 The insane benefits of adding fish oil to your diet. Well, as most of you know, I'm always adding easy steps into your diet to better your health. Well, I've got another one for you today. I'm talking about fish oil. Fish oil is a great additive to your diet for a number of reasons. First, it's got some wonderful natural anti-inflammatory compounds. Second, fish oil actually sends signals to your brain that actually modulate your food intake. In other words, makes you eat less and you're less hungry. Talk about a great hack to not eat as much. Third, it can actually protect your skin from sun damage since it's rich in long chain omega 3 fats. Here may be the best reason. It turns out that fish consumption is also associated with an overall bigger brain size and a bigger hippocampus, the memory centers of our brain. And one particular town in Italy, a Ciroli, they eat anchovies, a very small fish rich in omega 3 fats, for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they have more centenarians, people over a hundred, per population than anywhere in the world. And one of the reasons we suspect is because of their significant little fish high in omega 3 fat. Now, my personal favorite reason for recommending fish oil is that the long chain omega 3 fats and fish oil allow for the speedy repair of your gut barrier. And as you know, as your gut barrier breaks down, so you break down. And as your gut barrier stays intact, you stay intact. So I like my gut barrier to stay intact. And what's fascinating is omega 3 fats actually repair your gut barrier. And omega 3 fat consumption prevents the absorption of LPSs, those lipopolysaccharides that are cell walls of bacteria, from getting into your bloodstream in the first place. These guys actually cause energy draining inflammation. Now, I measure the omega 3 index in all patients who come to see me. The omega 3 index looks at the amount of 2 omega 3 fats, EPA and DHA, that are attached to red blood cells, which looks at approximately what you've been doing for two months prior to the test. It's called the omega 3 index. Now, the problem is most of my patients when I see them are deficient in their omega 3 index. And most of my vegetarians and vegans are profoundly low on their omega 3 index. So what? Well, it turns out that people who have the highest omega 3 index have the biggest brains, seriously, and the biggest areas of memory they have a campus. Now, here's the bad news. People who have the lowest omega 3 index have the most shrunken brains and the smallest areas of memory. And one would think you would want a big brain and big areas of memory. I certainly do. So we also know that people who have the highest DHA in their brains and your brain is about 70% fat and half of the fat in your brain is DHA. So that's why you want so much DHA. Now, the only people I see in my practice who don't take supplemental fish oil are people who eat sardines or herring on a daily basis. So unless you're a Portuguese Southern Italian or Norwegian descent, you probably don't fit this profile. And you should supplement with fish oil. Now, how do you do that? First of all, you want to find a fish oil that's molecularly distilled. Yes, fish oil has a lot of nasty heavy metals in certain fish, although small fish usually don't have those heavy metals. But just in case molecular distillation means those toxins and heavy metals have been complex out of the fish oil. Try to make sure your fish oil comes from small fish like sardines and anchovies or menthen. My recommendation is when you're taking fish oil, aim for 1000 milligrams of DHA per day. Now, that's tricky because what you see on the front of the bottle does not correlate with how much DHA is in there. You may see 1400 milligrams of omega 3s per capsule and you go, great, that's what I need. I only have to take one, not so fast. You have to turn the bottle around and look at the label and look for the words DHA per capsule. Now, a lot of fish oil manufacturers will try to fool you and you didn't look at the serving size and the serving size may be two or three. So whatever you see down below for DHA, you got to make sure that's per one capsule or if it's for two or three, you got to divide that number to find out how much each capsule contains. And unfortunately, I see this all the time. I see that people are taking their fish oil but have no idea that they're really looking for about 1000 milligrams of DHA per day. Now, why do I say that? Because when we put people on 1000 or more DHA per day, their omega 3 index will always be in the range that's considered normal. So that's where I got that number. Again, we measure this every day on everybody every three months. So we know what works and what doesn't. I'm not conjecturing about this. Now, there are several good national brands that I recommend. Nature's bounty is good but be careful. In general, you have to take four of their fish oil a day to reach 1000 milligrams. Omega Via DHA 600 is a fairly small capsule that has 600 milligrams of DHA per capsule. So you only need two per day. My female patients quite frankly love it because of the size. Carlson's Elite Gems can be swallowed or if you're not into swallowing these fish oil capsules, you can actually chew them and then swallow the capsule. And again, a lot of my female patients like this option. Kirkland Signature Fish Oil 1200 milligram enteric coated won't give you fish burps, which is good. But it's got to have the blue label, not the yellow label. And I see a lot of patients using the yellow label. And quite frankly, there's very little available DHA in the yellow label Kirkland. Now, if you're a vegan, no problem. There are plenty of algae derived DHA, EPA and DPA capsules. I personally like to thrive culinary brand. Now either way, aim to take 1000 milligrams of DHA per day. Now I recommend you take a fish oil capsule with every meal or better yet, mixed flavored cod liver oil into your food. Now don't wrinkle your nose. Believe it or not, modern cod liver oil has no fishy taste or no fishy smell. I love Carlson's lemon and orange flavors. And it's great to mix in with olive oil or perilla oil on your salad dressings or even on your vegetables. In fact, I have frequently served guests a salad in my home that's been made with half Carlson's fish oil, the lemon flavor, and they tell me what a great salad this is. What are you using? And I tell them cod liver oil and they try to spit it out. It doesn't taste fishy. And it's an easy way, particularly with your kids, to get fish oil cod liver oil into them. And their brains will benefit. Study after study shows that the more DHA in a child's diet, the better they will do in school. And believe it or not, the better emotional stability they'll have. So, whatever way suits your lifestyle and routine, get fish oil into your diet. Really, the benefits are not to be missed out on. And it's a really easy step to take towards getting your health on track. Make sure to check out the next one here. If you've got low energy, chronic fatigue, it's not in your head. It's in your gut. And you need to find someone who will listen to you.