Kathleen Doheny, "Fish Oil Fights Smog's Effect on Heart",
Forbes, May 26, 2005, Link: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/h-
ealth/feeds/hscout/2005/05/26/hscout525935.html

Daily supplements of fatty acid-rich fish oil may counteract
the effects of air pollution on the heart, researchers report.

"The cardiac responses to air pollutants were dramatically
reduced in those on fatty acids," said Dr. Fernando Holguin,
an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School
of Medicine. He presented the research this week at the
American Thoracic Society's annual meeting in San Diego.

Holguin's team tracked the cardiac health of 50 elderly
people, all nursing home residents averaging 70 years of age
and living in smog-plagued Mexico City.

Each resident received a one-gram oil capsule twice a day
(once in the morning and again in the evening) containing
omega-3 fatty acids. Half of the group received fish oil
capsules and the other half soy oil capsules.

The researchers took ongoing measurements of each
participant's cardiac function, focusing specifically on their
heart rate variability. Heart-rate variability refers to the
heart rate alterations from beat to beat.

"Exposure to the particles of air pollution reduces heart rate
variability, and taking the omega-3 fatty acids increased it,"
Holguin explained. "Increased heart rate variability reduces
heart disease risk."

The fish oil was much better at keeping heart rate healthy
than was the soy oil, the Emory team found. "Those on soy oil
had just marginal protection," Holguin said, while "those on
fish oil had a complete abolishment of the effect of the
[smog] particles on the heart."

Another expert, Dr. Zi-Jian Xu, a staff cardiologist at Santa
Monica-UCLA Medical Center and an assistant clinical professor
of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, said
he is not surprised by the results. "Fish oil has been found
to reduce cardiovascular events, mainly heart attack and
stroke," he said. "It has also been shown to modestly reduce
the risk of another heart attack. The theory is that omega-3
fatty acids can improve cardiovascular health."

The new finding is also consistent with previous
research, Xu added.

Holguin advises that people follow the advice of the American
Heart Association (AHA) with regards to their daily intake of
omega-3 fatty acids. The AHA currently recommends that
individuals with documented heart disease eat about one gram
of omega-3 fatty acids a day, preferably from fatty fish.
Beyond that, supplements could be considered "in consultation
with the physician," the AHA recommends.

Those without documented heart disease are advised by the AHA
to eat a variety of fish, preferably fatty species such as
salmon, mackerel and sardines, at least twice a week and to
include oils and foods rich in alpha-linolenic acid (flaxseed,
canola and soybean oils, flaxseed and walnuts) in the diet.

More information To learn more about outdoor air pollution,
visit the American Lung Association.

Once again, there is no basic control They way to do this
correctly would be to measure the AA content via skin
biopsies, then see what the effects are. Fish oil
counteractes arachidonic acid metabolization, which is how
this effect they demonstratte is produced. However, if a
person has little arachidonic acid in them to begin with,
they don't need the fish oil. Fish oil is very susceptible to
lipid peroxidation, in vivo or ex vivo, and studies of
Eskimos on such diets revealed very low life expectancies due
to the free radical damge these fatty acids do to human
bodies. Get some Asians who eat loads of coconut product and
use no high omega 6 fatty acid foods and put them in the
study and then we'll see for sure. Until then, the only
mechanism known that can produce this effect is how fish oil
blocks AA metabolization, but since AA is so dangerous, why
have it in your body in the first place? If you read the
entire scientific literature, you realize that AA cannot be
in a human body beyond trace amounts without doing serious
damage. Just today, sciencedaily.com had a report of higher
AA levels in depressed patients. You can do this epxeriment
on yourself: eat a huge amount of oily fish and stay away
from sources of large amounts of omega 6s, and see what
happens to your body. Guess what? It's already been done.

Biochemist Ray Peat noted: "An oil researcher spent 100 days
eating what he considered to be the Eskimo diet, seal blubber
and mackerel paste. He observed that his blood lipid peroxides
(measured as malondialdehyde, MDA) reached a level 50 times
higher than normal, and although MDA is teratogenic, he said
he wasn't worried about fathering deformed children, because
his sperm count had gone to zero." Original source: Sinclair,
H., Prog. Lipid Res. 25: 667-72, "History of EFA & their
prostanoids: some personal reminiscences."

If you want your MDA levels 50 times higher than normal, go
right ahead, but there is only scientific evidence (and plenty
of it) against this situation. MDA levels are used as markers
of cellular level damage. Do a pubmed.com search for MDA and
read through the studies to see for yourself. There are over
10,000 studies to choose from there.