Lose extra fat by adding fish oil to your exercise?

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Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

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Today's post: Thursday, 5-24-2007

Lose extra fat by adding fish oil to your exercise?….

I looked briefly at a summary of a study that found that exercise plus taking a fish oil supplement helped people to lose fat.

Since I already knew & have reported here that regular exercise, particularly strength training, helps people lost unwanted & excess body fat, I didn’t read further.

And, you may have already read here that taking fish oils improves your health in many ways. I’ve already been eating fish & taking purified fish oil & DHA supplements for quite some time.

But, I found out on the radio news on KCBS early this morning that I missed something.

It seems that the people who did the aerobic exercise AND took the fish oil supplement in the study, which was mostly DHA, lost about 3.5 pounds of fat that the people who only exercised or who exercised while taking a non-omega 3 oil did NOT lose.

The supplement used had 260 mg DHA and 60 mg EPA.

It’s already known that eating fish & taking omega 3 supplements lowers high triglyceride levels. And, the people taking the omega 3 supplement in this study lowered their triglyceride levels. In this case, it was by 14 per cent from their pre-study levels.

But they also increased their heart-protective HDL levels by 10 per cent over their pre-study levels.

And, they lost that extra 3.5 pounds per person.

Of course, the study was only for a short time period. So we don’t yet know if people who kept up exercise and omega 3 lost another extra amount of fat in the next time period etc, or whether it was just a one-time extra fat loss.

But, it’s clear that it helped at first.

So, if you are exercising to lose fat or to prevent becoming fat, your program may well work better for you if you also take omega 3 supplements.

Considering that the supplements already have other health benefits that make them well worth taking, that looks very positive indeed.

One of the best known omega 3 supplements from purified fish oil is the “Omega 3” supplement from Nordic Natural. Two of their capsules a day give you a bit less DHA than was in the supplement in this study & a good bit more EPA. And, by taking 100 mg of DHA or more in a separate supplement, you can easily get a bit more DHA than was taken in this study.

So, to the advice to people aiming to lose fat to:

Get more moderate & regular exercise AND at least two days a week of vigorous & progressive strength training each week;

Stop consuming refined grain foods, soft drinks & foods;

And to eat MORE vegetables, whole fresh fruit, & health enhancing protein foods & to also eat some nuts, avocados, & use some extra virgin olive oil;

We now need to add to make sure to consume omega 3 oils, including at least 260 mg of DHA each day.