, including those who took supplements, tended to score higher
on cognitive tests.
But in the latest
study, published in JAMA,
researchers found no such benefit when they explored the supplement in a
group of 3,073 elderly people at risk of developing macular
degeneration, a condition that causes vision loss with age. What set
this study apart was the fact that the scientists did not rely on the
participants’ recall of what they ate, but randomly assigned them to
take omega-3 pills or a placebo for five years. All of the participants
were tested on cognitive skills at the start of the study and came back
every two years for additional assessments.
During that time, study leader Dr. Emily Chew, deputy director of the
division of epidemiology and clinical applications at the National Eye
Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health) says, she did not
see significant differences in the cognitive scores between the two
groups.
It’s possible that in Chew’s study, it was too little, too late in
terms of seeing any effects of the omega-3s on cognition in this group
of elderly participants. Something like omega-3 fatty acids may take
years or decades to exert an effect, just as the decline associated with
dementia takes place over a long time course. “The bottom line is that
supplements are not the fast cure,” says Chew. “You are what you eat,
and you’ve got to eat well. Maybe it was too late for some of the people
in our study.”
MORE: Omega-3 Supplements Don’t Lower Heart Disease Risk After All
There are other important things to consider about Chew’s study,
however, beginning with the fact that all of the participants were at
high risk of developing macular degeneration. (The study was originally
designed to test whether omega-3 supplements and other antioxidants
could slow or reverse the vision loss in these patients.) Do people with
macular degeneration differ in some ways from the average population?
Does their condition make them less likely to respond to omega-3 fatty
acids? The answers to those questions aren’t clear yet. Previous studies
that have followed healthy participants over six years or also found
that people with higher omega-3 intake did not score significantly
higher on cognitive tests than those with lower levels.
Does that mean omega-3s aren’t the health-boon they were thought to
be? Not necessarily. First, there’s the question of whether omega-3
fatty acids from the diet, from foods such as fatty fish, can have more
potent effects on health than supplements. “It looks like high dose
omega-3 supplementation is not the same as eating high amounts of
omega-3s in a healthy dietary pattern high in marine fish and other
beneficial foods and nutrients,” says Frank Hu, professor of nutrition
and epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was
not involved in the study.
The takeaway for now, says Chew, is that it’s more important to adopt
a long-term approach to healthy aging as opposed to a quick fix in a
bottle of pills. Taking time and effort to live a healthy life, with a
nutritious diet and regular exercise, may be far more potent when it
comes to maintaining mental abilities than any supplement could
accomplish. “Supplements cannot replace a healthy dietary pattern,” says
Hu. “If you eat a healthy diet with high amounts of fruits, vegetables
and marine fish, you probably don’t need to take fish oil supplements.
The overall dietary pattern is more important than a single nutrient.”
