Fish Oil: Omega 3 Fish Oil Better than Statins

Did you know omega 3 fish oil is better for preventing cardiovascular disease than Liptor, Crestor and other statin drugs?

That’s the conclusion of a recent review of the most reliable scientific studies on fish oil and statin drugs and heart disease published in the highly respected Archives of Internal Medicine (Vol. 165: 725-730).

Omega 3 fish oil was found to be 45% more effective at reducing cardiovascular death and 76% more effective at reducing overall mortality than statin drugs.

That’s an amazing difference. Still statin drugs, such as Lipitor and Crestor, are being prescribed for millions of people in the U.S. to lower cholesterol and reduce risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). As a matter of fact, the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) recently recommended even more people take statin drugs to lower cholesterol.

But, like all drugs, stains have serious side effects and dangerous drug interactions. The most common side effects linked to statin drugs are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, rash, muscle weakness and pain. In rare examples, statins are even connected to kidney failure and death.
So why do you suppose, if fish oil is more effective, the NCEP is recommending even more people take statins? Good question, right?

Do you think there might be a conflict of interest for the NCEP committee members?

That’s the question raised by a group of over thirty doctors, epidemiologists and scientists from Harvard, Stanford, UCLA and other prestigious universities and research centers, along with the Integrity in Science Project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

In a vigorous protest urging an independent review of the scientific studies behind the NCEP recommendation, the dissenters pointed out that 8 of the 9 NCEP committee members had financial ties to the companies that manufacture statin drugs and that none of these ties were disclosed when the recommendations were published.

As Merrill Goozner of the CSPI Integrity in Science project declared, “When researchers have financial relationships with drug companies that raises red flags. When those relationships are concealed, alarm bells start going off.”

The protesting scientists also claimed the NCEP studies were misinterpreted and totally ignored significant data.

The NCEP studies, for example, showed statins had no significant benefit for women and older men without heart disease or for diabetics. Yet, these were several of the groups for which the NCEP recommended statins. And one of the studies the NCEP cited actually showed statins significantly increased the risk of cancer in the elderly.

Think about it! High cholesterol and hardening of the arteries are not caused by a deficiency of statins. They’re caused by bad lifestyle choices, such as smoking, lack of exercise and a poor diet.

And here’s the good news! Fish oil does a better job of reducing LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and arterial inflammation than statin drugs and it does it better naturally without any serious side effects.

That’s why the American Heart Association and the U.S. National Institutes of Health both recommend everyone eat salmon, sardines or other fatty fish at least two or three times a week.

They also recommend everyone with a higher risk of heart disease also take daily fish oil supplements containing a combined one gram of omega 3 fatty acids.

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