Fish Oil

There’s Something Fishy Around Here....

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Wiser words are rarely spoken. No one embraces this philosophy better than GlaxoSmithKline, makers of the prescription drug Lovaza.

High Cholesterol is big business. In 2008, the best selling prescription was Lipitor, a cholesterol-fighting drug that racked up an impressive 5.9 Billion in retail sales. Sadly, Lipitor’s sales figures fell by almost 5% from their 2007 totals. But why?

This can partially be attributed to competition from similar medications like Crestor, which came in at #17 in 2008 with almost 1.7 billion in retail sales. Unlike poor Lipitor, Crestor’s 2008 sales were up an impressive 22% from their 2007 totals. But. also-ran statin pharmaceuticals are not the only thing contributing to Lipitor's slide.

More and more people, it seems, are getting disenfranchised with these statin medications, as they are very expensive and often have very undesirable side effects. As an alternative, they are turning to other methods of fighting heart disease. Many are following the lead of Nanook of the North.




It turns out that Eskimos eat a really high fat diet, yet they don’t suffer from heart disease. This is widely attributed to the fact that they eat a lot of fish, which is high in Omega 3 Fatty Acids. And, it turns out, these Omega 3 Fatty Acids are very effective in preventing heart disease.

Meanwhile, us poor schmucks in the lower 48 don’t eat nearly enough fish. Making matters worse, our meat stock is mostly fed on corn, which is devoid of these needed Omega 3’s. In the olden days, our grass-fed beef fed on Omega 3-rich grass, and passed them onto us in that cheeseburger. Today, our diet of choice does not provide us with nearly the amount of Omega 3’s that we need, and as a result, our cardiovascular health suffers.

So, we can be healthier by eating grass-fed beef (which tastes funny to us) and oily fish (which tastes fishy to us) or we can take Omega 3 supplements. A good quality supplement, one with good quantities of EPA and DHA Omega 3 Fatty Acids, would run you around 10 bucks a month at your local discount store. This solves the problem for unhealthy Americans, but causes problems for pharmaceutical companies who watch their billions in annual sales start to slip slide away.

Enter GlaxoSmithKline, and their prescription drug Lovaza. Lovaza is essentially a high quality, concentrated Fish Oil Tablet, available only by prescription. Lovaza takes fish oil, concentrates it with the good Omega 3 fatty acids, and sells it through your local pharmacy. In fact, Lovaza is so concentrated that you might need to take 2 Over the Counter Fish Oil capsules in order to get the same amount of Omega 3’s as you do from one capsule of Lovaza. . With Lovaza, GlaxoSmithKline has decided to follow the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ philosophy with one little twist – Lovasta costs around 18 times more per dose then generic, non-prescription Fish Oil.

As compared to ‘traditional’ cholesterol medications, Lovaza is still a real bargain. A 100 capsule bottle retails for as little as $150.00. A similar, traditional Fish Oil supplement is available from vitamin-giant Puritan for about $4.25. Remember, you might have to take 2 of the Puritan capsules in order to get the same level of beneficial Omega 3’s as one Lovaza capsule, so factoring this in, we can see that Lovaza costs over 18 times as much as the Puritan dose.



Not a pretty picture, is it? And yet, we still wonger: "Why is our healthcare so expensive?"

There are many well-documented nutritional supplements that can be used to replace or augment pharmaceutical therapy. This makes sense, since many pharmaceuticals are based upon naturally occurring compounds. And with success stories like Lovaza leading the way ($417 million in sales in 2008, with a 65% increase from the prior year) you can bet that other ‘prescription supplements’ will be coming your way. However, I suspect that many people, like me, will find that the overpriced prescription version of our favorite supplement is going to be hard to swallow.

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