OmegaMatters
OmegaMatters is an educational podcast hosted by Drs. Bill Harris and Kristina Harris that focuses on all things omegas. With the help of their guests, they will try and put some of the most important research studies into context. They will focus mainly on omega-3 fatty acids, but from time to time will explore other corners of the fatty acid world.
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OmegaMatters
35 Fish Oil - Going Behind the Headlines
EPISODE #35 - Going Behind the Headlines… Is Fish Oil Bad for Healthy Hearts?
Recording date: May 31, 2024
Broadcast date: June 1, 2024
Hosts: Drs. Bill Harris and Kristina Harris Jackson
Background and key takeaways:
For this special edition of OmegaMatters, Drs. Bill Harris and Kristina Harris Jackson review a recent BMJ paper that concluded fish oil was bad for healthy hearts. There are several points of contention in this paper that Dr. Bill Harris reviews in detail.
· Why a new BMJ paper is generating sensational headlines around fish oil and heart health
· How this new research has come to the — misleading — conclusion that fish is bad for healthy hearts but ok for this with existing heart issues
· Why “reporting” fish oil intake is not as important giving people fish oil and measuring its effects
· How the latest BMJ paper compares to a study published in BMJ in 2020 that examined fish oil use and heart health — in a nearly identical study population and came to a very different conclusion
· How the mainstream press took the only negative from the recent BMJ paper (fish slightly increases Afib risk in healthy people) and disregard the several positive findings
· How most mortality stats are positive for omega-3 use and should hold more weight than individual CVD outcomes
· Whether the data were extracted properly — there are extreme discrepancies in the data from the Chen et al. study vs. the Li et al. study
· Why the bigger picture of omega-3 supplement use on health writ large in the UK Biobank is strongly in favor of the use of omega-3
· Why examining circulating levels of omega-3 is a better determinant of health outcomes vs. just reporting omega-3 intake
· In the UK Biobank, higher omega-3 levels are associated with lower risk for several major mortality outcomes. None of this was ever mentioned by Chen.
Important papers discussed:
· Regular use of fish oil supplements and course of cardiovascular diseases: prospective cohort study
Omega-3 Blood Levels and Stroke Risk: A Pooled and Harmonized Analysis of 183 291 Participants From 29 Prospective Studies
To watch this episode, visit our YouTube channel.
To read the full transcript from this OmegaMatters episode, visit https://omegaquant.com/omegamatters-broadcasts/.
To learn more about omega-3 testing, visit: https://omegaquant.com/omega-3-index-complete/