32 replies to this topic

[nameless]

Although this probably isn't a surprise, I ran across this study last night --

Effect of omega-3 dietary supplements with different oxidation levels in the lipidic profile of women: a randomized controlled trial.

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/23863036

Also found a more detailed article here:

http://suppversity.b...indices-is.html

The study was a bit oddly designed, as the base diet included a lot of fish, but I still found it interesting.I recall that there was a rancid fish oil study done a year or two ago, showing not much in the way of short-term harm, at least in regard to body oxidation numbers. But the above study does sort of demonstrate that it's not the best idea to consume bad fish oil. And by bad, it just means fish oil with higher than ideal peroxide numbers... stuff we probably can find on many store shelves.

So for those getting cheap fish oil without antioxidants, or consuming bottled fish oil (faster oxidation), perhaps you may wish to switch to something else. Fish oil with high peroxide numbers could possibly be a reason for some conflicting study results done on a number of fish oils, and the fact that in some cases, fish oil increases lipid numbers.

Edited by nameless, 02 January 2014 - 10:40 PM.

[(unnamed member)]

This company based in Norway supposedly makes a fish oil in drinkable cartons that has a proprietary formula that prevents oxidation. Anybody have any thoughts on what they are putting in there to prevent oxidation? Is this something we could do ourselves?





Anonymous poster hash: d9d65...5cd

[timar]

Those differential effects of "fresh" and oxidized fish oils are really remarkable IMO. As Adel from SuppVersity suggested, this study may well provide an explanation for the largely inconsistent evidence on fish oil. Who knows how many of the unsucsessfull trials used oxidized fish oil? I don't know of any trial where the peroxide value of the fish oil has actually been measured and reported prior to intervention.

This company based in Norway supposedly makes a fish oil in drinkable cartons that has a proprietary formula that prevents oxidation. Anybody have any thoughts on what they are putting in there to prevent oxidation? Is this something we could do ourselves?

Why do you think that they put in some magic ingredient? They probably use tocopherols, like most other companies do. Tocopherols are highly effective in preventing lipid peroxidation. The fish oil capsules from Nature's Best I take have a shelf life of 3 years from production. I usually store the capsules in the freezer, but I intentionally left some stored at room temperature for two years. I opened one capsule and it smelled pritistine, without any trace of rancidity. They are conserved with alpha-Tocopherol only. Seems sufficient for quality capsules.

Edited by timar, 03 January 2014 - 12:00 PM.

[nameless]

Yeah, I have wondered how many studies were worthless simply because the fish oil may have been oxidized. On a personal level, I have noticed on occasion fish oil raising my LDL, while at other times, it's lower or more normalish... depending on brand used. One time my doc was on a kick to try Lovaza, so I did, and my LDL skyrocketed up ... she wanted to know if I started eating sticks of butter or something. Logically the higher concentrates with low amounts of antioxidants (such as Lovaza), would be more prone to oxidation, especially since pharmacists treat it like any other pill (opened bottles, no refrigeration, etc). It could be a coincidence, but it's just something I noticed for myself.

The annoying thing about some fish oils is that even good ones can sometimes be 'fishy', even when opening a brand new bottle. I recall both LEF and Jarrow oils being unusually fishy when I tried them, yet they do include antioxidants. Or perhaps I was just unlucky and got a bad batch.

[trance]

Many times one of the gel caps has just sprung a small leak, not sealed completely, or possibly burst during processing. Not good for that capsule if it happens to be in your container, but not necessarily bad for the remainder as long as you're able to get past the smell and none of the other capsules are affected. If more than one capsule is leaky, they've probably all been exposed to excessive heat during processing, storage, or shipping. In that case, ask for a replacement and different batch number.

[MrSpud]

You have to know both the anisidine values as well as the peroxide values to get the whole picture. I remember it being described as peroxide value measures somewhat recent oxidation, but after a while the peroxide values go back down, but the anisidine values then start going up which is indicative of past oxidation. Look up totox values for more info if interested. They came up with totox values which mean total oxidation and it was some equation that added the peroxide to the anisidine values but with some factors included.

One company that made DHA from algae did a study of many different antioxidants and antioxidant blends and the thing that worked the best was a mixture of Tenox GT-2 and ascorbyl palmitate. You have to liquify the ascorbyl palmitate by melting it into another more stable oil, but then you add it and the Tenox GT-2 in small amounts to the Omega 3 oil. Blanketing with an inert gas during any mixing and handling of the omega 3 oil before and during encapsulation is essential. Nitrogen is the most common, but the Algae DHA company claimed that others were even better. I vaguely remember them saying argon worked the best (but I'm not 100% sure it was argon but I think it was). Something about nitrogen, although heavier than air, still was light enough that a little bit of air inevitably gets mixed in sooner or later.

Lovaza was really hard to work with. Not only did they not add any antioxidants, they also stripped out some natural antioxidants that are inherently present in less processed fish oil. They couldn't change the formula to add antioxidants because it would cause it to violate its new drug application filing. They couldn't even open the drums it was shipped in to take a sample to do qc testing without ruining it so they had the have the raw material manufacturer include pre shipment samples. The drums and samples were shipped under nitrogen. The tubing to the encapsulation machine had to be prepurged with nitrogen and everything had to be heavily nitrogen blanketed during encapsulation, much more so than regular fish oil that has a few mg of d-alpha tocopherol or mixed tocopherols in it. It would be easy to mess up and get accidental exposure to air. If they moved the encapsulation to other companies than where it was first developed, I wouldn't be surprised it they didn't stick to the same strict level of caution.

Edited by MrSpud, 04 January 2014 - 04:26 AM.

[timar]

Very interesting information, MrSpud. I gather that you work in the industry?

Regarding Lovaza, why would the addition of an antioxidant violate drug laws? I can't help, but if I read that it contains no antioxidants at all, my paranoid self gets hold of me and I think that this way it seems designed to fail...

[nameless]

Nice info Mr. Spud ... you always provide good info on fish oils. And yep, anisidine should be measured too, but don't know if they did so for the above study at all (don't think they did). The oils with the best numbers I've seen have been Minami and Nordic naturals, at least based on the info they give consumers. I think Coromega has good numbers too.

And interesting about Lovaza ... I would guess it's a weird FDA thing where once approved, they can't change anything at all about a formulation without having to redo the entire FDA approval thing? I would think that in the initial design of the drug (or fish oil formulation), however, couldn't they have just included antioxidants? The first thing that scared me about Lovaza was how drugstores handled it. Local pharmacists were fine with open bottles, keeping at room temperatures, and simply treating them like any other pill... and shipping during the summer, via hot UPS trucks for a week or more.

Edited by nameless, 04 January 2014 - 07:25 PM.

[MrSpud]

Yeah, I used to work at a company that made softgel capsules. Back then Lovaza was called Omacor. We didn't make the original clinical study softgels for them, I believe they had a softgel company in Europe make them, but they got the fish oil company to completely refine the fish oil and they thought that making it just the pure EPA/DHA would make it more pharmaceutical like and help differentiate it from fish oil supplements. I don't think the original pharmaceutical company that contracted the development of the clinical study supplies had a good understanding of fish oil oxidation. So all the clinical studies that are required to sell prescription drugs in the United States were done with softgels containing highly refined fish oil with no antioxidants, both the naturally occurring ones in fish oil and anything added like tocopherols, and all of those clinical studies would have had to been redone if they changed the formula in any way. Once they realized how hard it was to make production quantities they wished they had included an antioxidant, but they weren't willing to pay the expense to redo the new drug application and clinical studies. The product also never took off when it was first launched as Omacor, then years later another company bought the rights to make and sell the product and they renamed it Lovaza. It is cheaper to do that than to do your own development, but they were stuck with the original formula. Now that it is selling better, maybe they will be able to afford to redo the studies required to change the formula. If they make it really carefully avoiding all contact with oxygen before and during encapsulation it should be OK though, even with the original formula. But any accidental brief exposure to air will start the reaction and the fish oil will be prone to oxidation.

[MrSpud]

I just looked up lovaza and according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovaza they do now add some D-Alpha Tocopherol. That's good, it should help a lot.

[nameless]

Yeah, it looks like they have around 6IU/capsule, assuming I did my math right. For such a high concentrate, perhaps a bit more would be even better? I know some here have said that Nordic overdoes it, with 15IU/capsule (and at a lower concentration), but perhaps a little extra may not be a bad idea.

One of the other weird things about Lovaza (back when they were Omacor) I remember seeing was hydrogenated vegetable oils as part of its ingredient list. It'd seem like a odd thing to purposely include.

[MrSpud]

I just poked around a bit on Google. I remember the first several production batches of Omacor didn't have any antioxidant added, but I found a drug info page that mentioned that Omacor had 4mg of alpha tocopherol in a carrier of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils including soybean oil, and now Lovaza has 4mg of alpha tocopherol in soybean oil. So it looks like they added it a while back with the hydrogenated carrier, then changed it again to just the soybean oil. They probably got complaints from people saying that hydrogenated vegetable oil is to be avoided by people with triglyceride problems. Back before the early 1990s when people realized hydrogenated vegetable oils were bad for you hydrogenated vegetable oils were common in softgel products as a stable carrier and suspending agent. It was phased out in the 90s though and formulators switched to beeswax as a suspending agent or for making vegetable oils into semi solids. I don't know why they would have used a tocopherol raw material in a carrier using partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, other than that the same people who originally thought it would be more pharmaceutical to totally refine the omega 3s and not include any antioxidant were probably the ones who gave in and allowed the tocopherol to be added and they picked one that was as synthetic as possible. None of the data sheets for Omacor or Lovaza state whether the alpha tocopherol is natural d or synthetic dl, so it is probably dl. Probably there is some old pharmaceutical grade synthetic E in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that they thought would be better to use than supplement grade d-alpha tocopherol or mixed tocopherols or something like that.

[eon]

I have Lovaza. The instructions stated to take it on a low fat diet so I wonder since I'm on a ketogenic diet (high fat adequate protein low carb), would Lovaza be a contradiction? It wasn't prescribed to me to lower triglyceride but for ADHD. I have the generic form of Lovaza from TEVA. I called them up to find out what the half life is of Lovaza since I can't find it online. What would be your guess as to what the half life is of an omega-3?

 

Reason why I need to know is because I was also prescribed a beta blocker called Inderal (take as needed) and from what I understand Lovaza is not supposed to be taken with a beta blocker. So if I take each one 12 hours apart is that OK?

Edited by eon, 23 April 2015 - 08:31 PM.

[OneScrewLoose]

Fish Oil is the only thing I buy in stores like Costco and Trader Joe's. The higher turnover assures that it is fresh.

[eon]

from what my psychiatrist told me, who prescribed me Lovaza, I think he said the reason why it raises bad cholesterol is because it raises the good ones as well? Somewhere along that line. If anyone can explain better or what's the science behind this?

 

It lowers triglycerides is what Lovaza is really for, but I asked for it for ADHD reasons plus the psychiatrist is saying it is a mood stabilizer for bipolar as well (I'm not bi polar) but I can say is that Lovaza does stabilize moods more like a sedative actually.

[OneScrewLoose]

So you want to your psychiatrist seeking treatment for ADHD and he prescribed Lovaza?

[eon]

Hmm no. I should have been clearer. I was prescribed Lovaza as well as Vyvanse. I asked for Lovaza. At that time I didn't know much about it other than "prescription fish oil" which it really isn't plus I didn't know about the other "prescription fish oil" Vascepa. Allegedly the "better" one which I also just asked for. Oh and if you look at drugs.com Lovaza is prescribed for ADHD as well. It's a mood stabilizer but I don't think it's a focus enhancer.

 

 

So you want to your psychiatrist seeking treatment for ADHD and he prescribed Lovaza?

 

Edited by eon, 30 April 2015 - 06:52 AM.

[blood]

Study from earlier this year:

http://www.nature.co.../srep07928.html

Fish oil supplements in New Zealand are highly oxidised and do not meet label content of n-3 PUFA

Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 7928 doi:10.1038/srep07928

We evaluated the quality and content of fish oil supplements in New Zealand. All encapsulated fish oil supplements marketed in New Zealand were eligible for inclusion. Fatty acid content was measured by gas chromatography. Peroxide values (PV) and anisidine values (AV) were measured, and total oxidation values (Totox) calculated. Only 3 of 32 fish oil supplements contained quantities of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) that were equal or higher than labelled content, with most products tested (69%) containing <67%. The vast majority of supplements exceeded recommended levels of oxidation markers. 83% products exceeded the recommended PV levels, 25% exceeded AV thresholds, and 50% exceeded recommended Totox levels. Only 8% met the international recommendations, not exceeding any of these indices. Almost all fish oil supplements available in the New Zealand market contain concentrations of EPA and DHA considerably lower than claimed by labels. Importantly, the majority of supplements tested exceeded the recommended indices of oxidative markers. Surprisingly, best-before date, cost, country of origin, and exclusivity were all poor markers of supplement quality.

[OneScrewLoose]

I can't find a single study even evaluating if it helps ADHD or acts as a mood stabilizer (btw, mood stabilizer doesn't just mean it evens out your mood. It refers to a specific class of medication that treats bipolar and sometimes refers to medications that treat Borderline Personality Disorder. You feeling more even-keeled after taken it means nothing in regard to it being a 'mood stabilzer'), much less a study with conclusions. There's is evidence that Omega 3s can help some people with ADHD, and some people with Bipolar, but this tends to be a very small subset of those with these disorders. I have no reason to believe the Lovaza would be any different in this regard or any more effective than Omega 3s for these two conditions.

Here's what's I see on PubMed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm....ed/?term=lovaza

Everything in regards to ADHD appears to be anecdotal.

[eon]

Regardless of anything whether or not it stabilizes mood with "study" backing it up, I feel OK on it. Have you personally tried Lovaza? Also, I think in the link you provided, see that number 7 seem to have a mention of Lovaza and mood.

 

 

[OneScrewLoose]

If you feel better on it, I don't see a reason to stop taking (unless it's really expensive). Even if it were completely placebo, that is still a real effect that's working.

 

I do like to shoot higher than 'okay' though, especially with ADHD.

Edited by OneScrewLoose, 30 April 2015 - 10:52 AM.

[eon]

There was a time when everyone praised DHA, but now it seems as if EPA is the more potent of the omega-3s. I'm not sure if the sudden shift has to do with pharmaceutical competitions (Lovaza (DHA/EPA) vs. Vascepa (just EPA), etc.). But below is an article praising EPA for all the right reasons of course:

 

Omega-3 may help depression caused by certain types of inflammation

 

In a study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers found that the omega-3 fatty acid EPA (eicosapentataenoic acid) appears to boost mood in a subgroup of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) who have high inflammation levels.

 

http://medicalxpress...flammation.html

 

I've tried Lovaza and I'm waiting to see if my insurance would cover Vascepa. If not, does anyone here know of an OTC EPA only supplement?

 

Edited by eon, 07 May 2015 - 10:43 AM.

[OneScrewLoose]

I would first ask for studies that show conclusively that EPA and DHA are not only antagonistic, but so much so where the dose of one of them is completely nullified by the other. Otherwise, EPA and DHA only Omega-3 Oils are simply not worth their huge price.

[eon]

but those prescription "fish oils"" aren't your average fish oils or EPA/DHA. They are ethy esthers, etc. 

[OneScrewLoose]

I was simply talking about OTC supplements are EPA or DHA only, and are wildly expensive, often 10x the cost per dose of the regular Omega3s. IMO, it's a scam.

 

I definitely need to take a look at those presciption versions though. It's very fascinated. I've just been doing so much research since I started posting here again that I don't have time for it all. I was I could just inject PubMed into my brain, matrix style.

Edited by OneScrewLoose, 07 May 2015 - 08:36 PM.

[eon]

Hmm i'd need to look into OTC EPA, I had a DHA only supplement. I don't know why for just EPA or just DHA (this is not too expensive) OTC would be more expensive than having both together? I would assume because it's a different process to separate both from each other and I would assume it's easier to have both together as is which is why EPA and DHA separately would be more expensive.

Edited by eon, 07 May 2015 - 09:24 PM.

[OneScrewLoose]

Because it's marketing crap, IMO. Sent you a PM.

[nameless]

Hmm i'd need to look into OTC EPA, I had a DHA only supplement. I don't know why for just EPA or just DHA (this is not too expensive) OTC would be more expensive than having both together? I would assume because it's a different process to separate both from each other and I would assume it's easier to have both together as is which is why EPA and DHA separately would be more expensive.

 

Marketing reasons, as stated already, I expect.

 

It's been ages since I looked at fish oil stuff (or have even been active on this board), but I do seem to recall depression studies zeroing in at around 1000 mg EPA being the sweet spot for helping with depression. DHA muted this affect, so basically whatever you use, EPA should be around 1000 mg higher than the DHA you are taking.

 

Of course it's been so long since I looked at any studies, perhaps they have all been debunked by now... no idea. Look at pubmed and see what you can turn up.

 

As for prescription vs OTC, only reason to go prescription (in my opinion) is if your insurance fully covers it and you are having a problem finding an affordable (and good brand) EPA only supplement. The ethyl ester thing is meaningless, as many OTC brands are ethyl ester too. I know Nordic Naturals makes a decent EPA only product but I expect it's rather pricey.

Edited by nameless, 11 May 2015 - 02:18 AM.

[nameless]

Study from earlier this year:

http://www.nature.co.../srep07928.html

 

That is something I think most folks here should take a look at. Thanks for posting it. It doesn't just apply to fish oil manufactured in New Zealand/Australia either.

 

Personally I stopped taking fish oil a while ago and instead just try to eat a little more fish (of course then mercury could be an issue).

[eon]

Yes this Nordic Naturals seem to have the ratio you are suggesting:

 

http://www.swansonvi...000-mg-60-sgels

 

But I don't get why they all come with some DHA? I would prefer pure EPA, which I think why Vascepa is still special? Can anyone point me to an OTC EPA only product? Vascepa is still new which is why it's expensive.

 

This Swanson brand states it is in fact ethy esther (EE):

 

http://www.swansonvi...h-oil-100-sgels

 

I'm not sure if OTC ethyl esther versions of omega-3's were available when Lovaza first came out due to trademarks, but I think the OTC ethyl ether versions are just as new as generic Lovaza (DHA/EPA), or as new as Vascepa (EPA). 

 

Below are some products I think can be interchanged with LOVAZA:

 

Brand Names: Animi-3, Fish Oil, Icar Prenatal Essential Omega-3, Lovaza, Marine Lipid Concentrate, MaxEPA, Mi-Omega, Omacor, Proepa, Sea-Omega, Super-EPA, TheraTears Nutrition

 

Source: http://www.drugs.com/omacor.html

 

I don't see Vascepa having any OTC product equivalent that can be interchanged with it because I think it's still new. The pharmacy seem to go back and forth with my doctor in giving me Vascepa. Not sure why yet but I will find out. My prescription stated generic is OK but I guess the pharmacy didn't catch that. The prescription stated Vascepa when I think it should have stated the generic name Icosapent.

Edited by eon, 11 May 2015 - 03:44 AM.