[SR71]

I thought about starting a thread for interesting things heard on NPR, but they're usually just miscellany.

This bit was on fuckin' omega three supplements, how do they work? What was interesting? Everyone is afire for the super health thing, but really, we're not sure how it works, or if it works.

According to the author being interviewed, studies that point to efficacy find healthy people for things like unblocked arteries or lack of inflammation (catchall phrase inflammation) tend to have high levels of omega 3. Great. OTOH, studies where omega 3 is taken and then changes are noted are not that impressive, and all but lacking are large extended period double blind studies. Further, the mechanism by which the omega 3 would work is not well understood.

The point was, do people with healthier life styles tend to have more omega 3, or is it the omega 3 that makes people healthy? We're not really sure. The other thing is, though, that we're liquifying huge quantities of fish and harvesting freighters of krill to supply our demand. It's significant enough to be bad for fisheries, basically.

If you want to fight about it, feel free, it's just something interesting I thought I heard on NPR, if I even understood it correctly.