Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Diet part 1: Omega-3 questioned

Diet seems to be making news lately. So for the next few days, I'll link to some stories about diet and stroke prevention.

First one up - Omega-3 fatty acids don't reduce stroke:
"Our findings do not justify the use of omega-3 as a structured intervention in everyday clinical practice or guidelines supporting dietary omega-3," said Evangelos Rizos, chief author of the study.
After examining 20 studies comprising a total of 68,680 randomized patients, the researchers said there were 7,044 deaths, 3,993 cardiac deaths, 1,150 sudden deaths, 1,837 heart attacks, and 1,490 strokes.
An analysis of those figures indicated no "statistically significant" association with all-cause mortality, cardiac death, sudden death, heart attack, and stroke when all supplement studies were considered.
Click on the link above to read some of the past research related to omega-3 fatty acids. Time to stop taking the fish oil pills or similar? If a health professional told you to take it, check first.

(Image from National Institutes of Health)

1 comment:

Peter G Levine said...

Omega-3's may not reduce the risk of stroke. But almost every article I read Says that omega-3's can help reduce the effects of stroke after the fact. Great blog by the way.