Are Your Fish Oil Capsules Too…Fishy?
*I apologize for the length of this week’s health tip. The info contained within is TOO IMPORTANT not to share with you thoroughly.
I have long understood the importance of making sure my diet contained enough Omega-3 fatty acids. These “long-chain” fat molecules help maintain the soundness of cell walls, act as insulation around nerves/nerve cells, and reduce systemic inflammation—which, in turn, guards the heart and brain against damage and disease.
In order to get an adequate amount of Omega-3 through food alone, I realized I’d have to eat an awful lot of salmon, walnuts, and ground flax seeds. And honestly, I just don’t do that. So, I turned to supplements.
The first product I began using was made from krill oil. Unfortunately, as soon as I would digest those tiny, red capsules, I’d begin belching up fishy-ness, which was super distasteful, even to a fish lover like myself! As much as I wanted continue taking them, I simply had to quit.
Recently, I took a course, Taming Pain, which discussed nutritional ways to lower systemic inflammation—the new culprit behind most every disease process. The subject of using fish oil capsules for Omega-3 supplementation was one of the topics, and what I learned was not only fascinating, but potentially life-saving/extending for me (and for you)!
First of all, if you experience fishy burps after taking your supplement, it’s a sign your fish oil has gone rancid. YUCK! (And mine had this effect on me when freshly purchased!) Second, the Omega-3’s in fish oil begin to degrade immediately upon “harvest”, eventually becoming useless (rancid). The oil needs to be processed in a darkened, nitrogen environment, because contact with oxygen and light speeds this degrading process. Krill oil, we learned, is processed on ships and takes a month to get back to land where it is encapsulated—so that’s likely the reason my pills were already rancid when I bought them. The moral? Stick with fish oil.
Testing the quality of your supplements is easy. Simply puncture a capsule and squeeze its oil onto a plate. First, nose test it—does it smell fishy, at all? If so, it’s no good. Second, dip your finger in it and place it on your tongue. Can you taste fish? If so, no good.
In order to ensure and protect the quality of the supplements you purchase, gel capsules are best bought in one-month quantities and stored in the refrigerator after you’ve transferred them into a glass jar whose sides have been wrapped in aluminum foil (glass- protects against oxygen that seeps through the original plastic bottle and foil- protects against light exposure when the refrigerator door is open).
So, go ahead, throw away any “fishy” fish oil capsules you’ve got and get ahold of a fresh new batch. And then, take good care of those delicate gems!