Omega-3 fatty acids, which are important components of
many healthy foods, such as seafood, nuts, legumes and
leafy green vegetables, act to reduce inflammation
Score another point for fish oil supplementation, on top of the already enormous pile of scientific research showing it to be a miracle chemical (and I definitely don't say that lightly) [2]. Seriously, if you aren't getting enough omega 3 fatty acids, either from regularly eating lots of fatty fish or through supplementation, you're seriously missing out on some good stuff. Among supplement enthusiasts, it's consistently declared to be one of the only supplements that's actually useful. I prefer the liquid form [1].
It's not that fish oil is an unalloyed good, mind; just that we get way too much Omega-6 in western diets, and it seems that Omega-3 "cancels it out." In cultures with balanced Omega-3/6 intake, like Japan, fish oil has no benefit.
Correct. The alternative to pounding fish oil supplements is simply stop eating so much refined seed and vegetable oils. A ratio can always be fixed in at least 2 ways obviously.
It's harder than that. Our food supply has changed; sixty years ago when cows ate grasses, beef naturally had some omega-3s in it. Now that their diet is largely corn, beef brings virtually all omega-6s.
Ditto for "shelf-stable" foods. Omega-3 fatty acids go rancid at room temperature, so many packaged products have had the omega-3-based fats removed so they'll last longer on the shelves.
My understanding (from investigating this a couple years ago) is that grass-fed beef, while higher in O3's than corn-fed beef, is not a particularly significant source of dietary O3.
I think that is accurate. I only meant to use beef as an example of how our food supply has changed, not to suggest that beef is any sort of good source for omega 3s.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not just that grass-fed beef is higher in Omega 3, but lower in Omega 6. So it's not just about Omega 3 intake, but the ratio between the two.
> The results show a little more of the healthy long-chain marine omega-3 fatty acid forms known as EPA and DHA in farmed salmon than in wild salmon.
> [..]
> “Indeed, there is a larger amount of omega-6 in farmed salmon. You get nine times as much as when you eat wild salmon,” says Research Fellow Ida-Johanne Jensen at the Norwegian College of Fishery Science.
So it says that farmed salmon has slightly more O3 and 9x more O6. But how are the absolute ratios, is the salmon O6 content enough to matter if we want to balance out the presumably much larger O6 already in our bodies?
There's a certain optimal ratio between the various omegas. You could get too much or too little from any particular kind. It just happens that modern diets have too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3.
Japan has the lowest rate of diagnosed cases of depression of any country in the world (<2.5%). Of course, there could be other causes for this, and the accuracy of how well the diagnosed rate represents the actual rate is an open question. In particular, in east asian countries thre seems to be a cultural taboo against admitting mental illness and seeking treatment in order to get diagnosed in the first place. The fact that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates of any country in the world is an especially telling statistic that the diagnosed rate may not be telling us everything.
I work in the pharma industry in Japan and I can confirm that depression is massively under-diagnosed, and that the market for depression treatment is expected to boom in the coming years. So much, that they are now doing TV campaigns to encourage people to be diagnosed. So yeah, don't count on the current statistics to tell you anything significant, there are many cultural barriers at play in Japan, just like for many other aspects of the Japanese life.
So you will be working hard to make sure that Japan knows that it is depressed, and your pills will solve the problem for them, eh? Sounds honorable, kimosabe.
There's nothing wrong with using pills. I've had severe MDD (clinical depression) since childhood and my mum is the last person who would resort to feeding me pills; they were the only things that were effective enough to let me live my life somewhat normally. They still are.
I tried to substitute them a few times with more exercise, herbs, teas, voodoo, and comedies. I'd be OK for a week or two, but I'd eventually start degrading into a shit state.
Thank the fuck and heavens for the pharmaceutical industry.
First, I don't work on Depression so I can't really answer your comment in any sensible way. I was just sharing my knowledge of the market. Besides, there are conditions where you need treatment. I don't know if you have ever met REAL people suffering from depression but basically when you have that condition you can't function at all anymore. You can't work, you can't have friends, you can't communicate well anymore and when you reach that point I tell you you'd be glad to be able to take some pills to make you a normal person with normal emotions again. Your comment makes me think you don't really know what you are talking about, because depression can lead to suicide and having the right drug at the right time can really save you. I'm not saying the solution is ONLY about drugs, but when you hit the bottom, it's helpful to get back up.
Might be nice if societies didn't develop dependencies on massive, corrupt, for-profit, international pharmaceutical agencies though, wouldn't you think?
It may not be that deterministic, as if it's either diet or social context. One thing can feed on the other.
It can start as an emotional response, deflagrating an inflammatory process, revealing the nutritional deficiency. Or it can start with a nutritional deficiency, deflagrating an inflammatory process, which the brains reads as depression.
This mechanism is already seen regarding stress and magnesium. High stress -> Mg depletion. Low Mg -> Stress symptoms.
I wonder if we can make the assumption that a suicide must have come from depression. Or at least, I'm not sure if the reasons/depressions experienced in Japan are comparable to other countries. I'd also agree that the admittance of mental illness may be lower than the actual. There are some pretty strange conditions out there, like hikikimori.
Right, I'm not saying that suicide necessarily comes exclusively from depression. Obviously there are other cultural factors at play in Japan that may lead to higher suicide rates. Just that the massive discrepancy between suicide rates and diagnosed depression rates is suggestive of the fact that the actual depression is at least somewhat higher than what we see.
I am not an expert, but I've read in many places that the omega-3 in flax oil is far inferior, to the point of almost being worthless, compared with fish oil. IIRC the problem is that flax contains omega-3 in the form of ALA, in contrast to fish oil, which contains EPA and DHA -- the forms we actually need. The body can convert ALA to EPA and DHA, but the conversion process is extremely inefficient (something like only 5% get converted).
I have a fish allergy that makes me a bit nervous to take fish oil. I tried fax seed and stopped after reading about its ineffectiveness. How much milk should I be drinking for the Omega-3 benefits?
Edit: let me be specific. According to the web, each serving of this milk contains 32mg DHA Omega-3. The fish oil recommendation seems to be 3 grams of fish oil. How do these equate?
You can already buy several different kinds of algae-derived omega-3 DHA supplements on Amazon. But the best deal there is Ovega-3, which at $0.29 per pill is about twice as expensive as fish oil.
I am not a fan of flax. Let me suggest walnuts as an alternative. Let me also suggest that consuming less of the "bad" oils is a much more effective preventive measure than eating whatever crap and then trying to supplement with a "good" oil.
Due to the nature of the preferential binding, the 3/6 has to be 1-1 or greater to do >any< good, and since walnuts have a 0.24 : 1 ratio in favour of omega-6s, unfortunately, you wont getting any benefits of omega-3s from walnuts.
Apart from algae sources, the alternatives are a couple of pints of flax seed every night, or going without so many things that you run risk of malnutrition. So, nuts/seeds aren't a solution.
I am curious what your background is/where you get this info? Because that does not fit with my personal firsthand experience with getting well in spite of an incurable inflammatory condition that is supposed to kill me and frequently makes me suicidal if I eat the wrong things (especially the wrong oils).
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the 'balance' (preferential binding), anything less than 1-1 in favour of Omega-3 is as useless as nothing. So, something with close to 1-1 ratios, like flax seed won't make any difference unless you eliminate omega-6's from your diet entirely. This isn't just impractical - it's so limiting, you'll have trouble with other nutritional requirements.
Many diets eschew flax seed in general, but something to keep in mind is that unground flax seed itself is a good source of fiber. Mind, I'm not saying it's the best source of EFA's, but it's far better than junk food or fast food. I typically will put a very large spoonful of flax seed into about 3/4cp of Greek yogurt and add a little honey for a tasty treat, but I do also supplement with fish oil pills. I'll also add glazed walnuts to a bowl of plain old oatmeal for a filling and healthy breakfast.
I've switched from using fish oil capsules to eating sardines as they are quite high in Omega 3 (around 1g per 3oz), low in mercury, in no danger of overfishing, and relatively cheap.
They're also good with lemon juice on top if you're not a fan of Worcestershire sauce. Or you can melt cheese on top for a variation of the classic tuna-melt.
Also, if you want to avoid the extra omega 6 fatty acids, get the sardines that are packaged in water or olive oil (which is mostly monounsaturated fatty acids) rather than soybean oil.
Personally, I just eat them as a snack or light lunch straight from the can. Or perhaps chopped into bits over a salad. Sometimes I even mix them with a little brown rice.
Mash up with a fork plus half of a raw shallot (diced), optionally a bit of chili powder or black pepper. Spread on toast. Adding some slices of tomato, cucumber, or hard cheese is nice of you have them.
This is one of our fallback lunches/snacks when we haven't made it to the store recently and/or don't have time to cook.
And someone once said, "This farmed salmon tastes like cardboard." To which the old fisherman replied, "That is very unfair. There are some palatable cardboards out there."
Farmed salmon doesn't have the useful amounts of omega-3s, since they don't produce actually produce them. Wild salmon eat krill, which eat algae, that are ultimately the source.
I was going to link that too if someone else didn't. But since the base rate is already about 150/100,000 per year, and 15% over a lifetime, and the survivability for prostate cancer is high, the increase isn't really that much and the benefits outweigh the risks for me.
The great majority of effects tested and listed in the 'Human Effect Matrix' at [2] are either minor in magnitude or non-existent. That would seem to contradict your statement that Omega-3 is a miracle chemical.
The parent to my original comment claimed that Omega-3 is a "wonder chemical", having many beneficial effects, and cited that website as evidence. I was responding to that claim by pointing out that the website does not in fact appear to back up their position.
The problem is you expanded OP's claim. For starters OP never used your interpretation of wonder chemical: "cures many ailments". The article was on depression and OP never broadened the "therapeutic horizon." The linked website did not describe the effects of fish oil on depression as "minor in magnitude or non-existent."
> Score another point for fish oil supplementation, on top of the already enormous pile of scientific research showing it to be a miracle chemical (and I definitely don't say that lightly) [2].
I read that as "here is yet another thing that omega-3 treats", rather than "here is yet more evidence that omega-3 treats depression". Especially since it followed a quote from the article about anti-inflammatory properties rather than specifically mentioning depression.
Followed by:
> Seriously, if you aren't getting enough omega 3 fatty acids, [...], you're seriously missing out on some good stuff. Among supplement enthusiasts, it's consistently declared to be one of the only supplements that's actually useful.
Among supplement enthusiasts, not among depression sufferers.
But then it can be so easy to misunderstand the written word; perhaps I missed the intent of the original comment.
Without doing serious research on every ingredient listed above, let me suggest that you (or other interested readers) can just buy Walnuts for the same effect, without being exposed to all this other crap, which may be a problem for some people. Walnuts are unusually high in omega 3. I have a lot of dietary issues and I would be unlikely to eat the above (and I usually do not eat Planter's because most of their nut mixes are made with peanut oil, which is highly inflammatory and tends to make me psychotic and suicidal).
I cannot take fish oil. I am allergic to shellfish and I break out in hives when I take enough fish oil. So I have long eaten walnuts when I want to bump up my Omega 3 intake. But, for my purposes, a) avoiding problem oils does more for me than trying to specifically counteract them by adding other oils and b) eating less acidly also goes a long way to control my inflammatory condition.
Frank Sacks (Prof. of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Dept. of Nutrition)
> There are two major types of omega-3 fatty acids in our diets: One type is alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which is found in some vegetable oils, such as soybean, rapeseed (canola), and flaxseed, and in walnuts. ALA is also found in some green vegetables, such as Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, and salad greens. The other type, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), is found in fatty fish. The body partially converts ALA to EPA and DHA.
Given that I am supposed to be dead and I have gotten off multiple prescription drugs, my guess is that the approach I am taking is working. Granted, that proves nothing about walnuts per se since I have done a heckuva lot more than just eat walnuts sometimes. (But I also said -- twice -- that I recommend avoiding problem oils and other things as bigger factors.)
The effect might be that eating walnuts fills you up and makes you eat less potato chips. You're right of course, but don't underestimate how bad a place some people are coming from!
So you might want to do some research on ALA, EPA, and DHA. Our ability to convert ALA to Omega-3 is apparently fairly limited. This link appears to be fairly well researched:
I dole things like this out to myself each day when I fix my lunch. If I'm going out for lunch I pack it anyways and usually eat it between 10:00-10:30am, keeps me from overeating at lunch. Otherwise, yeah, they'd last about 5 minutes.
(They talk about the dangers of Selenium supplementation in regions with plenty of bioavailable selenium in the soil, especially when combined with Vit E supplementation. These are not heroic doses either.)
Fish oil supplementation is, like most other supplementation, really only applauded by the supplement industry.
There's no proof any of it does much, which is why here in the UK all supplement advertising has to include disclaimers like "May benefit the elderly or those on a restricted diet"
There have been some decent clinical trials showing a high does of fish oil (something like 1g a day) improves mood better than placebo in bipolar depresssives. There are some risks to taking really high doses of fish oil every day though - and not just mercury content.
Similar trials for just doing plenty of regular excersise such as walking show a better result. Given that excersise is really good for you, it's probably a better option.
IIRC, you need a 1/5 (Omega 3 / Omega 6) ratio, but our usual diet is so poor in the former that we end up deprived.
Palm oil, which is everywhere, has Omega 6 aplenty, and (virtually?) no Omega 3. In Europe, it is usually listed as "vegetal oil" in the ingredients lists. When it's not palm, they put the full name.
It is called different things in different places. Canola is actually a specific cultivar of Rapeseed. Canola actually stands for "Canada Oil" and the term probably isn't well known out of North America.
I don't know about countries exporting grass fed meat, but in the US there is a growing movement for raising grass-fed cattle and pastured chickens (for meat and eggs) usually within 100 miles of major cities, as opposed to grain-fed livestock raised in large factory farms.
The Omega 3 to 6 ratios of the resulting meat (and eggs) is better than the grain-fed ones. It seems that a lot of these inflammation problems are not only caused by the diet of the average person but also caused by the diet of the average livestock that we're consuming.
I think Andrew Weil's books are a good common sense source on supplements and he recommends fish oils purified to exclude mercury and PCB's. For counterexamples, I've noticed a few people taking quite large dosages of B complex vitamins. Dr. Weil notes that mega doses of B3 and B6 can cause problems including irreversible nerve damage. He also recommends against resveratrol supplements, another trendy thing.
There's an obvious conflict of interest with that link. They discuss the rancidity of fish oil and then pitch their own fish oil product. I've heard rancidity of fish oil discussed before. It seems like a reasonable thing to be concerned with, but I'd like to see an impartial, scientific discussion.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Now-Foods-Omega-Lemon-Flavor/dp/B001B4...
[2] http://examine.com/supplements/Fish+Oil/
Edit: added [2], a well-written examine.com page summarizing fish oil effects