What’s wrong with Omega-3 pill?

The modern (lock-and-key) paradigm presupposes that every illness can be cured by a special medicine. If the usual treatment is not efficient – there are a lot of alternative types of curative substances like vitamins, minerals, extracts and other stuff. There are a lot of arguments why alternative medicine is better than conventional pills and probably some of them are true. However we are living (so far) in the world of evidence based medicine and the reality can be harsh:

"There is a common perception that fish oil supplements have been proven to prevent cardiovascular disease, and in fact the evidence has been inconsistent and inconclusive," said Dr. JoAnn Manson, head of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who co-wrote a commentary published with the study.

Researchers from Korea combined the results of 14 studies that tracked heart disease patients taking fish oil or a placebo -- without knowing which they were getting -- for between one and five years. That included reports from the United States and India, as well as Italy, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

The patients were mostly male and in their mid-60s, on average.

Those who were assigned to take the fish oil supplements were just as likely to have a range of heart-related emergencies, or to die, as study participants taking placebos containing vegetable oil or other substances not associated with heart health.

For example, in one study from the Netherlands, 14 percent of people in either treatment group had a stroke or heart attack or needed a stent implanted over about three and a half years.

There were also no differences in deaths or other heart and blood vessel problems when the researchers looked specifically at people taking higher or lower doses of fish oil, or among those who took the supplements for only a year or two or for longer, Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung of the National Cancer Center in Ilsan and colleagues reported this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

And very sober and right conclusion:

"There's no one magic pill," she told Reuters Health. "The real important thing is it's the whole lifestyle. It's the rest of the diet and it's also regular physical activity."