You most certainly know someone taking fish oil pills – those fishy, translucent gold capsules – for their purported heart benefits. But evidence continues to mount that fish oil might be snake oil.
At the very least, it doesn’t pack nearly the punch we once thought. Instead, it’s probably just worth eating actual fish, which is loaded with plenty of healthy vitamins and minerals.
A new study found taking fish oil supplements ineffective in preventing the surgically-produced blood vessel access points used for dialyses treatments from failing. This sounds niche, but unlike other fish oil studies we’ve reported on, blood vessels are the exact wheelhouse scientists thought taking fish oil supplements would make a difference in. The research highlights a continuing trend: Despite their popularity, fish oil pills and their so-called omega-3 fatty acids don’t seem to be holding up to scrutiny.
“Based on the preponderance of evidence,” wrote Gregory Curfman, editor in chief of Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Health Letter for the Journal of the American Medical Association, “there is reason for scepticism that omega-3 fatty acid supplementation is effective” in preventing cardiovascular disease.
The latest study to reach that conclusion was simple. The researchers wanted to see if fish oil would prevent fistula failure – failure of holes surgically created to access blood vessels that are clogging up. Fistula failure is one of the main causes of death in dialysis patients, who need their blood routinely filtered to remove waste, the scientists wrote in their paper published in this month’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The team randomised 576 patients to receive either a placebo or fish oil for 12 weeks after receiving their fistula. Some patients also received aspirin, but it didn’t matter. There was little difference between the groups in the number of failing fistulae.
So, what the hell is going on in the $US1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) fish oil industry? Last year, we reported that fish oil has been accumulating negative results — only two of at least two dozen studies reported any benefit from fish oil supplements. Curfman explained that a pair of older trials from 10 and 20 years ago established fish oil’s cardiovascular benefits but didn’t include a placebo control. And the placebo effect, of seeing a benefit simply because the patient thinks there will be one, can be very powerful. Placebo-controlled trials since then have cast doubt on results of the first two studies.
I asked Alejandro Marangoni, lipid expert at the University of Guelph near Toronto, his thoughts on the matter. He was surprised by the results — he expected to see a positive effect of fish oil supplements — but pointed out one caveat. The oil in many of the fish oil pills could be oxidised, or spoiled. “If the health benefits are not there and on top of it all we are consuming a lot of rancid, oxidized oil, this could represent very negative health effects,” wrote Marangoni in an email to Gizmodo.
So, what’s next for you fish oil guzzlers? Scientists behind another clinical trial called VITAL, scheduled for completion in December 2017, are giving fish oil and vitamin D supplements to over 25,000 people in order to check whether the two, either separately or in tandem, reduce a person’s likelihood of developing cancer and other diseases. Until then, Curfman still recommended trying to eat fish at least two to three times a week, on top of the standard recommendations: Exercise, eating healthily and not smoking.
This article originally appeared on Gizmodo.
Comments
3 responses to “The Science Is In: Fish Oil Supplements Are Mostly Useless”
You know most supplements are useless
you should only take supplements if your doctor recommends so.
Also notice: placebo is helping people for real – so there is some benefit to taking ANY non-harmful pill they you PERCEIVE has an effect…
Interesting path this goes down because If I was suffering from something I would want every benefit – even placebo (but on the other hand we shouldn’t be condoning health-items that are lies)?
Body uses substance & assuming food / substance has substance is healthy is always a leap.
Digestion of some substances is proven to be ineffective delivery to the target location in the body that uses it. Sometime it doesn’t survive digestion, gets altered by the gut biome into toxic byproducts, doesnt pass into the blood stream from the stomach, or doesnt get to the target location, or genetics can be a factor in consumption (genetic vitamin deficiencies etc)
Supplements should be taken for diagnosed deficiencies only.
that being out of the way, you’re falling into the same trap that most people, in media, without knowledge do, over simplification.
The fact that this trial, says that fish oil does not prevent fistula failure, it says nothing regarding the other many conditions it reportedly helps with.
1 trial, 1 conclusion for 1 condition, does not mean it doesn’t work