Omega-3 vs Vitamin C for skin & hair
Short answer: For skin & hair, more users report improvement with Vitamin C — 97% of 29 reports, versus 90% of 48 for Omega-3.
Omega-3 has 1,341 meta-analyses and 3,093 randomized trials on PubMed; Vitamin C has 738 and 2,072.
Based on 3,026 reports about Omega-3 and 928 about Vitamin C. Not medical advice.
| Omega-3 Supplement | Vitamin C Supplement | |
|---|---|---|
| Users say it helped | 69%helped968 reports · high confidence | 64%helped204 reports · high confidence |
| Verdict | Mostly positive | Mostly positive |
| Research | AResearch: Strong | AResearch: Strong |
| Meta-analyses / RCTs | 1,341 / 3,093 | 738 / 2,072 |
| Mainly used for | ||
| Mood % reporting improvement | 86% (289) | 88% (25) |
| Focus % reporting improvement | 85% (172) | 64% (14) |
| Pain & inflammation % reporting improvement | 93% (112) | 80% (15) |
| Heart & lipids % reporting improvement | 83% (108) | 75% (4) |
| Anxiety % reporting improvement | 74% (84) | 94% (17) |
| Common side effects | fish burps, stomach issues, vivid dreams, fishy burps | kidney stones, stomach issues, insomnia, bone pain |
| Typical dose reported | 500/250 mg / daily | 2000 mg / daily |
For glycated hemoglobin, there was no significant effect in the meta-analysis. This systematic review with meta-analysis demonstrated that supplementation with omega-3 has protective effects on diabetes parameters.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr, 2022 ↗“I do supplement a lot of fish oil and vitamin A as retinyl palmitate though. It has really helped my depression, anxiety and ADHD and has enabled me to stop using more serious psychiatric drugs for those things.”
The failure of vitamin C supplementation to reduce the incidence of colds in the general population indicates that routine vitamin C supplementation is not justified, yet vitamin C may be useful for people exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise. Regular supplementation trials have shown that vitamin C reduces the duration of colds, but this was not replicated in the few therapeutic trials that have been carried out. Nevertheless, given the consistent effect of vitamin C on the duration and severity of colds in the regular supplementation studies, and the low cost and safety, it m
Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 2013 ↗“I know people say you get enough vitamin C from diet but I feel and look better when I supplement it.”
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Percentages come from first-hand user reports and are not clinical outcomes. Talk to a doctor before starting, stopping or combining anything. How we rate