EndurElite Chief Endurance Officer Matt Mosman discusses the health and performance benefits of fish oil supplementation for runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes.
Video Transcription:
Good afternoon family of fast. Matt Mosman, the endurance guru over at EndurElite, and I'm gonna give you about five seconds to guess what we're gonna talk about in today's video. So here we go, one, two, three, four, five. Okay, I lost my patience. We're gonna talk about fish oil supplementation today. More specifically, what it is, the health benefits, the performance benefits, and how much you should be taking on a daily basis to get these benefits. So let's just jump right into it and discuss what fish oil is.
Now, fish oil is a type of omega fatty acid and there's a few of them, but for the purpose of this video, we're gonna discuss two omega fatty acids, and this is gonna tie into fish oil supplementation here in a second. So we have omega-6s and omega-3 fatty acids. Now, omega-6s we get plenty of through a typical American diet of red meat and eggs, but the omega-3s, on the other hand, we don't get a lot of because that comes from fish. And as an American myself, I'd rather eat the red meat and eggs as opposed to fish because the only type of fish I really like is beer battered and fried. But the point being with this is for all the benefits of fish oil supplementation, you want the ratio of omega-6 consumption to omega-3 consumption to be about 1:1 or equal to really derive the benefits of both of those omega fatty acids.
The Health Benefits Of Fish Oil Supplements
Now, let's go to fish oil supplements. Now, as I said, fish oil is a type of omega-3 fatty acid composed of two fatty acids called "EPA" and "DHA." And a lot of you probably already know the many benefits of fish oil supplementation for overall health. I mean there's a ton of research out there on this showing that it can reduce plaque buildup, it can help prevent certain forms of cancer and diabetes, it's critical for the health of the brain, the eyes, the central nervous system. There's also a lot of research showing how fish oil supplementation could help with symptoms of depression and mood, and the list goes on and on and on.
The Performance Benefits Of Fish Oil Supplements
So even taking fish oil supplement for overall health is a really, really good idea. But as an endurance athlete, you probably wanna know how fish oil supplementation can benefit your endurance performance. And there's a few ways that it can do this. One, fish oil supplementation has been shown to prevent or minimize muscle soreness after exercise. Two, it has been shown to prevent inflammation. Now, you may be saying, "Matt you had another video about how we don't wanna prevent the inflammation process so we can allow the body to adapt to exercise." But in this case, fish oil works on a different mechanism compared to tart cherry and green tea extract.
So fish oil really helps prevent chronic inflammation and not the acute inflammation that we don't wanna prevent from happening to allow for those adaptations to exercise. Fish oil supplementation has also been shown to improve body composition, especially when combined with endurance exercise. So if you're trying to, you know, drop a few pounds or lose a little bit of body fat and have a little more muscle mass, fish oil supplementation might be right up your alley. So that is the health benefits and then the performance benefits of fish oil supplementation.
Fish Oil Dose
Now, how much do we need to be taking to get these benefits? And this is quite a range honestly. For general health, you wanna do anywhere from about 250mg up to about 1,000mg. And that's just for overall health. And that may help with some of the performance benefits too. But if you want to prevent soreness and get some of these other performance benefits, you really gotta go above 1 gram a day and even up to 6 grams a day, especially if you want to try to minimize soreness after exercise. So you can see where supplementation with a fish oil supplement is the easiest way to do this because you'd have to eat a ton of mackerel to get the amount of EPA and DHA needed to give you all these benefits.
How To Prevent The Fish Burps From Fish Oil Supplements
So fish oil supplementation all the way to get those amounts. Now, another common complaint about fish oil supplementation goes like this, "But Matt, fish oil supplements give me fish burps. Eew. Gross." And I would say, "Suck it up, Sally. It's good for you." But since I'm not really like that, I'm gonna give you a little hint here to prevent the fish burps and that is you wanna store your fish oil supplement in the freezer or you can take it with food or a combination of both and that should prevent the fish burps from happening.
So that's the down and dirty on fish oil supplementation. I mean, there's really no good reason for you not to take a fish oil supplement. You just wanna make sure, again, that you're getting the recommended dosage, anywhere from 250mg up to 6 grams daily for the health and performance benefits. Now, you also wanna make sure you're getting a high-quality fish oil supplement, and there's a lot of bad ones out there. Unfortunately, EndurElite does not have a fish oil supplement now but we will in the future. But in the meantime, definitely go over to Nutrabio and pick up a fish oil supplement from there and that way, you're knowing you're getting an efficacious dose and a high-quality fish oil supplement.
So I'm gonna sign off for today my endurance friends. If you have a fish-loving friend, please share this video with them. If you want other content on this like this on endurance training, nutrition, and supplementation, head over to the EndurElite website at www.endurelite.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, our Facebook group, our Instagram. I don't even know what else there is anymore for all this social stuff, like, Snapchitter or snap...I don't even know what it is. But anyway, subscribe to those various social media channels. And until next time, stay fueled, stay focused, and stay fast.
