Is Fish Oil Making You Sick?
Don’t be silly Laura.
Fish oil is anti-inflammatory, prevents cardiovascular disease, reduces arthritic pain, improves brain function, helps improve skin tone and appearance and is just generally good for you!
Well yes, that is all true. If you’re taking the right fish oil.
Do you get fishy burps after taking your fish oil?
If you do, I have two suggestions for you:
1) Stop taking it with hot drinks and/or hot food
2) Chuck it in the bin
It may seem a bit dramatic to tell you to throw away your fish oil supplement but sadly, some fish oil supplements sold in stores are doing you more harm than good.
Rancid fish oil causes disease.
If you get fishy burps after you take your fish oil capsules then chances are, the oil is off. Rancid oils are oxidised (opposite to anti-oxidants) and are very harmful for the body.
One of my reps recently encouraged me to chew one of his companies fish oil capsules. I was hesitant. I really didn’t want to be left with a fishy taste in my mouth all day.. And who wants to see a Naturopath with fish breath?!
He saw me turn up my nose and immediately popped a capsule in his mouth and started chewing. Well, I didn’t want to be a wimp, so I copied. To my amazement I could not taste one iota of fish! In fact I quite enjoyed my fish oil capsule, it was kind of like a lolly! And at no point in the rest of the day did I get any hint of fishy after taste.
The reason I could chew this fish oil capsule so easily is because the oil was clean, pure and fresh. During the manufacturing process it had not been left out in the open air being exposed to oxygen and going rancid.
I always tell my clients, “If there is only one supplement you are going to spend more money on it should be fish oil”. This is not a sales pitch. I’m not salesy at all. In fact, I mostly prescribe liquid fish oil because its a lot cheaper than capsules (and easier to take). This advice is simply because I want to help you improve your health, not make you sicker!
The other problem with bargain basement fish oil is Mercury. Cheap fish oil usually comes from large fish. Large fish are known to retain high levels of heavy metals. Hello toxic fish oil! This is particularly concerning when we are feeding nasty fish oil to kids (often in the form of equally worrisome chewy, coloured fishies). I hate to think that we are filling these little people with such toxic substances.
When you are buying fish oil, read the packaging. It should state on there somewhere that it is from a sustainable source and from small fish.
And for the record; Krill oil is not equivalent to 6 fish oil capsules in 1 (cleverly marketed) capsule. Fish oil is fish oil and no other oil, including krill oil, matches its supreme power.
OK, I got a little bit carried away with my creative writing at the end there. But seriously, don’t believe the hype. Krill oil has been proven to be great for cardiovascular disease. But fish oil has been proven to be amazing for so much more!
