"You're never too old to become younger!"  Mae West


I've dealt with this topic at length inThe Brain Food Diet, so it would be pointless to go over the ground in detail here.  But perhaps it is appropriate for me to make a few relevant comments as well as to increase the sources for further reading, expecially for professional visitors.

 How convinced am I that the omega-3s, and DHA in particular, really do slow down or even prevent the cognitive decline we assume to be a normal part of ageing?  Until two years or so ago, I hadn't fully made up my mind.  Some studies appeared to point strongly in this direction but they were contradicted by one or two studies that appeared to show the very opposite.  The contradictory studies were fewer and appeared to point in bizarre directions, such as consumption of saturated fat was good for brain function.  I'm afraid the evidence against that is so strong it made such claims suspect to me. 

In the last two years, and in most tellingly in 2007, a series of high quality studies convinced me beyond all reasonable doubt.  You will find those studies outlined in The Brain Food Diet.

It is important to grasp that maximum benefit is likely to come from taking omega-3s, and DHA in particular, long before cognitive decline sets in.  Many doctors, such as myself, suspect that cognitive decline (and Alzheimer's disease) begins long before it become clinically manifest, perhaps as early as the forties -- and certainly by the fifties.  Whether you take your omega-3s as oily fish in your diet, or as fish oil or omega-3 supplements, you shouldn't regard yourself as taking a drug-style of treatment, but rather that you are restoring the nutritional balance of your diet to normal.  

What about taking omega-3s as treatment in people who, tragically, have already developed symptoms of cognitive decline?

Yes!  I would sanction this.

Further advice on this, and also the cautions for people taking aspirin or anticoagulant drugs, is given in the book. 

Go to preventing Alzheimer's disease