When you are trying to cut corners and save pennies, your health is often the first thing that you allow to slide. While it certainly makes the least sense to start eating poorly, stop taking your vitamins and forgo your regular daily exercise, it is by far the easiest economic adaptation to make for most people because, like it or not, we take our health for granted.

Even worse, buying discount vitamins and dietary supplements can often make you sick or have no effect on your health at all, which is basically the same as wasting that money entirely. In particular, omega 3 supplements, which provide a dose of omega 3 fatty acids, which are vital to brain function, heart health, and a host of other important bodily function, are often completely useless if they are not designed and manufactured properly. If you are working on keeping your budget and your body healthy, then here are some important things to consider when you are buying omega 3 supplements.

• Check the ingredients.

Many off-the-shelf varieties of omega 3 supplement cost as little as six dollars. However, when you read the ingredients, you will find that at best they are made with low-grade tuna and mackerel, both of which are often grown in polluted waters, and at worst they are made from sardines, which have relatively few omega 3 fatty acids. You are not getting a bargain if your fish oil supplement is just that – fish oil – and does not actually contain any omega 3.

• Verify the source.

Find out where your fish oil came from. If you are buying it at a discount store, then it may be expired. Furthermore, the fish used to make the oil may have been grown or farmed in unsafe ways, and they may contain heavy metals or other contaminants that can build up in your body and make you sick rather than being good for you. If a supplement cannot tell you where its ingredients came from, then it may not be a health bargain at all.

• Evaluate the dosage

While some supplements are very cheap, they also contain next to no omega 3. As a result, you might need to take eight, ten or even twelve capsules a day. At this rate, not only are you going to smell like and taste fish on your breath basically 24-7, you are also going to blow through that “bargain” bottle of supplements in under a week. By the time you buy enough bottles to last you a month, you could have bought one bottle of a high-quality supplement that was engineered to only give you the advantages of omega 3, like stronger joints and a better memory, and leave off the side effects that come with non-molecularly engineered supplements, like fish body odor and nausea.

In the end, a good omega 3 fish oil supplements is a real investment in your health and the length and quality of your life. To learn about a reasonably priced, impeccably recommended omega 3 supplement, visit www.omega-3.us.