By Kennedy Shelley
Many people have been taking a fish oil capsule every day to prevent a heart attack, but they are just not sure if it really helps.
Most just think it’s cheap insurance.
Some scientists have said it is just a waste of money, while others think it’s important for those who don’t eat cold water fish such as tuna or salmon.
Because it’s not clear if it helps, scientists keep studying this supplement.
New research shows there may be an unexpected benefit from fish oil, it may reduce inflammation in our bodies.
Inflammation really may be the biggest killer in the world.
While we look at heart attacks, strokes and Alzheimer’s as the causes of death, the reason we developed these conditions originally was inflammation in the cardiovascular system.
Part of this is because of metabolic syndrome (see this important article if you don’t know what it is), pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes which is running rampant throughout the world.
To see how important this really is, see this article in Freedom Health News.
In short, chronic inflammation is dangerous. But the body tries to protect itself from chronic inflammation by increasing specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) molecules in the white blood cells.
The body makes these through Omega 3 Fatty Acids, which are found in fish oil.
Researchers in England looked at people taking fish oil supplements and the number of SPMs they produced.
The results of their work were published in Circulation Research.
Their conclusion was rather definitive:
“Together, these findings demonstrate that supplementation with an enriched marine oil leads to an increase in peripheral blood SPM concentrations and reprograms peripheral blood cells, indicating a role for SPM in mediating the immune-directed actions of this supplement.”
It’s not often that there is a double-blind study to determine the effectiveness of a supplement, but finally, there was and this result makes you want to consider adding fish oil supplements to your regiment.
Inflammation, short term is not a bad thing. It is the body’s defense against damage. The problem is long term inflammation tends to wear us down and the body doesn’t repair itself or rest.
Long term or chronic inflammation is what leads to arthritis or damage to our arteries leading to kidney disease, stroke or heart attack.
The American Heart Association recognized the importance of this research and issued a press release saying:
“supercharge macrophages, specialized cells that destroy bacteria and eliminate dead cells,” as well as making ‘platelets less sticky, potentially reducing the formation of blood clots’.”
This research is important because most of us have way too much in the way of Omega 6 fatty acids from our diets and not enough Omega 3.
Again, a quality fish oil supplement may protect you in ways we didn’t know but strongly suspected for a long time.
While this is important research, the specific dosing in order to get the maximum effect is still not known.
And it should be noted that this study was done on relatively young participants and we can’t be sure that this will work for every age group.
And then there is the issue of the quality of the fish oil.
But it does certainly point to the fact that it is worth your time to keep looking at getting the best quality fish oil supplement until we get more specific information.
