The Key Nutrient for Optimal Health (that most people don’t know about)

You want to increase your energy, slow down the aging process, prevent disease and have some mental acuity and vitality along the way. You spend time working out, get a bit of sunlight and try to eat right. But are you unknowingly undermining your own health and fitness efforts with this common diet mistake?

If you’re still eating a diet that is high in grains and vegetable oils, it’s highly likely that your ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is critically out of balance. While the optimal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should be roughly 1:1, in the average American this ratio is anywhere from 20:1 to 50:1. Recent studies show that this imbalance can be a major cause for the increasing incidences of heart disease, cancer, hypertension and even certain neurological diseases such as depression, postpartum depression and Alzheimer’s. Essentially, as the body’s omega-6 number rises, so does the body’s overall inflammation, and as most of you know, too much inflammation in the body causes the majority of the most common diseases plaguing us today.

So where does this imbalance come from? More and more, scientists are finding a link between high levels of omega-6 and the over-consumption of grains and certain vegetable oils such as soy oil and canola oil, and an under-consumption of high quality foods such as grass-fed beef, fatty fish and healthy oils such as flaxseed oil, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil and walnut oil.

What can increasing your omega-3 do for you?

Omega-3, with its high levels of DHA and EPA, is extremely anti-inflammatory. As a result, if you suffer from inflammatory diseases such as arthritis or ulcerative colitis, taking omega-3 can help reduce the level of pain in your body. In addition, because of its anti-inflammatory properties, omega-3 prevents (and might even reverse) heart disease, prevents certain types of cancer, and even aids in the body’s physical repair processes (making it extremely anti-aging). In addition, omega-3 is highly beneficial and necessary for brain health. Because the brain uses DHA as fuel, low DHA levels are now being linked to low serotonin levels, which in turn causes depression, postpartum depression, memory loss, fatigue and a host of other negative health effects. In fact, omega-3 is so beneficial to brain health that researchers at Harvard Medical School have successfully used omega-3 to treat manic depression and schizophrenia.

So what can you do to balance out your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio? Reduce the amount of grains in your diet and increase high-quality fish and grass-fed meats, eliminate all vegetable oils from your diet and take a high quality omega-3 supplement. It’s very important to find a high quality brand of omega-3 as many of the most popular brands on the market today come from fish sources that are extremely high in mercury. Obviously the effects of too much mercury and heavy metal toxicity would counteract the benefits of taking an omega-3 supplement.

How much omega-3 should you take? Most likely more than you think. Check out this simple fish calculator to see just how much your body might need.

http://whole9life.com/fish-oil/