We have 17-year-old quadruplets, Connor, Grant, Paige, and Clare.  I remember a meeting at our children's school years ago.. I think they were in about third grade.  The psychologist and teacher laid out a sheaf of test data and worked hard to convince us that our son Grant was learning disabled.  

   We resisted their attempts to label him and made it through the year with extra work at home.  That summer I learned about omega 3's, and started the whole family on them right away.  

  The next school year was a changed one for Grant.  He went from being a C and D student that required constant oversight to an A and B student who was completely self supervising.  He's been that way ever since.

   I didn't know it until then, but Grant had obviously been severely deficient in omega 3s.  Not uncommon when you consider that he was "gestated" at the same time as three other babies.  There's only so much omega 3 to go around, and Grant was the one that got the least.  How fortunate that we filled that hole early on.

What are omega 3's?
Omega 3's are fats.. oils, more specifically, and they're something you must have to be healthy.  They were always there in our foods.. until about 100 years ago when food started coming from factories instead of nature.  Omega 3's are so important that your body can't work right without them.  Like water for a plant, they're such a basic requirement to health that not having them promotes virtually every chronic illness, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and many neurologic illnesses, including dementia, depression, and ADHD.

How can being deficient in omega 3's cause so many different problems?  To begin with, omega 3's help regulate inflammation.   Omega 6s and omega 3s are both necessary in our diet.  Omega 6 fats are the precursors for the "hormone" that turns inflammation on, and omega 3s are the same for the hormone that turns it off.  We get plenty of omega 6s--because they're in everything we eat, as corn, soy, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, and peanut oils--but very little of the omega 3s.  That means we have a very strong tendency to turn inflammation on, and a poor ability to turn it off.  It has recently been discovered that chronic low level inflammation underlies virtually every chronic illness.

Omega 3's are also an important building block--like 2x4s for the body, especially for the brain and nervous system.  The cell membrane in particular requires omega 3's.  If they aren't there, your body isn't "up to code" and it affects the "fluidity" of the cell membrane, and that affects the ability of important substances to get in and out of cells.. things like serotonin, dopamine, and insulin, and that affects your health.  One reason trans fats are so bad for you is that they'll replace omega 3 fats in the cell membrane--even if omega 3s are present, severely impairing the ability of important substances to get in and out of the cells.

Why aren't omega 3's in our foods anymore?
The omega 3's we're talking about come almost exclusively from animals.  When foods began coming from factory farms, profit was the primary objective, not quality.  They started feeding slaughter animals (beef, chicken, pigs, etc.) in ways they would never eat in nature, to fatten them faster for greater profit.  Unfortunately, it affects the quantity and type of fat.  For example, grassfed beef is 3:1 omega 3 while feedlot beef is 20:1 omega 6!

Is it possible to get enough omega 3's in your diet without supplementing?
It's very hard, without making big changes in your diet.  Your need for omega 3's is mostly determined by how much omega 6's you eat.  You need a balance of omega 3 and omega 6 in your diet for your body's inflammatory process to work right.. the more omega 6 you consume, the more omega 3 you need.

When omega 3's were taken out of our foods, they were replaced with omega 6's (corn, soy, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, peanut, canola).  Many people get 20 or 30 times as much omega 6 as omega 3, because of the high amount of processed foods they eat.

The only person I know who might get enough omega 3's in his family's diet is my brother Eddie that lives in Alaska.  Ed fishes and hunts enough that all of their meats come from the wild.  Even then, depending on how much omega 6 they get in other foods, they could still need to supplement.

Here's Ed cleaning red salmon in the Kenai river, Alaska.

I take flax oil, is that good enough?
No.  The omega 3's we need most are called EPA and DHA and they come from animals.  Plant source omega 3's are great.. but they're "short chain" omega 3's, and the ones we need are "long chain."  You have to have EPA and DHA.

How much EPA and DHA do I need?
For your inflammatory process to work right, you need close to equal amounts of (long chain) omega 3 and omega 6 oils in your diet.  Remember, omega 6's tend to turn inflammation on, and omega 3's turn it off.  You need both.. in equal amounts to maintain a normal inflammatory response.  The good news is that as you improve your diet and lower your intake of omega 6 fats, your need for omega 3's will decrease also.

Barry Sears, a PhD in biochemistry and author of the "Zone" books is one of the foremost experts on omega 3s.  Here's what Dr. Sears recommends:

Current State of Health                              EPA & DHA Recommended
No known existing illness                             2.5 grams/day (2,500 mg)
Obesity, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes   5    grams/day (5,000 mg)
Chronic pain                                                 7.5 grams/day (7,500 mg)
Neurologic illness                                     >10    grams/day (10,000 mg)

I suggest a ratio of EPA to DHA of 2:1.  The product we carry has 400 mg of EPA and 200 mg of DHA in each gel cap.  For a healthy person with no known illness, 4 each day would provide 2,400 milligrams at a cost of $16/month.

When you first start taking omega 3's, take one or two right at the start of a meal, once or twice a day before 6pm.  As your body becomes accustomed, you can increase the amount taken at one time and can take them with just water.

What can you expect when you start supplementing with omega 3's  Some of the benefits take time, some are more immediate.  Many report weight loss.  I lost 8 lbs within a few weeks, probably because it improved insulin sensitivity.  Many report better digestive function, better elimination, better hair, skin, and nails, better concentration, relaxation, better sleep.  One study I read showed that 59% of chronic back pain patients enjoyed enough pain reduction by virtue of "normalizing" their inflammatory response that they quit taking their prescription pain medication.

You may not notice much at all.. but it's still a required component for health.  Give it time.  You can feel good about the fact that you're putting something back that has to be there in order for you to be healthy.. like water for a plant!