7 Big Benefits of Fish Oil Supplements

It’s unbelievable how beneficial fish oil can be for us. It protects almost every vital bodily function and keeps it running in prime condition. The benefits of fish oil supplements are many, let’s find out which are the major ones.

Benefits of fish oil supplements:
1) Cancer prevention - Due to its anti-inflammatory properties, fish oil is very effective at preventing cancer. The two most common cancer types - breast cancer in women and prostrate cancer in men - can be prevented by increasing the fish oil intake in your diet.
2) Heart protection - The Omega 3 fats found in fish oil help our heart’s electrical system to run smoothly. It also prevents the blood platelets from clotting which can cause heart attacks later.
3) Joint inflammation - Our joints get inflamed in gout and arthritis, which causes a significant amount of pain and reduces our mobility to a great extent. Fish oil can help avoid this by reducing the inflammation.
4) Hypertension - This is a very common disease in today’s hectic and stressful lifestyles. Fish oil helps in avoiding this too.
5) Brain acuity and development - A significant portion of our brain (around 30%) is made up of Omega 3 fats. That’s why fish oil can help our brain become more active and alert. It also helps in the development of the brain in a child still in the mother’s womb.

Finally, these benefits are for taking a fish oil supplement instead if eating fish directly:
6) Fish can contain a lot of pollutants like mercury, lead, and PCBs due to the polluted water where they were caught from. Fish oil supplements, on the other hand, contain highly refined oil to remove all these impurities.
7) To get an adequate quantity of fish oil, you would need to eat a significant amount of fish daily. This is really difficult for most people. Supplements contain concentrated oil, so just a couple of gels a day should be enough to provide the body with the needed Omega 3 fats.

There are two important points to consider in a supplement before you decide on one:
1) The source of fish oil - Not all fish contain the Omega 3 fats optimal for our health. You need to look for a fish that is naturally rich in DHA and EPA fats, with DHA being the primary one. The Hoki fish is one example of such a DHA rich fish.
2) The refining process - The benefits of fish oil supplements can be negated if the oil used has not been refined thoroughly. Molecular distillation is the process which removes all the contaminants from fish oil. The problem is, this process is complex and expensive, so many companies avoid it and make do with less effective and cheaper refining techniques. Look for a company that uses this excellent refining technique.

So there you have it. You can get all the great benefits of fish oil supplements, just do a little research and find the best supplement based on the two parameters we have discussed here.