Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Inflammation

Your health, good or bad, is driven by the level of inflammation in your body and your ability to sustain lean, metabolically active muscles. These two factors are the keys to most disease progression. It’s true. Heart disease, obesity, type II diabetes, arthritis, even depression—all these can be linked back to inflammation and muscle mass.

How?

Chronic inflammation eats away at our bodies, slowly and silently, until those first signs of disease appear. By that time, a lot of serious damage has already been done. By controlling inflammation, you will decrease the progression of most diseases.
Muscle mass decreases over time due to lack of exercise, eating processed foods, and normal aging. As muscle mass decreases, your weight increases, contributing to metabolic disease and overall poor health. The key to controlling weight gain and health is to have metabolically active, lean muscle mass.

If you’re like most people you don’t even notice your good health slipping away. That is, until you wind up having a “serious” discussion with your doctor.

Constant low back pain, sore knees and shoulders, that number on the scale creeping up month by month—all these things may concern you. But what can you do? Most people just brush them aside, work through the pain, and say “well I’m not as young as I once was.”

The truth is, there are no flashing lights warning that you’re about to get heart disease. Nobody just “catches” cancer like you catch a cold. Your body doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to have arthritis. It is a slow, nearly invisible process of cellular degeneration. You grow old from the inside out. By the time you notice those very first tiny wrinkles or gray hairs, your cells are already feeling old and tired. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to accept the slow degeneration of your body. You can do something about it even if you’re already showing signs of disease.

Your body may not have a “service engine” light, but it can tell you when you’re about to experience system failure. Fatigue, aches and pains, high cholesterol levels, mood swings, memory lapses—they’re all early warning signs telling you to stop and take care of yourself right away. But even if you missed the signs and are already in the disease stage, it’s not too late to give your cells the nutritional support they need and get your body back on the road to health.

A healthy body will have low levels of inflammation and a high percentage of muscle mass. We achieve that through exercise, proper nutrition, and careful use of properly formulated natural supplements.

Unfortunately, as you grow older, that high level of health becomes harder to maintain. You might exercise less, you don’t eat as well as you should, and before you know it, you are experiencing aches and pains, fatigue, and the early signs of disease.

It may not feel like it right now, but your body is designed to keep you healthy

Vibrant, energetic, youthful health is your birthright. Your body is well protected with intricate systems working in harmony to keep you healthy. Unfortunately, outside influences like toxic environments, poor diet, and lack of exercise throw your natural systems off balance, and they have to compensate. They go into overdrive trying to reverse the damage these forces have done to your body. You feel old and tired because your body is working so hard to keep you alive. There’s just no energy left over. You’ve used it all up.

You can treat the surface symptoms with over-the-counter and prescription drugs, but that won’t solve the underlying problem. Chronic inflammation silently eats away at your healthy body

Inflammation is your body’s natural response to threats like infection, injury, and disease. Acute inflammation occurs when your body battles a specific problem, like an infected cut. There are visible signs including redness, swelling, pain, and heat. This type of inflammation goes away when the threat is neutralized.

Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, is a prolonged reaction that doesn’t go away. This type of inflammation usually goes hand-in-hand with chronic disease. In fact, the inflammatory process tends to promote disease progression. Research has shown that this inflammation is linked to a wide range of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, gum disease, and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

It is essential to reduce chronic inflammation in the body to achieve good health and research has shown omega-3 oils can decrease levels of inflammation.

The two major forms of omega-3 fats used by the body are (EPA) eicosapentaenoic acid and (DHA) docosahexaenoic acid. Our bodies cannot produce these vital nutrients, so we must get them from the foods we eat. The best source for both these nutrients is fish oil.

Both EPA and DHA are important to your good health because they are anti-inflammatory

EPA is beneficial for peripheral (non-brain) health issues related to inflammation and diseases with an inflammatory component, cardiovascular diseases, gum inflammation and dermatology.

DHA is beneficial for optimal brain function. In particular, it shows great promise in healing bi-polar disease and depression.

Fish oils contain nearly equal parts of both EPA and DHA. These fatty acids act as inflammatory suppressants, promoting general health and well-being.

What are Omega-6 Fatty Acids?

Vegetable oils, processed foods, and animal fats are rich in fatty acids called omega-6 fats. These fats enter our bodies and are stored as "bad" triglycerides. When these particular fatty acids are broken down to be utilized by the body, they provide building blocks for pro-inflammatory mediators. In other words, they fuel inflammation and encourage disease.

Most people eating a typical western diet high in processed carbohydrates and saturated fat consume far too much omega-6. In fact, 8% of our diets are made up of omega-6 fats, while only 0.4% is omega-3

The proper balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 is essential for good health

You have molecules in your body called triglycerides. These can either store pro-inflammatory omega-6 or anti-inflammatory omega-3. In the early 1900s, we consumed an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of about 2:1. By the year 2000, that ratio drastically changed to about 20:1.

This severe imbalance within the triglycerides is what scientists believe is at the heart of America’s health crisis. Omega-6 drives inflammation. Inflammation drives disease.

By the simple act of restoring the balance, you can restore our good health

Physicians now recognize the importance of omega-3 oils and are recommending them to their patients. However, recommendations are frequently too low for real medical results.

Omega-3 has to compete for room in the triglyceride molecule. If there's more omega-6 available, that's what will be stored. So, a larger supply of omega-3 will ensure that more of the good fats get stored and used by your body.

What happens when you increase omega-3s?

When you increase the amount of omega-3s in your diet by our recommended amount, lots of complex chemical changes happen to decrease inflammation and slow disease progression. But the bottom line is you feel so much better.

After 30 days you will notice:

More energy
Less painful joints
Better memory
Less pain, stress, and anxiety
Healthier gums
Smoother skin, silkier hair, and stronger nails
Women will notice less painful periods, an easier transition through menopause, fewer problems with infertility and pre-term labor.
Men will notice decreased symptoms of BPH

Your doctor will notice:

Decreased triglyceride levels.
Less pain, anxiety and stress
Your prescribed medications are more effective

What should I look for when choosing an Omega-3 supplement?

There are many different forms of Omega-3 supplements on the market from gel caps, to yogurt-style treats, but many of these supplements do not provide the recommended daily dose of 3500 mg EPA:DHA. Often the higher dose is around 1000mg. When reading labels, be sure the balance of EPA:DHA is almost equal and see how much of the listed dose is EPA:DHA and how much is “other omega-3 oils” (these are not the active oils).

Also consider the purity of the oil. Unfortunately, our oceans are polluted and large fish such as salmon carry high levels of heavy metals in their fat. Oils made with small fish such as herring are well below detectable levels of contamination.

Finally, taste is a consideration. A common side effect of taking fish oil is the “fish burp”. A well-made fish oil does not cause fish burp and many oils now have added flavors such as citrus.

The bottom line is omega-3 oils are important for your overall health and your options for increasing it in your diet are much more appealing now than they were in your parent or grandparent’s day when cod liver oil was the standard.

Health Benefits

Omega-3 Oil

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