Outside Magazine Cries “Snake Oil” on Omega 3s – Huh?

Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fish oil supplements every year, but studies have never been able to prove their effectiveness.”

I would not recommend seeking health advice from Outside. Sorry, guys.

What the author misses here is that intervention trials for preventive medicine are essentially impossible. We can’t get 1,000 humans to eat Purina Human Chow and live in a controlled environment for decades. Our long lifespan and “confounding variables” make this kind of trial unrealistic.

Further, there’s not enough money in supplements to have drug-like evidence. Try to find such evidence for any food, for example intervention trials that prove orange juice is good for you.

In nearly 100 years of regulation by the FDA, the only over-the-counter drugs approved for the prevention of any disease are fluoride toothpaste, sunscreen, aspirin for blood thinning, and anti-ulcer drugs for preventing indigestion.

Now take a look at the link below. Omega 3 proves more effective than aspirin as an anti-inflammatory. Heart disease, cancer, arthritis, liver disease and many other conditions are now known to be related to whole-body inflammation. The research cited below tested specifically for inflammatory compounds (cytokines) in the blood.

“Aspirin alone had no effect on any factor versus baseline, but EPA+DHA, with and without aspirin, significantly reduced concentrations of 8 of 9 factors. Although EPA+DHA plus aspirin reduced concentrations of a subset of the factors compared to baseline, neither aspirin alone nor the combination significantly reduced the level of any analyte more robustly than EPA+DHA alone.”