How Much Fish Oil Should I Take?
That’s easy.
You need at least 1000 mg of Omega-3 daily.
The two most common questions I get about fish oil are:
- Which brand of fish oil should I buy?
- How much fish oil should I take daily?
Don’t confuse 1000 mg fish oil with 1000 mg Omega-3. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!
Your specific health condition may require you to take more than 1000 mg Omega-3 per day.
How much fish oil should I take per day?
1000 mg of Omega-3 is an ideal starting fish oil dosage because that’s what the American Heart Association recommends.
But getting 1000 mg Omega-3 is not easy because most fish oil pill have a lot less than that. More about that in a minute…
But if you really want to take charge of your health, the answer is a bit more detailed.
And to custom-tailor the answer to YOUR health, you need to know two things:
- How much Omega-3 does your current fish oil have?
- What is your ultimate health goal?
Both of these questions affect the answer.
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Let’s start with ‘How much Omega-3 does your fish oil pill have’?
If you buy your fish oil pills at the grocery store or corner drug store (tsk, tsk) then chances are, your fish oil pill has only 300 mg Omega-3 per pill. It’s 30% Omega-3 and 70% fish fat (bad fats that can be harmful.)
300 mg Omega-3 is not enough. Nowhere near enough.
Our diets are so bad that we get hardly any Omega-3 from the foods we buy at the grocery store. Unless you buy a lot of Salmon.
Useful Articles About Fish Oil Dosage |
Back to the drug/grocery store fish oil pills. You’ll need to take 3 of them every day to get 1000 mg of Omega-3.
300 mg of Omega-3 (found in one pill) is just enough to hide major omega-3 deficiency symptoms. To get real benefits, you need 1000 mg or more per day.
Again, don’t confuse 1000 mg fish oil with 1000 mg Omega-3. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!
Fish oil CONTAINS Omega-3. Cheap fish oil usually has 30% Omega-3. 30% of 1000 mg is 300 mg. That’s why you need 3 pills per day to get 1000 mg.
“How much fish oil should I take?”
Well, that depends on your ultimate health goal?
How much fish oil you should take per day also depends on your current health condition.
If you’re 35 and fit as a fiddle, (I’m a little jealous) to stay fit, you may only need 500 mg to 1000 mg a day.
But if you are trying to address specific conditions, you need MUCH higher doses of Omega-3.
Here is how much Omega-3 you need per day:
- For depression, you need: 1000 mg per day
- For heart disease, you need: 1000 mg per day
- For skin disorders, you need: 1000 mg per day
- For blood pressure, you need: 2000 mg per day
- For arthritis, you need: 2000 mg per day
- For asthma, you need: 2000 mg per day
- For diabetes, you need: 2000 mg per day
- For high triglycerides, you need: 3000 mg per day
For heart disease, you can get excellent benefits with 1000 mg. More helps but the benefits are not proportional.
But for triglycerides, the more Omega-3 you take, the lower your triglycerides drop. Scientists call this a ‘dose-dependent linear response.’ So I recomment 3000 to 4000 mg Omega-3 per day for triglycerides. Talk to your doctor about combining fish oil with low-dose statin – together, they produce better results than either one taken separately.
If you took your retail-grade fish oil pills, you would have to take 6 pills to get 2000 mg of Omega-3. Or 9 to 12 pills a day if you wanted to reduce triglycerides.
Call me crazy, but I’m NOT taking 9 fish oil pills a day!
I don’t want to smell like a fishing dock!
Things need to be a little simpler than that.
That’s why you should seek out very high potency, pharmaceutical grade fish oils that have close to 1000 mg Omega-3 PER PILL.
TIP: Some product labels try to fool you by saying 1000 mg Omega-3 per serving…but if you read the back, you’ll find that a serving is 3 pills. You need 1000 mg in JUST ONE PILL.
Besides OmegaVia, our favorite, there are several good quality pharmaceutical grade products available online:
- Nordic Naturals
- Omax3
- Minami Nutrition CardiO-3
- Ocean Blue Professional
All of these brands allow you get LOTS of Omega-3 with fewer pills. Your goal should be to find the most Omega-3 per pill. Only Minami and Ocean Blue have 1000 mg per pill, but Nordic and Omax3 are high quality even if they have less than 1000 mg per pill.
Easy dosage:
1 OmegaVia pill = 1000 mg Omega-3
2 OmegaVia pills = 2000 mg Omega-3
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Charles Serhan, a Harvard Medical School expert on Omega-3s:
“The kind of benefits seen in most of the clinical trials with Omega-3 generally have involved much higher doses than you see recommended on supplement labels.” |
| DISCLAIMER: The contents of this blog do not constitute medical advice. This is merely an open discussion of the science behind Omega-3 and fish oil. Please consult your physician for medical advice. |
About the Author: Vin Kutty is OmegaVia’s Scientific Advisor and Chief Blogger. He is a nutritionist, author, and Omega-3 expert with over 20 years of experience. When coffee’d up and fully inspired, he shares Omega-3 info-nuggets on Facebook and Twitter. Email him.
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