Hey, mom-to-be! Want to know what level of DHA is sufficient for your little one’s needs? Curious to know what the breast milk test says about your milk?
It’s understandable that you worry about what you take in when you’re getting your body ready for a baby. In this week's part two episode of the Less Stressed life podcast, Dr. Kristina Harris Jackson, a registered dietitian and research associate at Omega Quant enlightens us on:
Her Key Takeaways:
[02:55] What is Omega 3 Index Testing?
[06:38] DHA range to avoid preterm birth
[14:57] Why choose Omega Quant's Blood Testing?
[17:19] Breast milk test
[18:55] Tips for quality Omega 3 products
Other topics she touched on in this episode:
But wait, before you head on to have a listen, we will be giving away a $50 at-home Omega 3 Index Testing Kit:
Here's how you can join:
Got it? Great!
Now go on and listen to this episode!
Dr. Kristina Harris Jackson received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from Pennsylvania State University in 2013 and completed her training to become a Registered Dietitian in 2014. As a graduate student, she studied under Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, an internationally-recognized expert in fats and nutrition. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado-Denver under Dr. John Peters in the area of worksite wellness before returning to the omega-3 field. Kristina joined the family business OmegaQuant Analytics in 2014, with a particular focus on omega-3s in maternal health, helping create the Prenatal DHA test and the Mother’s Milk DHA test.
---
Assess your Adrenals, Detox or Get my Guide
Join us on Instagram
instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/
Shop our Favorites
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Hey, mom-to-be! Want to know what level of DHA is sufficient for your little one’s needs? Curious to know what the breast milk test says about your milk?
It’s understandable that you worry about what you take in when you’re getting your body ready for a baby. In this week's part two episode of the Less Stressed life podcast, Dr. Kristina Harris Jackson, a registered dietitian and research associate at Omega Quant enlightens us on:
Her Key Takeaways:
[02:55] What is Omega 3 Index Testing?
[06:38] DHA range to avoid preterm birth
[14:57] Why choose Omega Quant's Blood Testing?
[17:19] Breast milk test
[18:55] Tips for quality Omega 3 products
Other topics she touched on in this episode:
But wait, before you head on to have a listen, we will be giving away a $50 at-home Omega 3 Index Testing Kit:
Here's how you can join:
Got it? Great!
Now go on and listen to this episode!
Dr. Kristina Harris Jackson received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from Pennsylvania State University in 2013 and completed her training to become a Registered Dietitian in 2014. As a graduate student, she studied under Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, an internationally-recognized expert in fats and nutrition. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado-Denver under Dr. John Peters in the area of worksite wellness before returning to the omega-3 field. Kristina joined the family business OmegaQuant Analytics in 2014, with a particular focus on omega-3s in maternal health, helping create the Prenatal DHA test and the Mother’s Milk DHA test.
---
Assess your Adrenals, Detox or Get my Guide
Join us on Instagram
instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/
Shop our Favorites
Loving the podcast? Leave us a review!
spk_0: 0:00
If you're going to spend money on our supplement, then you want to make sure it works, and we don't necessarily promote one supplement over another. But the most important thing like I said before is dose and knowing how much you're getting in your supplement.
spk_1: 0:13
Welcome to the less stressed Life podcast, where our only priority is providing those ah ha moments toe up level your life, health and happiness. Your host Integrative dietitian nutritionist Krista Bigler helps health conscious women reduce the stress and confusion around food, fatigue, digestive and skin issues at less stress. Nutrition dot com Now onto the show If you're listening to this week's episode you probably already listening to last week's episode, So what I want you to know is that last week's episode is really kind of like a general overview as some Omega three stuff. This week's episode is more gets in a little bit more of the prenatal DOJ, but there's gonna be some crossover either way. Why I'm recording this message for you is because we've got a couple omega three index kits to give away valued at $50 you can do it at home. Send him into the lab. It's awesome. They'll send you the kit or the report, and it's self explanatory, honestly, on what to do with it from there. But to enter To win one of those kits, all you have to do is either you just need to share the podcast or this episode that's really it. So but and then you have to kind of prove that you've done it. So there's a couple ways to do this, and this allows us to be able to find you if you win. So one option is to just go ahead and click the share button in the podcast app, or send someone a text and that will take you to your text messages. Or you can just text someone like Hey, I think you'd really like X Y Z episode, and you can listen to a less stress life dot com or you can send I'm like a direct link to the episode, and I think many people kind of know how to do s. I won't walk through that, so there's Little Arrow somewhere, and it'll send you the text. What you have to do then, is take a screenshot of you sharing it and send us an email. Hello at less trust life dot com. Then the other two options for entering a win the Omega three index kit would be There's gonna be a couple of social media posts for each of these episodes on both Instagram and Facebook at Krista Bigler Rd. And you just need to comment and tag some one on one of those posts and that we will be able to find you that way, too. So it's up to three entries, right? You could email a screenshot of you sharing the episode, and you can comment on Facebook and you can comment on Instagram and actually can comment on both posts, and we'll give you as many entries as you. D'oh Doesn't matter so and then I'll do a random. There's a little like, random way you can pick for these. And generally, people don't mean you're listening to the car. You forget to do this so your chances are good. Your do your chances are good. You should totally enter Anyway. I hope that helps And good look, let's talk about how do we know
spk_0: 2:32
where we're
spk_1: 2:32
at with this? Because when you started doing study work around this population. There wasn't a reference range early for pregnancy, of what appropriate D J or Omega. However, we want to call this omega three. And it was like if I would go get my Omega Three Index contested, which I did a week or two ago, it's low. I mean, Milo, that reference rain just different than pregnancy. Tell us about that.
spk_0: 2:54
Correct. So the Omega Three index is the first, like, really omega three blood tests that came out way before our prenatal DOJ test. So the Omega Three Index is the E P. A and D J. Content of red blood cell membranes. The blood it has plasma. And it had spread blood cells and white blood cells and red blood cells just kind of carry oxygen around. And then no one else really cares that much about it, except for maybe measuring h b a onesie. Everything is going on in the plasma, but we look at a red blood cell and we look at the fatty acid membrane that makes up the red blood cell. And that is really interesting because it reflects tissue levels of fatty acids in your body instead of just what you ate yesterday or eight. This morning, that's gonna be in your plasma, the red blood cells, and really show kind of your months long intake of fat and what your body has to make those fatty acid membranes that the type of fats that are available to them is from what you've been eating over the last few months. And so these red blood cells, we look at the fatty acids. We quantify all we've wanted by about 24 fatty acids, and we take the e p a n d. J over the total fatty acids and we get a percent. And that percent really represents E p and G H A status. And the reference range that was set in 2000 for was 8 to 12% has an Omega three and next being that's an optical of omega three status. Urgent assistant. For a general population, less than 4% is not a good place to be, and these were all set with the end point of sudden cardiac death. That was the main focus, and that's where the research showed. People who were at 8% had a lot less risk of dying of a heart attack versus people less than 4%. So that's how it came to be. And then over the last 15 years there's been a ton of research that has corroborated those numbers, and it's starting to be used in brain health and I health as well. And then we started to look at this pregnancy population, which is totally different, and we thought, You know, Omega three and excavate. It's probably good for that population, but let's take a look and see what the evidence says. And if there is any evidence to set a target for that population and I felt like going into this population, it would be important to focus on D. H because that's where the research has really just used pure D h H or bound. That D. H is seems to be more effective than giving a P A. So I wanted to kind of match what the research hub had grown from, and so we looked at instead of EPA and D H A. Added together, we just are looking at D. H. A levels in the red blood cell for this prenatal D H. A marker and then a study came out in 2018 from Denmark. I think where they were looking at blood levels of pregnant women and correlating and showing how low blood levels of G H ey were highly predictive of having early preterm birth. And they were able to do this because in Europe they have more socialized medicine. So they had blood levels of all these women early in pregnancy, and then they knew whether or not they had a full term birth or early preterm birth. And so they were able to take those women. Would they know what the outcome is? Look back at what their blood levels were in early to mid pregnancy and see if it was predicted and it was extremely predictive. Toe have very low D H. A blood levels increase the risk of having early preterm birth by about 10 fold compared to the women who had higher blood levels, which was kind of wild. So that's really what motivated us to say. There's something here. There's so much background evidence that D. H is important for this part of pregnancy. Let's see if we can propose a marker and then we'll just start doing research and see how well this marker holds up. And we found that 5% was the target for having a d. H. A level of greater than 5% is a good place to be as it to avoid early preterm birth. That's where we landed.
spk_1: 6:51
Yeah, So I'm gonna recap that. So for the general population in 2004 it was decided that 8 to 12% of Omega Three index was great and less than 4% was a really bad place to be. Because we're trying to avoid sudden cardiac death. That's what the focus of that was. But you guys, really, I mean, in your doing research with a lot of places so we can talk about that in a moment. But in 2018 because of this study that came out in Denmark and then seen that there was a tenfold increase in preterm birth with low mega status. You guys found through literature review and your own studies that 5% was a pretty good target. But you guys are kind of the lab using that as the reference range. Essentially right?
spk_0: 7:24
Yes. So this is a reference range that we have proposed, and it's still up for debate, and we're always doing more and more research to trying to find these reference. Range is, but we're working with folks from Cornell. We're about to try and make a study happen at a hospital here in town to start to really solidify this 5% mark. What's cool is that looking, at the very least, the Omega three index in the prenatal D. J. R. A. Status marker of D. J, and you pay in DOJ status, respectively. So regardless of whether or not you're hitting that 5% target in pregnancy or 8% if you get your baseline level and you change your intake, you can see yourself how much you go up and how it relates to kind of the general public or the pregnancy public as far as we know. So it's both kind of, ah, marker of help or potentially risk factor for certain outcomes, but also just a nutritional status marker where you can track what works for you as faras intake goes.
spk_1: 8:25
And with kids, there's a wild can of worms at the moment. The yes, all different sizes of the moment something's a much
spk_0: 8:31
after kids. If a lot of people are testing kids and using a big threes for all different kinds of things and and then I would just say if you want to look at their levels, there's nothing wrong with that. But kids typically have just lower baseline levels and adults from what we've seen, and we don't know what a target level would be for them. So you can still use the test. You're still gonna just get that wrong number and you can see what you're doing is for a supplementation or die. It goes, is increasing their make a three level.
spk_1: 8:59
Yeah, I don't have anyone cares about this story, but it would have been a really cool idea if I had done this with my five year old. And there will always be next winter, everyone to the Gate of Winter. He got really dry hands, and I think that's multifold, right? Like we wash and we like exposed to cold and whatnot, and my fix for this is a high dose omega threes, and it works every single time. But I have to give him, like, three. What's normal for a little kid. Oh, and by the way, getting in our next reason because really treated. It depends on how well totally do it. And like a lot of these cod liver oil is a really flavored. I do these little dummies, but if you look at kids products, they're like barely anything. It's garbage. So I use the one with the highest amount where one little thing is like 300 total omega threes and all the other ones, like 80. So, like nothing if we think about adult version something, but that's something. But it's really nothing, Thank you. So I get to leave the noodle. I give him about 1000 and it works really effectively in a short time. Just kind of fun. You know, I really it is like a huge believer of, ah, dry skin from the inside out, mostly from
spk_0: 9:59
a lot of
spk_1: 9:59
personal experience, a client experience. You should people move the needle if you're doing, you're right out,
spk_0: 10:04
and I think your point about the doses super is that's really important, and I think that's what's kind of screwed up. A lot of the research is that nobody knows what dose use and they'll just kind of take a dose and give it to a bunch of people. And it may not be even close to enough to move their blood level. And, like you said, you're giving your kid a 1000 milligrams a day, which is, Ah, high dose, but certainly not out of. I mean up to 3000 milligrams a day is considered safe in the US It's 5000 in Europe. It's hard to overdose on these things, but
spk_1: 10:35
takes a lot of pills to get there. But it takes a
spk_0: 10:37
lot of pills. Yeah, and it feels like a lot. But when you do the higher doses, that's where you notice changes. Young quickly. Yeah, I do a lower dose, and it's gonna be a long time.
spk_1: 10:48
I'm a big fan of, like, Big make a big enough dose to see a difference, and then we can get it out if we need to. But, I mean, that's the problem with people who are experimenting with this. We're like, let's say someone's a mom and they're trying to send their child for whatever reason, If you're using this kid's Omega product, that's only 80 milligrams, and I'm over here saying I have to use 1000 to see a difference within a week or two. I mean, you're gonna be grossly disappointed. You're gonna say I tried omega threes and they didn't work. That's essentially
spk_0: 11:12
what we're gonna say. Yeah, doses, everything did. We just published a study showing the things that predict Omega Three Index. It's Joe's overpowers everything else. So if you get a high enough dose, you're going to get a response. But it definitely some people respond
spk_1: 11:29
a
spk_0: 11:29
lot to lower dose, and some people need a higher dose. It's the way you know is by testing.
spk_1: 11:34
Exactly. Great Second, probably right. You know this if you have a baseline. And so this is where you guys are, the experts. But talk to us about Omega three testing, and this is a good time to talk about the family business because the reason that you even have a job just a thrill, you know, getting. But like your dad kind of discovered this through the research he was doing at a university first and then kind of moved it over into its own place. Is that kind of how this started? Sort of because I mean, tell us about the testing technology out there who doesn't make a testing, and you talk to us a little bit about how you guys were doing a little bit different. But, like, this is what you're doing is really easy to do, too. So it's like, you order this, do it at home, send it in. And how is
spk_0: 12:11
that possible? Yeah. Oh, man. Lots of stuff to talk about. Let's see if I can remember all of it. So my dad is Bill Harris, and he and Klemens von Shockey, who is a German cardiologists They proposed the Omega Three Index in 2000 for after being
spk_1: 12:27
kind of a deal that didn't realize that
spk_0: 12:31
that's okay. But after there was several studies to in particular that came out showing that blood levels of omega threes were really highly predictive of sudden cardiac death and they said, Well, we can measure this. Why don't we offer This is a risk factor for heart disease, like cholesterol? And so they started out and they were both on one of the cardiologists. My dad was a researcher, PhD, not clinical, so they started to do research and they started to try and get this clinically adapt taken up. And so my dad had a lab. That's how they were running, doing fatty acid analysis on red blood cells in lots and lots of studies and then started to branch out and have doctors send samples. And further clients are for their patients. And eventually the research lab was just grew into a commercial lab because we had enough clinicians interested. And then today we have clinicians who are interested. We have individuals who contested. I'll talk about that a minute, and then we have a huge research arm still, So we're still running thousands and thousands of samples for research studies to continue to verify the numbers that we have and then the doctors. These are tests congee, confident that the specific number and the targets that we set our set on research. And when we do our analysis, their numbers can match our research numbers with regards to the at home test kit. What's really neat about fatty acids is that we can measure them out of a blood spot so somebody can use a lancet and get a finger stick. The you can put that blood on a card that we've treated with antioxidants and the fatty acids in that blood spot will be stabilized by our any toxins, and then they can send it to our lab. We punch a hole out of that blood spot and we can see there fatty acid pattern and get their Omega three index or they're prenatal DOJ level from that. And this is a technique that has been used in research for a very long time, and we've just built on that. And we've done a lot of testing to see how stable it is. And it works like a charm. It's pretty pretty neat that we can do that. Yeah, so that's why I think Democrats home testing. Yeah, part of our business
spk_1: 14:35
poke your finger and send it in an envelope essentially is like all it a cent mille, it really requires. But how is this different? So now that your commercial lab this is good because people can access it. But who else is doing, like, how else to people commonly get omega threes looked at? What are the other options out there like? Is this the gold standard, or is there a disparity in the marketplace because I think with all testing, there's better quality and not as good a quality testing.
spk_0: 14:57
So what's out there? There are lots of omega three tests out there, and what they mean is where I think we really stand out because we do have the strongest base of research behind our actual numbers and target. We measure it in a red blood cell. That's an important distinction. And red blood cell or a whole blood draw. If it's a measurement and plasma, which some labs do, then that level can be a lot more varied based on what you previously eaten. So our levels are much more stable compared to a plasma level. Some other labs also will only report like a ratio of omega six to omega three or a record Danek ass into E. P A. And they just give you this ratio number. Those numbers are more difficult to understand, as compared to the Omega three index, because you're dealing with two different fatty acids moving, and we think for the most part, the important side of the ratio is the omega three side that can having your omega threes in the good zone can pretty much fix most your ratios. And so for ours, we think it's just the easiest. Understand. It's a stable marker, and we use the same methods that we do with research. So we know our numbers are are solid, and we service a lot of other labs across the country and across the world. We actually have a lab in Australia and Scotland to do this work, and some of the other labs heir Salvio and Greenspan and Great Planes Laboratories. I think there's a whole list of them, and I'm not even sure of all of them. But you can either work through those labs or you can work directly with us.
spk_1: 16:26
But you can
spk_0: 16:26
not work with LabCorp request yet Those are different analyses that those numbers will not match up with ours.
spk_1: 16:35
And what are they looking at?
spk_0: 16:36
Unfortunately, Quest, we don't really know used to be plasma, but we're not sure anymore. It's hard to tell from the website, but it's not an Omega three index. It is not our method precise, so their number could be completely it might. If you get your number from them and you're thinking that 8 to 12% for the Omega three index is not the same things you don't worries. I think their numbers come back much lower s so you have to look at their reference ranges and not compare it to ours.
spk_1: 17:05
There's a lot to talk about here, and I want to mention one more thing because we kind of glazed over it a little bit. I mean, we mentioned it, but there's the mother's milk test, which is basically you're putting breast milk on the same piece of paper, essentially correct and you're looking at. And is the reference range different for that?
spk_0: 17:19
Yes, it's more different because it's we're looking at all the facts in the milk and not just the fats in a membrane. So the breast milk levels can change more quickly than the red blood cell levels. And so that number. We set a target for the breast milk D H. A level at 0.32%. So this is a completely different range, and that is really based on study. By TOM Brenna Many years ago, where they tried to take all the data on breast milk fatty acid levels in the world, and they found that the average was 0.32% and then you were a lot of other studies and even formula studies where they're changing the amount of D. H and R academic acid and formulas 0.32%. Being above that with DOJ level seems to be the sweet spot where you're out of the kind of deficiencies own. So being higher than 0.32% is great, but you may not be getting more and more and more benefit as you get higher and higher. Being below 0.32% is a little bit more of a deficiency state, so it's not a hard number to hit. Usually, that 200 milligrams a day should help most people get to that target breast milk number. But it will change a lot more quickly, and it's a little bit different. It's a little different marker.
spk_1: 18:32
I feel like this conversation can't be complete unless we touch on omega three supplementation and the pros and cons there. So when I say that, I mean quality again. So we just talk about testing quality, which is important. But it's also important, as with all supplements to check, make a quality because any negative research, sometimes it's coming from poor quality products. So what do you have to say about that when you're looking
spk_0: 18:55
for a product? Yeah, for us, we want you to know your product is working. If you're going to spend money on our supplement, then you want to make sure it works, and we don't necessarily promote one supplement over another. But the most important thing like I said before is dose and knowing how much you're getting in your supplement. Another important piece is the type of fatty acid in there, so there are different formulations. One is called on Ethel Esther formulation, and one is called a trackless red. There's also a possibility that those have different. They absorb differently, and a lot of the really concentrated supplements are Ethel Esther's, but they're not absorbed very well unless they're taken with food. So this is really important. If you're taking supplements fish oil supplements take it with a food that contains fat, because then you will actually absorb the fat in there. You could be taking supplements in the morning before breakfast, or if you don't eat breakfast and you will not absorbed one bit of it. If you don't have any sat with that gets your fat digestion going, no matter what supplement you take, that's gonna affect how well it works. But then the dose of epi and D. J you gotta look on the back panel and see how many pills it would take, how many pills were in a serving size and then look at the e p a N d h A number specifically not total fish oil, not total Omega three. You clear India J and try to see I need to take three pills to get 500 total milligrams of epi and Egypt. You're gonna have to do that math to really see what you're taking. And the other interesting thing is we have on our website a calculator that you can use your Baseline Omega three index and then you can put in 8% 10% whatever target index you'd like to get to, and then it'll give you an estimate of how many milligrams a day of U P. An D H e. You need to get to that target in about three or four months, and it's usually 2500 milligrams for a lot of people of u p an D h a day, which is a fairly high dose compared to what most people take. Got to know what's in your supplements, and you got to take it with food.
spk_1: 20:57
Yeah, those great points. So thank you for going over that, um if you could leave people with one thought about man, you know, you kind of knew omega threes were important, but you weren't didn't know how important they were. And now you're like, Oh, I should probably be paying more attention to this. And I have dry scanner, whatever, whatever. Maybe my eyes aren't that great. What would you leave people with? What would you say? Hey, you can do this. Just are improving this now.
spk_0: 21:20
Yeah, I think about this more in the pregnancy world of how it can be fairly stressful to think about eating fish and just anything that you meet during pregnancy. It's kind of stressful. And so one of my ideas or one of my goals and creating the prenatal D. H. A test was to take away the stress of worrying about fish and DOJ during pregnancy and getting your number and then knowing Aiken d'oh! I ca n't take D j from a settlement where I can eat fish, and I could be confident that I'm eating the right kinds of fish, and my number is going to reflect that so it can clarify what you should be doing. You don't have to go crazy eating fish every single day, but you have to eat some fish. Or you have to take some DOJ during pregnancy to make sure that you're fueling yourself and your baby as best as you can. And I think that the numbers helped clarify the whole fish and pregnancy issue because it is stressful. It was stressful to me, and it just allows you to be confident that you're doing the best that you can in this area for your pregnancy and for your baby.
spk_1: 22:21
Well, Kristina, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us, really schooling us on omega threes in pregnancy, breastfeeding and beyond that, really in just general life and kind of explaining how the reference oranges, they're different. And you know it's such an area that's talked about a lot, but really not always quantified or not very specifically. So I think we hit on some of those heads today and I'm sure we could talk longer about it. So your company is Omega Quant, which is at omega quan dot com. Is that correct? Correct. Correct. Which will have in the show notes. And over on my site, there will be some information on it. I mean, of course, you go to their website. And then I said I'm gonna include some information on ordering the test as well. So great. Thank you so much for coming on. And I'm happy. I hope we are able Thio chat again in the future about some other Omega three topics. Oh,
spk_0: 23:05
yeah, There's lots of them were excited about it. Cool. Thanks. Okay, Thanks.
spk_1: 23:10
And that's a wrap for today. Don't forget to go entered a win. The Omega three index testing kits. We have more than one to give away. Your chances are good if you want to know how to enter will give you as many entries as you Comet. Like you can comment each week on both Facebook and Instagram on this post at Crystal Bigler rd on both instagram and Facebook and you can send a screenshot of sharing both episodes and we'll give you is pretty much as many entries like up to six centuries. So your odds are excellent. Go ahead and go get entered now, because it's such a great, easy to do test at home. And there's zero cost to you because you'll get the results and they're really easy to interpret on your own, and it tells you what you need to do. Good luck. One of the best gift you could give us at the less stress life is your feedback. We are paid in podcast reviews. If you enjoyed this or any other episode, please leave us a review in the iTunes store or from your podcast app. Just search for less dressed life as if you're not already subscribed. Click on the banana Face image scroll to the bottom, where it shows the text of other reviews and write a review while you're there. Hey, make sure you hit Subscribe for Android or stitcher users. You gotta go to the desktop site and search for less dress life and then scroll down to leave a review. Stitcher doesn't load Apple reviews on their site, so if you want. You can leave a review in both places. Your feedback means a lot to the success of the show. Thanks so much for taking the time to do that, you rock.