Tuesday 8 September 2009

Why Would You Want Omega 3 Capsules With Concentrated Fish Oil?

By Peter Bertonach

If you've been reading about the benefits of Omega 3 supplements then you've probably read that most of them use "concentrated fish oil". But what is concentrated fish oil?

If you caught a fish and squeezed it very hard you'd get fish oil out of it. And there would be healthy Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in that fish oil. Like DHA and EPA, 2 of the most important Omega 3 fats. This would be called standard grade fish oil.

But if you put that in to 1000 mg Omega 3 capsules there really wouldn't be enough healthy Omega 3 fats in there.

So what do manufacturers do to overcome this? The use concentrated fish oil. It can be called super concentrated fish oil or highly concentrated fish oil, but it's all the same.

By putting the oil through a concentration process it is ensuring that there are much higher levels of DHA and EPA in the oil. This is good because it means that you can get a significant amount of good fats from taking a few Omega 3 capsules. Otherwise you'd probably need to take handfuls.

When a fish oil is concentrated the process used to do this turns the natural triglyceride form of the oil into an ethyl ester form. This is ok, the ethyl ester form of the fat is perfectly good, and can be absorbed into the body when eaten. This is known as "bioavailability".

Some manufacturers believe that they need to turn the ethyl ester form back into a triglyceride form because the original was in a triglyceride form. But the process used to do that results in a different molecular configuration from the original, so the new triglyceride isn't nearly as "bioavailable". But it's still good for your health.

And one manufacturer has responded to this by using a different formulation in it's Omega 3 supplements. It uses a concentrated fish oil from Tuna combined with an unconcentrated fish oil in it's original triglyceride form.

And the studies have been interesting, showing up to 2 1/2 times more effectiveness than traditional Omega 3 supplements using concentrated fish oil alone.

So most Omega 3 supplements have fish oil concentrate in them, but one has a mix of both concentrated and unconcentrated fish oil and the resultant product is a potent mix of your Omega 3 polyunsaturated fats.

If you'd like to find out more about which Omega 3 supplements combine the 2 different forms of fish oil visit my website where I discuss this in more detail.

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