VegEpa - Fish Oil Swizz or Worth Trying?

Thanks @Trish. As you know, I'm someone who needs units of measurement clarified and double checked

@Mij That's very interesting. Thanks! Love how you did the link!

"To date, there is no simple and accurate laboratory test to determine the total body magnesium status in humans. Mg is essential in the metabolism of vitamin D, and taking large doses of vitamin D can induce severe depletion of Mg. Adequate magnesium supplementation should be considered as an important aspect of vitamin D therapy."

I take 450mg Magnesium daily (possibly, I'm bad with units), but maybe not absorbing it. Injections sound painful, though.

Oily transdermal magnesium didn't work for me. I think I'll try drinking it mixed into water from powder.

 

@Squeezy I took magnesium capsules for many years but my levels were still 'deficient'. I was not absorbing them.

I did not feel any pain or soreness with the injections, but I've read that some find them painful.

How do you know transdermal mg didn't work for you? Was it based on symptoms or testing? I use transdermal but not sure if it 'works' for me. I no longer have deficiency symptoms that I experienced years ago.

 

There are small scale trials that support the use of VegEPA as an ME/CFS treatment. These are detailed here.

According to Professor Puri, in a study of 20 ME/CFS patients taking 8 capsules of VegEPA daily (equivalent to 2240 mg of EPA and 72 mg of gamma linolenic acid), 17 out of 20 experienced a "remarkable level of improvement within 3 months."

The rationale behind VegEPA is that DHA undoes some of the benefits of EPA, so VegEPA only contains EPA but no DHA.

I tried VegEPA myself for a few months, but did not notice any improvements in my ME/CFS (though it did help my post-encephalitis ADHD). And I have not seen any online accounts of ME/CFS patients benefiting from VegEPA.

It's much cheaper on the UK eBay, where a box of 60 x 500 mg capsules can be bought for £10 to £12 including postage. You only need two such boxes a month.

 

The main reason is for the DHA and EPA not vit D. My consultant recommended fish oil to me (I cant remember the medical reason at this moment but I think it is in any ME guides on different treatments. )
Fish oils have higher levels which is why they are preferred over things like evening primrose oil. My consultant did give me guides of how much DHA and EPA were beneficial and I think I remember when I was looking into this that the higher priced items had more of these compounds in one dose than the cheaper ones. So you might only need to take one capsule rather than 6 a day.
Being vegetarian I was keen to try but didnt want the fishy ones. I remember looking at VegEPA and being annoyed that it wasn't "veg", and that you have to email them to get the price - that alone put me off trying it - we have enough limited energy without having to try and get answers to easy questions like this. And hiding the price makes me wonder what else they are hiding.
Anyway I used flax oil capsules instead. Can't remember if they had any effect as I was trying so many supplements at the time !

 

Yes, Trish is right. As I said in my previous post: 4,000iu per day is considered the safe upper limit by most doctors in the UK and doses over that are contentious.

I doubt your GP will recommend higher than 4,000iu (especially on the NHS), but you should certainly discuss your current dose, especially if your vitamin D levels are still too low. It may be that there's something else missing from your diet (vitamin K2 or calcium, perhaps?) that your doctor suggests you try adding in first.

Some people report a difference between D2 and D3. I take D3 now. My Boots multivitamin (800iu) had D2 which is perhaps another reason it never really worked. I should add, too, that I was only on the 10,000iu dose for so long because I didn't realise it should've only been used in the short term. I'm not suggesting you should copy me.

Vitamin D gets stored in your body too, so it takes a while to deplete.

As always: we can't offer medical advice, so the usual disclaimers apply.

 

Flax (or linseed as it’s called more commonly in the UK) has omega 3 but as ALA rather than DHA/EPA so isn’t equivalent to fish oil by a long way unfortunately

There is a bit of confusion on this thread generally with some small facts slightly misinterpreted so I’ve looked around and the following link seems to explain it quite well...I’ve not got the energy to explain it myself today, but hopefully it helps a bit

https://alwaysomega3s.com/learn/epa-dha-ala-omega-3s

 

That link suggests we need DHA too. In which case, vegEPA (which only has EPA) would surely only be half as useful as other fish oil brands? I remember someone pointing out this flaw on the Amazon page for Puri's book.

 

Yes you really need both for heart health and converting them from Ala takes a long time/is inefficient, so we are more adapted to consuming it direct from our diet rather than making it from plant oils. Taking flax or milled linseed etc is still good for the healthy oils and mainly the fibre, but it doesn’t do much for heart or brain health...that’s why any health claims on food say a source of alpha linolenic acid rather than claims about omega and heart/brain/nervous system health. The EU food regs reviewed all claims for ala in 2009-11 and only allowed general healthy fats claims for this reason I believe

http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/labelling_nutrition/claims/register/public/?event=search

 

Here also are the EU recommendations for what constitutes a permissible claim (meaningful effect backed up by scientific published findings)

Basically for EPA/dha to have a meaningful effect for heart health (the only recognised health benefit by the EU commission) you need 250mg daily of EPA/DHA

So just look at what’s on the label to check equivalent per dose for any supplement ..of course you could eat oily fish instead and for vegetarians try and find an algae source that has this amount, although I’m pretty sure that is not what our bodies are particularly designed to digest effectively.

The Tesco fish oil capsules have 1000mg fish oil giving 250mg EPA/DHA per capsule and are cheaper than any other source I’ve found (on the permanent multi buy) .....although I haven’t looked recently and other brands are available etc.

I’ve put the current permitted health claim list here so you can look up evethything you want (magnesium, calcium, vitamin d etc) to find out what’s deemed meaningful to check any spurious claims. It’s probably one of the best considerations of nutritional scientific research (better than most of the crap you can read on the Internet anyway). At least they have a panel of scientists wading through and constantly reviewing the scientific research.


https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32012R0432

Just keep scrolling down ....it’s in alphabetical order

 

Be sure to avoid polar bear liver as one serving has enough Vitamin A to be seriously toxic!
Oh the interesting tit-bits you pick up at Uni.

 

Where did you go to university where you could pick up polar bear liver as tit-bits? Svalbard?

More seriously, the evidence provided by those "trials" looks rather thin. Far stronger evidence seems to be provided by the name of the patent holder.

 

Absolutely true. Early in my illness I took every type of plant based oil you can imagine, expensive combos etc for years. It was a complete waste of money.

In 2001 I did an RBC fatty acid test and my Omega 3 was down at 3%. My Omega 6 etc were fine. The biochemist/consultant advised me to take fish oils and only small amounts of omega 6 from plant based oils. My brain came back, I could actually think again.

 

@MeSci takes a product for vegetarians.

 

Marine micro algae (what fish eat)...it’s bloody expensive and you have to make sure they have both sorts in but if you are dead set vegetarian that’s the price you would pay I suppose. Obviously the cost partly is because of low demand (high overheads for low volume) but mostly because of the expensive extraction/low concentration in the raw material.

 

Yes, it's this: https://www.healthspan.co.uk/products/vegetarian-omega-3

They have another vegan one now:

https://www.healthspan.co.uk/products/veg-omega-3-1000mg

 

Well, I'm popping the Tesco Fish oil on my next Tesco shopping order and ceasing to fret about it - @arewenearlythereyet and everyone else, your opinions and info has been fantastic!

 

i remember that as well - will kill you!

 

So I take veggie DHA actually, not EPA. EPA makes me feel noticeably more exhausted and I'm not sure why.

It's really hard to get isolated DHA unless you use a veggie source. I use Solgar DHA. Helps cognition really noticeably.