Are Fish Oil Pills Good For You And Should You Be Taking Them Every Day?
Nutritional supplements are big business but the sales of fish oil pills are growing faster than sales of any other supplement in history. Fish oil pills can sometimes be called omega 3 supplements or Omega 3 capsules. Lets look at the benefits of fish oil and why you should be taking fish oil pills every day.
Fish oil contains 2 essential fatty acids called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and these are good fats. You may have heard that fat in your diet is bad for you but that is not necessarily true. Some fat in your diet is good for you.
It is certainly true that eating lots of animal products such as chicken and red meat containing saturated fat is not good for you and you should reduce your intake of saturated fat. But the essential fatty acids known as omega 3 fats are highly important to good health and your body does not manufacture these fats, so getting them in your diet is the only way to get plenty of Omega3 fats inside you. You can do this by eating lots of fish or by taking daily oil fish pills.
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.
The health benefits from increasing our intake of Omega3 fats go on and on and include many benefits to the heart. The American Heart Association, for this reason, tells us that we should have a minimum intake of DHA and EPA every week and that we should do this by eating more fish or by a daily regime of fish oil pills.
The benefits of increasing our intake of omega 3 include a reduced risk of heart attack causing death, lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides, reduced plaque in the arteries as well as improvements in brain function and memory, reduced incidence of macular degeneration causing blindness and a reduction in the risk or the effects of many inflammatory diseases like arthritis. And that’s not all.
There is also ample evidence that pregnant women should be taking Omega 3 supplements because DHA and EPA, and in particular DHA, is an essential part of brain development and that if pregnant women are DHA deficient this can negatively affect the brain development of the fetus. Equally it is important for breastfeeding women to supplement with DHA and EPA because these become available to the infant through the breastmilk, and are important to the infant for the same reason. Studies show that children with an adequate supply of Omega3 fats through their developmental years do better on IQ tests.
Clearly we should all be increasing our intake of DHA and EPA, but how do you do that? Eating more fish is one option. However fish is very expensive and there are only certain fish which have high levels of these essential fatty acids. And fish is generally contaminated with nasty toxins such as PCBs, mercury, pesticides and various heavy metals and the EPA tells us not to eat too much fish because of this.
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.
Note that not all Omega 3 capsules are as good as others and the best fish oil supplements contain way more of the active ingredient DHA than the worst.
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.
Tags: essential fatty acids, fish oil, fish oil pills, fishoil pills, omega 3, omega 3 capsules, omega 3 fats, omega 3 pills