Does Taking Fish Oil Tablets Help Prevent Bowel Cancer?
There are 2 important essential fatty acids that we need in our diet called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), and these are found in fish oil and in fish oil tablets. These are called omega 3 essential fatty acids and over the last 4 decades there are many studies which have established the health benefits of increasing our intake of omega 3 fatty acids. These benefits include heart health benefits, prostate cancer prevention and breast cancer prevention, and now extend to helping to prevent bowel cancer.
A study in Scotland on the benefits of increasing your intake of Omega3 fats found that more DHA and EPA in your diet can help to reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by up to around 40 percent. The study specifically noted that increasing intakes of DHA and EPA achieved this result, but that increasing the intake of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), a plant-based Omega 3 fat, did not produce the same result.
Clear evidence was that those who ate more fish had a lower risk of colon cancer and that those who ate less fish had a higher risk of colon cancer.
Another study in the Netherlands combined the results of 14 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.
Here in the US our average intake of fish is way below what would be needed to help achieve these results in preventing bowel cancer.
Of course it’s not true to say that eating more fish will prevent colorectal cancer, but it is probably fair to state that increasing your intake of omega 3 essential fatty acids found in fish oil can be an important part of an overall diet to prevent cancer, and can attract a range of other health benefits, including reducing the risk of death from heart related problems, substantially.
So how do you go about increasing your intake of fish oil containing Omega 3 fatty acids? Fish is getting more expensive by the day and it is also known that fish is generally contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs and pesticides and the FDA tells us not to eat too much fish for this reason. So getting more fish in our diet is risky and expensive.
But there are excellent alternatives. Fish oil tablets are very cost-effective and the best fish oil tablets contain no contaminants and can be taken daily at a much lower cost and without risk of chemical toxins.
However not all all fish oil supplements are as good as others, and you need to be careful comparing one with another because there are wide variations in the amounts of the active ingredients found in the different brands. You cannot directly compare the price of fish oil tablets alone if you are looking for the best fish oil tablets.
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.
I have known this for some time and take Omega 3 tablets every day. To find out which ones visit my website.











