David PerlmutterPresident,, Perlmutter Health Center · Board-Certified Neurologist | Functional Medicine Pioneer | #1 New York Times Best-Selling Author | International Speaker | Host of The Empowering Neurologist Podcast

December 22, 2025

22 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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In this monologue, board‑certified neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter discusses a recent King’s College London study that measured blood lipid profiles and cognitive function in 841 participants across six countries. The study found a sex‑specific pattern: women with Alzheimer’s disease had significantly lower blood levels of omega‑3 fatty acids (EPA/DHA) and higher levels of unhealthy fats compared to cognitively healthy women, a pattern not observed in men. Perlmutter interprets these findings as a possible explanation for why women are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at roughly twice the rate of men. He advocates for a targeted approach—encouraging women to increase omega‑3 intake, preferably through a high‑quality supplement in addition to omega‑3‑rich foods such as fatty fish—to support brain health and potentially reduce Alzheimer’s risk.

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What if the difference between getting Alzheimer's disease or not could be traced to the type of fat found in the blood? Hello, I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. I'm a board-certified neurologist, and I have been studying the relationship between nutrition and brain health and disease, for that matter, for decades. A new study from King's College in London followed 841 participants across 6 countries and actually looked at them in relation to cognitive function while at the same time measured their blood levels of various types of fats. And they found that women with Alzheimer's disease actually had lower levels of what are called omega-3 fatty acids in their blood in comparison to their healthy counterparts. Men, however, did not exhibit the same patterns. So this is what we call a sex-specific relationship, and it's not the first time that we've seen this as it relates to Alzheimer's disease. The study looked at the role of lipids in brain health and found that women's blood who had Alzheimer's had much higher levels of various unhealthy types of fats and lower levels of, of the omega-3s, for example, which we think are very good for the brain. This perhaps may explain why women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in comparison to men, and to me is a call for increased recommendation of omega-3 supplementation in women specifically, not just eating foods that are higher in the omega-3s like EPA and DHA, fatty fish for example, but actually taking a high-quality omega-3 fatty acid supplement to me makes sense. It's something I've been recommending for decades.