I have osteoarthritis in the padding (or facet joints if you want to get fancy with the terminology) of my lowest two vertebrae—the same place a lot of people my age get it. None of the over the counter pain medications have done any good for me at all. For the past year and a half I’ve had to sit down at work about every twenty minutes. I only need to sit for a minute or two and then I’m good for another twenty minutes. Sound familiar?
About a month ago I got the results back of a routine blood
test. Everything was great on it with the exception that my triglycerides were
a little high. (Yeah, I don’t eat very healthy foods most of the time.) My
doctor said that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start taking fish oil because it
will bring down those triglyceride levels in bad boys like me.
After a month of taking 1200mg of fish oil in a soft release
gel every morning, I don’t know how my triglycerides are doing, but my arthritis
is suddenly hardly bothering me at all! The doctor said nothing about the possibility
of this happening, but I couldn’t think of anything else about my lifestyle that
had changed. I figured I’d Google “fish oil” and “arthritis” to see if anybody
else had noticed these effects and found that many indeed have noticed the same
thing. Some of the articles said that fish oil it works best when taken with a
small dose of baby aspirin. The two somehow work together to create a
super-anti-inflammatory. I had already been taking a baby aspirin every day for
my heart anyway, so there was my answer.
I can’t tell you which brands are best because I’m new at
this and have only taken one, but the one I’m taking is Nature’s Bounty in a
1200mg (1.2 grams) gel cap. I get it from Walgreens. Most of the information I’ve
read says to take between 3 to 4 grams per day for arthritis. Until today I had
only been taking one dose in the morning and noticed that my back would start
feeling a bit tired and achy in the afternoon. Today I took an extra one at
lunch, and my back felt great all day. I’m going to start taking three gel caps
every day starting tomorrow.
I’ll leave a couple of links below where you can read more
about fish oil and what it does for you. You may have noticed this Dr. Oz guy
on TV talking fish oil up all the time. He considers it something of a marvel
or wonder drug, and I’m inclined to agree with him. It’s good for all kinds of
things including diseases of the mind like dementia. Give it a try. Don’t
forget the baby aspirin in the morning too though!
