Rhonda Patrick on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1054
“That has been shown to get into the developing fetal brain 10 times better than DHA and non-phospholipid form, free fatty acid form.”
What the evidence says
Rhonda Patrick claimed phospholipid-form DHA reaches the developing fetal brain ten times more effectively than free-fatty-acid-form DHA. The specific "10 times" figure for fetal brain uptake is not supported by available research: a controlled pregnancy study in pigs directly comparing phospholipid versus triglyceride DHA found similar fetal brain DHA accretion despite different placental uptake patterns. The closest supporting evidence is a 2017 mouse study reporting roughly a two-fold (not ten-fold) increase in brain DHA from a phospholipid carrier (lysophosphatidylcholine-DHA) compared with free DHA, but that study was in adult mice, not a fetal or pregnancy model. A 2025 replication attempt of that mouse study found no significant increase in brain DHA from the phospholipid form compared with controls. Overall, evidence for phospholipid-DHA's brain bioavailability advantage over free-fatty-acid DHA is mixed and unreplicated even in animal models, and no study establishes a tenfold fetal brain uptake advantage in humans or animals.
- DHA supplementation during pregnancy as phospholipids or TAG produces different placental uptake but similar fetal brain accretion in neonatal piglets - PubMed · government
- Dietary docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) as lysophosphatidylcholine, but not as free acid, enriches brain DHA and improves memory in adult mice | Scientific Reports · journal
- Dietary phospholipid carriers of DHA do not increase brain DHA levels: a replication study - PubMed · government