Fish oil supplements may not help your brain, study finds

 Fish oil supplements may not help your brain, study finds

Fish oil supplements are a multibillion-dollar business, touting support for brain, heart, joint health and more. But a study suggests that although omega-3s — the main nutrient in fish oil supplements — play an important role in the brain, supplementation may not affect cognitive function or brain structure.

In the two-year, randomized controlled trial, 365 adults, aged 55 to 80, who did not have dementia but had risk factors, were given either high-dose DHA — a type of omega-3 — or a placebo.

The researchers found that supplementation did largely increase the level of omega-3s in the brain compared to placebo. But there was no noticeable effect from it, suggesting that increasing the levels of omega-3s in the brain did not translate into a reduced risk of dementia, said Hussein N. Yassine, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Personalized Brain Health at the University of Southern California