Fish Oil Intake for Inflammation
Q: I read in quite a lot of places that fish oil capsules or cod liver oil are a great supplement for controlling inflammation and improving nutrient partitioning, but no one gives any information about dosing. I have no idea how much of this stuff to ingest. Have you formed any guidelines as a result of your research?
Extremely Limited Synthesis of Long Chain Polyunsaturates in Adults: Implications for their Dietary Essentiality and use as Supplements
Due to methodological issues that I won’t detail, determining what fatty acids were actually essential was actually a fairly difficult problem in the early part of the 20th century. In early research, it was thought that there were three EFAs, alpha-linoleic acid (ALA, not to be confused with alpha-lipoic acid, an insulin sensitizer), linolenic acid (LA), and arachidonic acid (AA). When it was found that rats could make AA out of LA, it was dropped, leaving two EFAs. I’d note that, at one point, it was thought that LA was the only EFA but, as we now know, both ALA and LA are essential fatty acids.
