Tag: Essential Fatty Acids

How To Stay Young Forever

Some people think aging is inevitable. They feel to stay young forever is not going to happen. Science has advanced and it has been discovered methods to use to stay younger is quite possible. Studies show changing the habits or lifestyle makes a huge difference between staying young forever and feeling old before your time.

If you smoke quit. If you dont smoke then dont start. Smoking increases the free radicals leading to cell death, damaging your lungs. You will have breathing complications including difficulty exercising.

Have a healthy diet that includes your essential fatty acids. It is recommended you eat fish twice a week so you get enough omega-3, omega-6, and DHA. These help your body cells be flexible and permeable. It has been proven they are an important part of the cells in the nervous system, blood vessels, and skin. They help to fight wrinkles and the brain. Oily fish is the considered the best for the diet.

Include fresh vegetables and fruits in your diet. The vegetables that are orange and yellow are high sources of beta-carotene, which is antioxidant that fights free radicals in the body. They help the bodys cells stay healthy and fight off cancer. Beta-carotene is converted into Vitamin A, which is great for your skin and eyes.

Maintain a healthy weight. When you are overweight you hurt your joints and put extra stress on your heart. When you are overweight you also have other health complications such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. Being underweight is not good for the body either. When you are underweight, the muscles and bones are robbed of the benefits of building stronger as well as energy. It is damages your kidneys and leads to early menopause and osteoporosis.

Exercise helps to work your heart. Cardiovascular exercise makes your heart pump and become a stronger muscle. When you keep your heart in good shape it lessens the chances of heart disease and stroke. You also lower your blood pressure helping the blood flow easier through the vessel, skin, brain, and digestive systems creating a healthy youthful body.

Build up your muscles. Start a weight training regimen of training twice a week. Strong muscles lead to strong bones helping you reduce the risks of breaking them easily. With age, it is easy to break bones so the stronger muscles and bones help you create a stronger youthful body.

As you get older, your sense of balance is effective. Combat the loss of balance practice yoga or dance. The neuromuscular exercise helps your body and brain remain in contact and builds the communication that is often lost with age resulting in balance problems.

To keep your brain active and sharp, do crossword puzzles, brain teasers, and math problems and read to stimulate the brain. Research has shown older adults who regularly stimulate their brain are less prone to the mental deterioration associated with memory loss.

Laughter goes along way. Make a younger attitude that is filled with laughter to keep you feeling youthful.

Fish Oil: The Quantity I should Take

For people who came to know the health benefits of fish oil, the next question they ask is how much quantity does one take? Well, some would recommend at least 3.5 grams a day while others suggest a mere 2.5 grams of omega-3 fatty acids would be enough to get the whole health benefits of fish oil. To be on the safe side, it would be better to consult your doctor of nutritionist for the proper dosage of fish oil.

There are in fact a number of factors to consider. Take age for example. It has been found out that the needs of younger people for essential fatty acids are higher than the older folks. One of the possible reasons is the fact that young people are more active which makes their needs for essential fatty acids greater than old people who have gone on with their retirements.

However, this should not be misunderstood that older people do not need daily intake of fish oil. The dosage or amount only diminishes but the importance of taking fish oil does not. Nothing can stress this more than the studies that have been conducted in the past which shows that the healthy essential fatty acids in fish oil help reduce and prevent the inflammation of blood vessels which is linked to heart disease.

According to experts, the lack of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and the docoxahexaenoic acid (DHA) can result to depression and heart disease. And since EPA and DHA are the primary omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil the significance of fish oil in ones diet cannot and should not be undermined. Plus, our body cannot produce essential fatty acids so our only hope to get them is through an outside source. Only by eating fish rich in fats and oil or taking those commercially available fish oil supplement capsules does our body get the necessary supply of omega-3.

Probably one way of determining the amount of omega-3 you take also depends on your intake amount of omega-6 fatty acids. You can find omega-6 acids from common vegetable cooking oils like canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil and sunflower oil. These are present in a lot of food available in the supermarket, most especially the processed ones.

We need to balance the intake of omega-3 and omega-6 since the latter compete for enzymes with the former. And too much omega-6 could result to inflammation which can later affect the heart. The effects of omega-6 counters the benefits omega-3 gives the heart. According to some experts, having a ratio of 2 to 1, omega-6 to omega-3, would be the best combination to have. The ratio properly balances the effects of both essential fatty acids.

Other doctors recommend taking only a minimal quantity of say 2.5 grams per day or even lower depending on how much it will take to maintain your state of health. Taking too much might result to bodily imbalance which can become harmful to your overall health. However, if you have a certain disease or existing condition like, your doctors might prescribe you a stronger daily dosage of fish oil to help you cope and regain your health.

To sum up, the quantity of fish oil you should take depends on your state of health, diet, age, among other factors. Consulting your doctors would be the best move before starting on a daily intake of fish oil.

Customer Knowledge: Buying Fish Oil Supplements

Fish oil has many benefits to our overall health, whether it is for the heart or brain. Research showed that fish oil can reduce the risk of heart attacks, cancers, mental and psychological disorders and other sicknesses. The market is full of fish oil products, but how do we make sure that what we get are actually the ones that can benefit our health.

Not all fish contains Omega-3 oil or the essential fatty acids. Fishes that have the highest number of fatty acids are salmon, herring, mackerel, sardines, and anchovies.

There are things that you would have to consider when buying fish oil. Actually, health professionals would say that eating too much fish that contains fish oil and Omega-3 can cause mercury contamination. This can happen if you do not exactly know where the fish are caught. If the fish is caught in polluted waters, we can ingest mercury and other heavy metals.

To avoid toxins entering out body, we have to make sure that the fish oil that we are taking is molecularly distilled and pharmaceutical grade supplements. These kinds of fish oil are removed of all toxins. You would have to check at the label to make sure that they come from clean waters and properly refined.

When checking the label of a particular fish oil supplement, you check their websites and look for the Certificate of Analysis. This COA is an analysis performed by an independent laboratory to identify the freshness of the product. Aside from checking the source of the fish and the freshness of the fish oil, you would also need to know what kind of fish the oil is from.

Studies showed that fish oil with docosahexaenoic acid or DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid or EPA have the most health and benefits. Studies showed that the brain uses or needs more DHA to function better. Aside from being free of heavy metals, it should always contain at least 60 % of EPA and DHA. You would also have to consider or be cautious with vitamins like Vitamin A and E which can be very harmful in large doses.

How would you know that you are buying the safe fish oil supplement? Only buy from companies that use fresh and high qualify fish and inform the public where they get their fish. You can check their websites or labels to be informed properly.

Fish oil supplements can be either liquid or tablet. Liquid fish oil costs more than oil capsules. But when compared with capsules based on the cost-per-gram it is actually less expensive. Capsules are tamper-proof and keep the oil from getting bad. Most people find fish oil to be expensive or over priced. Some experts would say that there are two ways to compare prices. You can compare the total amount of DHA in the supplement and the cost for each gram of DHA.

You would feel that you have low quality fish oil if you suffer from any ache or pain. So, we would have to be cautious when buying low-cost fish oil. They may not be the same as the high-quality fish oil. You would have to be cautious when buying cheap fish oil.

So, when buying fish oil, or any kind of product, read the label or the product information first. Getting informed will relieve you of any kind of health risk in the future. Reading the label or getting to know the product would not be more than a couple of minutes, anyway. So, spare the time.

Choosing Fish Oil Supplements

Choosing the right fish oil supplement may not always be easy. One of the things to consider is that one should know about what makes such supplements valuable to health, which is its omega 3 fatty acid content. There are various sources of such essential fatty acids. It can be easy to question if there is indeed a difference between getting this nutrient from different sources.

Three Types Of Omega 3 Fatty Acids
One of the things that people should know is that there are three known types of omega 3 fatty acids, the essential nutrient found in fish oil supplements. The three types of omega 3 fatty acids include EPA, DHA and ALA. ALA, or alpha-linolenic acid is a short chain omega 3 fatty acid that is usually found in plant sources such as flax seed, walnuts, canola and soybean oil. DHA or docosahexaenoic acid and EHA or eicosapentaenoic acid are considered as long chain omega 3 fatty acids. The latter two are those found in fish oil supplements.

The difference between short chain omega 3 fatty acids such as ALA and long chain omega 3 fatty acids has to do with how the body processes them. In order for the body to make use of such essential fatty acids, it has first to convert the short chain types into its long chain form. This does not usually happen readily. That is why fish oil supplements are considered more effective in providing the omega 3 fatty acids that it needs because it is already the long chain form which does not require any more conversion before the body can use them.

Effectiveness
One of the other things to consider when choosing between fish oil supplements and ones that are sourced from plants deals with their effectiveness and benefits. Experts believe that the long chain omega 3 fatty acids being sourced from fish oils prove to be more effective in terms of health benefits. These essential fatty acids have already been known to offer some benefit in preventing heart disease. With the short chain fatty acid ALA however, experts are not too sure if ever it does provide the same benefit because it may still require additional conversion before it can be used by the body.

Fish Oil Source
Now that one already knows the difference between omega 3 fatty acids sourced from fish as well as those from plants, it seems that fish oil seem to have the upper hand. But this time there are some other things to consider. In order to get the type of fish oil supplements that offer the best source of long chain omega 3 fatty acids, people should know where they are being sourced from.

One important thing for consumers to look at when buying fish oil supplements is the label. It should contain information of where the fish oil used in the supplement is being sourced from. Because there can be more than just one fish species to source out such supplements, it is important to clearly know what types of fishes these may be.

Certain labels may contain information of the fish oil being sourced from salmon, tuna or anchovies. This might be considered safe. But if labels on the said supplements only tell of fish oil or marine lipids, this should ring some warning bells. It may be possible that fish oils in such supplements may not be too sure where the source may come from, which might also cast some doubt on the purity of the fish oil being used