Cholesterol vs the Omega 3 Index

What effect does omega-3s and cholesterol have on heart health? Does the omega-3 index lower your cholesterol?

Omega-3 fatty acids do have a favorable effect on blood lipids. There are two lipids in the blood. One of them is called triglycerides and the other one is called cholesterol. We, the Omega threes are well known to lower levels of triglycerides and that's a heart healthy effect. But they have no effect on cholesterol levels and there has been some question that do Omega threes lower cholesterol? Well, no, they don't lower cholesterol. They have no effect, good or bad, on cholesterol levels. But they do affect your overall risk for heart disease, even if they don't lower cholesterol, simply because they help make the blood a little less sticky. They make the heartbeat a little more regular and, you know, in a more stable, sustained way. And they also again reduce inflammation, which is another component of heart disease. So even though they don't lower cholesterol, they do lower risk for heart disease. And in fact, when speaking about cholesterol, we've noticed that the our omega-3 index, which is our marker of omega-3 status in the blood, is really a more important predictor, more powerful predictor of risk for heart disease than cholesterol actually is. So they're related in the sense that they're both risk factors. A high cholesterol's bad, a low omega-3 is bad. You raise your omega-3, you reduce your risk for heart disease, but you're not going to lower your cholesterol.