| Answer: | Omega-3 oils are vital during pregnancy, both for your own wellbeing and for nerve and brain development in the growing foetus. But you need to pick and choose your oil carefully. Firstly, you want a pure oil, free from PCBs. Two brands that have consistently come out purest on independent tests are Higher Nature and Seven Seas.
Secondly, you don' t want to supplement more than 3,000mcg (10,000ius) of vitamin A in the form of retinol during pregnancy (see ' Is it dangerous to supplement vitamin A in pregnancy?' , opposite). Cod liver oil, which is an excellent source of omega-3, can be too high in retinol, so check the label. That said, most cod liver oil supplements rarely supply more than 800mcg (2,640ius) of vitamin A, so in practical terms this means that you are fine taking two or three of these high-strength caps. In terms of the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA, you want about l.OOOmg a day.
As for tuna, it has been found to be high in mercury, so you should eat other oily fish, preferably from waters that are as unpolluted as possible (for example, wild salmon from the Arctic), or organic fish. |
