New research on Omega-3 Fatty Acids - Dr. Jeff Bland and Dr. Austin Perlmutter

Foreign. So let me just kind of agenda set one more time and then we'll get started with the conversation. So I'm Dr. Austin Perlmander. I'm joined here by Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who I'm sure you all know we're going to be talking about some of the interesting work being done in omega 3 science and in the context of, I think, the last decades of maybe some misconceptions and where we stand today.

Dr.

Bland has a long standing history of being in this industry and seeing how Omega's science has been portrayed for practitioners. So we'll talk about that a little bit. And I know that several of you have already heard this, but the way we're going to do this is probably about a 30 minute or so, maybe 30 to 40 minute presentation style format. And then we will moderate questions that people have. If you have questions, you'll drop them in the Q and A section, which you'll see at the bottom of your zoom screen. In addition, I'll just highlight here if people have questions beyond this and want to reach out to our team. Becca Morrow, who I believe is in the Q and A and in the chat will be taking questions regarding products at Big Bold Health. Becca's email address is beccaigboldhealth.com B, E, C, C A. And Becca, if you're there in the Q and A section, if you wouldn't mind adding your information just so people could see it there. But beyond that, I think Dr. Bland, unless you have anything you'd additionally like to say, I will pick up the presentation. We can go ahead and get started.

Ready to rock and roll. Looking forward to it, Austin. Thank you.

All right, here we go. Let me share my screen and we will begin. Let's go full screen and let me just confirm. Are you able to see full screen, Jeff, on your end?

Looking good. Yeah.

Yep. Okay. All right, well, Jeff, why don't you go ahead and kick us off here a little bit around omegas. You, you've had many years of history in this space and I think as we, as we begin this conversation about. Here we are, 2024, still a lot of conversation around the specifics of fats and omegas. And I'm sure in your case there's a little bit of, as you say, kind of back to the future, but returning to the past and looking at how some of these tropes, misconceptions and various aspects of hype around this industry have changed the conversation. And let's maybe begin then with your history of how you got involved in this industry and where you've seen some of the substantial overlap and what we see happening today, and where there have maybe been some changes in how we perceive the science of omega 3s in the modern day.

Well, thanks, Austin, very much. Let me just give a quick historical thumbprint of, of this whole field from my perspective. It goes way back for me in history, actually, to 1978. I was invited to be a lecturer at the inaugural meeting of a group called the British Society of nutritional medicine. Dr. Stephen Davies was the founder of that organization in London. And so I went over there and one of the speakers was Hugh Sinclair, another was Yarn Dyerberg, both of who had done early work with the Greenland Eskimos, Greenland native population, on the consumption of these very high fat seal and marine mammal diets that were like 85% of the calories coming from fat that had this extraordinarily low level of cardiovascular disease. And this was considered at the time to be quite a remarkable discovery that, because the dominant theme at that point, coming up into the early 1980s, was Nathan Pritikin and others saying that fat was dangerous. Low fat diets were the rage. Get fat out of your diet. And here were people that were consuming 80% or more of their calories as fat, that were living long and healthy and with low cardiovascular disease. Well, it turned out in more discussion that ultimately that led me as a research professor at that point to get a research grant to do research on omega 3 fatty acids, this family of fats that are in the mammal oils. And that led us into some really exciting discoveries as it relates to their effect on membrane fluidity and to understanding the origin of where they went into cell biochemistry. And that led then into a group called the Ames Group in the northeast, a group of doctors, Sid Dacre being one of those, Stefan Rechtschoff and a whole variety of Leo Gallen was in that group. And we were studying then with David Horobin the effects of these omega 3 oils and the various omega 3 pathways going through alpha linolenic acid down in, through icosa pentaenoic and through docosahexanoic acid into various types of derivatives that modulate function and inflammation and have effects on the inflammatory pathway. That then led me to this research, which we ultimately did with students of mine at the university, and published some of the first papers which got me onto television, quite honestly, on Good Morning America in 1980, to represent to the American public the first commercial Omega 3 oil called Maxiba that was produced in, in, in England and was being imported to the United States as an omega 3 supplement. And you can imagine how I was pushed back at that point because the dominant thought was fat is dangerous. And here's a guy coming on television saying, people that certain fats are good and that we should get more of them. They're actually deficient in the diet. And I was pretty heavily criticized in that interview for trying to propound something that was suggested to be dangerous. But of course, now we recognize through years of extensive clinical and basic biochemical and cellular research that these are extraordinarily important, almost like vitamins, essential nutrients that play very important roles because we don't manufacture them at the levels that are often needed in the absence of getting them in our diet adequately. And that's why I've been so excited, actually, with what we've done here at Big Bold Health. You know, we've. We've been actually pioneering a new family of Omega 3 fatty acid products with Big Bold Health that I think are built off now of nearly 40 years of additional experience, research about what are the constituents within the fats that really have these benefits, and what are the things you want to reduce or eliminate because they're dangerous. And so this concept of Updates in Omega 3 research in 2024 is right at the center point, I think, of where therapeutic nutrition is going. So with that as an intro, Austin, I'll turn it back over to you.

Fantastic. And so for all those tuning in live, if you have questions you want to drop in the Q and A section, feel free to do so. If you're watching this after the fact and you have questions about this conversation, you can email either Becca, who is Becca bigboldhealth.com or contact Kelly Blandford. All right, so let's jump in, I guess as a little bit of background and context as to why it's so interesting to have this conversation when we look at the field of nutrition. So I'm coming to this a little bit later than Dr. Bland, who's been here longer than I have. But even in my limited decades of playing in this space, it's become so apparent that the field of nutrition, especially the field of, I guess, lipidomics, has been contested and flips back and forth like everything else every couple of years. So once one year everyone's supposed to eat more fat. The next year, people are supposed to eat less fat. And obviously, it's very confusing as it relates to what the average person is supposed to do, let alone what we're supposed to be talking about in clinical practice. And I think for context as to why this is so complicated, it's important to understand that there are these kind of prevailing currents in the United States that relate to why we, at one point, when I say we, I mean, I guess the medical profession were so opposed to the idea of dietary fat as it related to helping people achieve a healthy life. And so, as many are aware and has been described in a number of different books and articles, we had this push in the 1950s to in essence say people should avoid dietary fat in particular, because of a somewhat challenged at the time, but certainly incredibly challenged now idea that dietary fat was related to heart health outcomes. And so we had Ansel Keys, who was the first proponent of this idea that dietary fat is something we should avoid in particular because of the heart impact. He was out on his own talking about this conversation and then was brought into the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee in 1960, and subsequent to that, the American Heart association, which then as now, has a lot of influence on how people make recommendations in particular, because heart issues are the most common concerns for the majority of people, led to a generalized recommendation to decrease the saturated fat and compound components of fat, kind of in general, in diet, it was generalized from saturated fat to decreasing saturated or decreasing fat. And that spillover effect led to an impact on the type and the amount of fat that was consumed. So it led to a general fat phobia. And it led to a reliance on vegetable oils as opposed to saturated, more animal based fats. And so subsequent to this, in the decades afterwards, the United States government pushed for our friend, the food pyramid, which was in generally or in general, in line with the idea that less dietary fat is a good idea for most people. And so just a reminder here, depends on when you went to elementary school, depends on which country you were in when you went to elementary school. But for me at least, these were the. These were made into posters. They were hung up on the wall. This was the initial on the right dietary guidelines, which you can see here. The recommendation was to avoid too much fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. At the time, there was a large concern that dietary cholesterol led to increases in serum cholesterol and that saturated fat was the major concern. This is before our concern about trans fat and all the subsequent concerns that developed as a result of this. But again, 1980s dietary guidelines avoid fat. And that was subsequently translated into the food pyramid, which I'm sure everyone's at least seen. And if you haven't, this is your moment to see how this symbol of American diet was so widely proclaimed. What you can see here is two things. One is at the bottom, a strong emphasis on carbohydrates as the most important part of your diet. And if you look at the sources of these carbohydrates, you have white pasta, white bread and some crackers, cereal, some spaghetti. So that's what we should be prioritizing at the top of the food pyramid. The thing we should be minimizing is fat. So naturally occurring and added. They also had added sugars that were there. It's been consistent. But as we all know, there have been some substantial changes in what the government now recommends and in what the general population understands is healthy. So the implications of these recommendations, both in terms of these organizations like the American Heart association, and then at a larger scale, the United States government making these recommendations, is that the American diet was converted to one that really favored carbohydrates. And so, I mean, obviously this is a slight overrepresentation of what the typical American diet is today, but not much. The idea was we had to replace our calorie sources from fats and put something else in its place, and. And sugar and carbohydrates became the placeholder. So what you see as a result of this is in essence this trend that shows that our calories from added sugar over the years of 1980 to 2009 is what is tracking here dramatically increased. And in conjunction with that, we see the same parallel rate of increase in bmi. And so when we know that bmi, while not the perfect indicator by any stretch of the imagination, but a surrogate for the buildup of metabolic imbalance in the body, was increasing despite the decrease in specifically saturated fat. But overall fat consumption, we see that perhaps these recommendations weren't as well founded as maybe was thought at the time. So when we think then about what were the sources of our fats that occurred as a result of these dietary recommendations, again, remember, the goal was to decrease saturated fat consumption. So we had to turn to something else to replace that. What you see here in these graphs, and I'll kind of read out the main things, because it might be a little hard to see, is that as a percentage contribution to calories, soybean oil between the year 1990 and 1999 went from 0.006% to 7.38%, a percentage difference of 123,000. So we see basically this massive intake of vegetable oils replacing some of the more conventional F based products. We see that between the same time period of years that as a reflection of annual per capita consumption of foods, that the availability of soybean and canola oil and peanut oil and palm oil went up many thousand fold. And you can see here on these graphs on the right side as a percent contribution, soybean oil, canola oil, basically making these massive spikes in our overall consumption of lipids, again as a reflection in part, is this desire to move away from saturated fat intake from many animal based sources and moving to these vegetable oils as what was perceived as a better alternative. Now, when you look at the kind of essential fatty acids, and here we're really talking about alpha linoleic, sorry, alpha linolenic acid, as well as EPA and dha, which you see is a pretty substantial drop off in particular in DHA and EPA intake, as well as DPA, which is a more kind of recently recognized omega 3 that may have effects across a variety of metabolic and immune pathways. That's really, I think, the important background state in which so many of these recommendations and so much of our education is predicated. It's this idea that the government, that these regulatory agencies, that these large scale agencies like the AHA, which have so much power, were telling people by and large to make these changes to their fat consumption around saturated fat and the spillover effect was pushing towards these plant based fats.

Dr. Blair, just a real quick little sideline. You talked about canola oil. I think it's really interesting historically that that's derived from Canada. That's where it's got its name, Canada oil, because it's grown in northern climates up in Canada. And the original oil was coming from rapeseed. But you know, they thought we're not going to be able to commercialize something that has the name rapeseed. So it became canola oil. But in so doing, they also genetically hybridized it so that the alpha linolenic acid omega 3 content of that original rapeseed oil was reduced significantly. So the reason they did that is because it's these omega 3 oils are much more oxidatively volatile or liable to be rancidified. So to make it stable and shelf stable food, they got rid of the alpha linolenic acid by genetic hybridization and now canola doesn't any longer carry that same Omega 3 benefit.

Good caller. All right, and just a quick pause here for everybody who's listening live. If you have questions that you'd like to drop in. I know we have many, many people who are participants. So drop them into the Q and A and then we'll try to get to them at the end. So let's now transition from the general conversation around changes in fatty, fatty acid consumption over the basically 100 years and talk about omega 3s. I think this is a question that is so often posed is why care about dietary omega 3s? And there are so many different reasons why people will discuss these, either mechanistically at a cellular level as it relates to human wellness. But I think some of the most important and certainly some of those that we're most focused on here at big world health are how do omegas or how are they implicated in the immune system? How do they involve themselves as far as regulating immune activation, quelling excessive immune activation, and acting as conduits of information from the outside of the body to the inside of the body by way of regulating immunity? A couple of these bullets that I'll just flag for anybody who's wanting just the general recap. We know omegas are absolutely key to the health of our brains. They are, by weight, one of the most important contributions to the makeup of our brains. They aid in neuronal membranes, they aid in neurotransmission. As I mentioned, they're absolutely essential to immune signaling, not just because the Omega 3 itself, but also because of some of the metabolites we'll discuss in a moment, as well as to metabolic state and certainly eye function flagging. A couple of the things that we seem to know pretty well from the existing literature. We know that people who tend to eat diets rich in omega 3 fats tend to do better across a wide variety of domains. And this speaks to the idea, I think, of the mediterranean dietary pattern as well as the general blue zones type dietary pattern. If you were going to deconstruct the diets of some of the longest lived people around the world, and you were to look at what are some of those molecules, nutrients that seem to carry a preponderance of that story. So certainly it's diet, it's not an individual nutrient, but certain nutrients seem to do more than others. Omega 3s are a key part of that conversation, and that relates to a number of kind of more specific variables. There's obviously a large conversation around longevity right now, and we can look at a number of different metrics of longevity. Telomeres, I think have been popular, probably hit peak popularity a few years ago, and have kind of fallen off a little bit. But when you look at them as a metric of how much our cells have left, as far as divisions, as far as stability on the genome, we know that there is a correlation between dietary omega 3 intake and longer telomeres. And then one of the more interesting immunometabolic contributions that Omega 3s seem to provide is that they have a beneficial effect on muscle mass. And this has been shown that people who tend to have more dietary omegas tend to have more muscle mass. Why is that important? Well, adults, especially older adults with more muscle mass, we're learning for a number of reasons, do better. So it's interesting, there's some mechanistic pathways at play here that get to immunometabolism. And quick pitch here for Dr. Bland's PLMI event which is happening later this year, where that will be discussed in extensive detail by myself and others. But the idea here being that these dietary nutrients, the superficial story that we've heard, which is that if you eat fat, you get fat, and that's basically what we need to worry about. But the actual interplay between the immune system and our metabolism in particular is far more nuanced. An area that I've spent a lot of time focused on is this general contribution from diet, and in particular omega 3s in diet, to brain function. And so, by and large, it's been found that people who consume diets richer in omega 3s have larger brains, tend to think better. So with that in mind, let's look now at where we tend to get our omegas, Because I think the next piece of this is we say, well, a diet rich in omega 3 fats tends to be the diet that promotes all of these wellness outcomes. So is it just the question of eating a diet richer in omegas? And again, we come back to these data, looking at what's happened over a 90 year interval and looking at sources of various Omega 3s. So Alpha Linolenic acid, which again is the kind of precursor starting molecule to the omega 3 metabolic cascade, we see that the change in contribution from dietary alpha linolenic acid is so dramatic. And again towards these vegetable highly refined omega 3 sources, soybean oils being the top contributor here. When we look at EPA contributions, it actually is poultry and shellfish and eggs at the top of this list as it relates to relative change and contribution. With finfish, beef and game lower in the spectrum, dha, again, very similar, poultry, shellfish and eggs. And so it brings up this question of if you're going to look at your diet as your primary way of consuming Omega 3s, what are the best sources? And here I think there's pretty strong consensus in the medical literature as well as through various expert Interviews, which is that the best source of Omega 3s seems to be these small fatty fish. So specifically for a number of reasons, certain fish tend to bioaccumulate things that we do not want and they tend to bioaccumulate things that we want. So the goal here seems to be again, looking at the preponderance of data, both in terms of reviews and expert interviews and government level consensus that fish are about the best source of omega 3s that we can get in our diet. And ideally we're looking at sustainably fished species. And I hear I'd include again smaller fish as well as fish that are sustainably harvested. Salmon are always at the top of this list, both because of the relative toxin load being lower than most species and because they tend to be incredibly concentrated in Omega 3 as relative to other species. So cold water fish, I will just flag here and I think it's an important point to make. There are many people out there who choose for a variety of reasons not to consume animal based products. And so algae based omega 3s are still on the table. I think that as we look at actual plant based sources of omega 3s in diet, it turns out to be very challenging to get to the levels of EPA and DHA that are generally recommended through a plant based diet by itself. So key point here is this question of okay, well, we know diet is the most strongly studied indicator of correlations between omega 3 and overall wellness. Are we getting enough omega 3s in diet? And based on the data that we have available, it does turn out, and no shocker to all of you out there who are seeing patients, that the average person doesn't actually eat an optimal diet. I mean, I think there are a couple of those people floating around in the world who are optimal diet people, but not only do they tell you that, but also they're so rare that it becomes the atypical. And so majority of us live in the real world where we have to make concessions. And this helps to explain that despite the fact that, you know, these recommendations have been out for some time around consuming more omega 3 rich foods, that people tend to have relatively low levels of omega 3s as measured through a variety of different modalities. And this is, I think an important point which is that when it comes to how much Omega 3 we actually want to be taking in each day, the recommendations are variable depending on who you ask. And I think there's a big difference between a scenario in which you're saying you need to consume a multi gram dose of Omegas because you're trying to modulate a very specific, specific pathway at a very specific level. But when we look at the general recommendations on the goal here being to maintain optimal wellness over the course of our lifespan, to keep our immunity in a balanced state, to keep our metabolic state optimized, we're really talking about the equivalent of roughly two to three servings of fatty fish a week. And that provides around 500 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA a day. The American Heart association, which I brought up earlier in a different context, interestingly now has made their recommendations to be in line with these general RECS, which is two servings of oily fish, around 500 milligrams of EPA plus DHA. And this has been generalized in other review articles. So an article from JAMA, from Harvard researchers, around 2 grams a week of omega 3 fats from fish, which is roughly 2 servings of fatty fish, which comes out to again around 500 or so milligrams per day. Now with all of this said, again, most people are not getting to these levels. Then we get into this question of should people supplement? And this is where I've been really a bit challenged in looking at this research because we would like to think that, well, you make a recommendation that a person consume a supplement, they're covered because now they're getting the right levels of omegas. But when you look into the industry, things are not as clean as you would expect. So first of all, understanding that the majority of supplement based Omega 3 fish oil is, is coming from anchovies and that these supplements are especially coming from faroon. Now there's, there are fish oils coming out of Scandinavia, multiple other parts of the world. But when we look specifically at fish oil, the most common sources, anchovies and the most common location of sourcing is Peru. There are a number of articles that you can check out, some of which are in the medical literature, many of which are in the kind of public magazines and newsprint talking about the sustainability of these fish stocks. Because even though this is one of the globe's most impressive fisheries, there are people out there with massive nets harvesting massive amounts of these small fish. And so in the past, this entire industry has been shut down due to overfishing. There's also the concern for just black market profits because people are catching and exporting these fish in an unsustainable format. And the bottom line to all of this I think is just needing to look at additional ways to get this, get omega 3s from real food in A more eco friendly solution when it comes to how fish oil is processing or it's being processed. There are a number of commentaries around this, but I guess it's worth pointing out that fish oil production, omega 3 production, has become this massive industry around the world. And like any massive industry, you start to get to economies that benefit from cutting corners. And so when you look at modern industrial fish oil production, there are so many stages in between the actual catching of the fish and the production of the product that gets to the consumer or the patient that some of which are necessary simply because, for example, that fish has been out so long that it's become a little bit smelly and it needs to be treated with chemicals and or other steps in these processes. Otherwise people simply won't take it. But the bottom line is to know that there's a lot of stages in between the actual harvesting of the fish and the fish reaching the consumer in the form of fish oil. So some of those include chemical solvents, bleaching acid, high temperature gas treatment. And this is all in the context of trying to purify this fish oil so that the consumer gets something that is palatable. But there is a question that I think we need to ask, which is, is there a loss in this process? Are there potential issues with this process? And not that you need to remember this number. I don't think we're going to be quizzing you on this later, but fish oil, when it's processed can be basically cooked at very high temperatures. So we're talking about here up to 518 degrees Fahrenheit. As you might expect in the context of these being omega 3 oils, having these high temperatures and especially longer times at these high temperatures leads to a number of reactions, none of which are really things that are what we would want in a fish oil that tends to do better at lower temperatures. So the question as to why, I think that these are the kind of core ideas. One is fish sit out on decks. If you're sending out a boat into the ocean to catch a whole bunch of little fish, those fish can sit out for multiple days before they get back to the harbor. Once they get to the harbor and in the process of being processed, they tend to have the potential to be exposed to high temperatures and other environmental exposures which lead them to be smelly, which lead them to be kind of needing many of these steps in the industrial process. So that oxidizes the fish oil and makes them smelly. And it leads to this necessity for further refinement in Addition, there are things that are lost in this process. So consideration as to bioprocessing of these fish oils, we know that the majority of these products on the market are going to be an ester form as opposed to natural triglyceride form. And while there's some variability in this research, there's data suggesting that bioavailability of natural triglycerides is higher than an ester forms. And just to nail this point home, I think it is important just to consider the idea of how much are we going to double down on this idea that nutrition is in and of itself the thing that heals. Are we talking about food or are we talking about heavily processed things that have at some point been food? So the more we process something, the less it's actually in the form that our bodies are actually used to seeing. In some cases, that can be helpful, and in some cases we may lose something in the process. We also know that fish oil in kind of its natural form contains vitamins A and D. These tend to be stripped out in the context of processing. And then something that we're highly focused on here at Big Bold Health is the idea that fish oil, we start from the beginning, we say dietary fish oil is helpful because it is a healthy fat. Then we say, well, maybe there are omegas in there that have a outsize impact. Well, now we're understanding that it may not just be the omegas, but rather their metabolites that have such a substantial impact in particular on the immune system. As you look at this cascade from ALA to EPA to dha, we now understand that the cascade doesn't end there, that there are additional metabolites that are discussed in a moment called PRMs or SPMs that are a reflection of kind of these immune active processes that tend to be lost in the highly processed oils. Finally, I'll say that there are additional omega fatty acids. I mean, again, we have largely in this industry focused on, I would say, EPA and DHA being the most important omega 3s as relates to support, supporting immune balance, metabolic balance. But in the process of saying that's the only thing that matters, we tend to strip out these other omega fatty acids. And we're now understanding through studies that have just been published in the last couple of years, that there are bioactive properties of these other omega fatty acids. Acosanoic acid is a great example of this, with several studies that have recently come out looking specifically at sari oil, in essence demonstrating that, surprise, surprise, we tended not to know everything about what we were doing. When we decided that the entire story of the value of a food is carried by one or two molecules. So, brief moment here on resolving mediators and you've likely received lots of content from Dr. Bland on this already. There are YouTube videos and other content available on Big Bold Health's website that can get you some additional detail on this. But just in brief, the idea, as I mentioned a moment ago, is that you can have metabolism of naturally occurring oils and these include omega 3s as well as omega 6s. And these PRMs which are pro resolving mediators, are in essence being studied for their effects specifically on immune balance. So based on certain studies, we can see that some of these molecules may be in the order of magnitude of hundreds to thousands of times more significant in modulating various immune pathways than the Omega 3s themselves. These are found in minimally processed fish oil, not so much in highly processed fish oil, although some companies have basically refined so heavily their products that they have been enriched in these PRMs. Again, that's very different from saying that is naturally occurring in the fish. It's basically saying we're going to refine this product until we get to certain levels. And I would just highlight again, these have been primarily studied in the context of helping to quell an overactive immune response. Data published in the last couple of years shows that when you take supplements with fish oils that are high in these resolving mediators, it does increase these molecules in humans. So to just kind of summarize this here and again, I know I'm trying to kind of put a, put a little pin on what is complex science. There are thousands and thousands of peer reviewed articles on this topic. But the piece of it that I think most don't understand is that when we're looking at fish oil supplementation or fish oil products, the majority of these have been heavily processed, modified by chemicals and have been sourced unsustainably. The sustainable sourcing piece is something that for better or worse, all of us are going to need to look at and need to continue to look at. With a planet where a population is over 7 billion people and a continuing increase in demand for these products because stocks are not unlimited of naturally sourced omegas. And so again, looking at where there are environments where these things can be harvested sustainably becomes increasingly important. Most of these products again are high heat treated, concerned for a variety of reasons. And they're stripped of these molecules that occur naturally in these fish oils, like vitamins, as I said, A and D as well as these pro resolving mediators. So it's in this context that I'll turn it over to Jeff. As Jeff, you obviously knew all of these things long before I did. And I think your story of why this led you to a different solution is remarkable.

Well, thanks Austin. That was a fantastic overview of the last 40 years of history. As we've learned more and more about the bioactivities of these omega 3 oil family ingredients. I think it's really interesting, as you said, to look at what nature has done for us in the formation of this kind of a kaleidoscope of differing interacting molecules that all were derived out of what that fish ate. The fish doesn't actually make those Omega 3s to begin with. It consumes them in their diet. And it's part of the food chain that gets concentrated up into the ultimate fish. Unfortunately, because these are fatty materials, they pull other contaminants that are fat soluble with them in places around the world that are suffering from ocean pollution. And so we've been very excited to work in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. That's actually in my, in the background of me in this photo is a picture of our, of our plant in Dutch Harbor, Alaska that we had built in cooperation with the Native Alaskan Development Group. Dutch harbor is on the island of Alaska and the Aleutian chain. It turns out to be the largest fishing port in the world. Over a billion pounds of fish products go through this particular port every year because it's uniquely situated in between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. These very rich fishing grounds that are, as you know, under the purview of the state of Alaska which is, doesn't allow fish farming, doesn't allow any kind of genetic modulation or re interbreeding of fish. And so it's a, it's a, it's about as pristine an area as you can imagine. And having spent some time up there, when we built this building, the construction had to be able to withstand 20ft of snow on the roof and 100 mile an hour wind. So it tells you a little bit about the conditions out there. It's, it's quite a fascinating place to, to work and live. But it gives us the chance on with our, our boats that come in from, from the Bering Sea in the Gulf of Alaska to take their frozen materials that are never caught by nets. It's on line and hooks and come into the ship and are, are rendered right on, on board ship and go into minus 20 degree freezers within 20 minutes of a live fish. So when they come to our, our facility there in Dutch harbor, offloaded on our dock, they're in frozen state that they remain cool throughout the course of our process. So we, we ended up with a very unique kind of oil that you can't find, I believe, anywhere else in the world. That's why it's, it's certified both by MSC Marine Stewardship Council sustainable, but also by rfm, which is a responsible fish management certification that not only is the fishery sustainable, but also the shoreside communities of people, the fishermen and the people who work in the fishing industry all have a sustainable and gainful living. And so we're very excited that we're able to kind of take this concept and move it to the next level with regard to a series of products that incorporate this stewardship and natural nature of the ingredients. So we feel that we have, as I said earlier, come up with products within the big Bold health line that are unique in their composition, including the PRMs that Austin was talking about. Some of the highest levels of PRMs in any naturally unadulterated oil, and the fact that we have this full portfolio of omega 3 fatty acids that were not perturbed by high temperature heating or treatment or chemical treatment, including things like DPA, highest levels of DPA, which it gets converted into a specific family of PRMs that are very well known to attenuate inflammation. So we have at least some thought that these have some immune positive benefit as it relates to how they work in the fish and how they get translated into the human. So we're I think, very excited to be part of this whole process, the regenerative recycling. We think that we have a game changing, sustainable approach towards oils that are uniquely different through the kind of feature benefits that I mentioned to you from fish ultimately to frozen on board. These are special boats that we have in our fishing fleet. They're all line caught. We produce a pharmaceutical grade product, we don't have to strip out a bunch of contaminants because of the environment in which they're found. And so minimum processing. And it leads us then into our feeling that we're doing a responsible job of providing these oils to health professionals and their patients in ways that are uniquely different and consistent with sustainability. So that then leads to our products, which I've just described, delivering EPA and DHAN doses that are in natural form consistent with the levels that government and clinical studies have shown. A lot of people feel this is a horsepower race, that the more you can give a person, the better. That turns out not to be the case. We now recognize that like Everything else, there's a dose response relationship between health benefits and somewhere around the one to two grams a day which you're given in the natural triglyceride form is what we're trying to augment. And that leads to levels in the red cell membranes of about 7 to 8%, which is in the range that clinical studies have found to be most helpful in health promotion, disease prevention. So I think we're trying to use the best of science coupled with the best of nature to create a unique line of omega 3 fatty acid products.

So I'll jump back in here. Thanks, Jeff. We've got lots of questions, so I'm going to field a couple of these here. But just in general for follow up, here's the information on Becca, who I believe is in the Q and A section too, if you want to ask Becca any specific questions. But I'm going to. I'll bring up a couple questions and Jeff, I'll float this first one to you. I think there's a question about, you know, again, conversion levels from diet. And so many people, myself included, grew up drinking flaxseed oil. We always had a bottle in the fridge. And again, I think a reflection of the times where we, I guess, knew, or I shouldn't say we, I would say my parents believed that omega 3s were important and that flaxseed oil, which contains high levels of ALA was a good source of it. I mean, we've since learned that internal conversion of ALA to EPA and subsequently DHA is maybe lower than we would have liked. And some of these plant based sources, which again, I'm a huge favor, a huge advocate for flaxseed, chia seeds, walnuts, almonds, all of these natural sources of omegas. But maybe you could give us a little bit of commentary as it relates to how you see the intricate inversion and whether it makes sense just to eat a lot of nuts and seeds as a way to get your daily omega 3 dietary intake.

Yeah, thank you. Well, certainly what you've just said is good advice. Your parents obviously were way ahead of the curve and we're giving you good advice, you and your sister. But we do know that people that have certain kind of metabolic disturbances like insulin resistance, that that adversely affects the activity of the enzymes that convert ALA alpha linolenic acid down through EPA and into dha. So these desaturation elongase enzymes tend to be inhibited to some extent as a consequence of insulin resistance or hyperinsulinemia. So in individuals with metabolic disturbances, it's really desirable to get some of the already fully formed epadha, which then go directly into these pro resolving mediators that we feel are so important because they're closer to the the molecules the body uses than to modulate these important immune pathways. So nothing against whatsoever being a vegetarian, but you want to make sure that you've got good metabolic conversion of Ala into your longer omega 3 fatty acids.

A really interesting question I think is about ancestral lifestyles of healthy, long living people across the world. And the point being that because of the geographic location, they were not consuming as many of their omega 3s from fish based sources. And so the question is, do we think that the daily recommendations of omega 3s benefits us because it counterbalances the overload in omega 6s and processed oils or whether it is a standalone meaning? I guess the question is to what extent is the benefits that people get from a dietary or diet rich in omegas dependent on the fact that for most people the diet is so rich in these arguably less beneficial molecules. And I think there's some really interesting color around omega 6s. So Jeff, I'll turn this back over to you, but you know, we hear a lot about seed oils, omega 6s and how we should avoid omega 6s, have more omega 3s. Do you think that the benefit of omega 3s is primarily in counterbalancing that or do you think it's something else?

I, I think that's a very good point and I think it's a combination. You know, there's a study that was published a number of years ago that appeared in Lancet, a human study looking at the dietary intake of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids in inverse, Scotland and Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm, Sweden people ate more fish and so they had higher omega 3s. People in Edinburgh were more based on lamb and they were more Omega 6 terrestrial animal. And then they tracked cardiovascular outcomes in the two groups and found that there was a significant difference in the higher omega 3 intake from the fish in Stockholm versus the higher omega 6 intakes which are arachidonic acid rich from the terrestrial animal oil or fats. But I think it's a balance because we know that arachidonic acid itself also is converted into other PRMs that have beneficial effects on this whole immune process. It's not like one at the expense of the other. It's more the right kind of balance. And the balance right now has been way shift because of processing and the way we eat over into these omega 6 derived materials which are pro inflammatory press. Glenn Knee to Precursors. So we need to get back to the proper balance and that's for the Omega 3 intake improvement. Now some people are, you know, depend on algal derivatives of omega 3s and there's nothing wrong with them but they, they tend to be higher in DPA and DHA and lower in, in epa. And I think again this concept of balance, of getting your body the precursors to the families that come out of both the DHA and epa because those are different pro resolving mediators. So you want the balance which nature gives us. Nature is pretty intelligent. When we, when we eat from history, I think.

Excellent. Well, I know we're already at 40, 47. Okay, we're at 47. So we're going to wind this down. Let me say a couple of things because I know there are several questions that are outstanding. The first one is if you're interested to learn more and head to the website, it is propro.bigboldhealth.com that's specific for practitioners. So if you are a health practitioner, that's the place to go. You get access to Becca who again becca bigbold health.com as you can see here on the slide. We will be sending out the slides again based on we just want to make sure that all of the content here is good to go from a copyright perspective. And then I would just say in follow up we are going to be reviewing the questions that were posed and we'll do our best to kind of address those after the fact and email and other forms. So stay tuned on that. But in wrap up here, yes, we will be emailing out, we'll be making a recording available again, lots of really good questions here about various other kind of products, about some recent research that we're going to look at. And we want to answer that in the most cohesive and available format. So stay tuned for that. Dr. Bland, Jeff, anything that you want to wrap us up with?

I just want to say that I really appreciate, Austin, what you've done here in starting down this road to really deliver kind of sensible information from which clinicians can make informed decisions. And I think what's happened is that we got chemicalizing fish oils over the last 10 years and people started making higher horsepower concentrates and making them more chemical and farther away from nature. And I think we want to get closer, as you said, back to the food form to really deliver what has historically been our evolutionary requirement.

Great. All right everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. We had lots of people tuning in and I'm sure there'll be some outstanding questions, so feel free to follow up with Becca or with Kelly, and we will try to address all of those.