Just a reminder that coming up, we have our Saturday workout at 9am in Rec Park! We look forward to seeing you all there!

In the course of conversations in the gym, you may have heard trainers or other members talking about taking fish oil capsules. While CrossFit does not typically recommend much in the way of supplements, a good fish oil source would be the exception. The list of benefits are simply too numerous to overlook. There is a great Paleo site called Nikkisblogspot which had an article about fish oil I’d highly encourage you to read. It lists the following benefits of fish oil:

• enhances heart health by maintaining elasticity of cardio tissue
• helps the heart beat in a strong and healthy way
• ensures efficient heart function so that this key organ will last longer
• increases lean body mass
• increases metabolism by up to 400Kcal/day
• reduced inflammation within muscle and connective tissue
• improves fat burning
• important for cell membrane structure and essential for proper brain function
• improves insulin efficiency
• prevents excessive muscle breakdown
• increases brain health
• improves nervous system function
• contains antioxidants and their benefits

The pharmaceutical community has decided to cash in on this and released a new “drug” called Lovaza. As Robb Wolf points out, it is nothing more than a prescription fish oil!

Now the questions you may have are: where do I get some of this stuff and how much should I use? Robb Wolf has suggested taking a dosage of 1/2g of EPA/DHA per 10 lbs of bodyweight. For example, at my current weight of 170 I would need to take enough to equal 8.5g of EPA/DHA. Keep in mind however, that you will need to check the label to see how much actual EPA/DHA you are getting per capsule.

One of the best brands of fish oil is Kirkland, available at Costco. They sell a bottle of 400 capsules at 300mg of EPA/DHA per capsule, for just under $10. That works out to a total of 120g of EPA/DHA per bottle which equates to a cost of approximately 8 cents per gram of EPA/DHA. I compared this to the Kirkland concentrated version (each capsule is a little over 600mg of EPA/DHA each) and the price jumped to 13 cents per gram. Lastly, I looked at GNC’s triple-concentrated version (900mg per capsule) and the price worked out to 11 cents per gram.

So why would you ever consider the more expensive versions? Going back to my calculated dosage of 8.5g of EPA/DHA daily, that works out to 28 capsules if I buy the standard Kirkland fish oil. If I were taking the GNC triple-concentrated, it would only be a little more than 9 capsules. Moral of the story–if you prefer to take fewer capsules, you might want to pay a little more for the concentrated versions.

By all means, if any of you have come across a better value on fish oil please share and post to comments!

WOD – 09.11.09

10,9,…1

OHS (135/95)/HSPU

OR

5 rounds:
3 P Sn
5 OHS
7 HSPU

(Courtesy of CF Football)

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