Omega 3 dietary supplements: benefits and applications

Omega 3

The Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Physicists, pharmacologists and nutritionists alike have vocally touted the apparent benefits of the Omega 3 fatty acids that have increasingly become an important route of exploration for treating a remarkably wide array of conditions and/or disorders. The supplemental nutrient has been included with increasing regularity in investigative studies concerning heart disease, cancer, chronic joint pains and a large variety of learning or memory disabilities. Its omnipresence now in the contexts of alternative medicinal treatment and experimental investigation in a host of categories justify its centrality in the proposed study here, which will hone in on one possible and potentially valuable use of the supplement.

The literature employed to examine the credibility in the increasingly vaunted Omega 3 oil supplement is comprised both of legitimate scholarly research and of literature composed by advocates and entrepreneurs of herbal and alternative medical treatments. At present, the latter group makes a far greater majority of the publishing population on the subject, with its clear economic incentive for ensuring the connection between Omega 3 oils and various alleged health effects threatening to distort the picture somewhat. This is a regard in which the research proposed herein may be justified, suggesting that there is a considerable need for further clinical investigation of the proposed correlation.

Even a greater consideration of that which is available to us on the subject produces something of a mixed outlook. At the outset, it should be acknowledged that by and large, the health properties related to omega 3-based supplements are considered to be beneficial. In exactly what ways these are beneficial and to what extent remains largely up to the subject of debate and experimentation. At the base of this discussion though is the formative view by some that omega 3s are a part of the natural human diet and nutritional balance which are widely and problematically left out of many dietary habits, especially in the United States.

This proceeds from the argument that "man evolved on a diet with a ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids of approximately 1 whereas today this ratio is approximately 10:1 to 20-25:1, indicating that Western diets are deficient in omega 3 fatty acids compared with the diet on which humans evolved and their genetic patterns were established." (Simopoulos, 438) This is to suggest that where it still remains up for debate exactly how individuals benefit from the intake of omega 3 supplements, the impetus for much of the investigation into its health properties proceeds from the belief that our bodies are designed to benefit from its presence. To this point, the variance of associated benefits are those which, while not argued by all to be inherently produced by the presence of omega 3s in one's diet, are nonetheless many which suggest a normalcy of health functions.

The absence of such supplements, it is therefore suggested, could be affiliated with some degrees of impairment. Among its proposed health benefits, it is said to bear a direct relationship to certain mental processes which impact learning and reasoning aptitudes. According to research which is notably tied to the endorsement of a particular brand of the Fish Oil-based supplement, "it appears that children with ADHD just are not able to chemically convert the plant Omega 3." (Mercola, 327) It is therefore the proposition of this source that one of the suspected causes of ADHD is indeed a deficiency in a nutrient that is crucial to the balance of one's nutritional and intellectual well-being. The study holds that what appears to be a core cause for ADHD is the metabolic failure to process the Omega 3 nutrient from common digestion, resulting in a nutritional deficiency that directly impacts the dexterity and sharpness of one's mental faculties.

The properties of the omega 3 relating to certain physical issues also takes on great importance in this discussion, with a variance of findings casting the subject into continued disagreement. For instance, according to the findings of a study by Hooper et al. (2006), within a tested sample population, "the pooled estimate showed no strong evidence of reduced risk of total mortality (relative risk 0.87, 95% confidence interval 0.73 to 1.03) or combined cardiovascular events (0.95, 0.82 to 1.12) in participants taking additional omega 3 fats." (Hooper et al., 752) Though the study would go on to denote observable benefits where subjects were observed for more modest health gains, a greater margin of improvement was seen in the test population.

To contrast this finding though, a slightly earlier study would relate more positively to the prospects of preventing heart risk or mortality. According to Kris-Etherton et al. (2003), "three prospective epidemiological studies within populations reported that men who ate at least some fish weekly had a lower coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality rate than that of men who ate none." (Kris-Etherton et al., 20) This finding is demonstrative of that which many have suspected in the field for quite some time, that the human body relies on the presence of this nutrient for certain nutrition and immune functions, without which there is a heightened risk for certain conditions which could lead to mortality.