Can You Help Prevent Bowel Cancer Taking Fish Oil Tablets?

By Peter Bertonach

Fish oil tablets contain 2 essential fatty acids called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), which are otherwise known as omega 3 essential fatty acids. Over the last 40 years many studies have established the benefits of Omega3 fats to many areas of our health including our heart health. Studies have also shown a link between fish oil and breast cancer prevention and fish oil and prostate cancer prevention. However there are now studies which also show that increasing your intake of fish oil may help to prevent bowel cancer.

A Scottish study examines the benefits of increasing the intake of omega 3 fatty acids. The results of the study found that by increasing your intake of DHA and EPA you can reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by anything up to around 40 percent. And the study also noted that this result will not be achieved if you increase your intake of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), a plant-based omega 3 fatty acid.

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.

Another study in the Netherlands combined the results of-- studies on omega 3 and bowel cancer and found that the overall results showed that there was a lower risk of bowel cancer for those with the highest intake of fish and that it was possible to estimate the risk reduction according to the number of fish meals eaten, including that one meal of fish per week produced an estimated 4 percent reduction in the risk of colon cancer, meaning that 2 fish meals per week produced an estimated reduction in the risk of bowel cancer of 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 increasing your intake of fish or fish oil is only a part of an overall strategy to help prevent colon cancer, but it is also now firmly established that increasing your intake of Omega3 fats is also important to a wide range of other health considerations and can have significant heart health benefits.

So how do you increase your intake of omega 3 essential fatty acids? Fish is very expensive and is also generally contaminated with mercury and other toxins and the FDA tells us not to eat too much for this reason. These 2 facts combined mean that most of us eat way too little fish, and increasing our intake 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.

But the quality of fish oil tablets varies widely and in particular the amount of the active ingredients DHA and EPA can vary by a factor of 2 or 3 and for this reason it is very difficult to directly compare the prices of the different brands available.

So it would seem that the evidence is getting stronger of the health benefits of increasing your intake of Omega3 fats, including in helping to prevent bowel cancer. Clearly all of us should be eating more fish or, more conveniently and more cheaply, taking daily omega 3 supplements by way of fish oil tablets.

For this reason sales of fish oil tablets are increasing faster than any other supplement in history, and I have taken daily fish oil tablets for a long time. To find out which Omega 3 supplements are my choice visit my website. - 30310

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