I've been taking fish oil capsules every day for several years now. Over those years, I have learned some very useful things about omega 3 supplements and the different levels of quality of the oil they can contain. Some supplements are not what they claim to be. In fact, a few supplements on the market can actually be damaging to your health.

For the first few months, I was taking a liquid oil and eating it straight off the spoon. After a while, I read a report about an analysis of DHA and EPA levels, the active components in fish oil, which left me very disappointed. The supplement I was taking ranked very low in its omega-3 contents compared to the top products on the market.

Most fish-based omega-3 supplements have 180 g of EPA and 120 g of DHA per capsule. These are standard, mass-market products. Well, it turned out that many of the products tested, including the one that I was taking daily, didn't even meet the ingredient levels on their bottles. And some of these were sold by the most prestigious manufacturers. So we have to be very careful when choosing a brand. Some brands don't even deliver on the claims in their list of ingredients.

The next thing I noticed was that some of the best health effects of fish oil were largely due to DHA and not to EPA. Most fish oils contain more EPA than DHA, for the simple reason that EPA is a cheaper ingredient. So if the omega 3 supplement you're buying is EPA-heavy, then you could be getting ripped off, paying more for less.

A few months later, the omega 3 supplement my brother and his pregnant wife were taking, sold under a major brand name, which otherwise is a top supplement maker, was high on the list of fish omega 3 products containing high levels of mercury!

Fish oil happens to be a very special product. Since it is an animal-based product, quality control with regards to contamination is very difficult. Therefore, in order to avoid the mistakes I made, make sure you buy a omega 3 product with a high level of DHA relative to EPA and that you buy from a company that publishes the results of independent tests on their products and puts them in the public view.

This way you will be sure that you are spending your money on the most potent, purest and also most cost-effective product on the market today.

Author's Bio: 

Sector rotator. Natural health and biophysics devotee. I enjoy mountaineering, baguazhang, learning interesting things and the music of Piazzolla.

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