* Reading the article below says enough I think...
Whole article:
http://www.wellnessresources.com/health/articles/dha_krill_oil_gree...
The Green-Lipped Mussel Fantasy
Taking the cake for ridiculous EPA/DHA health claims is the maker of a green-lipped muscle product. The company promotion on its website states, “The omega-3 fatty acids found in greenlip mussels are up to 250 times more effective than other omega-3 oils in the market….these omega-3s are of such a high concentration and natural balance that it would take 247 capsules of salmon oil for example to equal just 1 capsule.” Other websites promoting this product refer to fish oil supplements as obsolete. Yes, it is just another network marketing company doing its thing. Yet, the message is not truthful and may have the net result of harming those who need proven amounts of DHA and EPA to protect their cardiovascular health.
Green-lipped mussel has been around for several decades and has a handful of studies showing that it has anti-inflammatory properties and may help improve pain in mild to moderate osteoarthritis. Some preliminary test results show that its main biologic activity is to reduce lipoxygenase activity, possibly reduce COX2 activity, and reduce some inflammatory cytokines such as TNFa. However, there are numerous nutrients with proven human clinical trials, which cost far less and have much better studies, that do the same thing (5-Loxin, curcumin, and quercetin to name a few).
Furthermore, new science is showing that excess leptin, due to obesity, is turning on gene signals and inflammatory cytokines that are driving the process of joint destruction in both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. In this study curcumin was able to stop this inflammatory response. However, getting to the source of the joint destruction problem means people should learn to eat in harmony with leptin, at which point there would be less inflammation in the first place (actually solving the source of the problem).
I don’t have a problem with anyone who takes green-lipped mussel for inflammation and likes the result. If something works for you, great. Personally, I have seen consistent improvement for less cost with much better studied and documented nutrients.
What I do have a problem with is green-lipped muscle being promoted as a superior omega 3 supplement, claiming to be hundreds of times more potent than fish oil and therefore fish oil being obsolete as a dietary supplement – translation: buy green-lipped muscle and not fish oil.
These wild claims of superiority are based on one 12-year-old animal study, Anti-inflammatory activity of a lipid fraction (lyprinol) from the NZ green-lipped mussel. The funny thing about this is that the company making the wild claims is using a study done by their competitor’s product as “proof” of their own supplement. This is a first in network marketing hype. Network marketing companies typically concoct their own “studies,” which are seldom published, and then exaggerate the meaning of their findings. In this case we have a situation wherein the findings from another company’s product are being extrapolated over to their own product. In fact, the unsubstantiated claim that their product is twice as potent as the one studied is being used to further exaggerate the claim of potency.
The dose of green-lipped muscle used in the study was abnormally high: 50 mg of Lyprinol per kg, or three capsule per day for a rat. If you are a 132 pound adult that means you have to take 1 bottle (60 capsules) of Lyprinol per day to reach the dose that was studied. However, the new product making the outrageous claims appears to have around 37 mg of green-lipped muscle per capsule, meaning that you will need 83 capsules of it per day to approximate the dose used in the study (retail value = $69 per day).
The study involved inducing inflammation in the paws of rats and then measuring the inflammation by subjective observation over a 16 day period while various doses of different nutrients were used in different groups. The experiment is foolish because the amount of salmon oil used for comparison (1850 mg/kg) would never be consumed by any human; in fact, it would be dangerous to do so.
The results showed less swelling in the Lyprinol group compared to the salmon oil group. However, the results of the study are not statistically significant. In fact, no statistical analysis of the data was published – meaning that the study has no scientific validity.
Currently, this study is being used to claim the superiority of green-lipped mussel to fish oil. Those promoting this notion compared the milligrams of Lyprinol to the milligrams of fish oil, and multiplied that by the statistically insignificant amount of improvement, which was arrived at by subjective measurement in the first place. And now you, the consumer, are supposed to believe that fish oil is obsolete!
In addition to the obvious shortcomings of this study, and preposterous promotion of it as proof of superiority of an ingredient, the primary method of benefit of fish oil in your body is not by modulating inflammation. Fish oil modulation of inflammation is a secondary benefit. This means the study is irrelevant as to whether or not you should be taking fish oil for your cardiovascular health and longevity.
This story actually gets worse. The essential fatty acids in the product are mostly from Hoki fish oil, not green-lipped muscle. Each 150 mg softgel capsule of the product contains a proprietary blend of Hoki fish oil and green-lipped muscle, amounting to 106 mg of fatty acids per capsule. Of the 106 mg, there are 16 mg of EPA and 19.5 mg of DHA. Most of these essential fatty acids are from the Hoki fish oil, since the company has stated that its green-lipped muscle oil is 3% DHA. If it were all from green-lipped muscle the 106 mg would yield 3.18 mg of DHA.
Based on the C of As on the company’s website and various components of the oils, it is possible to reverse engineer an approximation of their proprietary formula. Doing the math suggests that one of their 150 mg capsules is 44 mg white grape seed extract, 37 mg green-lipped muscle oil, and 69 mg Hoki oil. This means that the amount of DHA per capsule from green-lipped muscle is approximately 1.11 mg – i.e., virtually none.
This is actually kind of humorous. The product that makes fish oil obsolete due to its “superior” essential fatty acids is mostly low potency fish oil from Hoki fish. This is now the most expensive DHA supplement on earth. Said another way, this product costs .04 cents for each milligram of DHA, making it 36 times the price of high quality molecularly distilled DHA.