Comparing Omega-3s and Fish Oils

The human body con­stant­ly needs nutri­ents. Vit­a­mins, min­er­als, fats, pro­teins, car­bo­hy­drates — all this comes with food and finds its place in metab­o­lism. How­ev­er, not all food con­tains a suf­fi­cient amount of use­ful sub­stances — and not all use­ful sub­stances are present in a per­son­’s dai­ly diet.

Take, for exam­ple, the so-called “essen­tial fat­ty acids”. Their pres­ence in the diet depends on the growth of chil­dren, blood cho­les­terol lev­els in adults, skin con­di­tion, kid­ney func­tion, immu­ni­ty and gen­er­al health. The only prob­lem is that these essen­tial fat­ty acids are only found in cer­tain foods.

Most of them are found in fat­ty sea fish and some raw veg­etable oils (hemp, lin­seed, mus­tard, rape­seed). These prod­ucts are not includ­ed in the dai­ly diet. In con­trast, veg­etable oils con­tain­ing essen­tial fat­ty acids are almost nev­er eat­en, and oily ocean fish like mack­er­el are more of a del­i­ca­cy.

As a result, the body sim­ply does not have enough sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids, and you have to use them in the form of nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments. And most often for these pur­pos­es, “Omega‑3” and fish oil are used. That’s just what they are more effec­tive?

In this mate­r­i­al, we will fig­ure out how Omega‑3 dif­fers from fish oil, and also what is bet­ter to take.

Omega 3

Omega-3-polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids — and this is how this group of sub­stances is ful­ly called — are the most impor­tant nutri­ents that are used by the body in almost all of its sys­tems.

So, the pos­i­tive effect of Omega‑3 is man­i­fest­ed in the fol­low­ing:

1. affect the nor­mal growth of the child. With a lack of Omega‑3, there may be a lack of growth. Of course, it doesn’t “reach” to dwarfism, but short stature is “pro­vid­ed”;

2. Nor­mal­ize the lev­el of triglyc­erides in the blood. This is very impor­tant for the pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of cer­tain dis­eases;

3. Improve kid­ney func­tion, reduce the risk of devel­op­ing kid­ney fail­ure and oth­er sys­temic prob­lems of this organ;

4. Improve local immu­ni­ty of the skin, make it soft­er and more elas­tic. Reduce the risk of devel­op­ing mim­ic and sim­i­lar wrin­kles. Help to cope with inflam­ma­tion, includ­ing acne, and accel­er­ate wound heal­ing;

5. Pre­serve and restore telom­eres in DNA mol­e­cules, there­by pro­long­ing life;

6. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve brain func­tion, reduce the risk of depres­sion and depres­sion, reduce the risk of depres­sion or bipo­lar affec­tive dis­or­der;

7. They improve local immu­ni­ty of the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem, reduce the risk of “catch­ing” colds.

In addi­tion, Omega‑3 reduces stress lev­els and improves over­all psy­cho-emo­tion­al well-being, while increas­ing men­tal sta­mi­na. So this dietary sup­ple­ment is real­ly use­ful.

Most Omega‑3 is found in sea and ocean fish, espe­cial­ly small breeds like mack­er­el, anchovies and her­ring. It can also be found in some veg­etable oils — lin­seed, cameli­na, rape­seed, hemp and mus­tard. Lots of Omega-3s are found in spinach, sea­weed and chia seeds.

Omega‑3 is part of fish oil, as it is obtained from marine fish.

Despite the fact that plant sources con­tain omega-3s, for the nutri­tion­al val­ue of the diet, you should not be lim­it­ed only to them. The fact is that there are 2 types of Omega‑3:

1. ALA (ELK). Pre­sent­ed main­ly in veg­etable oils;

2. EPA (EPA) and DHA (DHA). Pre­sent­ed main­ly in fish oil.

All these acids — ELA, EPA and DHA — are part of the com­plex with the com­mon name Omega‑3. They have a sim­i­lar effect, but to get the most strik­ing pos­i­tive effect, you should not be lim­it­ed to tak­ing just one thing.

As a result, if you want to buy Omega‑3 in the form of a dietary sup­ple­ment, then you should make sure that the com­plex con­tains all these acids — ALA, and EPA, and DHA. The lat­ter, for exam­ple, is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed for chil­dren dur­ing inten­sive assim­i­la­tion of new infor­ma­tion — train­ing or prepar­ing for exams. It improves brain devel­op­ment and pro­tects against men­tal fatigue.

Despite a vari­ety of ben­e­fi­cial effects, omega-3s are still not well under­stood by sci­en­tists. In par­tic­u­lar, it is not very clear in what dosages these sub­stances should be used. From the point of view of the Min­istry of Health of the EU, an ade­quate intake rate is about 1 gram per day. But the US reg­u­la­tor FDA says that you should not con­sume more than 2–3 grams of Omega‑3 from dietary sup­ple­ments or fish oil per day.

So, let’s sum up.

In gen­er­al, omega-3s are best tak­en as sup­ple­ments. It is very dif­fi­cult to con­sume enough marine fish, algae, chia seeds and oth­er mus­tard oils per day to pro­vide the required dosage.

Fish fat

Fish oil is a com­plex nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ment that con­tains a huge amount of nutri­ents. It is obtained main­ly from cod liv­er. In addi­tion, it is found in the meat of some ocean­ic fish species — mack­er­el, her­ring, and so on.

Fish oil is made up of many glyc­erides, most­ly fat­ty acids. Most of all it con­tains ole­ic and palmitic. And Omega‑3 and Omega‑6 are respon­si­ble for the ben­e­fi­cial effect, which is about 5% of the total vol­ume. In addi­tion, fish oil con­tains vit­a­mins A and D.

Ini­tial­ly, fish oil was used in med­i­cine due to the con­tent of rare vit­a­min D. It is prac­ti­cal­ly not found in oth­er prod­ucts. But at the same time, vit­a­min D is vital for the nor­mal devel­op­ment of the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem in chil­dren. There­fore, fish oil was pre­scribed for the pre­ven­tion of can­cer and sim­i­lar dis­eases.

Vit­a­min A, in turn, is essen­tial for skin and vision. In addi­tion, it improves immu­ni­ty and ensures nor­mal growth in chil­dren. But most impor­tant­ly, it is used in the bio­chem­i­cal process­es that deter­mine human vision. With a lack of vit­a­min A, not only astig­ma­tism or sim­i­lar dis­or­ders can be observed, but also a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the per­cep­tion of col­ors, as well as the so-called “night blind­ness” (dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish objects at dusk).

In addi­tion, fish oil has a pos­i­tive effect on the state of the diges­tive sys­tem — except when a per­son has catarrhal dis­eases (viral inflam­ma­tion of the mucous tis­sues).

How­ev­er, fish oil also has dis­ad­van­tages. So, in some cas­es, it con­tains heavy met­als that are not excret­ed from the body, espe­cial­ly mer­cury. This is due to the insuf­fi­cient puri­ty of the habi­tat of fish, from which this food sup­ple­ment is extract­ed. In addi­tion, it may con­tain ammo­nia and oth­er nitroge­nous deriv­a­tives, includ­ing ptomaine.

Espe­cial­ly a lot of harm­ful sub­stances are found in fish oil that has under­gone insuf­fi­cient purifi­ca­tion. It has a dark brown col­or. Med­ical fish oil, which has passed all stages of purifi­ca­tion and there­fore is prac­ti­cal­ly devoid of harm­ful sub­stances, has a char­ac­ter­is­tic yel­low­ish-amber hue, is trans­par­ent and does not taste bit­ter when shak­en in water. This dietary sup­ple­ment is rec­om­mend­ed and allowed to be tak­en.

The dosage of fish oil varies depend­ing on the degree of purifi­ca­tion and prepa­ra­tion. But it is usu­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed to take at least a few of its cap­sules per day — that is, about 3–5 grams. The spe­cif­ic rec­om­mend­ed dosage is indi­cat­ed on the pack­age. There are no neg­a­tive effects with exces­sive intake; fish oil is calm­ly excret­ed from the body in a nat­ur­al way.

So, let’s sum up.

Med­ical fish oil is rec­om­mend­ed for pur­chase. Only it under­goes suf­fi­cient purifi­ca­tion, which makes it safe and use­ful. But pre­sent­ed in the form of dietary sup­ple­ments, it may con­tain harm­ful and dan­ger­ous sub­stances, since no one guar­an­tees suf­fi­cient pro­cess­ing qual­i­ty.

It is also worth con­sid­er­ing that fish oil is not a med­i­cine. There­fore, it is used for pre­ven­tion rather than treat­ment.

Comparison

So, fish oil is a com­plex of use­ful sub­stances that includes Omega‑3, Omega‑6, vit­a­mins A and D. And Omega‑3 itself is a set of polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids nec­es­sary for the nor­mal devel­op­ment of the body. But the dif­fer­ence between these sub­stances is not lim­it­ed to this.

In gen­er­al, reg­u­lar fish oil is health­i­er. How­ev­er, there are a cou­ple of “buts”. First­ly, it does not con­tain plant-derived omega‑3 fat­ty acids (ALA), so it is rec­om­mend­ed to sup­ple­ment its intake with the use of appro­pri­ate oils or flax or chia seeds. Sec­ond­ly, it is very impor­tant to cor­rect­ly cal­cu­late the dosage of fish oil, drink­ing it as much as indi­cat­ed on the pack­age.

“Omega‑3” is a bio­log­i­cal sup­ple­ment main­ly for adults who are able to prop­er­ly con­trol their diet. In addi­tion, it is absolute­ly safe. Thanks to the many degrees and meth­ods of purifi­ca­tion, harm­ful sub­stances like the same heavy met­als are removed from it.

There is no point in tak­ing both at the same time. You can lim­it your­self to just med­ical fish oil.