Item #10
Eating
Fish Just Once a Month Cuts Stroke by 40 Percent
Even
eating McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish has impact.
Men
who eat seafood as seldom as once a month may cut their risk of the
most common kind of stroke by more than 40 percent, a new study by the
Harvard School of Public Health has found.
Many
studies over the last two decades have found that eating fish reduces
the risk of stroke and heart attack. What is surprising about this one
is that it shows how little fish — one to three meals a month of
virtually any fish or shellfish, like salmon sushi, tuna on rye,
broiled lobster or McDonald's Filet-O-Fish — appears to produce the
maximum benefit.
"Previous
studies found that you had to eat fish once or twice a week,"
said Dr. Ka He, the Harvard nutritionist who led the study, which was
released last week by The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"And they found a linear association — the more fish you ate,
the more benefit you got. But in our study, we found a threshold.
Further fish did not provide further benefit."
A
Harvard study of strokes among 80,000 female nurses followed for 14
years reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association in
January found that women who ate fish five or more times a week had a
52 percent lower risk of stroke than women who ate fish less than once
a month. But it found that the relative benefit dropped to only 22
percent for those who ate fish once a week and 7 percent for those who
ate fish once a month.
Dr.
He agreed that the protocols of the two studies were roughly the same,
and he said he could not explain why his study found a threshold
level, while the other study found a progressive benefit.
Dr.
He's study also deepened a mystery that has stymied nutritionists: it
was believed for years that fish wards off heart disease and stroke
because it is rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and sales
of fish oil capsules soared on this assumption. But this study, like
other recent ones, found no definitive connection: fish with larger
amounts of omega-3 fatty acids did not confer larger protection
against stroke.
"Everybody
continues to bark up the wrong tree," said Dr. Martha L.
Daviglus, a preventive-medicine specialist at Northwestern University
Medical School in Chicago, who led a 1997 study of fish and stroke
risk in 1,800 employees of a Chicago electric company. "Everyone
wonders: is it some other component of fish, some combination, or
what?"
Dr.
Daviglus did agree with the general conclusion Dr. He's study reached:
something in fish is good for the arteries and everyone should eat at
least some fish each month.
Although
the study did not reach conclusions about species or cooking methods,
both she and Dr. He were quick to say that they thought it would be
medically irresponsible to suggest that anyone eat only deep-fat-fried
fish, like that found in fish sticks and fast-food restaurants.
The
fried breading is full of salt and transfatty acids, which have been
associated with heart disease, Dr. He said.
Although
fatty, dark-fleshed fish are the richest in fish oils, Dr. He's study
found that even men who ate light-fleshed shrimp two or three times a
month had fewer strokes.
His
study used data found in the Health Professional Follow-Up Study,
which includes 51,529 doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other health
workers who joined in 1986, when they were ages 40 to 75. Every four
years, they filled out detailed questionnaires about their habits,
including fish consumption.
The
questionnaires ask how often the men ate fish and whether it was one
of four groups: canned tuna; dark-meat fish like mackerel, salmon or
sardines; other fish, like flounder, cod and hake; or lobster, shrimp
or scallops as a main course.
Dr.
He's group, which began its study two years ago, screened out all men
who in 1986 had histories of stroke or heart disease, diabetes or
obesity, leaving a pool of 43,671 men whose histories Dr. He analyzed
for a 12-year period. Over the years 1986 to 1998, 609 had strokes.
Ischemic strokes — those caused by clogged cerebral arteries, which
account for 80 percent of all strokes — seemed to be reduced by
eating fish.
Rates
of hemorrhagic strokes — those caused by burst blood vessels —
were not affected.
Dr.
He adjusted his figures for factors like smoking, age, aspirin use,
lack of exercise, high cholesterol and use of high blood pressure
medicine, and concluded that men who ate one to three meals of fish a
month had a 43 percent lower relative risk of ischemic stroke than men
who ate fish less than once a month or never. Men who ate fish five or
more times a week did not fare significantly better; their relative
risk was 46 percent better.
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