21 August 2013

fish oil

When I worked at my last job, there was an employee of the hospital that would come to the lab to get some tests ran.

The first time I ran the test, his serum was so cloudy with fat that I had to dilute it twice to obtain a triglyceride result. Of course, I didn't need a machine to tell me it was off the charts.
When I handed him the results, I reminded him that he should be fasting and those results were probably not accurate, and to lay off the burgers and fries and sticks of butter right before having blood drawn. He replied that he was indeed fasting, for about 12 hours. Holy crap. I'd never seen anything like it.

I imagine he had some sort of serious hereditary lipid issue; he was a trim man who ate decently and exercised.

A few months later, he came by and had us run some more tests. This time, his blood was still a little lipemic, but I was able to obtain a result without dilution. His test result was less than 1/4 of what it had previously been.

I asked him what he'd done differently, and he said that he had not changed one thing, except he started taking fish oil supplements. That's it. That's all he did. No drugs, nothing else.

I was amazed. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, and performed the tests myself, I probably would not have believed it.

I personally have had some struggles with blood lipids. Nothing as dramatic as that, but it could stand to improve. So today I saw some supplements on sale and decided to give it a go. I should probably get my blood drawn before starting them, but I don't want to come into work fasting.

I figure it couldn't hurt to try them.

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