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Answer by Pū
New Order – Age of Consent

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Question by Amr R: I want someone professionl in herbal medicine to tell if fish oil has any side effects.?
I’ve heard that fish oil capsules have some side effects and that they contain traces of mercury. Is that true?

And if there’re side effects, what are these side effects?

Best answer:

Answer by ninja
Fish oil is not a herb (plant). Fish oil has lots of mercury in it unless you get what says pharmacuetical grade where they take it all out.

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Best answer:

Answer by iamboundee
no, go ahead…

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The Fish Farm Revolution [Slide Show]
Fish raised in offshore cages and coastal pens could become a more sustainable source of protein for humans than wild fish or beef. [More]
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The Blue Food Revolution: Making Aquaculture a Sustainable Food Source (preview)
Neil Sims tends his rowdy stock like any devoted farmer. But rather than saddling a horse like the Australian sheep drovers he grew up with, Sims dons a snorkel and mask to wrangle his herd: 480,000 silver fish corralled half a mile off the Kona coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. Tucked discretely below the waves, Sims’s farm is one of 20 operations worldwide that are trying to take advantage of the …
Read more on Scientific American

Upsher-Smith Introduces Nexa(TM) Select With More Plant-Based DHA Than Any Other Once-Daily Single Gel Capsule Rx …
MAPLE GROVE, Minn., Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. announces the launch of Nexa(TM) Select Rx prenatal vitamin, the newest addition to the Nexa(TM) Prenatal Vitamin Family . Nexa(TM) Select contains plant-based DHA (325 mg) and Vitamin D3 (800 IU). Its advanced formulation offers more plant-based DHA than any other single gel capsule Rx prenatal vitamin taken once a …
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Breuner Marsh restoration will turn old dumping ground into ecological gem
East Bay Regional Park District proposes $ 7 million restoration after spending nearly that much to buy the 217 acres of land.
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Egrets doing well in La. despite hurdles
THIBODAUX — They stride along bayousides, glide in our skies and strut through pastures just about everywhere in Louisiana’s coastal parishes.
Read more on The Shreveport Times

It’s still hard for me to make anyone understand the devastating effects of depression if they’ve never experienced it themselves. It’s like this deep pit you can’t climb out of, this sucking feeling inside your chest that feels like it will swallow you whole… metaphors never seem to be enough to get the point across. Even with the growing acceptance of depression as a legitimate mental illness, some people still think that it’s all in your head. Like you can just WILL yourself to stop being sad all the time.

For me, depression was more than just a mood problem. I had trouble concentrating on anything, I had trouble sleeping, and I either ate way too much or nothing at all. It affected my grades, my job, and my relationships. By the time I got to college it was so severe that I wound up in an emergency room.

I finally started getting treatment for depression, and it worked alright. For a while at least. I got my life back on track, patched up a lot of friendships, and started dating my future husband. But under the surface, I knew there was still something wrong. When we found out we were having our first child, I knew about the risks of post partum depression, but I thought since I’d already been through such a serious depressed episode I’d be able to handle it.

You can imagine how well that went.

Another hospitalization, a huge strain on my marriage, and two weeks away from my baby boy later, I promised myself that I would never let something like this happen again. So when I found out that number two was on the way, I knew I couldn’t sit idly by and let depression sneak up on me again.

Counseling alone wasn’t enough, so my therapist put me in touch with a psychiatrist. I went into the office expecting to have to argue him down on the dosage of an anti-depressant to cut down on the risk to my unborn child, but he surprised me. He told me he’d recently read about a fish oil study that showed mood stabilizing effects for women and adolescents with mild to moderate depression. Since I wasn’t at a crisis point, and we didn’t want to take any unneccesary risks with the baby, we decided to try it out.

Long story short, it worked. Within two weeks, I was already feeling better and the feeling lasted all the way through to the birth and beyond. No baby blues, no depression. What really made me happy, though, was knowing that there were no harmful side effects for me or the baby. In fact, the other benefits of fish oils are well documented. DHA supplements are believed to help with eye and brain development for infants and developing fetuses, and DHA and EPA have proven benefits for heart health.

Now, I wasn’t told which fish oil supplement to use, I was just given a daily dosage of EPA to meet. I went with nature made fish oil because I knew that quality mattered (it was also the one they stocked at my grocery store). All joking aside, it was really important for me to choose a high quality fish oil product, since I didn’t want to risk fishy burps or high mercury content. What I didn’t know at the time was that even sites like amazon carry fish oil pills, so I could have skipped the trip to the store alltogether.

Click here to see for yourself.

I know this won’t work for everyone, but in all my discussions with other folks who have depression we shared one concern: how can I fix this with the least harmful side effects? Anti-depressants can be really effective for some people, but they carry certain risks that are pretty unpleasant for people who get struck with them. Using fish oil for depression, the only thing I’ve ever run into is side benefits. I’m no doctor, and I certainly can’t give anyone medical advice. I can only speak from my experience and my own research.

Now, for a little perspective. Most fish oil products you can buy now are made from small, wild caught fish. That’s important, because mercury is primarily a concern in larger fish like tuna, swordfish, and sharks. Small fish don’t live as long, so they don’t accumulate as much of the stuff. Wild fish are safer than farmed fish because the food they get has much lower concentrations of mercury and other toxins to begin with. While cod liver oil sounds like the classic old timey cure-all, it’s probably less healthy for you than fish oil pills, since the liver is where toxins (like mercury) are stored. Nature Made, the brand I went with, uses wild sardine and anchovies as their source, which was part of why I settled on them when I began treatment.

Click here to check out the fish oil supplement I went with.

The other side effects listed there seem to be mostly a problem if you’re taking large doses, so it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor if you’re not sure how much to be taking. I was using three pills a day under medical advice, which is one more than the bottle suggested as “normal” but still well below the levels where the FDA starts shaking their heads. I looked it up once, and I think I would have had to be taking three times that amount to approach the three gram suggested maximum for DHA and EPA or something crazy like that. You should probably check with your doctor before starting any vitamin routine, even one as safe as this.

Til next time,

Sarah

My name’s Sarah and I’ve fought with mental illness for much of my life. Like a lot of women, depression didn’t start to affect me until adolescence, but when it did it was bad. I know there are millions of people out there right now coping with the same problems I had, and it really breaks my heart to see other people dealing with that pain.

The way I see it, there’s two major roadblocks to treating depression. One is that people are afraid to talk about it because of all the negative myths surrounding mental illness and the people who suffer from it. The other is that sometimes the treatments sound worse than the problem they’re supposed to treat. The only way to deal with the first is for those of us who have gotten through depression, anxiety, and other disorders to get out there and talk about our experiences. Negative stereotypes only begin to dissipate when the truth is readily available to the masses.

The second problem is a little more thorny. For people with severe, life-threatening depression, effective treatment is worth almost any side-effects. For people with mild to moderate mood disorders, some of the side effects for anti-depressants are a bit much to deal with. Fortunately, there are other options. The one that worked for me, if you can believe it, was fish oil pills. I was surprised when my psychiatrist suggested that we try fish oil for depression, but it worked, and it was completely safe for me (and for another very important little someone).

I still need to figure out the rest of this wordpress stuff, but I’ll be back in a little bit to talk more about my research and experience. I hope this turns into something helpful for you, or at least interesting