I remember being a kid many years back and mom forcing me to have a tablespoon of fish oil. She said it was good for me and it would make me smart. All i remembered was it tasting yucky. Little did i know Mom got it right.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, had your head in the sand, living on Mars the past couple of years, fish oil is supposed to be good for you and does everything short of world peace.
Fact.
Numerous studies have shown supplementing with fish oil has a variety of health benefits including reducing inflammation, improving blood lipid profiles, improving cognitive function, preventing cardiovascular disease, increasing immune function, and reduced risk of cancers.
But how much fish oil should you take in order to reap the benefits?
Robb Wolf, along with many other nutrition gurus, recommends 0.5 grams of omega-3 in the form of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid (EPA and DHA) per 10 pounds of body weight for healthy individuals. However, if you are recovering from an injury, overweight, stressed, not sleeping well, and/or eating a poor diet, you’ll probably want to increase that dosage to 0.75 – 1.0 grams per 10 pounds of body weight. Keep in mind that not all fish oil products are created equally. Higher quality fish oil supplements tend to have a higher dose of EPA/DHA per serving than their poorly manufactured counterparts.
Step 1 – Figure out how much do you actually need in grams
[Body weight in pounds / 10] * [Fish Oil Factor] = Required dose of fish oil per day
Step 2 – Find out how much EPA/DHA there is per serving.
Only EPA and DHA are considered. Ignore the rest of the omegas
Step 3 – Divide total EPA/DHA in grammes divided by the dosage per serving in order to get the total number of servings you actually need
It might seem like its a lot of fish oil to be consuming if you are getting very low quality fish oil with low dose per serving. So always get good quality fish oil which don’t have unnecessary crap. Remember not every 1 gram of fish oil is the same.
So if you are looking to for fish oil Do’s and Dont’s, here’s an article. 🙂
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