Understanding Fish Oil Labels

Perhaps you haven;t taken enough for long enough.
Anyway this seems to make the most sense…

Mike Roussell (T-Nation)

  1. I hate it when people give fish oil recommendations and talk in terms of capsules or grams of fish oil. Talk in terms of EPA and DHA! Otherwise it just confuses people! There is no standard concentration of fish oil so saying that you take 3 one gram capsules means crap. EPA and DHA is what matters.

Charles didn’t specify EPA/DHA and if you go to his website and look at the liquid fish oil he sells you can’t see the nutritional facts to see how pure it is. I would assume (it is a pretty safe assumption) that Charles’ fish oil is 30% pure and thus 45 grams of fish oil is only 13.5g EPA/DHA. Thus he is recommending 9-13.5 grams of EPA/DHA. This isn’t that outrageous in that studies have found that 25-30g EPA/DHA is well tolerated without adverse bleeding effets. But as Canadian_Bacon has pointed out “results may vary”. I wouldn’t recommend that you follow Charles’ recommendations using a 30% pure fish oil supplement as your exposure to potential toxins will be greatly increased. But if you choose a higher purity/potency product, increase you dosages in a stepwise manner over time, and spread your intake out across the day (I wouldn’t consume more than 5 grams at a time) I’m sure you would see a benefit…to what extent I’m not sure because the most I’ve ever consumed was 7 grams EPa/DHA per day…