LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

EPA

How Much Fish Oil Dosage Should You Be Taking?

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You’re aware that fish oils play a role in health.  But, there is serious disconnect between how much fish oil you should take and the fish oil dosage you are taking.

First, a little background.

When we talk about “fish oils” we are really referring to two types of fatty acids, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA).  These are called fish oils because we get them from fatty fish that got these fats in the first place from eating a plant based diet made up of seaweed and algae.

Another common type of omega 3 fatty acid is alpha linolenic acid (ALA), which is the principal form of fatty acids in plants such as walnuts, flaxseed and chia seeds.

This blog post is not going to go into the hundreds of benefits of omega 3 fatty acids.  Rather, I need to discuss dosages.  I do not believe I have ever had a patient come in who was taking the right amount of omega 3 fatty acids for their specific scenario.

As an example, I had a new patient this week who was a 51 year old diabetic female on 2 different diabetic drugs as well as insulin.  Pretty much the only supplement she was taking was fish oil.  Her dosage?  1 tablet.

Keep in mind that most fish oil supplements are in a one gram dose.  This is NOT 1 gram of omega 3 fatty acids, but rather the total weight of the little capsule.  Manufacturers usually use glycerin to make up the difference.  Do the math to make sure you know what dosage of omega-3 fatty acids you are taking.

Which brings us to the point of this blog post.  Therapeutic dosages of fish oil is almost always higher than what people are taking.  In general, it STARTS at 3,000 mg (3 grams).

This particular article confirms the appropriate dosages.  Researchers looked at the ability of 3.36 grams (3360 mg) of essential fatty acids to cut down on inflammation created by visceral fat cells.

Overall, the results were positive (as expected), but the take home message here is that the dosages used in clinical studies are much higher than what patients are generally using.

If you are using fish oils supplements, what dosages are you taking?

 

FISH OILS AND ANTIOXIDANTS INFLUENCE HAYFEVER IN ADULTS – (11-13-03)

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Influence of the dietary fatty acids and antioxidants on hay fever in adults

Higher intakes of EPA (usually associated with healthy fats such as fish oil and olive oil) showed a protective effect against development of hay fever. This is not a surprising finding; however, dietary approaches are rarely addressed in modifying risk for atopic diseases and asthma. Surprisingly, higher intakes of beta carotene showed an increased risk. Using some guesswork, I can apply two possible scenarios here.

First, this study used a dietary recall by the study participants to evaluate intakes. This can be misleading and there may have been other factors that were contributory other than the beta carotene. Second, higher intakes of one type of nutrient without balancing among the nutrient’s “cousins” (such as too much Vit E without taking in gamma tocopherol will lower levels of gamma tocopherol) can lead to problems. This second idea may be the most reasonable hypothesis.

The influence of the dietary intake of fatty acids and antioxidants on hay fever in adults – Allergy, Vol 58, Issue 12, pp. 1..

Read entire article here

MONOUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS POSITIVELY EFFECTS CHRONIC DISEASE – (10-23-06)

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Omega 3 Fatty acids from fish or fish-oil supplements, but not alpha-linolenic acid, benefit cardiovascular disease outcomes in primary and secondary-prevention studies

Sometimes I think we get to a point where additional studies seem to be a waste of resources and we ought to just accept a fact and move on (i.e. breast feeding is good for babies, cigarette smoking is bad for us…). We are definitely there with fish oil. And of course, adding in omega 3 and monounsaturated fatty acids into your diet as much as possible is going to be a good thing on almost every chronic disease because they have an anti-inflammatory action.

This review does not find the same benefits from ALA (found in higher levels in flax), but we have always known the human conversion from ALA to EPA is pretty low. But, in ALA’s defense, we have see positive effects of this fatty acid on other aspects of our health as well.

Read entire article here

FISH OIL KILLS CANCER CELLS – (10-20-05)

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Apoptosis in human pancreatic cancer cells induced by eicosapentaenoic acid

Pancreatic cancer is definitely low on the list of cancers you would want to get. There just aren’t 3 yr survival rates. A few years back, Dr. Gonzalez published a small clinical trial in pancreatic cancer using various approaches such as vegetarian diet, digestive enzymes, detoxification and coffee enemas and got a few patients in this trial past 3 yrs. The results were enough for the NIH to give him a grant to further his research.

You can bet the the positive results from his approach is not from one single approach; rather, it is the accumulation of many beneficial components in this lifestyle. In the study here, the researchers found that EPA, an essential fatty acid, induced the death of cancer cells in the lab. Not a bad start.

Read entire article here

USE OF EPA REDUCES RISK OF CANCER – (08-01-05)

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EPA inhibits UV-induced MMP-1 expression in human dermal fibroblasts

Remember that Eicosapentaenoic acid is an essential fatty acid that is found in fish oils along with DHA.  I have always stated that my belief is that the increase in melanoma in our kids is coming from inside, not from sun exposure.  As you all know, I truly hate to find research that supports my opinion, but I feel it is my obligation to my readers to point these articles out in a non-self-serving manner.

So in this study the ability of UV exposure to increase expression of the genes that produce matrix metalloproteinases–enzymes that destroy tissue and create inflammation–was reduced with the addition of EPA.  So, not only will it probably lower your risk of many types of cancer, your skin will look less wrinkled in the process.

Read entire article here

FLAXSEED OIL INCREASES PLASMA CONCENTRATIONS OF N-3 ACIDS – (02-13-06)

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Flaxseed Oil increases the Plasma Concentrations of Cardioprotective (n-3) Fatty Acids in Humans

There has been some controversy about the ability of alpha linolenic acid in flaxseed getting converted in humans to EPA and DHA. I have personally moved to a broad spectrum essential fatty acid supplement that I recommend.

This study confirms that conversion to EPA is good, but flaxseed does not convert over to DHA. This being said, if a patient is willing to grind up flaxseeds daily and use the whole product, I am a strong supporter of this approach, because there are other compounds like lignans that will be present in addition to the fatty acids that are very good for our health.

Read entire article here 

Omega 3 vs. ADHD

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Multiple recent studies have confirmed that childhood disorders like autism and ADD / ADHD are on the rise and have been for some time.  It seems clear to me that this is the end result of exposure to environmental chemicals in the womb and less than optimal maternal nutrition, or some combination thereof.  Chemicals known to affect brain development are almost everywhere, prescription prenatals are of shockingly low quality and our country’s collective diet is horrendous.

If this is true, it unfortunately means that the child’s brain may be susceptible due to factors involved in the womb.  We likely cannot change this predisposition.  If this predisposition meets an triggering factor (immunization, nutrient deficiency, more toxin exposure, processed foods and chemicals, etc…) something is likely to happen, and the end result could be autism, ADD / ADHD, type 1 diabetes or even childhood cancers.

I have come across many studies over the years espousing the benefits of certain natural compounds like probiotics and fish oils.  At times, the long list of conditions that have shown to benefit can make someone near giddy with excitement.  However, once you come down you realize that many of these conditions would likely not exist in the first place had we not removed healthy fats from our diet and blast our normal, protective bacterial flora to smithereens with antibiotics at the slightest hint of a sniffle.

With that being said, this particular study looked at the potential benefit of the essential fatty acids EPA and DHA on ADHD behaviors in children and found an improvement in several parameters with the supplementation.

Rather, it wasn’t actually the supplementation that demonstrated the positive effect, but rather the DHA levels in the red blood cells of the children.  This can be an important distinction and may relate to factors such as compliance with supplementation (better compliance for longer periods of time will raise DHA levels better) and the availability of other, less healthy fats in the diet.

Couple this with an unprocessed diet free of chemical additives, sugars and food dyes and it is likely you will begin to see positive changes in a young child’s brain and behavior.  What is there to lose by trying?

Another Supplement Tied to 20% Less Seizures?

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In those who suffer from migraine headaches and seizures, anything that can help to reduce the number of attacks they have is a welcome addition.  Clearly lifestyle and supplementation play a strong (if not stronger) role in the management of both migraine headaches and seizures along with the mainstream medical approach of pharmacological management.  For many sufferers, this information is rarely shared by their physicians.

Before we illuminate today’s brain protecting nutrient, we need to cover a little basic physiology.  Those of you with very good memories will undoubtably recall that the cells of our organs are made up of a lipid bilayer.  Consider our membranes as sort of a fatty moat made up of bunches of molecules that look like a head with legs.  On the outsides of both sides of the moat we have the heads, which are soluble in water.  The legs that dangle from the heads face toward the center of the moat, meeting each other in the center.  These legs are made up of fats that do not dissolve in water.

All by itself, not much can pass through this moat.  Things that dissolve in water can make it past the heads, but not the legs in the center.  Things that are fat soluble can’t make it past the heads to get into the moat at all.  A relatively impenetrable moat.

But things still need to get in and out of the cell.  The cell needs to get messages in and out,  it needs nutrients in and out and things manufactured inside the cell need to get outside of the cell.

The cell does this through the use of pores embedded in the membrane.  Some go all the way through the moat, some only go partway.  An important factor of how well messages are transmitted, or NOT transmitted, is the health of the cell membrane.  Lower quality fats (such as trans fats) will impede healthy cell communication.

On the flip side, higher amounts of healthier fats in the cell membrane ensure that messages that are supposed to be passed along are passed along.  Overall, it just makes for a healthier, happier cell.

What does this mean for a condition like epilepsy?  Seizures and migraine headaches can occur when a cell is not healthy enough to communicate effectively with its neighbor.  This can mean that an inhibitory neuron (that shuts down its neighboring cell) may not be effective at calming a connecting cell.  Or, it could mean that an individual brain cell fires before it is supposed to fire, beginning a cascade of wild messages that trigger a headache or a seizure.

A recent study in the March issue of Epilepsy and Behavior demonstrated that the fish oil DHA was able to lower seizure rates.  The study was small and non-randomized, but is consistent with our understanding of what triggers seizures as well as prior studies.

Of the ten people in the study receiving 1,000 mg of DHA, 6 had a reduction in the number of seizures.  One patient had a marked reduction in seizure activity.  Overall, the reduction in seizure activity was 16%.  Quite an accomplishment for something as safe and inexpensive as fish oils.

Of course, the big question is, why had fish oils not been a recommendation prior to this study?  Even that one patient with marked reduction in seizure activity could’ve had a massive impact in his or her quality of life by such a simple intervention long before this study.

Read the study here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S152550501100686X