Sunni Mauritians

Author: Jean Carper

Fish oil can curb heart disease in many ways. In fact, it is almost a sure cure - better than any known drug - for high tryglycerides, a type of blood fat that can be dangerous to arteries, especially when coupled with low good-type HDL cholesterol. In fact, fish oil is probably the safest and best "drug" around for reducing triglycerides, according to a new analysis of the data by William Harris, Ph.D., director of the Lipoprotein Research Laboratory, Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke's Hospital, in Kansas City. Dr. Harris reviewed seventy-two well-controlled human studies and found that fish oil supplements reduced abnormally high triglycerides an average of 28 percent in patients.

Amazing New Heart Discoveries

If you have heart disease and are at high risk of cardiac arrhythmias - irregular heartbeats - that can trigger sudden death, you should be sure to get sufficient fish oil. New research suggests that fish oil can help keep heart rhythms from going berserk.

Although researchers have known for years that eating fatty fish helps prevent heart disease, and notably death from heart disease, it was thought that fish oil acted mostly by protecting the arteries against plaque buildup and by thinning the blood. Now researchers suspect that the most profound benefits from fish oil come from directly protecting the heart against electrical malfunction leading to sudden death.
 
Only in the last decade have scientists begun to understand how the fat content of cells can foster illness and how infusing cells with the right fat can correct the fatty imbalance, making dysfunctional cells behave properly and disease symptoms subside. Among other things, the omega-3 fatty acids in fish temper our cells' angry inflammatory attacks on other cells, keep cell membranes pliable enough to slip easily through blood vessels, rev up antioxidant defenses, and modulate the passage of electro-chemical messages through brain and heart cells.

True, omega-3 fish oil defies the definition of conventional drugs because it does not conform to the pharmaceutical mind-set that one agent treats only a single specific symptom or disorder. Fish oil's therapeutic powers are so broad they might seem preposterous were they not so scientifically grounded. Leading scientists throughout the world acknowledge that fish oil is a therapeutic wizard, full of surprises.