Omega-3 fats are essential for your heart health, your brain health, your mood, anti-inflammation,
and more. Whether it's doctors, or functional medicine practitioners,
health fanatics around the world, everyone agrees we need more omega-3s in our diet. It's one of the
most common supplements but it's also one of the most expensive supplements. If you're confused,
you are not alone. There are over a thousand brands, there are literally hundreds of millions
of dollars spent every year on marketing, and it kind of seems like they're all the same. But
they're not the same at all. This is a buyer's guide to omega-3 fats. Let's take a look. If
you're in-person in a store, here's what you want to look for. If you're online, you can look for
the same thing, just zoom in with your mouse. The first thing to look for is a dark bottle. This is
an amber bottle, it doesn't matter if it's plastic or glass, but it wants to be amber to not let the
light in, or completely opaque. What you'd like to avoid are clear bottles. Doesn't matter if it's
glass or plastic, if it's clear, don't buy it. These oils are highly susceptible to light damage,
heat damage, and also oxidative damage, so we want to make sure that our oils are protected in a dark
bottle. The next thing to think about is your source. You really just have three sources that
you should consider if you're doing a pill form supplement, and those are fish oil, krill oil, and
algae oil. Fish come in all different sizes, we'll talk more about that later, different concerns.
Krill are little crustaceans, they're little teeny shrimp-like creatures, we'll talk about that. And
algae is actually where all these omega-3s come from in the first place. There are different cost,
environmental, and ethical considerations, but this is really what you're looking at. The next
thing that we need to look at, which is absolutely crucial, is the cost-benefit analysis. If you walk
into a pharmacy or an online store it seems like the costs vary from $20 a bottle all the way up
to $100 per bottle. But the reality is, the cost differential is not really there. The challenge
with the nutritional supplement industry is, because there's no standardization, it's possible
that some main manufacturers will sell you a big pill of oil with just a little bit of actual
active EPA and DHA and other manufacturers will sell you mostly EPA and DHA, with just a little
bit of carrier oil. Here's how you calculate it. Again, if you're in the store, pick up the bottle,
flip it around and look at the nutritional label. If you're online, scroll with your mouse and
here's what we're looking for. In this particular supplement, for every two capsules I have 800 mg
of EPA and I have 400 mg of DHA. This is actually a really potent fish oil supplement, most of them
are much, much weaker, half or even a third, some would even be a quarter as weak. Next, and maybe
most importantly, you need to do a cost per dose calculation. Whether you're in a store or online,
you'll see a bottle that might cost $20, you'll see another bottle that might cost $90. It seems
like there's a huge disparity, but very often that has to do with dosing. Here's what we're looking
for. When you combine the EPA and the DHA we want at least 1 gram per day. With that in mind,
here's how you do the calculation. If you have a bottle, pick it up, flip it around, and look at
the nutritional facts label. If you're online, scan your mouse and zoom in. Ignore all the
astaxanthin, ignore all the vitamin E, just focus on two numbers - EPA and DHA. This particular
bottle has 400 mg of EPA and 200 mg of DHA per pill. So, the recommended dosage is two pills,
that gets me to over one gram per day. I wrote out the math for you, so it's a little simpler. I
combined the EPA and the DHA in two pills and that gets me to 1.2 g or 1,200 mg. So, two pills gets
me an effective dose. I mentioned this, that seems really obvious, but a lot of supplements you might
have to take four, six, or even eight pills to get an effective dose. So, what looks like a cheap
bottle is actually really expensive. What looks like a convenient option, suddenly you're choking
on pills. This particular bottle has 200 pills, which means it's a 50 day supply. I paid $49 for
the bottle, which means roughly about a dollar per day. Now, that doesn't sound like that much,
a dollar per day, if you took it for a month. But many of us take something like this every day.
Many of us live in a household with more than one person. Maybe there's four people in your house,
really quickly you could be talking about hundreds of dollars a year or even a thousand plus dollars
per year. It's kind of an important decision. You want to make sure you get it right, make sure
you're investing your money and your ingestion into something that's going to have value. To
give you a reference range, on the low end maybe you'd find something of good quality that would
cost 50 cents per day, maybe on the high end $1.50 per day. Right around a dollar per day is
pretty typical, hence the reason I'm making this video. The next thing to look out for for are red
flags. On that same label, when you zoom in, you want to look for something called ethyl esters.
These omega-3 fats are bound up in phospholipids or triglyceride forms. These are just different
ways that they're created and the ethyl ester form is not dangerous, it's not bad for you, it's very
bioavailable. The problem is, research has shown that it's more prone to rancidity than other
forms. Now, fortunately, most manufacturers have stopped using this ethyl ester form, but you still
need to check for it. It'll usually show up on the label. The next thing, and nobody checks for this,
is you need to look at the expiration date. There are a lot of old supplements sitting on the shelf,
and as we repeatedly will talk about today, these things are highly volatile, these polyunsaturated
fats, with light, and oxygen, with heat, with time, they go bad, they go rancid,
and they kind of have the opposite effect. Instead of being anti-inflammatory, they can actually flip
and become inflammatory. And some research has suggested as much as 10% of the supplements that
you'd buy online or in the shop are actually rancid. So, check that expiration date. Which
leads me to my next recommendation, which is not so popular but important, is don't buy
boutique brands. When it comes to omega-3 fats, there are no microbreweries of fish oils, there
are no little manufacturers who are juicing fish and squeezing out oil, it doesn't work like that.
Whether it's fish oil, but especially with krill, and absolutely with algae oil, there are not very
many people manufacturing these things, which means even though you see dozens of different
brands, the source material, the actual oil, it's often coming from the same companies. So really,
what you want is the freshest you can possibly find. These little brands have low turnover,
they're very likely to have old product. Now, technically this is illegal, but it happens every
day, even on big sites like Amazon, rancid, old, expired supplements are being sold. It's in teeny,
tiny print, so check. Don't buy the boutique brands, buy the ones that are selling the most.
In a physical store, that would be the ones on the front of the aisle, the ones that are clearly
having the most turnover. Online, it's the ones with the most reviews, the best seller status,
you've seen them before. It's really the way to go when it comes to supplements. OK, now that we've
got our high quality omega-3 in a dark bottle, we've chosen our source, and everything is sorted,
it's nice and fresh, buy a three-month supply, don't buy anymore. If you buy a really long
supply, again, it's likely to sit on your shelf and go bad. Now that that's all out of the way,
let's take a deeper dive into selecting which type of fish, or krill, or algae oil. Let's also take a
look at some of the plant-based sources that can also be interesting to explore for your omega-3
needs. Before we do that, my name is Lucas, I hadn't introduced myself yet. I'm a yoga teacher,
I'm a nutritional coach. I actually owned a nutritional supplement company for over
10 years and I worked with some of the larger manufacturers in the US and Canada and we had
an omega-3 line at one point. And I learned a lot along the way, that's why I made this
video. I have no supplements to sell you, I'm not going to recommend any brands, there are
no affiliate links in this video. This is just for educational purposes. I do have one ask. If
you find this video valuable, hit subscribe down below and I also have one offer for you down in
the description. I put a PDF link, it's totally free, but it has references to everything we
talked about in terms of selecting good omega-3 fats for you. OK, let's go a little deeper.
Fish oil is the most complex. Here's what's the important thing to remember with fish oils, almost
all of the research, whether it's cardiovascular benefits, whether it's anti-inflammatory benefits,
whether it's brain health benefits, almost all of the research that's been done, medical,
non-medical, all the above, almost all of it has done been done with fish oil. Does that mean that
these other options don't work? No. Are there very likely carryovers? Yes. Are there very likely some
differences? Also probably yes, but we don't really know. So, the first thing is fish oil is
the original omega-3, in terms of supplementation, and so you should know that going into it. There
are also the most options. There's cod liver oil, salmon oil, there is even things like squid oil
and all kinds of other options. Your best choice is to go smaller. The problem, there's a bunch of
problems with fish, but one of the big problems is bioaccumulation of toxins. The pollutants,
industrial pollutants, end up in our oceans, which end up in our fish. The larger the fish,
the more of the toxins. So, something like cod or shark oil is going to have way more toxins than
something like sardines or anchovies. So, when you choose fish oil, smaller fish like sardines and
anchovies are always going to be a better choice, so much so that I would discourage you from those
big fish sources altogether. The kinds of toxins that you would find would be things like mercury,
and arsenic, and lead, PCBs, dioxin, and they're pretty prevalent in those larger fish and they
absolutely end up in fish oil supplements. Hopefully at a small enough quantity that they
don't do damage, but it's definitely a cause for concern. Now, the other cause for concern around
fish oil are, well, the fish they're dying, our oceans have been fished out, there are massive
environmental concerns and population collapse when it comes to different fish species. This
is for sure a problem that's only getting worse and so it could be argued that fish oil is not
the most environmental or ethical source, but again, there are other factors to consider.
Moving right along, we get to krill oil. Now, all of these will get progressively more expensive,
unfortunately. Krill, if you're unfamiliar, are little shrimp-like crustaceans in very cold water,
like in the Arctic. And if we got rid of domesticated animals, so dogs, and chickens,
and pigs, and cows, krill would be the largest biomass, so lump of living stuff, on the planet.
That is to say there are a lot of krill, there's tons of krill, they're at no risk of population
collapse, at least right now it seems sustainable. Who knows how long that will last. They have a
pretty simple nervous system, a lot of people would suggest they don't feel pain, I'm not the
person to decide that, you can decide that, but there's a lot of krill for now. What there are
not is a lot of manufacturers and so what that means is krill oil is mostly coming from just
a handful of different sources and the price is pretty high. In terms of the omega-3 profile, it's
pretty comparable to fish oil. It's just going to cost you more. But it could be argued that
krill oil is more ethical and more sustainable. I think that's a valid argument. Moving right along,
we get to algae oil. Now, many of you are probably wondering why didn't we start with
algae oil? Algae is often said to smell fishy, but the reality is, fish smell algae-e. Meaning the
fishy smell that we've all come to know and hate actually comes from algae. Fish eat algae, algae
contains Omega-3s, and that's why the fish smell the way they do. So, why not just go straight to
the source? Well, algae is considered sustainable, they certainly don't have the ethical concerns,
it's easier to harvest than it any of these animal foods. The challenge is it's still very much an
industry in its infancy and so there are very few suppliers, it's very expensive, in some cases it
might might be even twice as much as fish oil, although that's changing. And the reality is,
the profile is quite different between algae oil and these other two. What do I mean by that? Well,
usually with fish oils and krill oils you have a slightly higher EPA to DHA ratio. With algae oil
the DHA is way higher than the EPA. What does that mean? We don't really know. Most people
postulate that EPA is better for your body and DHA is better for your brain, but there's still
a lot of unknowns. Is it likely that algae oil has slightly different effects than krill and
fish oil? Yes. Could it be better? Maybe. Could it be worse? Also maybe, but this is something
to consider. The challenge with algae oil is it's very much like avocado oil. Avocado oil is great,
I don't have it in my kitchen, I can't find it in the grocery store, it often comes in tiny bottles,
it's really expensive. I mostly use olive oil in my kitchen, I don't have anything against avocado
oil, it's just not readily available. This is kind of where algae oil sits on that spectrum. OK, so
with all that said, then we think why do we need all these oils anyway? Why this whole video? Why
all this expensive stuff? If I'm going to spend a dollar a day just giving myself omega-3 fats,
shouldn't I just eat omega-3s? And the answer is you should try to do that as
well. If we were to turn back the clock 100 or, even better, 200 years, what we'd find is
omega-3 fats in all kinds of food, including land animals, including ruminant animals,
like cows had a little bit of omega-3. Right now, omega-3s are really depleted, we don't eat
the same amount of sea animals and sea creatures that we used to. Water-based animals, of course,
have higher levels of omega-3 and if you look at the way the population of the earth laid down,
pretty much civilization formed around you know the Nile river basin, the Mississippi basin,
the coasts of the world, we probably had access to a lot of fish, and a lot of crustaceans, and
a lot of seaborn plants for a very long time that we just don't have so much of right now. However,
we do have access to some things that you can use. These are flaxseeds, also known as linseeds
depending on where you live in the world, and these are chia seeds. These are essentially
superfoods and they are incredibly cheap, very, very inexpensive, and nutrient dense. They contain
a whole lot of insoluble fiber and a decent amount of soluble fiber, which is really great for
clearing out your bowels. It's also great for your lipid levels, managing cholesterol, triglyceride
levels as well. And they contain omega-3 fats. However, they're in a different form, they're in
ALA form, which is alpha linolic acid. And your body needs to convert this ALA omega-3 into the
DHA and EPA and your efficiency at converting this is really dubious, it's unclear. Some people seem
to do it really well, other people not so much, and we don't have a really great way to know.
And probably, just this is not going to be enough, but who knows? Maybe you're a power converter. So,
what should you do? I still think it makes sense to include either or both of these in your diet
because they're so great for you and because, for sure, you'll get some of those anti-inflammatory,
heart health, cardiovascular, brain health benefits of the omega-3 fats and it's just
such a cost-effective nutrient way to go, it's really a win-win. Flaxseeds and chia seeds,
just like these oils, are also unstable, which means you want to store them when they are in
the whole form in the freezer and then, after you grind them, in the refrigerator. Here's how you
use them. Take your flaxseeds or your chia seeds and put them in a blender dry and then pulse the
blender. Don't let it go long or it'll get all gooey, but pulse it until you have a powder,
put the powder in a jar, put the lid on the jar, put it in your refrigerator, and now you
can sprinkle this on salads or smoothies. It tastes really great, it's nutrient dense, and
it's a great way to go. Recently there's been a bunch of online articles about the phytoestrogens
in flaxseeds in particular, you don't need to worry about that, there's a lot of confusion
about xenoestrogens versus phytoestrogens. Xenoestrogens, these are chemical compounds
that are estrogen-like chemicals and they can really screw up your hormones. Phytoestrogens,
while it's not impossible that they screw up your hormones, in many cases they're actually
pro-hormone, they're actually really beneficial, and so the confusion between xeno and phyto, phyto
means plant, is why flaxseeds have gotten a lot of bad press. I don't think there's any reason,
unless you speak with your doctor, that you should be concerned. These are really amazing
superfoods that you can get pretty much anywhere in the world. This is your guide to omega-3 fats.
Probably everyone, whether you're eight years old or 80 years old, needs more omega-3s in their
diet. The good news is you have options, the bad news is they're pretty expensive. My suggestion is
choose really wisely, it's a lot of money, it's a lot of time, but it doesn't have to be that
difficult. Hope you found this video helpful. As I mentioned before, I'd really appreciate
if you hit subscribe. Be sure to grab that PDF in the description down below. I have a program
called YOGABODY Daily, if you're interested in healthspan, and strength and flexibility,
you can find all of that at yogabody.com. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.