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.

It is common knowledge, confirmed by studies, that US citizens eat way too little fish and therefore their intake of omega 3 essential fatty acids is inadequate. There are studies which have shown that citizens in countries where fish is on the menu almost daily have much better health and in particular much better heart health then we do and that this is a result of their higher intake of fish and seafood products.

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.

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 offer the ideal answer. These are small capsules of fish oil which are simple to take everyday, and although children may struggle taking them it is a simple matter to cut the top off and poor the oil onto their food. The very best fish oil pills are free of contamination and are extremely cost-effective to take 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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