High dosing Fish Oil

[gymrob]

Hi all,

Recently I purchased some Poliquin fish oil for myself which is great stuff and now I want to get my dad on fish oil since he is obese.
I will be using Nordic Naturals Omega 3 liquid on him. I have read Poliquin recommend up to 30-45 grams per day for obese people. This is a LOT! Has anyone ever used such high doses? I am just concerned about the possible issue of internal bleeding.

I have also heard it is better to talk in terms on EPA/DHA content. Either way I think at first I will put my dad on 1 teaspoon per day (5ml) which is the recommended dose on the bottle. The fish oil we will use contains EPA: 825 mg and DHA: 550 mg. The higher EPA will also help to lower his high blood pressure.

Anyone have any experiences with doses? Either way if I increase dosage I will make sure to spread throughout the day.

Thanks.

[Razz]

I know Ido has experiences with this.

Just wanna share my personal story here: RecentlyI upped fishoil to 20gram/day from 10g/day because of cracking joints. Placebo or not my joints got better, not fantastic but better. After around 5 days of doing this I started having insane diarrea all the time and didn't realise it was because of the fishoil until I realised 'the stuff' even smelled like fish. So just watch out

[Gregor]

I think he recomends such a high dosage, just because of a profit. Of course you mus take his fish oil, because it's the best in the world and natural

[Blairbob]

Recently for a month or two, maybe a month and a half, I went to mega dosing and besides burning through a big bottle of Glucosamine/Chondroitin/MSM in concert with some elbow rehab exercises.

I generally always took 10 capsules 2x a day, sometimes 3x a day. So that would be 6.6-10 g EPA/DHA a day besides double dosage joint complex. Getting the third portion a day was sometimes difficult (after wakeup, before bed but during day was very hit and miss).

My elbow has gotten better, I never had any digestive problems or fishy smells. Bare in mind, this wasn't exactly mega-dosing.

If I don't do the elbow rehab for a couple of days (when it comes Monday after last workout being Friday), I start to feel it. I do think the fish oil helped.

I'm slowly going back down to fish oil consumption of 3-5g EPA/DHA a day. If I find my joints and recovery are inhibited, I'll re-up it.

[slizzardman]

2-3 doses a day should be fine, but I'd do just one dose for the first week at least. Olive oil is also anti-inflammatory, and much cheaper, so combining the two will cut costs if your dad will take olive oil as well. It's really good for you, the healthy fats can make a world of difference.

Going over 15 grams of fish oil a day is excessive, generally speaking.

[Blairbob]

Robb Wolf is officially one of the mods and our nutrition guy but I would bet he's typically too busy to read the forum that often.

It seems Poliquin and Robb reccomend the mega dosing fish oil for fat loss and individuals with severe inflammation or who are obese.

There may be some other uses for mega-dosing as some of the literature for mental and neural disorders like autism/aspergers/alzheimer's and other brain disorders seem to benefit from the inclusion of Omega 3's in the form of fish oil.

[slizzardman]

It has been shown pretty well that going over 25-30 grams a day seems to have less beneficial effect than lower, but still high, doses of fish oil.

One thing that you have to be careful of is using a term like "megadosing" without a definition. Everyone could have a different idea of what that means, and without guidelines to follow they could make unhealthy decisions by accident.

[Razz]

btw im back to 10g after my experience, just so you don't think i'm crazy and still goes with20g after that incident

[slizzardman]

Good thing too, man! That sounded gross!

The recommendations I have read are for something like 8-12g total of the epa and dha combined at the MOST, more than that can be weird because they are polyunsaturated fats, which do in fact mobilize your bowels! Razz knows all about that hahahaha!

So based on .3 grams of the good stuff for every gram of oil, you'd need to take around 30g of oil to get on that maximum recommendation, which is higher than you need for a positive reaction. But if you've been backed up maybe it's a good thing to go big! Just make sure to buy a snake first...


Apparently I clog toilets with "alarming regularity."

[Gregor]

I am taking it 10g per day.

Eikosapentanska kislina (EPA) - Ω3
15,0 g
210 mg
Dokosaheksaenska kislina (DHA) - Ω3
11,5 g
161 mg
Gama-Linolenska kislina (GLA) - Ω6
4,5 g
63 mg

[Blairbob]

That's why some people try for higher purity fish oils, whether in liquid or highly concentrated capsule form because then you don't end up taking 30g of fish oil to equal 10g of EPA/DHA.

Yeah, taking that much fat in a day pretty much means you don't have to worry about irregularity issues. If anything, you might have to worry about the consistency of your stool.

On a complete side note, I have heard of some alarming rates of defecation by people who are obese, out of shape with horrible diets. My diet is not good, but I've heard of some of these people only going to the bathroom every few days or a few times a week!

The one reason I wanted to do some high dosing fish oil in concert with the bottle of joint complex and elbow exercises was to get my elbow back to par ASAP but in as well doing it without any sort of exotic medication (because of my wallet).

There are some threads dealing with mega dosing on T-nation but I don't remember any threads offhand anywhere online as to the effects of mega dosing on BP or cholesterol.

15g of fish oil would generally be 4.5g of EPA/DHA which is a sort of sweet spot. The reason Poliquin reccomends so much fish oil was because that fish oil in grams, not EPA/DHA content. So 30-45g comes out to 10-15g of EPA/DHA.

Robb Wolf's mega dosing is 1g for every 10lbs if memory serves me correct.

[Scott Kane]

http://www.swansonvitamins.com/SWE026/ItemDetail?n=0
$6.39 for 100 caps.
Contains 300 mg of EPA and 200 mg of DHA per softgel

I've been taking this for about a year with some Carlson's liquid thrown in for good measure. 16-24g/day. No fishy diarrhea

[Blairbob]

I've heard the Ascenta line has some high ratios of EPA/DHA/O3:g of fish oil.

Right now, I get 200 caps of 300mg EPA/DHA for 6 bucks@ Walmart. No fish burps. My last two bottles had burps after 2 hours of so and were from Safemart ( I was broke so I had to buy them where I had a gift card ).

I'd like to find an oil right now but all gets down to budget right now.