How Fish Oil Helps Support Healthy Inflammation Management
Did you know that inflammation is a normal process that occurs in the body? Despite its bad reputation, inflammation needs to get the credit it deserves.
It basically refers to the process of the immune system responding to an area in the body that needs repair. It could be a slight bump to your elbow, stubbing your big toe, inhaling pollen, developing a sore throat or cold etc...the list is pretty long.
In fact, without inflammation, we’d all be dead in a matter of hours. You see, the whole process of inflammation can be compared to a battlefield whereby the immune system’s ‘army’ namely the white blood cells, etc. ‘attack’ the damaged area or part of the body where a foreign object (such as an allergen, or bacteria etc.) has entered.
This is often referred to as the “up-phase” of the inflammation process.
Thereafter, as with any battlefield or fight, someone has to clean up the mess. This is the “down-phase” of the inflammation process. Macrophages and other cells associated with the immune system’s response “unit” clean up the area to bring it back to a healthy state.
This full cycle of inflammation is called immunomodulation and this refers to the overall inflammatory management process that the immune system is responsible for.
Poor lifestyle choices and anti-inflammatory drugs mess up this inflammatory management process!
Your immune system’s immunomodulation cycle is quite a delicate process, and if you constantly over-load this immune response you will likely cause an imbalance in the overall inflammatory management process...leading to chronic inflammation whereby the body is either over-attacking the area of concern or taking too long to repair and bring it back to balance.
Over-loading can be in the form of poor lifestyle choices such as eating junk food, smoking...even poor posture and sitting at your desk over time can induce chronic inflammation to some degree.
Some people will resort to anti-inflammatory drugs to solve the problem but in fact, this actually makes the problem worse! Remember, you want to make the inflammation process efficient and complete, not suppress it altogether!
You need inflammation to occur in order to help the body repair and heal itself. Therefore, it makes sense to support the immune system and its inflammatory management process as much as possible.
Fish oil helps maintain immunomodulation and supports the body’s immune system to ensure the inflammatory management process is as efficient as possible.
What makes one fish oil better than another?
As is the case with any nutritional product on the market today, there are good and bad products. Fish oil is no exception.
With a bad one you may be unwittingly introducing substances into your body that you do not want, for example: mercury, PCBs or even increasing your load of free radicals. These substances may have a negative effect on your immune system’s inflammatory management process and could interfere with the body’s delicate immunomodulation balance.
But it does not end there...rancid fish oil is associated with high oxidation levels. Besides giving you fishy repeats and ‘burps’, increasing the amount of oxidation in your body is far from ideal and could affect your body’s inflammatory management process. To add insult to injury, some fish oil companies add flavoring to their fish oil to mask its lack of freshness.
You owe it to yourself to use only the purest, and thus the safest omega-3 fish oil available. If you and your family want the best product possible there are certain guidelines that you need to follow.
The Guidelines
- High content of quality omega-3 and DHA: Be reasonably high in omega-3 with the dominant essential fatty acid being DHA.
- Purity: The fish oil must undergo the best filtration and purification and meet the strictest specifications.
- Freshness: This means low oxidation levels; once again with cold, hard evidence to back-up such claims.
Xtend-Life's Omega 3/DHA Fish Oil meets these key criteria.
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