Recent Study Says Fish Oil Can Regenerate Damaged Muscle

Medically reviewed by

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD

Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD is an aesthetic medicine specialist whose work focuses on patients who are treated for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other weight-related issues through nutritional analysis, keto diet programs, and supporting medications.

Updated May 13, 2018 by

Amber Bogdanowicz

Amber is a freelance writer and student based in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She studies molecular biology at Bloomsburg University, writes for a number of companies about all sorts of cool things, and enjoys reading about new scientific developments. When she’s not in the lab culturing cells or writing, she’s normally enjoying her time with her dogs or hanging out with her family.

News, Science

Photo by Tom Sharrow/SoNourished.com

A recent study in regenerative medicine found a particular fatty acid in the ketogenic diet to be effective in encouraging muscle growth and regeneration.¹ Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) of n-3 PUFAs are commonly found in fish oil supplements with the ability to alleviate inflammation and alter skeletal muscle function.

Age and Muscle Mass

Skeletal muscle refers to the muscle in your body that you have control over. It responds to exercise and nutrients.² As you age, it becomes less responsive to exercise and protein which is termed “anabolic resistance.” This contributes to a loss of muscle mass with age.

How to Build Muscle

Typically, when you get some sort of injury to your skeletal muscle, it’ll undergo a process called myogenesis in which specific stem cells called satellite cells will quickly be produced and activated to play a function in the repair process. During this process, palmitate (PAL) activates the NF-kB pathway (a pathway associated with altered gene expression, typically for inflammation) that causes insulin resistance in skeletal muscle cells.³ Insulin is needed for your muscles to take up glucose. Meanwhile, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) is produced; it's associated with muscle wasting and weakness along with inflammation.⁴

This study by Tachtsis et al. found N-3 PUFAs to be particularly useful in inhibiting those negative effects of PAL and TNF-alpha. It does so by activating certain anti-inflammatory pathways in your cells, so they can then differentiate.

The word differentiate refers to the conversion of a stem cell to its adult form. A stem cell is an undecided cell. When you give it the right knowledge and tools through differentiation, it turns into its “adult” form where it has one specific purpose (in this case, a skeletal muscle cell).

How Can N-3 PUFAs Help?

Looking more closely at this mechanism, N-3 PUFAs are anti-inflammatory because they can change the exterior of the cells which consequently provides changes in proteins embedded into the outside of the cells which are found in lipid rafts (literally…rafts of lipids or fats). That process, in turn, allows the membrane’s properties to change so that the N-3 PUFAs can decrease inflammation, a symptom of muscle degeneration by PAL and TNF-alpha.

Using Protein and Increasing Strength

A big part of aging and muscle degeneration, as stated earlier, is anabolic resistance where your body doesn’t respond to the protein that it needs to rebuild muscle. This study found N-3 PUFAs to be able to enhance muscle growth and protein usage in order to rescue cells from anabolic resistance. In other words, N-3 PUFAs allow your skeletal muscle cells to regenerate by incorporating protein, meanwhile decreasing the occurrence of inflammation through the inhibition of PAL and TNF-alpha.

The average person, athlete, or patient suffering from muscle degeneration could benefit from a healthy diet of N-3 PUFAs through a ketogenic diet! Find them at your local grocery store in fatty fish like herring, salmon, mackerel and tuna. It’s a good excuse to eat fish!

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Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD

This article has been medically reviewed by Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD.