Why Should You Be Taking Fish Oil Pills 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 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.
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.
However Omega 3 pills offer the perfect solution. These are small capsules of fish oil which can be taken easily. For children it is simply a matter of cutting the top off the capsule and tipping the oil onto their food. The best fish oil pills are entirely contamination free and a much more cost-effective than eating fish, and can safely be taken daily.
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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Tags: essential fatty acids, fish oil, fish oil pills, fishoil pills, omega 3, omega 3 capsules, omega 3 fats, omega 3 pills