Fish Oil - Two Key Questions Answered

I'm sure that you've heard all the news about fish oil supplements and all the benefits they can confer on our health. Fish oil supplements have been proven by many scientific university studies to increase good cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower C-reactive protein and inflammation, alleviate depression and keep our blood vessels clean and flowing.

Here are two key questions of people often ask me when they're looking to find the best fish oil on the market and my answers, based on my many years in the natural health field:

How do I know which fish oil products are good? In answer to that I can tell you that without a doubt that the most important thing is to get a potent molecularly distilled, pure fish oil, made from fish from the cleanest seas in the world, such as those in the southern ocean of New Zealand. It should be as high as possible in DHA, it should be properly encapsulated with natural tocopherols (vitamin E) in an opaque container and ought to be free of light. It should also have a certificate of analysis freely available to the public, proving that the oil contains no toxic chemicals such as mercury or PCBs, which are found in almost all of the waterways in the world today. I personally would never trust a company that doesn't provide this information to potential buyers.

How quickly will it have a positive effect? This will depend on the quality of the product and the reason you're taking it. If you're taking a top-quality, strong product as part of a program in preventative medicine or to generally boost your overall health, then taking the fish oil capsules as recommended on the bottle is just fine. Most brands recommend two or three capsules a day, which amounts to between 650 mg and 1000 mg of DHA and EPA polyunsaturated fatty acids daily.

If the product you choose is top-quality and your goal is to lower your triglyceride levels or homocysteine, results usually appear within one month, often in as little as two weeks, as they do with most issues related to blood test parameters.

I can give you a specific example of this: One of my good friends, who has a history of heart disease in his family and lost his father very early, had homocysteine levels exceeding 700 and got them down to the low 300's in under one month. Ideally, triglycerides should be below 100. And, to be honest, he hasn't yet made the dietary changes that he should have made. There lots of studies done by many universities that show them the same results with large groups of people.

If your goal is to alleviate depression, the results will vary on the severity of the depression and on the person suffering from it. Some people get faster results by taking six or seven grams of omega-3's everyday. Others take more time.

For diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and more advanced cardiovascular disease, university studies in Scandinavia show that results usually take about three months to appear. This is due to the fact that long-term conditions which are entrenched in your body take a lot longer to alleviate or reverse.

In conclusion, as long as you stick to my recommendations above, you will end up avoiding all the low-quality, inferior products available on the market today, and should get maximum benefits at a cost almost everyone can afford.