Is fish oil useful or harmful for the heart?

Despite decades of research, the evidence in favor of omega-3 supplements is murky.

In 1970, two Danish researchers traveled to Greenland to study a nutritional paradox: Inuit living in the region consumed foods very high in fat, yet reportedly had a very low rate of heart attacks.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0 ">This observation went against the nutritional dogma of the time, which held that eating fatty foods—like whale and seal meat and fatty fish—would clog your arteries and cause heart disease.

Inuit in Greenland, a Danish territory, had lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels than people in Denmark, the researchers reported. The reason, they hypothesized, was that the Inuit diet was rich in omega-3 fatty acids, particularly EPA and DHA, which are concentrated in fish and the animals that eat them.

These findings sparked decades of scientific and commercial interest in the role that omega-3 fatty acids play in heart health, even after later studies suggested that in fact, Inuit had rates of heart disease similar to those seen in Europe, the United States. States and Canada. Today, omega-3 supplements are among the most popular in the United States, surpassed only by multivitamins and vitamin D. Among U.S. adults ages 60 and older, about 22% reported taking omega-3 supplements. 3 in a 2017-2018 survey.

Unlike most other supplements, fish oil has been rigorously studied, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. But the results of these studies have been mixed, leaving researchers and doctors wondering whether fish oil benefits heart health. They also found that taking fish oil is linked to a slightly higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heart rhythm.

Here are the Evidence of the benefits and risks of fish oil exists today.

A multitude of studies, but unclear benefits

After reading news reports from Greenland, researchers began looking at people elsewhere in the world and found, in study after study, those who ate fish at least once a week were less likely to die of coronary heart disease than those who rarely ate fish. In animal experiments, they found that fish oil helped keep electrical signaling in heart cells functioning properly, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. .

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