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When measuring biomarkers in the lab, it's essential to know whether you're looking at short-term fluctuations or a measurement reflecting longer-term trends. While both can be useful (depending on context), they have different implications: much like a person's glucose may fluctuate throughout the day, standard lab measures of omega-3 rely on plasma, biasing them to the content of a recent meal.

The omega-3 index test, pioneered by Dr. Bill Harris and Dr. Clemens von Schacky in a 2004 paper entitled, "The Omega-3 Index: a new risk factor for death from coronary heart disease?" exploits the longevity of red blood cells. By investigating the omega-3 content of red blood cell membranes rather than plasma, the omega-3 index reflects a desirable longer-term measure that is more reflective of the time it takes to accumulate omega-3 within the membrane throughout the approximate three-month lifespan of blood cells.

Since the invention of the omega-3 index, a host of research continues to emerge showing the importance of omega-3 status in risks ranging from cardiac-associated death to all-cause mortality to dementia and covid-19 severity. More importantly, targeting a lab range for omega-3 helps sidestep the issue of inter-individual variation: not everyone responds identically to the same omega-3 dose. Furthermore, the question of whether or not participants in research studies have adhered to one or more strict dietary or supplement guidelines may be removed from the equation. In other words, the index tells the story when food diaries do not.

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