Skeptical about Fish Oil
I wrote this page to answer the skeptics who think treating depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses with fish oil is just another false promise by the natural remedy people.
I know the first time you hear about treating depression with fish oil it is hard to believe. It sounds like one of those companies pushing a magic "natural remedy" that is going to miraculously cure some illness. I am a skeptical person by nature. I didn't think it was going to work either. I thought it was a bunch of bull. I thought "If this stuff was really effective, it would be common knowledge. Doctors would be telling everyone to take it."
That is the attitude I had when I started taking it to treat my own mental illness. I was just at a point where I would do almost anything to make my illness go away. To my surprise, it actually worked. It didn't work as fast as I would have liked, but it definitely was working.
Once I realized how well it worked, I began to get mad. I was really pissed off that I had sufferred with my symptoms for so long. Had I known about this stuff earlier I could have avoided some the worst days of my life. I thought to myself " Why didn't my doctor mention this?" "Why didn't I hear about this from anyone sooner?" "Shouldn't this be common knowledge?"
Why you don't hear about it
I began to realize several things.
- Fish oil cannot be patented. It is a naturally occurring substance. Drug companies won't get into manufacturing something they can't patent. Its too easy for competitors to do the same thing.
- Drug companies are constantly educating doctors about their drugs. They show them studies and medical explanations of how and why the drugs work. They certainly aren't going to promote something that competes directly with their own products.
- The rapid increase in depression and other mental illnesses related to the lack of omega-3 in our diets is a recent phenomenon. Back when people used to eat whole foods instead of processed ones, they had more essential fats in their diet and fewer cases of depression as a percentage of the population.
- The idea of taking fish oil as a serious treatment for mental illnesses conjures the idea of another false promise by the natural remedy people.
Should you be skeptical about fish oil?
Of course. Everything you read online should be taken with a grain of salt. I challenge you to question everything I say on this site. If you do enough research on it, you'll find that there have been numerous instances where people have successfully treated a variety of mental illnesses by supplementing their diets with omega-3 fats in one form or another.
I advocate fish oil capsules because that is what I used. After seeing how well they worked for me and what a huge gift life is when you are free of depression, I felt obligated to spread the word.
I wish you all the best.
Is your experience with anxiety or depression similar to mine? I wrote a little three page story of my experience with anxiety and depression. Read it if you want a better understanding of how I discovered fish oil and why I decided to create this website.