Posted by LOOPS on June 8, 2005, at 16:27:50
In reply to Re: New finding! Wheat germ oil..., posted by vitaqueen on June 8, 2005, at 9:32:29
Hi vitaqueen -
sorry to hear you're not feeling so great - hope things get better soon!
Ok, so I take different brands of fish oil. I think the cheapest I found was Dr Murray's Rx factors fish oil, which has 400mg EPA and 200mg DHA per cap. A close second is NOW double-concentrated caps with 360mg EPA and 240mg DHA. The brand I take with the most EPA is Source Naturals Arctic EPA which has 500mg EPA and 90mg DHA per cap. However this brand is pricey ($30 for 120 caps from betterlife.com).
I usually will take one high EPA cap and one of the others (think prefer Dr Murrays) 3 x daily. Occasionally, for some kind of weird intuitive feeling, I do take more - sometimes less, although not often less.
There are various theories floating around at present regarding fish oil and mood: one is that DHA-high fish oil makes mood worse - and that the quantity of DHA in the cap detracts from EPA's effects on mood - so therefore the more EPA and the less DHA the better. Also we are supposed to be able to make DHA out of EPA.
The other theory is that mass dosing is no better than taking a gram or so of EPA a day - and might even be less effective for depression etc.
So, as usual, trial and error is the way to go. I haven't noticed a lessening of effect with my dose, which was higher than originally - but then I might have been very deficient in omega 3 (was a vegan for months on end), and maybe I'm still playing catchup.
The one time I did try a brand of fish oil that had equal amounts of EPA/DHA, my symptoms seemed to come back within about a week (and I didn't know at the time the ratio in the pills I was taking so it wasn't psychosomatic (sp?).
I tried flax seed oil and it didn't feel very good with my system. I got quite hyper and irritable on it - and I need calming down, not hyping up most of the time.
I will say I go through cycles where my anxiety seems to come back for a day or two. This has happenend a lot with the fish oil. Overall I am very good now, but I still have days - and I have found taking a combination of EFAs helps to sort this out.
I take GLA pills on a semi-constant basis - (evening primrose oil/borage oil etc) which gets rid of anxiety for me just about immediately. I also take lecithin caps every day and find these very helpful for anxiety.
Dr Stoll seems to think it's important to be taking extra vitamin E and C when ingesting high amounts of fish oil so I try to do this. I don't take the amounts he recommends though (aka 800IUs vitamin E and 1.5g vit C) - 800IUs of vitamin E feels like too much to my body.
Hope that helps. I think there is some truth in the high EPA theory - at least it feels like that to me.
Loops
poster:LOOPS
thread:506534
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050510/msgs/509705.html