Fish oil for a balanced diet and optimal health

You can eat a clean diet or eat junk food, but if you're not eating fish, then your diet is not balanced. This article will show why fish oil is an essential part of any diet plan for optimal health and explain how to find a good fish oil supplement. To do this, it is important to understand how omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids affect the body

The typical Western diet today is generally anything but healthy and balanced. Highly processed foods and unhealthy fast food often predominate and you can usually only distinguish between a poor diet and a very poor diet. Attempts to make this diet a little healthier are often limited to half-hearted actions, such as replacing cola with Diet Coke for a meal consisting of a fatty currywurst and chips. Such actions achieve little more than soothing a guilty conscience without really making the diet healthier or more balanced.

Of course, there are also some people who try to eat healthily. These people can confirm that a healthy diet is anything but easy.

Omega fatty acids

Healthy fats - especially omega fatty acids - can contribute a lot to a healthier diet. There are omega-3, omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids, but for the purposes of this article we will focus on omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

An optimal diet should contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in a ratio of 1:1, but in reality the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is often more in the range of 1:10 to 1:25. This excessive intake of omega-6 fatty acids can cause problems, as can anything that is fed to the body in excessive amounts.

When the body has an abundance of omega-6 fatty acids, this initiates either an anti-inflammatory or an inflammatory response in the body. Inflammatory responses are completely natural and necessary to a lesser extent, but only if they are temporary in nature.

Beneficial vs. chronic inflammatory reactions

Inflammatory processes have a bad reputation, and wrongly so, because in essence they are nothing more than the healing process after an acute injury. Without inflammation, there would be no tissue healing process. When you sprain your foot, an inflammatory reaction sets in and causes swelling, which helps to splint the joint and prevents you from injuring the ankle further. In other words, such swelling is nothing more than the body's own bandage.

The more severe the swelling, the more severe the injury and the longer the healing process will take. Training with weights is another example of an acute and temporary inflammatory process. It is this inflammatory process that builds muscle.

One should encourage such acute inflammatory processes as they heal the body and make it stronger. This usually happens during the first 72 hours.

In contrast to acute and temporary inflammatory processes, chronic inflammatory processes, where inflammation does not stop and eventually damages tissues and organs, should be avoided. Increasing the amount of omega-6 fatty acids can make problems with inflammation worse.

Most people are likely to eat foods rich in omega-6 fatty acids, which can result in the body being in a continuous state of inflammation. The body tries to rebuild damaged tissue over and over again every time you eat.

The body will send a substance called fibrin to these areas to rebuild and will not stop as long as there is a continuous inflammatory process going on. It will continue to deposit fibrin until the muscles are no longer as soft and elastic as they should be. This will make the muscles stiff and sore. The whole body will ache and you will be tired all the time.

At this point, it is time to come back to the 1:1 ratio of omega-3 and omega-6. The reason this ratio is considered optimal is that omega-3 fatty acids prevent this excessive rebuilding of muscles and tissues by fibrin. In other words, limiting the amount of omega-6 fatty acids you consume allows for a normal healing process.

It is important to remember that omega-6 fatty acids are essential fatty acids. A complete elimination of omega-6 fatty acids from the diet is not advisable and I am not sure how this could be achieved. The easiest way to achieve a desirable omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is to increase the intake of omega-3 fatty acids.

Fish oil contains the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Nutrition experts recommend that healthy adults should eat at least two portions of fish per week - especially oily fish such as mackerel, sardines, herring or salmon. Alternatively, you can also take 1000 to 3000 mg of EPA and DHA in the form of a fish oil supplement. On average, the actual intake is far below these amounts.

Benefits and risks of fish oil

Scientific studies suggest a link between taking fish oil supplements containing EPA and DHA and the alleviation of many health problems. These benefits are so diverse that they could fill an entire book, and a complete list of all the benefits of fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids is far beyond the scope of this article.

However, depending on various factors, you should also be aware of the risks of eating fish. Children and pregnant women could be unnecessarily exposed to mercury by eating fish. However, these individuals are also at lower risk of the health problems that omega-3 fatty acids can help to combat.

However, for middle-aged and older men and postmenopausal women, the benefits of fish and fish oil far outweigh the risks.

The only known negative effect of fish oil supplementation is that high intakes, above the recommended 1 to 3 grams per day, can promote a tendency to excessive bleeding in some people. For this reason, people taking blood-thinning medication should always consult their doctor before starting fish oil supplementation.

How to recognize a good fish oil supplement

The labels on fish oil supplements can be quite misleading. If you are looking for a good fish oil supplement, you should not be confused by the advertising promises, but instead take a closer look at the list of ingredients on the back of the packet.

Here you will find the amount of EPA and DHA contained. Add these values together and choose the product with the highest sum of these values. The total amount of fish oil contained is completely irrelevant, as only the amount of EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids contained is of interest to the body. Incidentally, the recommended daily intake mentioned above only refers to the amount of EPA and DHA and not to the total amount of fish oil.

Most fish oil supplements only contain 30% EPA and DHA, but there are also products with an omega-3 content of up to 60%.

You can find good fish oil and omega-3 products here.

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