January 20, 2010
Sales of fish oil pills are growing faster than sales of any other nutritional supplement in history. Lets look at why fish oil pills, sometimes called omega 3 pills or omega 3 supplements, are selling so fast and why you should be taking them as well.
There are 2 essential fatty acids known as omega 3 fatty acids. These are called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), and they are good fats. Contrary to what you may have heard about diet fats in your diet are not all bad.
There are some bad fats, in particular saturated fat which is primarily found in animal products such as red meat and chicken. However there are also good fats which are extremely important to your health. The omega 3 fatty acids called essential fatty acids are extremely important to your health and are not manufactured in your body. Therefore the only way you can get Omega 3 fatty acids into you is by taking oil fish pills, or eating a lot of fish.
Studies have shown that way too many of us, in fact almost all of us in the US, have too little omega 3 fatty acids in our diet. Studies of populations in countries where fish and seafood are important in the diet show that these people have much better heart health than we do and the studies show that this is a result of their superior intake of fish.
There’s a wide range of health benefits from increasing your intake of essential fatty acids. These health benefits include improvments in heart health and these are now recognized by the American Heart Association which recommends minimum intakes of DHA and EPA for each of us every week. They suggest eating more fish or else taking Omega 3 capsules.
The health benefits include a reduced risk of death from heart disease and heart attack, lowering triglycerides, lowering blood pressure and reducing the build of plaque in the arteries. Other health benefits include an improvement in brain function and memory, a reduction in the risk of macular degeneration causing blindness in older age and a reduction in a range of inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and lots lots more.
DHA makes up a major part of the fats in our brain and a developing fetus has a powerful demand for DHA for optimum brain development. Pregnant women should ensure an adequate supply of Omega3 fats in the diet, generally by taking fish oil pills, and should continue supplementation during breastfeeding as DHA and EPA become available to the infant in her milk. Studies also show that infants raised on an adequate intake of Omega3 fats do better on IQ tests.
It is quite clear that we need more DHA and EPA in our diets, but how? Of course we can all eat more fish but fish is very expensive and only certain types of fish, namely oily fish, have high levels of Omega3 fats. Fish is generally contaminated with toxins and the FDA tells us to limit our intake of fish for this reason.
Omega 3 pills are the ideal solution. They are capsules of fish oil which you can take everyday, and you can cut the top off and poor the oil onto the kids breakfast if they can’t take the capsules. They are cost effective and the best fish oil pills are contamination free.
But there are wide variations in the amount of DHA, the most important Omega 3 fat, in the different omega 3 supplements available and it’s difficult to compare one brand of supplements with another.
Every day I take fish oil pills with my breakfast and give them to my family. I take what are, in my view, the worlds best fish oil pills. If you’d like to find out more about these Omega 3 supplements visit my website.


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