owner Clark Consulting + Coaching, LLC Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Disclosure(s):
Catharine Clark, PhD-H, MS, CNS, LDN: No relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies to disclose.
Objectives: The goal of this community study was to determine if older adults could reduce their level of inflammation. Many older adults suffer from multiple chronic inflammatory diseases and incur higher health care costs.
An objective measure of inflammation, the percent of omega-6 in Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (%n-6 in HUFA) has practical applicability. This simple blood-spot test, the gold standard of biomedical evidence, is inexpensive, accessible, and significantly links to morbidity and mortality. It was hypothesized that a 10-week intervention would allow sufficient time to make dietary changes and for a change from baseline in the primary measure, the HUFA biomarker. Three HUFA are metabolized, from foods eaten, to bioactive hormone-like prostaglandin eicosanoids (PGE1, PGE2 and PGE3).
Methods: Individuals older than 50 years were recruited via the Lifelong Learning catalogue of a large university from July 2018 to March 2020. Participants were screened for willingness to take an omega-3 (n-3) supplement with 1875mg of EPA and 1275mg of DHA; complete 5-minutes of daily homework; and attend most of eleven consecutive, 90-minute weekly classes. The secondary measure was the validated PROMIS Scale v1.2 – Global Health questionnaire. All participants provided written informed consent.
Results: Forty participants completed the intervention. The mean age was 69.1 years with a range of 51–86. At baseline 68%n-6 in HUFA was the mean value which contrasts positively to the typical American at 76%. After the intervention the mean was 46%n-6 in HUFA a decrease of 32% or 22 percentage points (ppt) indicating reduced intake of n-6 foods. All participants had biomarker improvement.
There was small, statistically significant improvement on all 10 questions in the self-rated Global Health questionnaire notably Quality of Life and Pain.
Five participants re-measured their inflammatory biomarker about 2 years after the intervention. Three did not maintain their post values although they did not revert to baseline. One maintained their post value in %n-6 in HUFA and one saw significant, additional improvement of 9.4ppt.
Conclusions: This community program showed substantial reduction in inflammation using a supplement and reducing dietary n-6 intake. Given the prevalence of chronic disease others may develop similar programs for people of all ages.
