Best Fats: Omega-3s - July 2002

Unlike polyunsaturated vegetable oils, polyunsaturated fish oils have always had a stellar reputation; three new studies have demonstrated why.

“Three new studies showed that the omega-3 fats in fish oil protected people from sudden death,” says Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health, who co-authored two of them. (In “sudden cardiac death,” which causes half of all heart disease deaths, the heartbeat goes awry and then stops. Most victims have clogged coronary arteries.)

The first study showed that healthy men who had more omega-3 fats in their blood were less likely to die of sudden death over the next 17 years than healthy men with lower blood levels of omega-3s.

Study two showed that healthy women who reported eating fish at least five times a week had a 45 percent lower risk of dying of heart disease over the next 16 years than healthy women who ate fish less than once a month.

The third study showed that men who survived a heart attack and were randomly assigned to take fish oil supplements (1 gram, or 1,000 mg, a day) were 53 percent less likely to die of sudden death than survivors who were given a placebo.

The last study is the most powerful because it’s a clinical trial, says Stampfer. ”Add that to earlier studies on humans, animals, and cell cultures and we can now say that fish oils prevent arrythmias and sudden death.”