Most
people, whether healthy or having cardiovascular disease (CVD), would
benefit from the regular consumption of oily fish, scientists have
concluded.
While eating whole fish undoubtedly offers the optimum approach for
increasing omega-3 intakes in both primary and secondary prevention,
delegates heard, supplements have a major role to play in increasing
omega-3 intakes for people who do not like fish.
The symposium “A fish a day keeps the doctor away” centred on the CVD
benefits of the long chain highly unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids
eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
found in the flesh of oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel, herring, trout and sardines.
In the round table debate speakers attempted to unravel the current
confusion where initial studies showed eating fish or taking omega 3
supplements delivered CVD benefits, but more recent studies with
supplements failed to reproduce these effects.
“Omega-3 fatty acids are really important to human health, whether
you’re talking about CVD, brain or immune health. Heath professionals
have a key role to play in educating the public about the beneficial
effects of including fish in their diets,” Philip Calder, a metabolic
biochemist and nutritionist from the University of Southampton, UK,
said.
The latest European Guidelines on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention
in Clinical Practice recommend that people should eat fish at least
twice a week, one meal of which should be oily fish.
For people opting for supplements, warned Calder, it is best to take
pharmaceutical grade preparations of omega-3 oils since not all over the
counter preparations contain the same dose of the fatty acids.
“It’s important that health professionals give clear guidance around
the need for patients to take 1g of omega-3 a day to achieve any
beneficial effects. With over the counter brands containing different
concentrations there’s a danger people may not be receiving sufficient
intakes,” Calder said.
Eating oily fish may prove more beneficial than taking capsules of omega-3.
“This is because fish contain all sorts of other nutrients like
vitamin D, selenium and iodine that may also be beneficial against CVD.
And we don’t have the final proof that the benefits from eating fish
come from the omega-3,” Daan Kromhout, from Wageningen University, The
Netherlands, said.
“Fish, it needs to be remembered, don’t provide a total panacea
against CVD. As well as consuming fish, people need to eat healthy
diets, not smoke and be physically active,” Kromhout said.
The first association between omega-3 consumption and incidence of
CVD was found in epidemiological studies in the late 1970s when Danish
investigators Bang and Dyerberg discovered the incidence of myocardial
infarction (MI) was ten times higher among the Danish population than
Greenland Inuits.
These findings were presented by speakers the EuroPRevent 2012 meeting in Dublin, Ireland.
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