A lot has been said about fish oil supplements and a lot of claims have been made. As someone who has a lot of experience with natural health, I’m going to publish several posts with the goal of establishing a most trusted source of real information about fish oil supplements and the benefits of fish oil.
Why Take A Concentrated Fish Oil?
Some health products can become fads. In fact, there are quite a few health and medical products on the market that have no scientific basis at all, and those include both natural and chemical/medical products.
Some of the natural supplements, however, have a deep basis in biochemistry and human history. Concentrated fish oil supplements are one of those few products which really live up to the claims made on their behalf.
Prestigious researchers in Scandinavia, the USA and Japan have found that our hunter-gather ancestors consumed about 20 times more omega-3 fatty acids from fish than we do today. This is directly a result of our modern diet. Our ancestors ate a natural diet rich in fish, wild game and greens. Their fish came from clean, unpolluted waterways and their beef, lamb and other meat was mainly grass-fed.
Wild, fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines and mackerel contain very high levels of the polyunsaturated fatty acids DHA and EPA, also known as omega-3 fatty acids. Grass-fed land animals are also quite high in omega-3′s. Unfortunately, today’s fish come from polluted waterways and our meat comes from mass production farms, where the animals are fed grains such as corn or, even worse, genetically modified soya beans, a diet which they were not meant to eat. The result is that the fish are contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs and other toxins, and our meat is very low in omega-3 fatty acids, leaving us with a deficiency.
Omega-3 fatty acids are actually essential nutrients, just as essential as vitamin C or proteins. And many researchers at the world’s top universities have agreed that the majority of people in the western world are deficient in these nutrients.
Many of the health challenges we face today are directly related to this dietary deficiency in polyunsaturated fatty acids. EPA and DHA play a critical role in cardiovascular health, mental health, inflammatory conditions and blood chemistry imbalances. Heart disease, atherosclesosis, ADHD, depression, arthritis, rheumatism and allergies are all directly related to the balance of omega 3 versus omegas 6 fatty acids in our bloodstream.
How To Properly Choose A Fish Oil Supplement
As with all natural supplements, there is a huge difference in the quality of the available options. Roughly, there are five main issues you should consider before choosing a fish oil supplement:
1. The type of fish used. Fish oil capsules can be made from many different types of fish, including tuna, mackerel, anchovies and more. Your first concern when choosing a fish oil supplement is that it should be made with fresh fish, rich in omega 3 fatty acids. The best fish are ones which live in cold waters such as the areas near Alaska or New Zealand, or off the coast of Peru and Chile. There is one particular species of fish known as Hoki which is especially rich in the omega 3 fats, EPA and DHA. Hoki has some very unique and benefits.
2. The purity of the fishing zone. Most of the waterways in the world are now polluted. The food chain in the oceans, lakes and rivers is contaminated with heavy metals and toxic industrial chemicals. Fish oil capsules are made by taking whole fish and squeezing them to get out their oil. So it is of paramount importance that the fish used to make the oil be from the cleanest seas possible and free of contaminants.
Alarmingly, the types of fatty fish which are the highest in omega 3 are also the ones which are often the most contaminated with heavy metals. Hoki, which is abundant in the clean, pristine seas of the Southern Ocean of New Zealand are not only very high in omega three fatty acids but also very low in contaminants. This is because they come from a fishing zone practically free of toxic contamination and far away from industrial pollution. Generally-speaking, smaller fish tend to be cleaner than larger fish, due to the fact that they are at the bottom of the food chain.
3. Oxidation. The polyunsaturated fatty acids, EPA and DHA, the most important constituents of fish, are very fragile, and can be easily damaged by light, heat or improper storage. Any supplement you buy should be in an opaque, sealed container. Also make sure that the oil is encapsulated and contains vitamin E, sometimes labelled “tocopherols.” The various forms of vitamin E act as a natural preservative that protect the fish oil from oxidation damage.
Unfortunately, there are many companies out there trying to take advantage of people who want to improve their health. Many products, including some very popular ones, have tested positive for heavy metals and have been found to be oxidized or otherwise damaged in some way. I advise you to keep this advice in mind when you’re making a decision and you’ll avoid all of the low-quality, bad products on the market today.
Personally, I use one of 4 fish oil brands. Lately I have been using a New Zealand fish oil which you can link to from this page, if you’d like.
4. Molecular Distillation. This process involves taking the fish, extracting the oil and then removing all of the impurities that could be damaging to our health. Molecular distillation also concentrates the oil, making it a lot stronger. The result is a much more potent, much more effective and cleaner product.
5. Cost: The most important ingredients in fish, DHA and EPA are only present in fatty fish, like salmon, tuna, sardines and mackerel. So, in order to get enough fatty acids from our diet, we have to eat several portions of these fish every week, and they have to be fresh, which can get expensive. Alternatively, we can easily get the omega-3 oils we need with top-quality supplements for under $20 USD per month.
This is one of the reasons that I often choose the New Zealand fish oil brand. I also buy fish oil from Luxembourg, Switzerland and the USA, but those end up being significantly more expensive.
6. The level of DHA in the product. Most fish-based omega 3 supplements contain significantly more EPA than DHA. This is because EPA is a much cheaper ingredient. It is DHA, however, that is the key ingredient in fish fat and it is DHA that has the most important effect on brain function. DHA is responsible for most of the health benefits of a diet high in fatty fish. Additionally, DHA can be converted into EPA by our bodies, whereas EPA is not so easily converted into DHA. So we must look for fish oil capsules with a higher level of DHA than EPA.
Therefore, it is essential to do a proper comparison between different fish oil brands. Some very famous brands have tested positive for mercury and PCB’s, making them dangerous, especially for children and pregnant women.
My Personal Experience With Fish Oil Supplements
I began taking fish oil daily with a well-known fish oil liquid, eating it right off the spoon. Eventually, I saw it mentioned in a survey. Its actual level of DHA and EPA was nowhere near the claim made in its ingredients list! Later, I graduated to another famous brand, only to see that brand on a list of products that tested positive for contaminants.
I then realized that there is no point in buying from any fish oil manufacturer which doesn’t respect its customers enough to provide them with an independent certificate of analysis, showing them exactly what is in their product. Good companies should have absolutely nothing to hide from their customers.
For a while after those early mistakes, I was ordering very expensive and pure fish oil from Switzerland. The product was of exceptional quality, but it was costing me $3 per gram of DHA. Then I found the aforementioned, unique fish oil, which has much more DHA than most other fish oil brands. This allowed me to drop my cost down to under $1 per gram of DHA.
My personal choice, and it is working very well for me, is to eat fish from the southern hemisphere and the open ocean as much as possible, to avoid fish caught near major industrial nations and to take several grams of supplemental, concentrated fish oil capsules every day.
INFORMATION ON THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF FISH OIL
