Fish Oil: Can Fish Oil Help Childhood Asthma?
Posted by Michael Byrd on Apr 23 2007 | Tagged as: Fish Oil
Childhood asthma has more than doubled in the last 25 years. It now affects over 9 million children and is responsible for nearly 13 million missed school days and hundreds of thousands of emergency hospital visits.
But there’s hope for all these children.
A University of Sydney research team recently discovered that eating salmon and other fatty fish, such as sardines, a couple of times a week can reduce the risk of childhood asthma by as much as four times. (Medical Journal of Australia, Vol. 164: 137-40)
Asthma triggers vary from one child to another. Some children are allergic to such foods as eggs, wheat, milk, soy and nuts. Others are affected by airborne dust mites, mold and pollen. Tobacco smoke, exercise and certain weather conditions are also common triggers.
But they cause an increase in inflammation that brings on the coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath associated with asthma.
So how can fish oil help children with asthma? The answer is easy!
Omega 3 fish oil fatty acids DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) are simply nature’s most potent and safest anti-inflammatory agents.
Fish oil has been found in thousands of studies over the last thirty years to be highly effective at relieving the inflammation of arthritis, bursitis, colitis and migraines, as well such respiratory conditions as emphysema, cystic fibrosis and asthma.
Another research team from the University of Montana, for example, recently completed and published a report that showed supplementing children’s diets with fish oil DHA and EPA significantly reduced the severity of asthma symptoms in over 40% of their patients. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 65: 1011-17)
These are pretty amazing results when you think about it. And all your child has to do to get asthma relief without medication is to eat salmon or sardines two or three times a week or take a good quality fish oil supplement.
That’s pretty easy, don’t you think?
