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1. Your brain can only absorb a maximum of 3.8 mg of DHA per day -Your body’s ALA to DHA conversion rate (1 percent of the daily recommended intake - 2 grams of ALA) ends up creating 20 mg of DHA – and that’s using numbers on the low end of the spectrum, as if we were looking at a person who has a pretty low ALA to DHA conversion rate. And even if you were to consume 2000 mg of DHA through fish oil per day, your brain would still only be able to absorb that 3.8 mg per day, which can be synthesized easily by your body. This means, the less-than-average body is able to convert 5 times more DHA than your brain is capable of absorbing It’s this fact, the seemingly small numbers involved in the conversion from ALA to DHA, that has people claiming that our bodies need more DHA. But only focusing on the low conversion rate completely ignores how much your brain is able to absorb in the first place.

2. The half-life of DHA in the human brain is 2.5 years.-This a major contributor as to why you don’t need massive quantities to maintain optimum levels of DHA in your brain. DHA remains in your brain for long periods of time, which helps maintain your baseline.

3. Vegan convert more EPA and DHA than fish eaters -A study that examined vegans who didn’t eat fish, found that their levels of EPA and DHA were similar to people that eat fish. In fact, the vegans appeared to have better ALA to DHA conversion rates than the fish eaters.

4. Human can increase their ability to convert EPA and DHA -Studies have found that mammals have the ability to increase their ALA to DHA conversions when there’s more readily available ALA omega-3s in their diet. In one study on rats, the conversion rate was between 6 to 10 times higher when ALA was increased (and with no DHA in the diet at all).   The conclusion of these last two studies is that your body can improve its ALA to DHA conversion rates when there’s DHA lacking in your diet or when you have ample ALA – a concept that makes sense of the fact that women of childbearing age have ALA to DHA conversion rates 2 to 9 times higher than men. It’s thought that women’s conversion rates increase around childbearing years because DHA is important to fetal development.

5. ALA, unlike EPA and DHA, directly competes with omega-6s for enzymes, which positively impacts your ever-important omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. And when linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid) consumption is decreased the body converts more ALA to DHA.

6. Better conversion Studies indicate that if you take a plant-based omega-3 supplement, daily, for eight weeks your body converts more than enough DHA and EPA.

7. Enough DHA Your body relies on ALA to maintain healthy DHA levels. It actually stores enough ALA to maintain optimum DHA levels for over a month. This is your body’s way of protecting you from periods of time where you might not be able to get enough ALA or DHA.

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