First off, I want to wish you the happiest of Valentine’s Days! I hope you are able to spend it with everyone who loves you and you love.
You may or may not know that February is National Heart Health Month.
As such I thought it would be a good time to remind you of the heart healthy benefits of Omega 3 fish oil.
It’s easy to lose track of the role of fish oil in your health because of all the push and pull in scientific publication. In case you haven’t noticed there is a war going on. The Big Pharma driven industry is trying desperately to control the public’s enthusiasm and consumption of fish oil as well as many other supplements.
There is an unending “good- no good” battle in the media. The funniest one most recently was “Once and for all Fish Oil is no good for your Heart!” What they were trying to say was that in a huge meta analysis there was only a 7% improvement in overall cardiac outcomes and this was not statistically significant. A day later a study was released that said exactly the opposite!
Of course, I have written to you for years about how worthless meta analysis really are because the end result is predicated on what data you put in, pick all negative studies and you get negative result. Most of the Big Pharma sponsored journals are the ones that doctors read. I come from that world and I can tell you true. Most doctors know nothing about the true biochemistry of Omega3’s and Omega 6’s. Like you, they read only headlines and maybe a part of the abstract and have already drawn their conclusion.
They are simply too busy to dig deeper.
This sets up the perfect storm to create a legion of true believers that spread the word for Big Pharma.
The problem is the battle is being lost and will continue to be lost until they do something out right nasty to our little supplement industry and clamp down in a fashion that everyone will recognize is an invasion of all of our rights.
So, far they have been smart enough to avoid that but don’t put it past them. They have all the money after all, and they mean to keep it.
In spite of that, fish oil sales continue to increase logarithmically and I would venture to say more and more doctors are using and telling their patients to use it.
They just don’t admit it in public LOL!
If you educate yourself and look at the question of fish oil and heart health as a whole I think you can draw your own conclusions. And I know what they will be.
In the meantime to quote the old 60’s mantra, “Make love not war!”
Think of your loved ones when you order your fish oil.
Happy Valentine’s Day,
Dr. Dave