Fish Oil and Your Health
One desire that almost everybody around the world want fulfilled is to look good and stay healthy! What we don’t realize is that we are already endowed with many nutritious foods that can help us to fulfill this wish.
Fish is one such surprisingly nutritious and healthy food, rich in omega 3 fatty acids. Fish oil serves as an excellent supplement for your overall health and well being. In simple words, fish oil can be called the omega 3 power house.
Fish has always been a wonder food and a health secret for many people living near the sea. Omega 3 essential fatty acids present in them are essential for your health and existence.
With increasing awareness in consumers and global market, many new fish oil supplements are launched every day. Fish oil supplements industry is growing at the rate of 50 percent per year. By the year 2010, it is expected that in the US alone, consumers will spend around $310 million on fish oil supplements, such as Omega Daily™.
In this article, in addition to covering the benefit of fish oil and fish oil dietary supplement, we are going to give you an overview fish oil side effects, dosages and other essential aspects of this extremely useful food supplement.
Fish Oil Supplements vs. Fish
Eating plenty of cold-water oily fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, anchovies, herring and mackerel can give you all the advantages of omega 3 fatty acids. Unfortunately, due to pollution, a lot of pesticides and toxins also come along with them.
On the other hand, consuming fish oil supplements is safer as most of the purification techniques remove mercury levels and other toxins from the fish. This has been established for most of the high and low-end fish oil products.
Further, your lifestyle and eating habits have made an imbalance in the amount of omega 3 and omega 6 acids you must consume. Studies have proven that even if you consume a diet rich in essential fatty acids, the proportion of omega 6 fatty acids is much higher than required in your diet. This further necessitates the requirement of omega 3 supplements in their purest form to maintain the balance of these acids.
Fish Oil vs. Flaxseed Oil
In the fish oil vs flaxseed oil debate, fish oil supplements are considered to be superior to flaxseed oil. This is because fish oil supplements are rich in EPA and DHA omega 3s while flaxseed oil is rich in ALA. For your body to be able to use it, ALA needs to be converted to EPA and DHA. This makes fish oil supplements more effective than flaxseed oil.
Also, when you consume foods containing omega 6 fatty acids ALA stops acting, thus the need to intake omega 3 supplements, such as fish oil supplements becomes more essential. Fish oil supplements taken in required dosages, fulfills your body’s need for omega 3 fatty acids.
Benefits of Fish Oil
Fish oil has several benefits on your health and life. It helps in:
- Improving skin texture.
- Enhancing hair growth and health.
- Improving memory and concentration.
- Developing stronger immune system.
- Lowering blood cholesterol levels.
- Enhancing heart health and reduces risk of cardiovascular diseases.
- Maintaining chemical balance in your brain.
- Improving brain health and reduces risk of brain diseases such as dementia.
- Developing positive attitude toward life.
- Reducing chronic inflammation.
- Helping you feel good and stay healthy…all the time!
Dosage of Fish Oil Supplements
Essential fatty acids comprise a family of long chain of polyunsaturated fatty acids — Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and Alpha lenolenic acid (ALA). Of the three ALA is the parent. These essential fatty acids can be provided only through diet as your body cannot make them.
The amount of EPA and DHA present in a supplement decide the dosages for that supplement. It is also a point of major difference between a good quality and a lower quality supplement.
A high-end supplement provides a higher concentration of these acids while lower-end, cheap supplement provide you with lesser concentration of these acids. Optimum dosages of the acids are 2 to 4 grams of EPA/ DHA.
A lower-end supplement of 1 gram of fish oil will provide you with just 180 mg of EPA and 120 mg of DHA and the rest of it is a complex of other marine minerals and vitamins.
Therefore, to get the required dosage of omega 3, you will have to pop up around 10 such pills, which can cause burping, diarrhea and other side effects. On the other hand, a good quality fish oil supplement, such as Omega Daily™ will provide 600 to 850 grams of EPA/ DHA per capsule.
Side Effects of Fish Oil Supplements
The following are some of the most common fish oil side effects that may occur under specific conditions:
Allergy – it is a common side effect in people with the history of hypersensitivity to fish and fish products.
Bleeding – it is associated with a reduced clotting response in blood, when very high dosages of fish oil supplements are taken.
Warfarin and heparin associated risks – fish oil supplements should not be taken along with these drugs as these are blood thinning drugs used to retard clotting in blood vessels.
Gastrointestinal upset – it is associated with self-limiting diarrhea, occasional burping, and indigestion in some people, but with improved processing techniques this has significantly reduced.
Low blood pressure – it is associated with acute low blood pressure when taken along with other low blood pressure medications and should be avoided.
Identifying a Good Fish Oil Supplement
Several research journals and magazines have published reports on the clinically proven benefits of fish oil supplements. One often feels compelled to incorporate one such product in your diet as well, to improve your health and life. However, the question arises which product is best in quality, which can offer guaranteed benefits, at genuine prices that no other product can offer.
Fish oil supplements that contain EPA and DHA in triglyceride forms are most stable and can be easily absorbed by your body. Being a costly process, very few high-end manufacturers make such supplements. EPA and DHA if present in triglyceride form can be absorbed easily in your body to give maximum benefits.
Fish oil supplements should also contain some amount of anti-oxidants like Vitamin E to prevent oxidation of the fatty acids present in them. Processing of these supplements in oxygen-free environment is also important to prevent formation of lipid hydroperoxides. In addition to being toxic and a causal factor for serious disease conditions, these products also cause rancidity in the capsules.
The quality of fish oil depends on three main characteristics:
- Fish used for oil extraction,
- Processing techniques for processing the raw oil,
- Storage conditions of the oil and the supplements.
Omega Daily™ is one such product. The secret of its quality lies in its patented processing technology. It takes care of purity of the extracts, potency of the ingredients and storage of the compounds in zero oxidative environments. It will be very difficult to find another fish oil supplement in the market can have the advantage of this technology.
Omega Daily has proven to be beneficial in more than 45 health conditions. It is patented combination of natural marine lipid extracts and omega 3 fatty acids extracted from New Zealand green lipped mussel.
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