Is your body getting enough Omega-3s? The answer might surprise you.

Inflammation is a silent killer. It plays a key role in chronic diseases like heart disease, cognitive decline, joint pain, and even depression—yet many people don’t realize that something as simple as their omega-3 levels could be the missing piece to better health.

On this episode of Beyond The Pills, host Josh Rimany sits down with one of the world's foremost experts in omega-3 research, Dr. William S. Harris, PhD, FASN. With over 40 years of groundbreaking research, 300+ scientific papers, and contributions to multiple American Heart Association statements on fatty acids and heart health, Dr. Harris has changed the way we understand the role of omega-3s in reducing inflammation, supporting heart and brain health, and improving overall wellness.

As the co-inventor of the Omega-3 Index and founder of OmegaQuant Analytics, Dr. Harris brings cutting-edge insights into why measuring your omega-3 levels could be the key to unlocking better health. We’ll explore:

✅ What the Omega-3 Index is and why it matters

✅ The connection between omega-3s and inflammation, heart disease, and cognitive function

✅ How you can optimize your health by balancing your fatty acid levels

✅ The latest research on omega-3s and what the medical field is missing

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re getting enough omega-3s or how they can dramatically impact your well-being, this is the episode for you. Tune in and take the next step toward better health—beyond the pills!

🌐 Learn more at: www.omegaquant.com | www.faresinst.org

All right.

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to this episode of

Beyond the Pills.

I'm Josh Rimini, pharmacist turned healer.

And today I have a very special guest,

Dr. Bill Harris,

who has been the leading

researcher in the

omega-three fatty acid

field for over forty years.

He has over three hundred

scientific papers on fatty

acids and health and the

vast majority on omega-three.

He has been on the faculty

of three medical schools,

the University of Kansas, Missouri,

at Kansas City, and South Dakota,

and has received five NIH

grants to study omega-three.

He was also the co-author on

three AHA statements on

fatty acids and heart health.

We'll talk a lot about that.

As the co-inventor of

the omega-three index and

other omega-three blood

tests in the founder of

OmegaQuant Analytics.

Dr. Harris has been ranked

among the top two percent

of scientists worldwide

based on the impact of his research.

Welcome.

Welcome, Dr. Bill Harris.

Thank you so much for coming.

You bet, Josh.

Great to be here.

Nice to talk with you.

Man, I've

As the pharmacist who turned

un-pharmacist going to

functional medicine,

I learned a lot about omega-three.

And recently, let's say the last ten years,

learned about omega-three indexing.

And so I'm very proud and

privileged and honored to

have the co-founder,

co-creator of the omega-three indexing.

And I want to jump right in.

I want to talk about...

your story and how you got into all this.

Oh, how did I get into all this?

Well,

I was told by my mentor to get into this.

This was back in nineteen seventy nine.

I was finished.

I had finished a Ph.D.

in nutrition at the

University of Minnesota,

and I went to Portland, Oregon,

Oregon Health Sciences

University to do a

postdoctoral fellowship

with a scientist named Bill Connor.

And Bill was very interested

in the effects of different

dietary fats on cholesterol

levels back in the late seventies.

And he was particularly

curious about what would

happen if you fed people a

lot of fish oil,

as opposed to plant seed

oils or solid fats, like saturated fats,

butter, meat, things like that.

he said you know fish fish

oil is a liquid oil at room

temperature like plant oils

are but it comes from an

animal not a plant and so

we knew the plant plant

oils are liquid and they

lowered cholesterol levels

but the in the saturated

fats and animal fats raise

cholesterol so bill was

curious about here's this

animal liquid oil what does

it do to people so that was

my assignment and I took me

a couple of years to do a

a trial where we fed people

we recruited students uh

fed them different diets

for one month at a time we

fed them a whole bunch of

salmon oil that was our oil

of the day back then and uh

I mean a whole bunch

meaning all virtually all

their fat from salmon oil

so it was huge they you

know like a half like a

half a cup a day of salmon

oil that they just drank which was

Pretty gross, but they did it.

Anyway,

we found out that the cholesterol

level did go down on the

salmon oil diet like it did

on the vegetable oil diet

relative to the saturated fat diet.

And so that was fine.

It didn't go down a lot,

but these were healthy people.

But the triglyceride levels

dropped pretty substantially,

and that was kind of a surprise.

That was the first kind of

discovery that omega-threes

lowered triglycerides.

But that put me into

learning about salmon oil

and about the same time

that the Danish Greenland

Eskimo studies were being

published about how it

seemed like there's

something about these

omega-threes that reduce

risk for heart disease in Eskimos.

And so I started to learn

more about that and started

to look at blood coagulation platelet

platelet action, platelet inhibition,

because the omega-threes did that too.

We didn't know what the

mechanisms were of how the

omega-threes lowered risk,

but we were starting to

explore it back there in

the early eighties.

And I've been pretty much,

I guess the first half,

first twenty years of my career,

I was interested in giving

people fish oil and see what it did,

sort of intervention studies.

But then

with the creation of the omega-three index,

which we'll talk about a little bit later,

which is a blood test,

I got more interested in the question,

what do omega-three blood

levels tell us about future

risk for disease?

That's huge.

I've become more in the epidemiology side,

studying populations,

studying blood levels and

predictions than actually

giving people fish oil and

testing what it does to them.

And let's let's talk a

little bit about that little like,

you know, for the listeners out there,

we're talking omega three fatty acids,

right?

They're coming from

predominantly fish and what

fish eat right from the

algae and things like that.

Right.

And so and we know that

omega threes are healthy.

We know that fish oils are healthy.

And for cardiovascular reasons,

even to the point where

pharma has created SLS

versions of these things

and moved them in that right.

But this is like, I'm hearing,

for the years we've known

that these things have been

pretty good for our health,

yet I feel like we still

scratched the surface on

the awareness of its importance.

And so I wanted you to talk

a little bit about

omega-three and the other omegas and what,

cause you're the expert here, right?

We want people to understand

that there are different omegas and they,

they,

they're in the body for certain

reasons and the ratios are important,

but talk to people a little about the,

about the mega fatty acids.

Cause I think it's really

important just to get a baseline here.

Yeah, sure.

And when we say, and this is very common,

this is called omega fatty acids,

but there's,

Lots of omega fatty acids.

Omega-three fatty acids, one family.

Omega-six fatty acids is another family.

Omega-nine is another family.

So when I talk about omegas,

I'm talking about primarily

omega-three fatty acids.

And those are all related to

each other chemically.

The structure,

chemical structure is similar.

one part of the molecule,

then the other part of the

molecule differs.

So it's like in a family,

you've all got the same last name,

but you have different first names.

And that's the way it is

with the omega-three and the omega-six.

So in the omega-three family,

there's a plant-based

omega-three called alpha-linolenic acid,

ALA.

Typically,

flaxseed oil has got quite a bit of it.

Chia seed oil has some,

but flaxseed is kind of the classic.

Although most Americans get

the ALA we get in our diets

mostly comes from soybean oil.

Because soybean oil,

we consume so much of it in

so many different forms,

but it's got about five to

six percent ALA in it.

So that's the bulk of where

we get it is from that.

Most people are not taking flaxseed oil.

So that's the plant omega-three.

It's a shorter version of

the fish oil omega-threes,

which are EPA and DHA.

ALA is converted to a small

extent to those two longer chain,

but that happens in the

liver and it doesn't happen

very efficiently at all.

So you really can't raise

your blood omega-three

levels in any substantial way.

You can't raise your omega-three index,

EPA and DHA,

by taking the plant omega-three.

So our primary talk today

probably will be about EPA and DHA,

which are the,

we call them marine or

seafood-based omega-threes.

Those originate, as you implied,

they originate in the ocean.

They're actually made by a

very single-celled organism

called microalgae,

sometimes called phytoplankton.

And

that's where the real factory is,

where they turn sunlight

into these long chain fatty acids.

And then really small filter

feeders in the ocean will eat the algae.

And then the small fish will

eat the filter feeders.

And then the big fish eat

the little fish and up it goes.

Because fish really don't

make omega-three any more

efficiently than we do.

So they have to eat it just like we do.

So when we

Our best source of

omega-three is preformed

EPA and DHA from seafood.

And so that's, I think,

what we're really going to

be talking about.

Well,

I think that's a really important point.

And the second point that

you made is these are

essential fatty acids.

In other words,

we've got to eat them in

order to get them.

We don't manufacture them, right?

Well,

we don't manufacture the parent

omega-three ALA.

Mm-hmm.

we can if we eat ala we can

make some and we make

probably enough epa and dha

from ala to sustain life we

don't make enough to give

optimal health that's huge

because we look at you know

epa and dha are not dietary

essentials they are uh

they're bioactive molecules that are

helpful in reducing risk for

a lot of disease,

but there are certainly

human beings can live

without eating any EPA, DHA preformed.

If you're a vegetarian,

if you're a vegan particularly,

you're not eating because

these just come from, I mean, yeah,

there are products where

you can get EPA and DHA from algal oil,

but that's brand new in the world.

typically vegans who eat no

animal products at all don't eat any EPA,

DHA.

And yet they grow up, live, have children,

reproduce so they can live.

We just think they're at

higher risk for a variety

of chronic diseases for

having low omega-three levels.

And they do have low omega-three levels.

So EPA and DHA are just, I think,

bioactive nutrients that are helpful,

but they're not essential.

Well, it's important though, because

What you're saying,

because I love the word optimal, right?

When I talk about

optimization of nutrients,

it's very different than

let's call it RDA or the

nutrient levels we need not

to get a disease associated

with the deficiency versus optimization,

which is where I think

we'll be going today

because we have an omega

three index testing.

We can test the omegas in

our body and we can see them.

So it's a really clear point

to make that we're trying

to optimize health now.

We're not trying to make a minimal amount,

right?

And because we need to

ingest these at larger

levels rather than relying

on the systems to make the minimum levels,

let's talk a little bit about,

because everyone knows Fischl.

It's the top three supplement in the world,

right?

these omega threes that we were using,

I've been using them in

practice for years.

It was actually the first

supplement omega three

professional grade high

quality omega three that's been

was one of my first

supplements when I started

learning about nutrition as

a pharmacist because we

didn't really learn about

this we learned about it in

the arachidonic acid

cascade and inflammation

and things like that and

then we learned about how

the NSAIDs work but now

that was my first

supplement in learning

about clinical nutrition

and it was kind of it's now

full circle because I'm

using it so much more now

from the perspective of

If I had to give people

certain things to make it

really simple for their health,

omega-threes at my top of

my list because of all of those.

Let's talk about the

epidemiology and the health reasons.

So you've studied this for so long, right?

And you've seen these anecdotally,

but you've seen them in all the studies.

You've written three hundred papers.

So what are the benefits

here of omega-threes?

Well, the benefits are different,

different levels.

We can certainly say that omega-threes,

if you have, again, we're talking EPA,

DHA.

If you've got optimal levels of them,

you're chronically

suppressing inflammation.

And I think that if you have

to point to one thing,

that's probably the most

important thing they do,

is reduce the whole tone of

inflammation across the body.

Multiple systems are all

less inflammatory.

And so that has implications

on all kinds of diseases,

which is why omega-threes

seem to play a role in so

many different maladies.

But other things that they do,

they do make the blood

thinner in the sense that

they will reduce

the risk for platelet aggregation,

which causes blood clots.

And so that's a component of

what they're doing.

They don't do it to the

point where you're

increased risk for bleeding.

Clinically significant

bleeding doesn't happen

with taking omega-three.

But it's kind of like taking

a baby aspirin in a way,

because that will make your

blood thinner as well.

But you won't have some of

the GI bleeds that you get

from taking aspirin.

You also lower triglycerides,

something I mentioned earlier.

Your blood levels of

triglycerides are going to

be lower if you've got high omega-threes.

And blood pressure has been

reduced by omega-threes in

randomized trials.

So those are kind of

biochemical mechanisms by

which they work.

But at the end of the day,

they reduce risk for a

variety of diseases,

which is where we kind of

come up with the

The epidemiology is what's

showing us how a high

omega-three is chronically

associated with a lower

risk for a variety of

chronic disease outcomes.

And so that's why we think they're good.

Well,

and you touched on the really

beautiful point here,

which is inflammation, right?

The root cause of almost all

the chronic conditions is this

it's kind of like

omega-threes are at the top

of the level here because

it's lowering inflammation

on the global level in the body.

So all these downstream effects,

when we talk about it in a

functional perspective,

is like cardiovascular

system and all the other

downstream effects to

inflammation or inflaming body,

which is high inflammation, becomes

lower because we're

improving that status in the bloodstream,

right?

Because the mega three index

testing in the blood.

So I love that you brought

that up from the beginning

because it's not like we're taking,

because a lot of people

like think about like pharma.

It's like, oh, you take this drug.

It does this specific thing, right?

It's we're taking omega three as a,

as a nutrient, as, as,

as something that we're

taking in our bodies and

it's allowing the body to

lower the inflammation in the body.

Right.

Which is amazing.

Right.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

And it's not really, it's really the,

the chronic inflammation we have is,

you know, maybe we'll get into this.

It's not,

not really because of omega-six

fatty acids.

It's from the lack of omega-three.

The body is doing it's when you,

get enough omega-threes and

it doesn't make any

difference about how much

omega-six you got.

It's not- Well,

talk to people about that

because I think there's a stigma around,

you know, if we're talking nutrition is,

you know, the seed oils are bad.

These are good.

You know,

I've talked a lot about the

ratios in there.

And when you talked about

the Eskimos and the studies

they did on Eskimos,

it's because their levels were so high,

right?

That's why they were in such good health.

And so you've seen in your

research that it's not

really because the way I

look at it is like you

could have this much omega six,

but then you have this much

omega three because it's all volume,

right?

Because it's in the blood.

So you've seen that it's not

really the ratio.

It's really just the amount

of omega three that makes the difference.

Is that what I heard?

Right.

Right.

A ratio is you can make a

ratio of that out of anything.

But I don't I don't like the

omega six omega three ratio.

OK, because I think it's misleading.

Number one,

it presumes that omega six

fatty acids are all alike.

And there's like seven of seven omega.

There's really only two

fundamental omega sixes that we eat.

In our diet,

linoleic acid being the by far

the predominant and then

arachidonic acid will eat some, too.

But we don't when we say but in the blood,

like there's seven

different omega six fatty

acids that are made from them.

And we don't,

we imply when we just pool

them all together as omega-six,

we apply they all act the same way.

All these seven different

fatty acids all have the same function.

And that's not true.

We have seen time and again

where a high level of linoleic acid,

the primary omega-six,

is associated with all

kinds of excellent health outcomes,

just like a high omega-three.

Both omega-three and omega-six are good.

linoleic is good, EPA, DHA are good.

So this ratio is kind of good versus good.

I mean, that doesn't make any sense.

So what's the point of that?

The idea that omega-six

fatty acids are

pro-inflammatory just has

no basis in evidence.

You look at human trials

where people are given

omega-six or linoleic acid,

or you look at

epidemiologically where you

look at populations,

you look at the blood

levels of linoleic acid, and you look at

inflammatory markers in the blood.

There's no relationship.

It's not high omega-six,

high inflammation.

It just isn't there.

And studies we've done

recently looking at very,

very large populations,

looking at the blood

linoleic acid levels as a

predictor of health outcomes.

And we find that

consistently the people

that have the highest

linoleic acid levels are

the ones that live the longest,

have the least

cardiovascular disease and

the least diabetes.

So that doesn't sound like a bad thing.

That's a good thing.

So linoleic acid is a good player.

And this whole campaign

against seed oils is just

not based in good evidence at all.

It's based on the fact that

you can call oils processed,

and all of a sudden,

because it's processed, it's bad.

Everything processed is bad,

which is stupid.

I mean, water's processed.

Give me a break.

I mean, everything...

we eat pretty much is

processed to some extent or another.

And the idea that omega

sixes are bad came out of

the the sixties and seventies.

And it's just been shown to be not true.

So what's what's the

I love root cause medicine, right?

I'm a functional medicine guy.

So in your opinion,

as you've seen in your

studies and in your field,

like this is the thing

you've studied for your

entire career pretty much, right?

So what is the culprit of

the inflammatory response then?

If it's not the omega-six,

then in your experience,

because I feel like that's

the only way we can speak

through these days, in your experience,

what would you say is the

key marker then for the

inflammatory cascade?

I'm not sure there's a key marker,

but I think probably just over nutrition,

being obese, being fat,

too much adipose tissue is

creating this inflammatory state.

And that's a big part of the problem.

And why are we fat?

Well, you know,

how many reasons do you want?

We sit around in our butts all day.

We don't move nearly as much

as we used to.

We don't exercise.

And we eat lots of very

tasty food and we put on weight.

And

That's the biggest problem

that's causing this chronic inflammation.

Adipose tissue produces

molecules that are pro-inflammatory.

I agree with that statement, too,

because it's

You know, the the visceral adipose tissue,

we call it hot fat.

Right.

It's all metabolically active.

It's got all the inflammatory markers.

We're moving those

interleukins and all that good stuff.

So it's a really good point

to make here is like kind

of like we don't need to

look at the smoking gun per se,

but I'm glad that you put a

little a little.

scientific evidence,

because everything I love

to say is also backed by science, right?

You've done all these

studies and understand like

it's not the omega six is

similar to the fact that like, you know,

we're talking fats here.

Right.

And then for how many

decades did we say fat was bad for us?

Right.

Low fat, low carb, you know,

getting into these things

and moving into these

different directions.

And like now we're moving

into the direction that

some of these fats are

really good for us.

Right.

Right.

And I'm concerned that this

whole anti-seed oil thing

is going to result in lower

intake of linoleic acid,

which primarily comes from seed oils,

which is going to increase

our risk for metabolic disease.

Well, I guess the question is,

if we get rid of all the fats,

because we know that we

don't eat enough fish in this country,

why it's a big,

a big marker for

supplementation and why

it's top three in the world,

or at least in the country.

And it's like, well,

if we get rid of all the omegas, like,

well, what are we eating at that point?

Right.

So then it just perpetuates

the whole problem.

So I'm glad that you brought

that to light because it's

a really important factor

and something that I

continuously go down and learn.

Well, let's talk about indexing, right?

You said this is your cloth

here and talk to people

about how this came about.

And we'll definitely talk

about how we can do this because

in in my experience

clinically and what I've

heard and what I've learned

in my experience with omega

quant and indexing my

patients is the number

matters right that's right

if you don't know the

number you can't manage it right

But knowing the number and

getting it to a certain

level has the results that

you've been seeing, right?

Yeah, right, right.

So, yeah,

we're talking about the omega-three index,

which is a blood test

that's typically done with

a drop of blood on a piece of paper.

The blood's collected at home,

mailed to the laboratory,

then you get a report back from the lab.

We have is omega-quant here in Sioux Falls,

South Dakota.

uh and omega quant's been

around for about thirteen

years now we developed the

omega-three index test

twenty years ago uh in

early in two thousand four

was our first publication

on the omega-three index uh

and when I say our I mean I

have a colleague in germany

dr clemens von schacke and

he and I kind of cooked up

the idea together and then

have been building the case for it

ever since,

that the omega-three index is a

marker of risk.

It's not just a marker of

how much fish you eat, which it is that,

but that's not the point.

The point is it is a

biologically relevant and

actual risk factor.

So if you change the levels

of the omega-three,

you'll change your risk for disease.

originally proposed this

idea based on some studies

that had just been

published at that time in

the early two thousands,

showing that when they look at people,

they look across the range

of blood omega-three levels,

and you compare the people

with the highest omega-three levels,

the people with the lowest

omega-three levels,

the people with the highest

levels are like,

ninety percent less likely

to have a sudden cardiac arrest.

That was one of the studies

that we had learned about.

It was a study done at Harvard,

a very nice study.

And it was that study that

prompted us to say doctors

ought to have access to this,

patients ought to have access to this,

a marker of their omega-three level.

We named it the omega-three index.

It's the red blood cell EPA DHA content.

So we're not measuring plasma omega-three.

We're measuring omega-three,

which is okay in some settings.

For some research settings,

it's fine to measure plasma omega-three.

It correlates quite well

with red blood cell omega-three,

but red cell is more stable,

less noise in it.

Kind of like hemoglobin

A-one-C is a better

long-term marker of

diabetes status than is the

blood glucose level.

So it's the same idea.

So the omega-three index, EPA,

DHA as a percent of the

total fatty acids in a red cell membrane.

That percent is roughly

ranges from a low of two

percent to maybe up to ten,

twelve percent.

So that's the range.

Most Americans are in that

five-ish percent area.

Vegans are down there around

three and a half percent, which is low.

People in Japan or people in

Korea who eat a lot more

omega-three than we do,

eat a lot more fish as part

of their culture.

They're having an

omega-three index of seven, eight, nine,

ten percent in that area.

We think eight percent and

above is really kind of the,

use the word optimal.

We think that's an optimal place to be.

And getting up there is not,

doesn't take huge amounts

of fish or huge amounts of supplements.

It's fairly doable.

But that's the omega-three index test,

and we've been studying it

and its relationship with

disease outcome for a long time now.

And like you said, higher levels are good.

Let me repeat what you said, though,

is you saw that when you

get the omega-three levels

at those optimal ranges of

where people ate a lot of fish,

eight to twelve percent,

you're seeing ninety percent

decrease in sudden cardiovascular events.

Yeah.

And that needs to be

explained because that's what's called a,

it's an observational study

and it's a kind of a case control study.

We've, and that's for people who,

nobody's taking supplements

or fish oil supplements in these studies.

This is just,

some people have high levels

because they eat a lot of fish.

Some people have low levels

because they don't.

The people who chronically

eat higher amounts of

omega-three have higher

omega-three index in their blood.

And those people are the

ones that are lower risk

for sudden death.

That was the study anyway, back in the,

in two thousand two that

came out that prompted the

development of the omega-three index.

At this point,

I can't say that people that

have the highest

omega-threes are ninety

percent less likely to have

sudden cardiac death now.

I think evidence has accumulated.

It's maybe thirty or forty percent,

but that's huge.

It's a nutrient.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani Right.

Exactly.

What I would tell people is

I've been on stage and I say,

imagine a drug like that

could reduce cardiovascular disease,

like sudden cardiovascular

risk by thirty five percent.

Like no drug can say that.

Right.

But omega three has been

shown like it's a correlation.

Right.

We're not saying you take omega three.

You're going to definitely have this.

It's not a cause and effect thing,

but it's an overall thing.

And I just say the omega-three indexing,

the easiest way I've said

it to my patients and

pharmacists when I teach

them to use this in their pharmacies,

because it's a point of care test.

All we need is a CLIA waiver

to do it in the store.

You can give it to the patient.

They can do it.

It's really simple.

It's a finger stick, dried blood spot,

right?

Right.

And...

It's the best test your

doctor will never tell you to get, right?

It's one of those tests

where if I could help someone,

because this is what we're talking about,

high impact, low cost.

If I could help someone at

this level of impact,

And, you know,

an omega three index is less

than a hundred dollars.

Right.

And we can move it.

We can move it in a way

that's accessible because there's,

and this is why I love

bringing this into the pharmacy practice.

It's like,

what if we could do a one C

omega three and a vitamin D on everybody?

we would be, we would,

and then we optimize the omega-three,

we optimize the vitamin D,

we look at their metabolic

health in three simple ways.

This is why I created Rx to

Wellness and the Wellness

Made Simple stuff that

we're doing and launching

is because those three

simple labs and three simple supplements,

because I add magnesium in there,

can do a whole lot for health rather than

fifteen hundred dollar a

month medications and so I

I love simple bill and I

love getting high impact

and that's why I've been I

love this test and I love

how simple we can do this

because you test right you

see where your levels are

and then you're the we've

seen the the labs because

we've used them it's like

you need to eat this much

fish or you need to take

this many supplements

To get you to the eight to twelve percent.

So it's a really simple way

to get you high impact,

high results and little to no effort.

Right.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And certainly safe and it's

cheap and doesn't interact with any drug.

That's a problem.

So it's it's a great way to go.

Well, in that that's the,

I always get the patients

that say this or that, like,

so what I'm hearing is also like,

if someone's on blood thinners,

they can still take omega three.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So there's really no

contraindication here.

Cause it's coming from

something that's got high impact,

low inflammatory cascade.

And we can, we can work the,

we can work from this top end downstream,

like approach.

which again, high impact, low dollar.

What better is that, right?

How can it get any better than that?

Right, exactly, exactly.

So how do people,

so OmegaQuant is the one

I've been using for years.

That's the lab that you've co-founded.

No, I actually found it by myself.

That was not co-founded.

Oh, that one.

I'm sorry.

That one was you.

Yeah,

that was totally the founder of... It

was co-founded, right.

We have patients,

but we also... I teach

pharmacists wellness.

I teach practitioners wellness.

in the the allopathic world

because this is one of the

key members here is like

you can use this in your

practices primary care in

your pharmacy settings so

we're going to set up links

for practitioners to set up

and get this lab into their

spaces really easily and we

also have patients that can

buy this directly if

they're wanting to do their own

you know, their own test here.

It's, it's not complicated.

It's not complex, right?

No, very easy.

So we're thinking easy, simple.

Um, and you know, it's,

it's a finger stick away.

And then also you do, um,

we have it for pets too, right?

For dogs, for dogs.

Yeah.

Right.

So my wife is, I'm coaxing her.

She just graduated one of

the first classes of

holistic pet health coaching.

And I said,

you got to put a mega three in

there for your dog, because guess what?

We love our dogs probably

more than we love ourselves.

You know,

we want them to live around longer.

And so if they're not in their diet either,

it's a really useful test.

So you can also test your animals too.

That's right.

And you can also test pregnant women.

Pregnant women can test

themselves because it's

important that they have a

high DHA level while

they're pregnant to help their baby.

And also it's been shown

that higher omega-three

levels in pregnancy have

been shown to reduce risk

for preterm birth.

And pregnancy extends gestation a few days,

which is an important writ large.

The longer you can keep the baby inside,

the healthier they are, to a point,

obviously.

So that's a good test.

And we also have a milk lactation test.

Mom can put a drop of her milk on a card,

just like the blood,

and we can measure the DHA

content of that.

advise her whether she needs

to take more omega-three or not.

That's perfect.

These are like beautiful, easy,

like we can talk really high level.

It reduces inflammation,

does this with cardiovascular system.

But when we're getting down

to like the details, it's like,

can we help these specific things, right?

Keeping the gestation super important,

healthy babies, good brain health.

I've used omega-threes in so

many different, like we've used it for

traumatic brain injuries.

Like there's so many

different things we can use

the omega-threes for that

are going to help with that inflammation.

But what we're talking about here is very,

it's optimization.

That's the hugest part that

I think is so important

here is instead of just

recommending a supplementation,

we're recommending that

we're looking at it

optimizing it.

I just call it test, treat, test protocol,

right?

You test, you get the levels, you optimize,

and then you retest to see

where you're at.

Simple, easy, and high impact.

Right.

Evidence-based medicine, right?

Evidence-based healthcare.

Back by science, evidence-based, right?

This is evidence-based well care, I think,

because we're using this as

a proactive approach to

modifying someone's health

and making it really simple, right?

For me,

I've gone very complex in my career

and in my life about all

these high-level protocols

and all these things we can be doing.

And I've moved back into

this simple space because

you know,

wellness and well care made simple.

I put omega-three and

indexing at the cornerstone

of that because of its high impact,

right?

That's what we're talking

about here is where it's

simple and it's got a high

level of impact rather than

getting in like the eighty twenty rule.

If we could do this eighty

percent of the time,

we don't have to worry

about the little stuff.

Right, right, right.

Handle the big problems first.

And that's the big problem.

Low omega-three.

And in our Westworld brains,

you can do this pretty quickly.

You can do it pretty easily.

Have you,

and using quality supplementation, right?

We're talking omega-three supplements.

versus fish oil.

We talk a lot about that, right?

So there's some labeling

things we want to talk to

our patients about the omega-three EPA,

DHA values that are in the

capsule and getting it from

quality sources that are

purifying it and moving out

all the toxicities because

there's a lot of toxicities

and things like that, right?

Well, I mean, in fish oils,

omega-three products, there's very little

There's no mercury, for one thing.

That's all taken out just as a matter of,

because mercury is water

soluble and fats are lipid soluble,

when they're separating at the first pass,

when they're taking the

fish they collect and

cooking them down and

separating the oil from the fish meal,

any mercury that's there,

and there's very little

there because these are

typically anchovies or sardines,

really small fish.

Any minerals that are there

are going to go with the water layer,

not with the oil layer.

So it starts right away.

You're not going to have any

of the minerals or the

metals that people are concerned about.

And then just the very

process of cleaning up a

fish oil to where it's even

tolerable taste-wise.

There's a lot of steps.

Even the simplest or maybe

the cheapest fish oils

go through quite a few steps to get clean.

Yeah.

You can get cleaner and

cleaner and cleaner and pay

more and more and more and more.

The higher the concentration of omega-free,

typically the cleaner it is in a way.

Yeah.

They've distilled it down into the parts,

right?

EPA, DHA.

I always gone in this space

of like best quality on the

planet for the price,

like moving those two together.

Cause you can go high end spectrum,

you know,

And then you could go really low quality,

but then to get to eight to

twelve percent,

it's a lot more pills a day.

Yeah.

So we get no burden.

Right.

So it's kind of like in that middle.

Like,

where do we get into the middle zone?

So test, treat, test,

and go on the website.

We're going to send the links.

So providers, right?

If you're listening and you

want to put this into your practice,

we're going to give you

avenues there as well.

This is super important because it is,

it's very accessible too.

This is not something that's difficult to,

you don't have to go to a

lab quest and get blood draw.

Like it's literally a drop of blood,

send it out.

And your provider can help

you manage this.

I've used my my friends and colleagues.

We didn't even talk about eye health.

Like there's so many

different ways that we can

improve the status.

Of the omega three by testing,

seeing it and then optimizing it,

which is super great.

Right.

And it looks like this eight

percent target is pretty

much optimal for every

disease condition we've looked at so far.

So you don't have to hit one

target for one thing and

one target for another thing.

And it just get to eight

percent and then go worry

about something else.

That's so it can't get any

simpler than that, right?

Test,

take its supplements or eat this much

fish and then retest.

If you're at eight percent,

stay with where you're at

and you're good.

Right.

You got to keep doing it.

I mean,

that's the important thing is once

you've reached eight

percent and you decide, OK, I'm there,

I'm going to stop taking my omega three.

Sure.

Fall right back.

It's a factor, right?

It's in there all the time.

I love that.

So in your experience, as we're closing up,

this has been such a very

valuable conversation.

So thank you because I think

it's just so important to,

to reiterate here is like we got,

we can get so complex with

our health routines and the

things we need to do.

And this is very simple.

This is super simple.

So in your experience, this is forty,

fifty years of really

diving in deep on this one.

This isn't like a reiteration.

Like we're still talking

about the same thing.

Omega three.

Right.

If you had to give someone like one.

What was if they had to

think about one thing they

could do right now, what would it be?

Well, obviously,

test your omega three level.

If it's too low,

increase your omega three intake.

and retest to make sure

you're at eight percent.

I mean, that's three things.

But it's one thing.

It's optimizing your omega

three index status.

Couldn't say it any better than that,

because.

I've been in nutrition for a

long time and teaching

wellness is like when you

optimize in this again,

we've gone all the way to

genomics and longevity and

all these things people are doing,

and it's like

You guys, you heard it from the OG here.

You heard it from the original guy.

He's telling you this is the

simplistic way of doing it,

but simple doesn't have to be difficult.

It can be really impactful.

Right, right.

Exactly.

Genetic tests, you can't really change,

but this you can change.

And, and, and,

and what we can do is what we,

we really need to focus on

in this day and age and,

and making it simple and

easy is super important.

Well, we're gonna send the links.

We're gonna have everybody to,

to hopefully the listeners

will listen and,

and do these simple things because let's,

let's, let's talk simple, right?

Simple.

So easy.

Right.

Well, Bill,

I really appreciate you coming on today.

I really,

really think this is going to be

an amazing,

impactful thing that we can do.

Like I said, you know,

this is part of our mission

to to help make medications unnecessary.

And this is a good one step for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh.

Good to be on with you.

Appreciate you guys.

Until then, everybody stay well.