There are 2 important essential fatty acids that we need in our diet called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), and these are found in fish oil and in fish oil tablets. These are called omega 3 essential fatty acids and over the last 4 decades there are many studies which have established the health benefits of increasing our intake of omega 3 fatty acids. These benefits include heart health benefits, prostate cancer prevention and breast cancer prevention, and now extend to helping to prevent bowel cancer.
A study in Scotland on the benefits of increasing your intake of Omega3 fats found that more DHA and EPA in your diet can help to reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by up to around 40 percent. The study specifically noted that increasing intakes of DHA and EPA achieved this result, but that increasing the intake of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), a plant-based Omega 3 fat, did not produce the same result.
The researchers found clear evidence that those with the highest intake of fish had a lower risk of bowel cancer and that those with a lower intake of fish had a higher risk of colon cancer.
A Dutch study also established, by comparing the results of 14 other studies, that one meal of fish every week reduced your risk of bowel cancer by an estimated 4 percent. Therefore if you eat 2 meals of fish each week your risk of bowel cancer reduces by around 8 percent.
The average levels of fish intake of people in the US is way below that which would achieve these significant results in helping to prevent bowel cancer.
Of course it’s not true to say that eating more fish will prevent colorectal cancer, but it is probably fair to state that increasing your intake of omega 3 essential fatty acids found in fish oil can be an important part of an overall diet to prevent cancer, and can attract a range of other health benefits, including reducing the risk of death from heart related problems, substantially.
So how do you go about increasing your intake of fish oil containing Omega 3 fatty acids? Fish is getting more expensive by the day and it is also known that fish is generally contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs and pesticides and the FDA tells us not to eat too much fish for this reason. So getting more fish in our diet is risky and expensive.
However there are excellent fishoil tablets available which overcome these problems. Fish oil tablets are small capsules containing omega 3 fatty acids and the best fish oil tablets are completely contamination free and are much more cost-effective to be taken daily than increasing your intake of fish.
However not all all fish oil supplements are as good as others, and you need to be careful comparing one with another because there are wide variations in the amounts of the active ingredients found in the different brands. You cannot directly compare the price of fish oil tablets alone if you are looking for the best fish oil tablets.
So it would seem that along with a range of other health benefits including heart health benefits increasing our intake of fish oil by way of taking fish oil tablets daily can be part of an overall strategy to stay healthy and in particular to help prevent bowel cancer.
I take Omega 3 tablets every day. To find out which ones visit my website.
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