With all the talk of EPA and DHA and ALA, how do you choose your Omega 3 capsules?

And it gets worse when you start reading all about converting ALA to DHA, then about long chain and short chain fats and so on.

One of the people who read my site recently asked me how to go about choosing his Omega 3 capsules because he had got confused about long and short chain fats.

I can understand his confusion. Heres a short explanation, and then well have a look at how to choose the best Omega 3 fish oil supplements.

There’s the 3 main Omega 3 fats, DHA, EPA and ALA. They are all good for you but the most important by far is DHA.

You get ALA from plant sources like flax seeds, and your DHA comes from sources like deep sea fish. And DHA is a long chain fatty acid, whilst ALA is a short chain fatty acid. But the most important is DHA.

DHA comes from fish oil capsules so you need fish oil Omega 3 supplements rather than flax seed capsules. You also get EPA from fish oil.

Every brand of fish oil capsules has DHA.

So if you’re better using fish oil supplements are they all the same? If not how do you choose between the different fish oil supplements?

There are two factors in choosing the best fish oil supplements. You need to consider the quantity of DHA you get in each capsule and you need to look at the purity of the fish oil. That’s all.

To decide which are the best value fish oil capsules you must consider how much DHA are in them, not just the price.

So if you look at supplements that are half the price of some others they may seem good value, but if you get a third of the DHA they aren’t.

And don’t stop there because you need to find out which are the purest oils used in the supplements because, sadly, most of our fish can be contaminated with toxins. You don’t want to be taking capsules with fish oil that may be contaminated with mercury, for example.

That’s the 2 things you need to consider when choosing your Omega3 capsules.

But actually doing that comparison isn’t as easy as you’d think and you may struggle. I have run the sums and one brand comes up as the best fish oil supplement on both DHA quantity and also on oil purity.

I tell you which brand on my website.

Tags: Heart

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