Omega 3 is a bunch of healthy fatty acids that are not made by our body but benefits from it immensely if consumed in our diet. If there was one food that could be classified as Ambrosia, it would be Omega 3!
Omega 3 has some amazing health benefits and these include:
- Boosting heart health (de-clogging the arteries)
- Lowers triglycerides (fat sticking in your blood vessels).
- Helps you get rid of or control depression (feeling low? Have a grilled Sardine) and rheumatoid arthritis (painful joints).
- Helps control bipolar disorder.
- Taken during pregnancy, Omega 3 helps boost mothers and baby’s health as well as aids in visual and neurological development in the infant.
- Since Omega 3 helps fight inflammation, it also keeps away asthma / provides relief from asthma.
- There is also some indication (ongoing research) that Omega 3 may also be helping infants improve their cognitive ability.
- Similarly, there is indication (ongoing research) that Omega 3 may also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. This could be happening due to improved blood circulation in the brain.
Over time, our over indulgence results in the clogging of our arteries and blood vessels. As the clogging continues, the heart has to pump more energetically. There’s only so much the heart can do and in due course it just gives up. When something identical happens to the plumbing in our homes, the local plumber always first pours a chemical into the drain pipes. This chemical eats into any blockages and helps clear out the drain.
Omega 3 is the take-care-of-your-plumbing kind of nutrition except that in clearing your blood vessels, it extends your lifespan which is why we likened it to Ambrosia.
How to obtain Omega 3 fatty acids?
You would have to agree that the health benefits of omega 3 fatty acids are impressive enough to include Omega 3 in our daily food plan.
While there are several types of Omega fatty acids, the two beneficial ones are called EPA and DHA. Let’s not bother about the full form of these abbreviations because it would also mean having to explaining a couple of other things that would probably bore you to death!
The best sources of EPA and DHA (let’s just call them Omega 3 fatty acids), is ‘oily’ fish. If you regularly bring fish at home, you might have noticed that some fish not only have a kind of smoky-oily smell to them, they also give off a lot of thick oil as they are cooked. This fish oil is super rich in Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 can also be obtained from flaxseeds.
Include the following ‘oily’ fish in your weekly shopping list:
- Bluefish,
- Herring,
- Mackerel,
- Salmon,
- Sardines,
- Sturgeon,
- Lake trout and
- Tuna
If you are a vegan or do not regularly cook or eat fish, you can obtain your quota of Omega 3 fatty acids from cod liver oil capsules (over-the-counter sale), walnuts, canola oil, flax and flaxseed oil, soybean oil and olive oil.
Confusion
Some of our readers wrote in to say that meats too contained oils and that oil from meat also contained Omega fats. Absolutely true! However, oil from meat contains Omega 6 not Omega 3 – they are not the same (must make a note to write an article on Omega 6).
Caution
Just because the health benefits from Omega 3 are immense, or your triglycerides are high or you suffer from depression or rheumatoid arthritis or asthma please don’t consume vast quantities of fish. Just include a small quantity of it (three fingers thick) once a day, in your daily diet.