Fish Oil. You may know it as “cod liver oil” that your mom and dad took, or the “castor oil” kids took in the 50’s and 6o’s. It turns out that the pharmaceutical companies also studied the special properties in fish oil and tried to create their own versions. Unfortunately their new drugs were released to the public under prescription by physician only and, with a very sad ending. They killed a lot of people. You may know them as Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra.
The studies also showed great news that by the 85th day of taking 2,ooomg – 5,ooomg of fish oil, the subjects no longer requested NSAIDS and preferred taking just the fish oil.
Since that initial lecture, I now have all my auto accident patients taking fish oil immediately, and it has helped them recover much faster, with less chronic pain as they get older. Just like in the study, they prefer fish oil over NSAIDS. They are much happier knowing that their digestive tract, liver and kidneys are no longer getting irritated and inflamed.
Did you know that the main nutrient in fish oil (DHA) is the same as our brains? Yep. Fish oil is brain food. Stroke victims, people with concussions or other head injuries or mental illness can all benefit from fish oil.
Did you ALSO know that fish oil can help make you skinny? Yep. Fish oil also breaks down arachadonic acid, which accumulates around the mid section of guys, and the hips of women, helping you reduce that spare tire, belly fat and saddle bags.
Anti-inflammatory, Brain Food, Weight Loss – Fish oil is literally a Triple Rainbow when it comes to health!
So, let’s review: now that you have reduced unnecessary medications, increased your water intake and performed a detoxification program, you should begin to feel better. In fact, a LOT BETTER.
You may begin to notice less phlegm in your throat, or that your sinus passages are no longer clogged up. Food may taste better, your sleep may be a bit deeper and some of the pain and inflammation may be a notch or two less. Some people going into this program with their pain scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) start as a 7 or 8, and are now down to a 4 or a 5. Big difference for such small changes in diet and lifestyle. But remember – the more toxic you are, the more susceptible to allergies and colds and inflammation you become. Your immune system has been under attack for years, if not your whole life. You are just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and your outlook on life can appear to be a bit brighter, especially since your eyes are clearing up!
Now is the perfect time to introduce to your system one of the oldest, natural anti-inflammatories around. Fish oil. Yep – Mom and Dad’s spoonful of cod-liver oil back in the old days was for a good reason – HEALTH!
So why does fish oil work, and why do we recommend it? If you can follow along with me through some organic chemistry 201 terminologies, I think you will get the BIG picture.
Cox enzymes convert the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid into the pro- inflammatory pain producer prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). So if there was a way to stop or inhibit the Cox enzymes (I, II or III), the creation of pain would be lowered or stopped.
Pharmaceutical Researchers came up with a few products to do that. NSAIDs aka “non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs” like aspirin, ibuprofen, etc blocked Cox I and Cox II and reduced pain, but because of the blocking of Cox I, they caused a lot of bleeding (16,500 bleeding deaths per year). So the search was on for just a Cox II inhibitor, and believe it or not, THREE were created and approved by the FDA (Bextra, Vioxx and Celebrex).
In 2004, all three were pulled from the market (all started in 1999) because it tripled or quadrupled the incidence of heart attacks or strokes via another product called LOX. Published accounts stated that Vioxx resulted in 56,000 heart attacks during the 5 year release.