ED Recovery: Fish Oil Supplements

Many people struggling with eating disorders have to take fish oil supplements when they start recovery, to get vital vitamins and minerals into your body straight away, so that your body doesn't have to wait the food to take effect.

These fish oil tablets also help your body make the best use of food, and provide your body with important chemicals such as EPA to help your body break down food.

Here are some things fish oil capsules can help with:

Healthy skin (if you have flaky skin or are prone to rashes etc.)
Healthy nails (if your nails split and/or are brittle)
Improve the efficiency of how your body uses food
Healthy hair (helps stop hair loss if that is one of your symptoms)
Better general health
Brighter moods (maybe helps depression? I hope so!)

Anyway, mine are beginning to work I think. Yay :)

The supplements I have to take are Ideal Omega 3. These are quite big gelatin capsules: about 1cm in length and 0.5cm in width. They are designed to maintain and support your mind, mood, body and cardio health.

I haven't tried any different supplements so I'm not really in a position to recommend these over others, however I think they have been working, as I've stopped getting stomach aches after I eat now. (Yay!) I think my body found it hard to digest food after not eating that much, so it really helped having the vitamins and minerals my body was lacking in before.

At first I wasn't keen on taking these supplements- after all, it felt like I was swallowing a horse pill! But after a few days of taking them, the size didn't bother me any more, and I like taking them now because they say that they improve your mood etc. (and I've been getting a depressed recently) Although they probably just say that to sell them, I guess it's something psychological that just makes me feel better if I take them. I don't know - that might just be me!

Some dietitians prefer for you to get these vitamins and minerals from food rather than supplements, so check with your dietitian whether or not it's a good idea to take fish oil capsules, or whether she'd prefer you not to.

Not sure what the point of this post was.. To tell you fish oil pills aren't that bad and it's ok to take them?.. I don't know ;) Still- I hope this wasn't too much of a drag to read and hope it was possibly helpful in some vague way!

(Picture of Ideal Omega 3 via here)

Hannah xox