Omega-3

[RubyTuesday]

This thread is very long. Can someone please summarize how much EPA & DHA one should start with and work up to, somewhere prominent in the thread? Thank you. I have been trying for days to figure this out and have not yet.

[Sheila]

Ruby – You can start with approximately 500 mg total of EPA + DHA. The exact split doesn’t matter. Then, watch your reaction to it, and, if all goes well, add another pill every two weeks.

We don’t know how high to go yet. This is cutting-edge clinical research we’re doing together. But, other people are currently using 9,000 – 18,000 EPA + DHA for other neurological injuries and serious psychological problems.

[grandmaD]

I hVE TO say I don't understand the quantitities you are taking and suggesting. If I add my EP/A and DHA together I get 271mg. Oh, I just saw that is in each ml. Ok, so I am taking ten times that, (10ml) which is 2,710ml. Is that right? Is one mg=to 1ml?

I couldn't u;nderstand how you could take 9,000 of it because 1 whole bottle is only 500ml.

[Sheila]

gD – is this it? --

1 ml of your liquid = 271 mg of EPA + DHA

10 ml of your liquid = 2,710 mg of EPA + DHA

[Moui]

What time of day do you take your fish oil? Do you find it stimulating at bedtime? I took some twice at bedtime recently and had some trouble getting to sleep but it might be the heat as well. Or other things going on. I even had very minor wd-ish primal fear-type of thoughts going around in my head one night.. they were gone in the morning.
I know I can tolerate fish oil as I've taken it for almost 2 years.. 1 in wd and 1 after I went back on. I took it mornings/ after first big meal then.

[Sheila]

I take my fish oil divided into five times a day, including once during the night. I don’t seem to find it activating right after taking it. However, I notice that whenever I go up in dose, I have three nights of not great sleep.

Now, having been at a high dose for awhile, I can remember my dreams better, and, just recently, I started having more upbeat dreams.


Addendum – I forgot that I am in the midst of a gentle, but significant detox – which I simply had to do for my feet – but which makes me have a detox reaction to *any* change. And, the sleep problems I have for three nights after updosing on Omega-3 are characteristic of my *detox* sleep problems, not my earlier *neuro / dysautonomia / w/d* sleep problems.

So, there will be some other people who have built up toxins in w/d, and might have a detox reaction to updosing on Omega. But, those people will tend to be the ones who have already been in w/d for many years and are older.

[bruno2006]

sheila: I have been looking into high dose fish oil because I began using it and came across Chris Kresser and his thoughts on this therapy. I was wondering if you could comment or know of any long term groups that were followed using this approach or if you know of some decent studies. Chris notes, "The only fish oil study lasting more than four years showed an increase in heart disease and sudden death".

I know fish oil is highly oxidative and one must supplement with vitamin E to prevent any troubles. Even though I havent added vitamin E with my fish oil, I think it may be wise. Moreover, I am going to give it a try and see of I get some benefit. If not, I think its a good idea to get back down to a reasonable dose which for me is 3-5 grams a day.

http://chriskresser.com/when-it-come...-is-not-better

[Sheila]

Bruno – Just to give you some perspective on where I’m coming from, it took me nine years to decide to go to a mega-dose of Omega-3. I went up to about 1200 around 2005, and up to about 4000 in 2009. I am not a mega-dose kind of person.

I just looked at the summary of Chris Kessler’s article. It was published in 2010. There are studies coming out now nearly every week on Omega-3. I’m about two weeks from finishing a huge blog post that will survey some of the neuro and psych studies. I encourage you to go to PubMed and search Omega. Especially look at studies done by Michael Lewis and Joe Hibbeln.

Everyone, including Kessler, agrees that our evolutionary ratio of Omega6:Omega3 was somewhere between 1:1 and 3:1. Yet, globally, it now measures 12:1 to 50:1. This diet is not what we are designed for.

Now, what’s the best way to supplement? I don’t know. Fish oil pills is what we have. Algae oil pills are becoming more available. If you buy a brand that has been assayed for quality control and you store it well and use it promptly, I, personally, feel satisfied that that is safe.

I definitely think you should take both Vit E and Vit C as antioxidants along with your Omega. I do.

I don’t know if there are any long-term follow-up studies. One way you could approach this is that you are treating neurological damage. After you feel you are healed, you can drop back down to a maintenance dose of around 3000. I think that’s what Michael Lewis suggests. But, we don’t know how long people need the treatment-level dose for.

I’m not familiar with that 4-year DART-2 study. But one commenter wrote this –

“It is worth noting that the DART 2 researchers disagree with your interpretation of the results. From the paper: “An adverse effect of fish oil as distinct from dietary fish is unlikely.” There is a good discussion in the paper of some reasonable explanations for their results. They seem to think that the result may not be statistically significant but also bring up the possibility that the fish oil group may have engaged in riskier behavior or skipped their usual medications due to the belief that the fish oil pills were adequate. The study was an RCT [randomized controlled trial] designed to evaluate the efficacy of dietary advice, not of fish oil supplements, and thus should not be taken as evidence against fish oil supplementation.”

Maybe you could read the study and analyze it for us and post here?

Bottom line – you would be taking mega-dose Omega-3 to repair neurological damage. I’m not sure Kessler looked at that. You may *need* Omega-3 more than most people.

[stan]

i am not a specialist in omega and take some,
giving high dose to a body is not very good maybe
a friend of mine told me, it is useless to take heavy dose of something, it depends if the body works with or reject it without using it when peeing for example, the goal is the body digest it;
i am native extreme, but better to be reasonable and this is not easy for me

[Iggy131313]

it concerns me that people were having a bad reaction to fish oil on SAs thread, especially as people were saying that it increased their inner restlessness/akathisia, especially as it makes sense to me from all this reading that omega 3 should REALLY help us##

im scared but i want to try it