Dr's warning: If you are taking a prescription medication you should never change diet or supplementation without consulting your doctor, because any dietary change (for better or worse) will affect the metabolism of that prescription drug.
It's oil extracted from the flesh of certain dark fleshed fishes that contains the long chained omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. It comes in largish (one gram) clear gel capsules and as a liquid.
To correct the imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in our body.
Our ancestors' dietary ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats was 1:1. Today, due to the decline in food quality and our diets in general, that ratio has fallen to 1:25, and our health is suffering. We recommend taking fish oil as a supplement because it is very hard to obtain enough long chained omega-3 fats from diet alone.1
Numerous studies confirm fish oil's heart protective and anti-depressant qualities, but its beneficial scope extends much further. Dr Sears claims fish oil counteracts the negative affects of insulin on our balance of eicosanoids, the group of hormones that have such a fundamental influence on our well-being. (For more information read Dr Sears' book The Omega Rx Zone.)
I don't want to dwell on all the benefits here, hopefully you'll find plenty throughout this site (in time), but I'd like to stress that fish oil is an important component of the Zone Nutrition Program.
Nope. Well not usually. The capsules themselves have little scent. A small percentage of people do go through a phase of burping them up, which is quite smelly indeed, but this usually passes. If this happens to you take them just before bedtime.
I know of two brands available in Australia that claim to be odour free - Thompson's and Nature's Own. Their broken capsules still smell fishy to me but they do seem less pungent than others.
Generally the purer the oil the less it smells: Dr Sears' Omega Rx oil is the least smelly I've had. The cleaner types tend to cause less gastric upsets like reflux and burping too.
There are omega-3 fats in flaxseeds (linseeds) and canola though the main one is ALA which has less desirable affects on our hormones than EPA and DHA so Dr Sears recommends we avoid these types of fats.
The new wave of omega-3 breads and cereals and margarines invariably contain the shorter chained ALA, not the longer chained omega-3s that we want.
I'll eventually post more on this topic but until then I again refer you to The Omega Rx Zone or the official American Zone websites.
Please note that all the benefits listed on this page and throughout this site rely on the assumption that we're combining fish oil supplementation with a hormonally balanced diet, as high levels of insulin quickly counteract any benefits of a favourable omega-3 to 6 ratio.
Fish oil does not work by itself!
next > Is it safe?