Fish Oil Supplements

I see people taking Fish Oil capsules, usually from large bottles purchased at national store chains. I usually ask them why are they taking Fish Oil supplements and I'll usually get an answer like "someone told me fish oil is good for my health."

Indeed, Fish Oil and Omega 3 Fatty Acids are good for your health. Omega 3 Fatty acids are linked to cognitive function in the brain and who doesn't want a sharper mind? A healthier cardiovascular system is another known benefit as well as the often told result of lowering your cholesterol.

I have had great benefit from my aching knees and back from a combination of Omega 3 Fatty Acid and Glucosamine whereas my chronic pain is completely gone.

However, back to those large off the shelf bottles of Fish Oil. I tell people, if I were you I would be careful taking food grade, off the shelf Fish Oil as there is no other nutritional supplement being sold today with the impurities and toxins. in fact there is a reported law suit against multiple fish oil manufacturers because of PCB's and other chemicals found in these supplements.

There is thought to be many trillion gallons of mercury, petroleum products, dioxins, and fertilizers among other toxic substances dumped into our water supplies each year. Way more than enough to cause the consumer to re-think buying non-pharmaceutical grade fish oil supplements, let alone give them to your kids. In fact, several friends of mine had giant bottles of fish oil, a three month supply, on their desks that they purchased for $9.99. This is a very necessary nutrient so you think you are getting quality at $3.33 per month? To ad insult to possible toxic injury, those tablets smelled,...well, fishy! And you get to taste it twice, once going down and then again with the "fish burp"! Great.

I take a highly purified, pharmaceutical grade version of Fish Oil capsules giving me the a high dose of Omega 3 (EPA and DHA) nutrients that is really necessary in tooday's western diet where we often exceed the recommended 2:1 Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratios in our bodies by 10 to 20 times, providing a fertile ground for oxidative stress and the resulting inflammation to affect our health, sometimes first detectable in joint pain.

The link to better brain function cannot be tossed aside with quality Omega 3 supplements. I have several friends who I introduced to a daily pharmaceutical grade mineral and anti-oxidant supplement and adding an alike quality Omega 3 has significantly decreased ADD/ADHD behavior in their children, between the ages of 6 and 14 years old.

For Information on the Products I recommend, click here, to contact me.

Toxic Contamination of Whales Means Danger for Seafood Consumers

MyAchingKnees.com found this article from the Associated Press, 24 June 2010, which gives credence to our assertion that off the shelf Fish Oil is thought to have a higher level of contaminates and toxins than other food grade products. If you are going to consume off the shelf, food grade Fish Oil to receive your essential Omega 3 Fatty Acids, then do so at your own risk.

Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.
Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.
After more than five years and 87,000 miles, samples had been taken from 955 whales. The samples were sent for analysis to marine toxicologist John Wise at the University of Southern Maine. DNA was compared to ensure the animals were not tested more than once.

Payne said the original objective of the voyage was to measure chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, and the study of metals was an afterthought.
The researchers were stunned with the results. "That's where the shocking, sort of jaw-dropping concentrations exist," Payne said.

Though it was impossible to know where the whales had been, Payne said the contamination was embedded in the blubber of males formed in the frigid polar regions, indicating that the animals had ingested the metals far from where they were emitted.

"When you're working with a synthetic chemical which never existed in nature before and you find it in a whale which came from the Arctic or Antarctic, it tells you that was made by people and it got into the whale," he said.

How that happened is unclear, but the contaminants likely were carried by wind or ocean currents, or were eaten by the sperm whales' prey

Chromium, an industrial pollutant that causes cancer in humans, was found in all but two of the 361 sperm whale samples that were tested for it. Those findings were published last year in the scientific journal Chemosphere. The corrosion-resistant metal is used in stainless steel, paints, dyes and the tanning of leather. It can cause lung cancer in people who work in industries where it is commonly used, and was the focus of the California environmental lawsuit that gained fame in the movie "Erin Brockovich."