According to the American Heart Association,
“Angina is chest pain or discomfort caused when your heart muscle doesn’t get enough oxygen-rich blood. It may feel like pressure or squeezing in your chest. The discomfort also can occur in your shoulders, arms, neck, jaw, or back. Angina pain may even feel like indigestion.
But, angina is not a disease. It is a symptom of an underlying heart problem, usually “coronary heart disease (CHD).”
Here is what the American Heart Association recently provided as to prevalence of Angina:
People who have angina frequently end up having heart attacks. And they have to be constantly worried about the heart.
People with heart issues are advised to consume more fish oil, but is this correct?
In this study, men who were consuming fish oil which had angina were compared with men consuming more fruit, or with “control” men who weren’t given anything special:
They began this study in 1990 and continued it until 1996. They recruited 3114 men.
What they found should shock doctors who are still recommending fish oil
“Risk of cardiac death was higher among subjects advised to take oily fish than among those not so advised”
25% more men died who were taking fish oil capsules. And 50% more men had sudden death from heart attack, than the “control” group of men who were NOT taking fish oil capsules.
This is a striking increase in heart attacks and death from fish oil
The study says bluntly:
Men advised to eat oily fish, and particularly those supplied with fish oil capsules, had a higher risk of cardiac death.
This is one of a number of studies showing the harm of fish oil.
There are other studies that show fish oil is wonderful. However, those studies do not typically extend beyond very short-term, as this study did.
The study authors are heavily biased to favoring fish oil, so we attempted to explain their result.
The higher incidence of cardiac and sudden death associated with fish advice was wholly unexpected.
But they couldn’t easily explain this away.
But their summary of the situation is interesting.
And this calls into question ALL the dietary advice about heart health
“There have been other trials of diet and lifestyle factors that have produced paradoxical results.
“In the Sydney Diet–Heart Study…despite good dietary compliance, the intervention group had a significantly higher mortality than the control group.
“A higher net mortality rate (14% difference) occurred in the intervention group of the UK component of the WHO Collaborative Trial of Multifactorial Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease, which used advice on diet, smoking, overweight, blood pressure and exercise (World Health Organization European Collaborative Group, 1983).
“In a randomized trial among middle-aged men in Finland the intervention consisted of diet, lipid-lowering drugs, and antihypertensive treatment; these measures were successful regarding the risk factors, yet the intervention group had a significantly higher mortality from cardiac disease, and from all causes (Strandberg et al, 1991).”
Let’s summarize: dietary interventions that the authorities recommend CAUSE higher mortality
The fish oil craze is just the latest fad.
There are a lot of other studies showing that it has no benefit, or that it hurts people, and, of course, are many studies showing how wonderful it is.
But the studies showing how wonderful it tends to be very short-term studies.
And they don’t actually measure the most important thing, which is all-cause mortality.
They don’t measure how many people survived better as a result of consuming fish oil, and then people who don’t consume fish oil.
It turns out, that people who are consuming fish oil do not necessarily live as long or as healthy as people who don’t.
Citations
Angina (Chest Pain)
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HeartAttack/SymptomsDiagnosisofHeartAttack/Angina-Chest-Pain_UCM_450308_Article.jsp
Lack of benefit of dietary advice to men with angina: results of a controlled trial
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2/full/1601539a.html#close
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