Could the Benefits of Fish Oil Supplementation Include Reducing Your Risk of Hearing Loss?

The health benefits of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids are now firmly established by mainstream science. Amongst other benefits you may even help save your life from taking Omega 3 supplements every day, because science has shown that overcoming your deficiency in the Omega 3 fats may prevent a heart attack.
But it is less well-known that adding more of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids to your diet may also help protect your hearing. The benefits of fish oil supplementation grow bigger and bigger.
Yes you heard right. Adding more Omega3 fats to your diet has been shown in at least 2 studies to reduce the likelihood or amount of hearing loss that people may suffer over time.
The 2 studies were conducted independently, one in Holland and one in Australia. The Dutch study examined both the level of hearing of a group of people over a period of 3 years as well is what they ate. Each of the participants in the study was tested for hearing including high-frequency and low frequency sounds, and the reduction, if any, over the period of the study was measured.
And it was found that those who have the highest intake of fish in their diet were roughly 10 percent less likely to suffer from hearing reduction compared to those who had the lowest intake of fish.
And of course fish is the primary source of the most important of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids, namely DHA and EPA.
Another study in Australia undertaken for 5 years found that people who ate fish at least twice a week had roughly half the rate of hearing loss compared to other people who rarely or never ate fish.
It is not fully understood why increasing your intake of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids could help reduce hearing loss. But the fact that the mechanism is not well understood does not alter the fact that this seems to be the case, as borne out by 2 solid scientific studies.
And of course it's not just hearing loss that can be protected by increasing the amount of Omega 3 fatty acids in your diet, there is an extremely wide range of health conditions which can be positively impacted by eating more fish.
Sadly though much fish is heavily contaminated with Mercury, and in fact we are told not to eat too much for this reason, and this combined with the fact that fish is becoming extremely expensive presents a conundrum. How do we get more of the Omega3 fats in our diet without going broke doing so, and without eating Mercury?
Fortunately it's quite possible to get high quality Omega3 supplements which contain oil from fish, and which are not contaminated with Mercury or any of the other contaminants present in fish, and which are also cost-effective to take daily.
Sadly however not all Omega 3 supplements are high quality.

Do Learning Difficulties In Children Respond To Omega 3 Supplementation?

Learning difficulties amongst children seem to be on the rise. Whether it's autism or ADD, or dyspraxia or ADHD or dyslexia or any one of a number of other learning difficulties, the incidence of these problems seems to be on the rise. So why could Omega 3 supplementation have anything to do with the solution?
It's a good question. Omega 3 essential fatty acids and in particular DHA and EPA are found primarily in seafoods and in particular in oily fish. A century or more ago seafood was high in our list of important and much consumed foods. Virtually everyone ate fish at some stage during the week.
And because they ate fish regularly, and because fish, and in particular oily fish, is extremely high in the essential fatty acids, our forebears got an adequate amount of the essential fatty acids in their diet.
However fish has now been supplanted in our diets with such foods as burgers and coke. And as a result most of us if not all of us are nutritionally deficient in a range of the important nutrients, and this has a range of implications for all of us.
Study after study has shown that increasing our intake of the essential fatty acids, most commonly by taking quality Omega 3 fish oil supplements, will help prevent a wide range of health conditions, including reducing our risk of dying.
A study undertaken in the UK on more than 100 children with learning difficulties has shown that increasing the amount of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids in the diet of these children helped a percentage of them, though not all, to function better and to achieve more at school.
All of these children were selected on the basis that they had average ability but were performing badly at school. They were given Omega 3 supplements every day for 6 months and tested on their performance amongst other things.
Of course you cannot conclude from this study that giving Omega 3 supplements to your children will cure their learning difficulties, there is certainly much more to it than that. However it does seem that adding more Omega 3 essential fatty acids to their diet, commonly by way of Omega 3 supplementation, is one tactic that ought be considered by parents and medical professionals.
And there is solid scientific evidence to support the conclusion that our children will perform better with adequate amounts of essential fatty acids and their diet. The omega 3 fats, and in particular DHA, make up a large percentage of the brain and a higher supply of DHA during the early years has been shown to improve cognitive performance.
So if you're a parent of a child with learning difficulties, along with consulting the appropriate medical professionals, it may well also be worth considering Omega 3 supplementation. It's not just learning difficulties that may benefit, is a wide range of other health benefits from adding more of the essential fatty acids to the diet, both to yourself and your children.
And the best way to do this is by taking high quality Omega3 capsules, though not all fish oil supplements are high quality

Are You Getting Much Omega 3 In Fish That You've Fried? And If Not What Should You Do?

So you're eating fish tonight. Is there much Omega 3 in fish that might be served up to you tonight? Surely there is because everyone now knows that fish is the best source of those all-important Omega 3 essential fatty acids.
Not necessarily. The amount of Omega 3 in fish varies greatly depending on the type of fish and a number of other factors, including, if it's salmon that you're having, whether it's wild or farmed.
But a new factor that seems to affect the amount of Omega 3 in fish that we are eating has also been uncovered in a recent study. It would seem that how you cook your fish affects how much of those all-important essential fatty acids you'll be eating tonight.
A recent study undertaken and published in Neurology journal seems to be showing that how you cook your fish determines whether or not you're getting the maximum benefit from those Omega 3 fats.
The study was undertaken on residents of what is sometimes called the "stroke belt", a string of southern States which includes Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia and more. In these States the rate of death from stroke and the rate of stroke in general is much higher than the rest of the country, and in particular much higher amongst African-Americans.
And the study established that people living in these States ate much higher than levels of fried fish than in other states.
In other words there was a correlation between the amount of fried fish consumed by those residents and their rate of stroke. And in particular it was found that African-Americans in those states have extremely high rates of consumption of fried fish.
Now of course this doesn't establish that all these people are getting strokes from eating fried fish, it would require much more study to firmly establish this. However it is certainly worrying and offers a powerful suggestion to those amongst us who understand the health benefits of more Omega 3 fatty acids in the diet that they should be baking or steaming their fish rather than frying it.
Of course there are problems with getting your Omega3 fats by eating fish, regardless of how you cook it. Fish is becoming extremely expensive and we are now warned by our government not to eat too much due to contamination with Mercury and other toxic contaminants.
And for this reason, in my view, the most cost-effective way to get a regular daily intake of the Omega3 fats is through the use of high quality Omega 3 supplements.
However there is no doubt that fish is good to eat, provided you don't eat too much. But if you're eating your fish confident in in the knowledge that you're getting all those good fats in your diet you may be fooling yourself, there may not be so much Omega 3 in fish that youv'e fried.

Omega 3 Oils Are Now Essential in Everyone's Diet, Including Yours

In many cases claims about the health benefits of various alternative and nutritional supplements are little short of voodoo. However it is now clear that this is not the case when it comes to the health benefits of Omega 3 oils.
Many of the alternative and health supplements available on the market are backed up with very little solid scientific evidence to support the health claims made about them. Often mainstream science and medicine is extremely sceptical about any of the health claims made for so many alternative products.
But there is one nutrient that must be in your diet. It's the Omega 3 oils, and there is now solid scientific and medical agreement worldwide about the health benefits of these essential nutrients.
These can sometimes be known as the essential fatty acids, and the 2 most important of these are DHA and EPA, which are primarily found in seafood and in particular in oily fish.
The recognition of the health benefits of the Omega 3 oils has just received a substantial boost. On the 3rd and 4th of March 2011 there was an Omega 3 summit held in Bruges in Belgium. This summit was addressed by some eminent experts in the health care field, and the intentions of the summit were to examine the evidence of the health benefits of the Omega oils and to "start the turnaround" in the consumption of the long chain essential fatty acids worldwide.
In its press release the summit made a very significant statement about the health benefits of the essential fats, known as the long chain Omega 3 fats. This press release observed that disorders of the brain and heart resulting from a deficiency of the long chain Omega 3 fats called DHA and EPA are "the biggest challenges to the future of humanity".
This is about as mainstream as you can get. This is a significant recognition by mainstream medicine and science that many of the lifestyle diseases that afflict so many of us may be prevented by an increase in the intake of the Omega 3 oils. The best way to do this is by taking high quality Omega 3 supplements.
Not only that but the summit recognized the financial burden placed on health care systems worldwide of the costs of dealing with what are, in many cases, diseases preventable by some simple measures such as Omega 3 supplementation.
There is now no doubt at all that everyone should be sustaining a minimum level of intake of the long chain essential fatty acids. It is not difficult to do. There are excellent fish oil supplements available which contain high levels of DHA and EPA, and they are entirely accessible to everyone, and are cost effective to take.
For a collection of mainstream experts such as this to recognize that health and lifestyle diseases resulting from deficiencies in the Omega 3 oils can be this serious is a very powerful message to us all, and everyone should hear the message.