Best bet for heart health - Updates - Brief Article

Taking fish oil may be the best nutritional step toward reducing your chance of heart disease. Fish oil contains special essential fatty oils known as omega-3 fatty acids--essential because the body cannot make them.

Although flaxseed and other foods contain one type of omega-3, alpha linoleic acid (ALA), fish oil furnishes two additional and very important omega-3s: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

Researchers at Baker Medical Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, studied the ability of omega-3s to prevent hardening of the arteries--a condition that leads to high blood pressure and heart attacks. During the seven-week course of the study, one group of patients took fish oil with omega-3s while the rest took a placebo.

The omega-3 group showed a significant increase--in just seven weeks--in artery softness, while the placebo patients showed absolutely no change. Results were published in the August 2002 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.