Omega

Pregnant women need them for their babies' brains. Kids need them to learn. Adults get healthier hearts from them. The do-it-all nutrients known as omega-3 fatty acids appear to reduce pain in people with rheumatoid arthritis — and may help treat autism, bipolar disorder, depression, Alzheimer's disease, ADHD and prostate cancer. Even dogs and cats need omega-3s to stay healthy. So eat more fish. Take fish oil pills (or their vegetarian counterparts). Start buying fortified foods.

The reviews of Don DeLillo's last few novels put me in mind of the sports journalist who, after a certain Yankee game, wrote, " Babe Ruth was not able to make any home runs." Critics of "The Body Artist," "Cosmopolis" and especially "Falling Man" seem to want DeLillo to be the Babe Ruth of novelists, to keep writing "Underworld" and "Libra," those long, magisterial books about big American events. Such people will probably not regard his new novel, "Point Omega," which weighs in at not much more than 100 pages, as a literary home run. Yet "Point Omega" is a splendid, fierce novel by a deep practitioner of the form.

It's not hard to get all of your daily needs from nonmeat sources, nutritionists say, but it takes thought and planning -- plus a few tricks. No matter how old your vegetarian kids are, the first step is to educate yourself on healthful alternatives to animal products, such as hummus, tofu, quinoa and legumes. When vegetarian teens live in a meat-eating family, they should also take some of the responsibility for preparing vegetarian meals, says nutritionist and epidemiologist Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, so that the entire burden doesn't fall on parents.

Heart health is a numbers game. Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides -- you practically need a personal data assistant to know how worried you should be. Now some experts want to add yet another number to the mix: the "omega-3 index," a measure of the levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood. Omega-3 fatty acids, naturally found in fish, have a steadying influence on the entire circulatory system. Two of them in particular -- docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)

Sunday, Aug. 10 400 IM World record: 4:03.84 Former record: 4:05.25, Phelps, June 29, 2008 Mark Spitz time: Didn't compete Second place: Laszlo Cseh (Hungary), 4:06:16 Recap: It was really pretty effortless. Phelps trailed at the first 100 but then kicked it into overdrive to make it not much of a race. Phelps on Phelps: "I wasn't comfortable after the first 200. . . . I think it made my breaststroke stronger . . . coming home in the freestyle it's all adrenaline."

Dragon Bone Hill, a site in the western hills outside Beijing, is so named because prehistoric fossils found there were thought to be the remains of dragons. Locals used to grind up the fossils and sell the powders for their imagined curative powers for everything from insomnia to impotence until the Chinese government banned the practice a few decades ago. The clash between science and superstition is one important theme of Amir D.

Need to lower your LDL? Try milk and cookies. Or maybe orange juice. Or tortilla chips. Increasingly, companies are adding heart-healthy sterols, soluble fiber and omega-3s to processed foods and beverages. And these nutrients are in high demand. Sterols and soluble fiber are recommended by the National Institutes of Health's National Cholesterol Education Program as part of a larger plan for lowering "bad," or LDL cholesterol.

The link between good health and fish emerged in 1978, after a group of researchers from Denmark reported that the Inuit of northwest Greenland had one-tenth the death rate from heart attack as that of their Danish neighbors. The scientists concluded that the Inuit diet, primarily made up of fish, seal and herring oil, protected them from high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

If a new kind of pork makes it to the dinner table, healthful eaters worried about fat and heart disease might finally be free to, well, pig out. Scientists using genetic engineering techniques have produced pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids -- a kind of healthful fat abundant in fish but not naturally found in meat. The omega-3 fatty acids are believed to offer some protection against heart attacks, and federal nutrition guidelines recommend adults include them in their daily diets.