Something Smells Fishy

February 06, 2012

And by fishy I mean delicious and healthy!

Have you ever gone fishing with the warm, golden rising-sun at your back and your line in the water? Some of you may say yes, and some may say no. But here’s a tougher question for you, one I’m sure that everyone will say "no" to. Have you ever travelled to outer space?

If you say "yes" to that, please come to the branch. It would be awesome to meet you! Actually, everyone reading this come into the branch. Whether you’ve been to space or not, you’re all really cool people in my book.

Now, I’m sure we all know about that nifty thing called gravity. It keeps us, well, grounded to say the least—keeps the rivers in the river beds, the trees in the ground, and non-floaty objects like ourselves from being all floaty.

Keeping this in mind, that’s why our bones stay as dense as they do, except of course due to aging and all that fun jazz. But not minding that I’m getting older, bones are dense for a reason. They don’t break under the earth’s gravitational pull, but when we go into space where there is significantly less gravitational pull on our bones, this allows them to weaken at a faster rate. Now, I’m sure you all know that this explains why astronauts have trouble standing up when they land back on earth.

But here’s my reason for telling you what you already know from an article on our Health Reference Center: NASA now states that Omega-3 may help in reducing bone loss for astronauts!

This has nifty implications for us regular, civilian types.

First, for those who have to stay in bed or can’t be as active to keep their bones strong, Omega-3 looks to be one nutrient that could help in restoring and maintaining bone density.

Second, if you want to travel to space you’ll want to pack along a bottle of Omega-3 to keep your bones up or eat as many salmon dinners as possible (which I'm sure would be much more tasty than the regular astronaut tube food, or maybe they'll make it into a paste too...salmon toothpaste, gross). All of this talk about salmon and Omega-3's doesn’t mean Omega-3 is the panacea to bone density problems, but it’s one more thing to consider when inspecting one’s own health.

However, I really like fish, especially salmon, despite the fact that they're kind of smelly.The fact that they are high in Omega-3 is just a plus for me. Here's some awesome salmon cookbooks if you want to get more Omega-3 in your diet!

Until next time, gesundheit!

~Cody C.
Parkville Branch