Why does the body need fish oil: who should take it, beneficial properties and contraindications

Should you take fish oil?

It is useful to take fish oil for the following conditions:

• lack of vitamins A and D in the body;
• acute and chronic respiratory diseases;
• various eye diseases;
• wounds, injuries, bone fractures;
• problems with the growth of bones and teeth;
• dry skin and mucous membranes;
• poor condition of hair and nails.

The medicine can also be taken to prevent vascular diseases and rickets.

Popular pharmaceutical drugs

High-quality fish oil says “medical grade.” Avoid bottles labeled "food grade". Check the expiration date before purchasing.

The table shows the most popular drugs.

When purchasing, ask for a product certificate. It indicates the type of fish from which the fish oil is obtained and the production time.

How to use

Oil

Intended for internal use during meals.

For an adult, it is enough to take 1 tbsp per day. l. For children, the dosage is determined by the doctor and depends on age.

Features of administration depend on the purposes for which the medicine is taken, as well as on medical indications.

Capsules

The drug in capsule form should be taken after meals and washed down with a sufficient amount of drinking water. The capsule must be swallowed immediately. You can take up to 6 capsules per day.

The duration of treatment is determined by a specialist and cannot exceed 1 month.

The method of use and dosage may vary among different manufacturers.

Storage rules at home

The dietary supplement in capsules must be stored in a cool, dry place , protected from direct sunlight. This helps prevent damage to the gelatin shell of the capsule. You can store the product in the refrigerator, this will extend the shelf life. Do not allow the product to freeze or heat above +25C.

Bottles with an oily solution are also stored in a cool place. The packaging has tinted glass that protects from exposure to sunlight. After opening the bottle, the solution is stored in the refrigerator for about three months. This time is enough to consume the product.

Contraindications

Despite the usefulness of fish oil, it has a number of contraindications:

• increased susceptibility to constituent components;
• hemophilia;
• low blood clotting rate;
• open pulmonary tuberculosis;
• excessive calcium levels in blood plasma;
• excessive levels of vitamins A and D in the body.

Relative contraindications include: ulcers, acute and chronic nephritis, breastfeeding, liver and kidney pathologies, heart disease, old age.

Children can be given oil from 3 months. Capsules are contraindicated in children under 7 years of age.

Adverse reactions and overdose

If you keep the dose and follow the established dosage regimen, then no negative reactions should appear. Otherwise, an upset stomach, an allergic reaction, and bad breath may occur.

With prolonged use, an overdose may occur, manifested by the following symptoms:

• lack of appetite;
• gagging;
• lethargic and drowsy state;
• stomach upset;
• headache.

If such symptoms appear, maintenance therapy should be started. You should stop taking the drug.

Can I use an expired product?

To save time and money, many people try to purchase the supplement for future use. But it is not advisable to do this.

Is delay dangerous?

After the expiration date has passed, fish oil should not be used. After opening the package, the product begins to deteriorate quickly. With the formation of secondary products, the concentration of useful substances decreases. This makes the reception impractical. After all, its effectiveness decreases. There is also a risk of sedimentation of oxidized insoluble products on the walls of blood vessels.

Children may become intolerant to the resulting compounds. Therefore, you should not give them a rancid oily solution.

Fish oil is a food supplement. During storage, it does not release toxic products. Therefore, it can be disposed of in the same way as food. This will not cause any harm to the environment. You can find out what to do with expired medications from your home medicine cabinet here.

It turns out that you can take medications that have expired. But to maintain health, it is recommended to use only those drugs whose storage period has exceeded the indicated expiration date by no more than a year. Read our articles on how to store and what is the shelf life of drugs: Phenazepam, Paracetamol, Otipax, Levomekol, Acyclovir, activated carbon, potassium permanganate, Linex, hydrogen peroxide.

Signs of spoiled product

It is quite simple to identify a spoiled biological additive. It changes its taste to bitter. There is also a pungent odor. Capsules lose their yellowness when spoiled.

If stored in the refrigerator, flakes may form in the bottle. They do not indicate damage to the product. This precipitate quickly falls at room temperature.

Fish oil is a healthy product. But to achieve a positive effect from taking it, it is important to use only a high-quality supplement. To do this, it is important to know and comply with storage conditions.

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Should children be given fish oil?

For children under 2 years of age, the medicine is usually prescribed to prevent rickets. It contains vitamin D, which is necessary for bone growth and a strong immune system. This vitamin is useful in that it reduces the body's susceptibility to heart pathologies and skin diseases. It normalizes heart rate, maintains blood pressure at the desired level, and promotes the development of intellectual abilities.

After taking it, overly active children become more perseverant and calm, they can be better controlled, and they become less irritable.

To make it easier for young children to take the drug, it is produced in the form of capsules that do not have a specific odor and have a pleasant taste.

The instructions say that the oil can be given to babies from 3 months, and capsules can be taken from 6 years.

Doctors advise giving the medicine to those children whose immunity is very weakened. It will also be useful for diseases that occur with complications.

The benefits and harms of fish oil

Beneficial properties of fish oil:

• can lower blood pressure;
• reduces the likelihood of developing diabetes;
• helps cope with stressful situations and depression;
• slows down the development of malignant tumors;
• nourishes tissues with useful elements;
• activates brain activity.

Harm of fish oil:

• is a strong allergen;
• has contraindications;
• taking on an empty stomach may cause stomach upset;
• high calorie content.

The benefits of fish oil capsules

Capsules prevent the substance from oxidizing, suppress unpleasant taste and aroma, but the composition is no different from a liquid product for internal use. The composition also contains many beneficial vitamins and minerals.

Murzaeva Irina Yurievna

Endocrinologist, Preventive Medicine Doctor

October 25, 2021

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of consuming FISH OIL. Fish oil is valuable for the polyunsaturated acid OMEGA-3 it contains (and omega 6 vitamin D!). Omega-3-6 are also found in other foods of the animal and plant world. But the maximum concentration is observed precisely in fish oil. And despite all this, a ban on its use in medicine was introduced in the USSR.

Fish oil has been used in disease prevention programs for over 150 years. Soviet scientists hypothesized that our food contains insufficient amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega 3-6-9). These acids are found in large quantities in fish oil. But we don’t eat enough fish oil to cover our body’s needs.

In the USSR, for several years, the government actively organized preventive methods for improving the health of children.

At school and kindergarten, fish oil was forcibly given to each student using a dessert spoon from a bottle. And no matter how badly we treated fish oil in childhood, care for the younger generation in those days was at the state level and gave positive results.

The children were strong. There were very few children in the class who fell asleep during lessons from fatigue. Children very rarely suffered from colds. In those days, there was such a saying: Fish oil should be taken in the month of the year where the letter “P” is: January, February, March, April September, October, December.

In addition to taking “spoonfuls” of fish oil, there was fish on the school canteen menu every Thursday. Thursday was fish day.

But in 1970, a decree was issued banning the use of fish oil in medicine. Why did this happen?

Let us turn a little more to history: “In the Kaliningrad region, small fish that were useless and very harmful to other fish were used for fat burning. In other regions of the country, the main object of fat burning was the entrails and waste from fish cutting.” And only because fish oil was rendered from the entrails of fish, waste from fish cutting, as well as from fish liver oil, it contained a huge amount of toxic substances. And this is very harmful, especially for a child’s body.

It is for this reason that the preventive use of fish oil was banned in 1970.

But no one has canceled the positive effect of fish oil on the body.

And in 1997, a law was passed to return fish oil to pharmacies

But mass prevention with fish oil is a thing of the past, and perestroika began in the country.

I think for this reason, the number of omega-3 deficiency (a separate topic) and vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases has increased exponentially in the country:

• first of all, rickets (it is less common, yet mass prevention of rickets in children under one year of age has been established in the country);
• osteomalacia (more often!!!!) is rickets in adults;
• cholelithiasis and urolithiasis;
• as well as infertility, missed pregnancies, alopecia, sarcopenia (decreased muscle mass), caries, depression, obesity, increased incidence of acute respiratory infections and ARVI (immune defect), probably AIT and other autoimmune diseases and some others!

In the pathogenesis of many diseases there may be a deficiency of vitamin D. Here many clinical cases could be described where the main complaints were based on a primitive deficiency of vitamin D.
But fish oil is a complex thing. As it turned out, it consists of several polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) - omega-3 and omega-6 (this is vitamin D!!), oleic (more than 70%), palmitic (about 25%), stearic (no more than 2% ), trace amounts of capric, butyric, acetic, valeric and some other acids.

Fish oil also contains cholesterol, the fatty pigment lipochrome (in negligible quantities); organic compounds of sulfur, iodine, phosphorus, bromine; nitrogenous derivatives (butyl- and trimethylamine, ammonia); 2 ptomains - morruin, which has a urinary and diaphoretic effect on the body, and poisonous azellin; oxydihydropyridinebutyric (morruic) acid.

That is, pure fish oil contains many impurities that we do not need!

What we actually need from fish oil is vitamin D and omega-3 (omega-3 is a separate topic of discussion).

Importantly, it is almost impossible to raise vitamin D levels to optimal levels only by consuming foods containing it (milk, fish oil, meat, etc.); The vitamin D found in multivitamin and mineral supplements is not enough to raise your levels to normal; Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be overcome by spending a week at sea.

To understand whether the body has enough of these substances, it is better to get tested

blood for 25-OH vitamin D and omega-3 index! And depending on their level, select medications! This is an individualized approach to health :).

Today, vitamin D and omega-3 preparations are different drugs. Although our neighbors Finland and Norway make high-quality fish oil, which is quite suitable for routine prevention. But I am still confident that if prevention with high-quality fish oil from early childhood was revived in Russia, there would naturally be more healthy adults and children; some diseases would not occur with such frequency as they do now. This, by the way, also applies to prevention with iodine preparations or iodized salt, but this is a separate article!

The main conclusion: until mass prevention of hypovitamianosis D has been established, starting from 1-2 years of life, organize family prevention:

“Give fish oil to all family members” (children, parents, grandparents)

Material from the site was used in writing this article

"Proper nutrition for you and your loved ones"

Below is a table for selecting doses of vitamin D according to its level in the blood serum. I will write about the selection of omega-3 later.