Omega-3 — the happy drug that deserted Tuna (Sushi)

As a chronic sufferer over the past several years of insomnia and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) with concomitant anxiety and unease, it was quite shocking to me when I suddenly felt at ease and dosed off to a very satisfying sleep reminiscent of my pre-illness life.

It was a two softgels free sample of Nutrigold's potent 750mg EPA omega-3 that had made this indelible impression on me more than a year ago. Nothing else had helped me sleep precisely like a baby hence.

Omega-3’s Amazing Benefits

In addition to heart health by lowering triglycerides and counter balancing the Omega-6 laden Western diet, perhaps the most underappreciated benefit of Omega-3 is that it helps to regulate mood, depression, and mental function, which apparently also aids in sleep patterns by lowering the stress hormone Norepinephrine and enchancing the secretion of Melatonin to its rhythm for regularity of the circadian clock.

Since proper sleep is essential to human health ranging from cognitive performance to proper hormone levels and avoiding sports injuries, we could posit that Omega-3 is a very important nutrient.

Prioritizing Omega-3

Somehow in the turbulent and always-in-energy-debt struggle for daily energy that ensued over the past 18 months, I managed to not be able to focus on Omega-3. I had registered in my befuddled, zombie state-of-mind that at some point in the future I’d like to buy some Omega-3 fish oil, but I never found the time to research it properly and there were no Omega-3 softgel supplements of the same quality available for immediate purchase here in Davao, Mindanao. So somehow it always got pushed off, “to the next day or week”, as it has been for so many tasks for someone in a daily grueling battle with CFS.

This week in my Herculean effort to try to find some way to will myself out of this multi-year health debacle, research revealed some interesting facts that I thought would be very important to point out to others.

Only The Belly of Tuna is High in Omega-3

I’ve been eating home-brewed boiled tuna soup regularly for the past year or so since my girlfriend had joined me, but I had stopped eating the belly of the tuna (in soup) which I used to eat regularly at a nearby restaurant before 2013 (after which I had moved away to the mountain until my return here in 2015). I had also tried all-you-can-eat sashimi buffet nearby and had thought that Omega-3 doesn’t really help me after gorging on sashimi several times. The buffet was chosen instead of the restaurant with the tuna belly because I thought my girlfriend would prefer the buffet and it was air-conditioned (which is an important factor in avoidance of mosquitoes and viruses such as Dengue, Zika, etc).

Today I discovered that the typical Maguro (aka Akami) form of tuna sashimi or sushi has very low levels of EPA and DHA!

It is only the Toro (aka belly or underside) of the tuna that is one of the highest sources of EPA and DHA and three times greater than Salmon. Only caviar is higher.

Note that only anchovies, herring, and mackerel are roughly as high in the essential EPA and DHA forms of Omega-3 as salmon, so your typical plate of sushi and sashimi is not an optimal source of Omega-3 although eating the entire plate-sized portion yourself might be adequate.

Omega-3 might be one of the key nutrients to help us sustain supreme happiness, youthful bliss, and well being. And unfortunately Western diets (at least American) typically contain a ratio of 20:1 or greater of Omega-6 to Omega-3.

^{Edit: note one of the reasons our diets are so laden in Omega-6 is that our meat is typically not free-range, grass fed as it was even through most of the 19th century. For example, free-range eggs may have a 1:1 ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 compared to 1:10 for modernized egg factories, although in both cases the Omega-3 in eggs is typically the undesirable ALA form and not very high in the requisite EPA+DHA form.}