Alzheimer’s disease is a horrible illness that afflicts many old people, robbing them of their memories and leaving them trapped in the past. Yet there is now some intriguing new evidence suggesting that taking fish oil for Alzheimer’s may help to slow the onset of the disease by offsetting some of the contributory factors.
Remember that this is very early stage work and as hopeful as it sounds, it is far from offering a definitive cure or protection, so please keep that in mind. Also there is not great evidence that giving people who have advanced or even mild Alzheimer’s get much benefit from taking fish oil. The real benefit is though to come from taking it over a very long period when it can offer some protection against the underlying damage that may be too late to arrest or reverse once symptoms emerge.
Fish Oil, Food for The Brain?
When I was growing up, my grandmother always used to tell me to eat fish because it would make me clever. She may have been onto something. At the time my father just thought that she was talking about protein, since in the small Eastern European village that her family came from, fish was probably one of the few sources of protein that poor people could afford.
A far more important component of the fish my grandmother wanted me to eat was the Omega 3 found in fish oil, which is a major building block of the brain.
Now it turns out that fish oil (or Omega 3, EPA and DHA to be more precise) may also help to protect the brain from various sorts of stress and damage that can lead to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Studies on mice and rates have shown (according to Dr John Briffa) that:
In a recent review [1], researchers assessed the evidence in which animals (rats and mice) with animal models of Alzheimer’s disease had been treated with omega-3 fats for at least 10 per cent of their life spans. Long term treatment with omega-3 was found, overall, to:
• Reduce amyloid-ß deposition
• Improve cognitive function
• Reduce brain cell loss
In other words, in animals, omega-3 supplementation was found to combat key underlying processes in Alzheimer’s disease and improve brain functioning too. This is not enough to prove that long-term supplementation with omega-3 would help prevent or ameliorate Alzheimer’s disease in humans. It is enough for me, personally, to make me think that keeping up a good intake of omega-3 fats is likely to be a decent insurance against declining mental function as I age.
In another study, reported on my the National Institutes of Health, Omega 3 supplements were tested on older women. It found that there was a positive result on various aspects of cognition, but unfortunately not on Alzheimer’s. It said that:
Epidemiologic studies have generally supported a protective association between fish and omega-3 FA levels and cognitive decline. Some of the small, short-term, randomized trials of docosahexaenoic acid and/or eicosapentaentoic acid supplementation have found positive effects on some aspects of cognition in older adults who were cognitively intact or had mild cognitive impairment, although little effect was found in participants with Alzheimer’s disease. Large, long-term trials in this area are needed.
