Health

Study Finds -  It sounds like science fiction: a simple supplement that can help override your genetic programming. Yet a new study from the University of Georgia suggests this might not be far from reality. Their research indicates that fish oil could help millions of people swim against the tide of their cholesterol-raising genes. This isn’t just another drop in the ocean of supplement studies. It’s a potential sea change in how we view the interplay between genetics and nutrition. The research, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, dives deep into data from over 441,000 participants, exploring how fish oil supplements might modify the expression of genes linked to blood lipid levels.

“Recent advances in genetic studies have allowed us to predict someone’s genetic risk of high cholesterol,” explains Yitang Sun, lead author and recent doctoral graduate from UGA’s Department of Genetics, in a statement. “But the current prediction has room for improvement because it does not consider individual differences in lifestyles, such as taking fish oil supplements.”

What Sun and her colleagues discovered was nothing short of remarkable. Participants who reported regularly taking fish oil supplements showed lower blood lipid levels than their genes predicted – especially for total cholesterol, LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, and triglycerides. It’s as if the fish oil was swimming upstream against the current of genetic predisposition.