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My doctor has recommended I start taking fish oil caps in hopes to raise my HDL. (blasted total number went down by 52 points, but took my HDL with it.. bah) Anyway, she recommends I get a brand that has been manufactured in Sweden because they generally have less toxins. I asked her nurse for the brand name but she didn't have one.. just that I need to get a Swedish brand.
And yeah I'm already doing all the other stuff.. exercising 60-90 minutes a day, eating very high fiber, using canola and olive oil, eating fish...
First question.. does anyone have any idea of any brand names that I might try? Second... Is there a reputable place online to get it? I'll call the doctor back and press for a brand if no one knows, but I thought I'd try here first.
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I've been taking fish oil capsules for 2 years now and can attest to their benefit in reducing the cholesterol numbers along with the same things you are doing with diet (oatmeal and salmon) and exercise.
I would buy my fish oil capsules at the regular old store when they're on special - never really thought about the toxins and contaminents to be honest but I can see where it's a concern - even if you just don't want the extra junk like starches, sugars and fillers that might be in some products. I'm not sure I've seen enough bad stuff in the regular stuff you get at the store to offset the higher price but that's an individual choice.
Do a google search on pure fish oil. There are a ton of sites returned selling products at all different prices. Or check the bottles.
Ingredients: Pharmaceutical-Grade omega-3 fish oil concentrate (ethyl ester), gelatin, glycerin, and purified water.
Since my goal is to raise my HDL, I am curious what these caps did to your HDL level? Did it raise it? My total is only 152 so it is fine.. I just need to raise my HDL.
Location: A beautiful and peaceful place in the woods
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S/C/G: Stuck/Working on it/Good 2 Go
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Linda,
After taking the capsules, my total cholesterol went down - LDL went down, HDL went up a tiny bit. But my HDL's always been pretty good - it's 76 as of my last blood test. I saw the most dramatic results - 33 points down in 6 months when I started a regime that included oatmeal at least 3 times a week, salmon once or twice a week and the fish oil capsules. And I only take the fish oil once a day, not 3 times a day as recommended on the bottle. I'm lucky I can remember once a day
I'm familiar with your eating lifestyle from reading your journals and I know you choose to eat alot of the foods they recommend for raising HDL - so no news there. Frustrating because you are already doing all the right things... The only thing I saw in one article that surprised me was that if your diet is ultra low fat (less than 25% fat), that could drop your HDL levels.
One of the other things I saw as an HDL treatment was Niacin (a B vitamin) - but apparently it's not well tolerated in alot of people.
That is a great article. Eating enough fat is still an issue with me. I am one of those people who gained weight in the 90s when low fat/non fat was the "in" thing. I've raised it up from like 10% (eek) to around 20%. I mentally still freak out at the thought of adding fat, but I am fighting it. I only use olive, canola and occasionally sesame seed oil so I just need to work on adding more.
That article really is something I will keep in mind when I plan my meals.
Location: A beautiful and peaceful place in the woods
Posts: 8,905
S/C/G: Stuck/Working on it/Good 2 Go
Height: Fun Size
A gazzillion years ago I was going to WW and we had the best leader I've ever had - and he was a guy! Someone asked him, if low fat is good, wouldn't no fat be even better? His answer was no - you need a certain amount of fat in your diet to be healthy. Take the spoon of salad dressing when it's allowed and don't cut back.
The lowered HDL levels were news to me. I do know for a fact that your gall bladder requires fat to "squeeze" and do it's job. Go too low fat and you could be setting yourself up for gall bladder removal - remember the trash in the 90's about Slim Fast users winding up with their gall bladder's removed? Not so much Slim Fast's fault as much as too low fat.
I can appreciate your fear of fat and I know you get sensitive to some foods. You've done a fantastic job with your weight loss so far - kudos and congrats to you. Good news is that 1) you love to cook and experiment and 2) there's "good" fats that you can add into your diet in moderation - walnuts, almonds, peanuts, peanut butter, cold water fish like salmon, avocado and of course olive oil.
You can probably tweek a bit of this into your meals to boost the fat percent a bit. A teaspoon of slivered almonds is not going to do the damage of a spoon of Ben and Jerry's. I'd suggest giving this a try rather than relying just on the fish oil alone.
By the way to answer your original question, I didn't see Swedish fish oil, but if you do a Google search on Norwegian Fish oil, you'll get alot of hits. The Norwegian ones claim their cod liver oil compounds come from less poluted waters.
There is an article in a recent Prevention magazine that says the oil taken for the Omega 3 capsules is taken from the muscle of the fish and, therefore, not contaminated with the mercury we have been hearing so much about. The mercury is found in the liver and intestines of the fish. For what it's worth.....
That was a good article! I checked into this recently because my mother expressed concerns, so I tried to do a little research. Cod liver oil may present problems, as will other fish livers. But the fish oil in capsules is not prone to this. ConsumerLab tested fish oil capsules and found that they were all safe. Consumer Reports also reported that fish oil capsules are safe.
Here is there report:
Quote:
A flood of scientific findings on fish oil points to a startling conclusion: Certain omega-3 fatty acids in the oil, consumed either from fish or fish-oil capsules, appear to offer as much protection against dying from coronary heart disease as do cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The evidence of fish oil's protective powers is so strong that the American Heart Association now urges everyone to eat at least two small 3-ounce servings of fish a week. That's particularly important after menopause in women and after age 45 or so in men, when coronary risk starts to rise.
Last fall the heart association advised people who already have heart disease to consume about 1 gram a day of the active ingredients in fish oil--omega-3s called EPA and DHA. To follow that recommendation, the average person would have to take at least some fish-oil pills. This is one of the few times that a major health organization has endorsed any dietary supplement for treating or preventing disease.
But consumers who want the coronary protection that those omega-3s can provide may have other questions:
• Who else needs the pills? Millions of Americans have increased coronary risk but no apparent heart disease. Our medical consultants say that fish-oil supplements may make sense for those people as well, depending on the extent of their risk for heart disease.
• Is fish safe? Young children and women who are nursing or pregnant or who may become pregnant should avoid or limit their intake of certain types of fish that can be contaminated, notably with mercury. Other people should vary their choices, frequently eat the species unlikely to contain contaminants (see Right fish, least risk), and sharply restrict their intake of the species with the most mercury, namely shark, swordfish, and king mackerel.
• Are fish-oil supplements safe and are their contents reliable? The federal Food and Drug Administration rarely monitors the composition and purity of dietary supplements. But our tests of 16 top-selling fish-oil supplements were
reassuring: All those pills contained roughly as much EPA and DHA as their labels promised. None showed evidence of spoilage, and none contained significant amounts of mercury, the worrisome PCBs, or dioxin.
So the choice boils down to price, and we found good news there, too: Two brands, Kirkland Signature Natural Fish Oil and Member’s Mark Omega 3 Fish Oil, each a CR Best Buy, supplied the desirable daily dosage for less than half to as little as a tenth of the cost of the other brands we tested.
FIVE-WAY PROTECTION
Studies suggest several possible mechanisms to explain how fish oil helps minimize the consequences of heart disease and perhaps prevent the disease in the first place:
• It may electrically stabilize the heart-muscle cells, reducing the likelihood that a heart attack will trigger an arrhythmia or potentially deadly heartbeat disturbance.
• It may fight inflammation, which makes arterial plaque deposits more likely to break apart, create blood clots, and thus trigger a heart attack.
• It may make certain blood cells less sticky and less likely to form clots.
• It may make the arteries more elastic, reducing the chance that increased blood pressure will cause plaque deposits to rupture.
• High doses can reduce blood levels of triglycerides, a fat that may increase heart-disease risk.
A DRAMATIC DROP IN DEATHS
The benefits of fish oil emerged when researchers noticed that people who ate fish frequently suffered fewer heart attacks and died of heart disease at a lower rate than those who seldom ate fish. Most significant, those studies showed that eating fish offers powerful protection against one of the most dreaded and unpredictable consequences of heart disease: "sudden-death" heart attacks that kill within minutes. Subsequent research suggested that high fish consumption may also reduce the risk of stroke.
Controlled clinical trials have confirmed that a steady diet of fish or fish-oil supplements works as "secondary prevention," reducing the likelihood of a repeat heart attack in people who’ve already had a first attack.
For example, the Diet and Reinfarction Trial, involving some 2,000 heart-attack survivors in Wales, found that those who increased their EPA and DHA intake from fish by at least 500 milligrams a day for two years had a 29 percent lower death rate than those who didn’t boost their fish intake; a drop in fatal heart attacks accounted for that entire benefit. Another trial, involving some 11,300 Italian heart-attack survivors followed for 3 1/2 years, found that those given 850 milligrams a day of EPA and DHA from supplements had 20 percent fewer deaths overall and 45 percent fewer sudden-death heart attacks than the untreated control group.
Long-term clinical trials of fish-oil supplements have not yet been conducted in one important group: people who have major risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, but who haven’t developed any apparent signs of the disease. So researchers cannot be sure that taking these supplements would work as "primary prevention"--keeping a heart attack from occurring in the first place.
However, William S. Harris, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the University of Missouri and director of the Lipid and Metabolic Research Laboratory at the MidAmerica Heart Institute, notes, "There has never been a cardiologic treatment that worked as secondary prevention that didn’t also work as primary prevention."
Fish oil Caps
