6 ms·

The title is a little misleading. Claims about fish oil and its potential decrease of cardiovascular events in high-risk populations is not supported by researc

by tghw 12y ago

The title is a little misleading. Claims about fish oil and its potential decrease of cardiovascular events in high-risk populations is not supported by research. The article does not address other potentially beneficial effects, such as decreased inflammation.

evo_9 12y ago
Or it's more profound, positive effects on mood. My wife takes fish-oil daily as a mood stabilizer. When she skips a day or two all hell breaks lose in our house. Hell I take a smaller dose myself and it's amazing how much better I am at keeping my mood in check; I've never had much trouble but I have always gotten little edgy when hungry. That doesn't happen anymore.
- r00fus 12y ago
  I wonder if the mood stabilization effect has anything to do with blood sugar levels?
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  >My wife takes fish-oil daily as a mood stabilizer. This is why I take it as well. Its incredible how well it works. I hate to engage in conspiratorial thinking, but some of these overly critical analysis really seem to be coming from a big pharma "tell them the shit doesn't work" perspective. In a country with for-profit medicine, non-patented or low-profit treatments often get demonized. Especially by "useful idiots" who follow this ultra skeptical mindset where only what they hear from an authority like the government or academia, has any real value. They refuse to believe these institutions can have institutional fraud, incompetence, groupthink, or unfair motivators to getting published. As someone who works in a healthcare related field, its pretty obvious that industry controls the narrative, at least to me. Or can be gamed by private industry and other benefactors who have a bias or agenda.
  - WalterSear 12y ago
    And I've taken it daily, in sufficient quantities, for several months at a time, without noticing any difference at all.
    - moveroovee 12y ago
      Did you consider quality as well as quantity?
      - WalterSear 12y ago
        Yes, I compared brands and didn't buy cheap stuff.
  - lanaius 12y ago
    Dietary supplements are, if anything, not low profit.
    - scott_s 12y ago
      Indeed. To close the loop, for those who don't see it: the companies that make "dietary supplements" have all the same incentives that Big Pharma does.
- cjensen 12y ago
  It is nearly impossible to be objective about your own brain. If you suspect X makes you happier, then it probably will. After it works once, you will probably believe X makes you happier, and if definitely will. In other words, even if fish-oil does work as a mood stabilizer, there would be no way for you, as a consumer of fish oil, to be even slightly certain it works.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    I used to play a trick on myself where I'd hold a particular hand position and meditate on a state of mind, one intended to clear my mind and get centered, the other to get me amped up to go do some work. (I worked in construction at the time) It worked amazingly well, and I spent several weeks / months feeling no other emotions. I'd feel the state slipping, and just hold the hand position and the state would come back. Only reason I stopped was that the emotional monotony got old after awhile. I have no trouble believing that fish oil as a mood stabilizer can work fantastically, and yet have no physiological effect whatsoever.
  - narrator 12y ago
    >It is nearly impossible to be objective about your own brain. People can't trust their own perceptions? Isn't that what gaslighting is about? Why do we accept eye-witness testimony in court cases if people should not trust their own perceptions? If a person saw another person strike another person, should we trust their testimony? No! We should have a double-blind placebo controlled experiment where we go back in time and have a large sample size of identical people watching the same person getting struck and not struck in alternate universes and ask them if the person was struck to determine if their perceptions can be trusted.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      Eye-witness testimony is mostly bunk and is often not trusted in court. It's been shown over and over that eye-witnesses can be manipulated (even without their knowledge) and are not reliable. No, you can't trust your own perceptions. You can only really trust that you are having a perception at this moment in time.
- sedachv 12y ago
  > When she skips a day or two all hell breaks lose in our house. Only a "day or two?" Sounds like the placebo effect. Try swapping her fish oil capsules for something else and see if there is any difference.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ggchappell 12y ago
> The article does not address other potentially beneficial effects, such as decreased inflammation. I'm wondering about that. Particularly given the increasing interest in the anti-inflammatory properties of statins & whatnot, an effective, easily obtained anti-inflammatory supplement should be very much worth looking at. The article does not say any thing about how well tested the claimed anti-inflammatory effects of fish oil supplements are. Does anyone know?
Zancarius 12y ago
The article does mention reduced inflammation, albeit somewhat indirectly (referring to the omega-3s in fish oil). Otherwise, it's rather dismissive. That seems to be a side effect of headline fads along the lines of "studies show X is bad/has no benefit" or "studies show X is good for you!" The best answer, of course, is "we need more data." However, I did find this gem buried quite a ways down toward the end of the article: > Dr. JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the large clinical trials of fish oil focused only on people who already had heart disease or were at very high risk. If that's true, then it appears TFA is looking at it from the wrong angle. In other words, fish oils may have no effect on someone who's already suffered from a heart attack (or is at high risk), but someone who is aiming to use it as a preventative treatment might reduce their risk. Should this be the case, studying at risk populations who may have already had heart problems might not be the best starting point. It's a bit like fretting over a nutritious diet and plenty of fluids being of little use for someone who already has the flu, regardless of how poor their diet was prior. On the other hand, jimrandomh [1] near the top of these comments links to the study and warns there may be something more at work here. This is in the thread where magic5227 points out a comment on the NYT article that the statistical work in the study raises some considerable questions because it may have established too high a burden of proof. jimrandomh's comment suggests otherwise. So, who knows. It's worth reading through that thread as well. Personally, I think the truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes. It's apparently clear the Inuit's diet has influence on their cardiac health, but is it really just the omega-3s and not the wider range of benefits from eating fish? Or is it possibly tied to a lifetime of omega-3 intake rather than starting supplementation on a whim or only after serious health problems? If that's the case, shouldn't long-term supplementation (on the order of decades) be a focus of study instead? (Note: I have never followed fish oil studies, nor do I take it, so perhaps someone will be kind enough to link to such a study.) Anyway, I'm no nutritionist, and I'm kind of an idiot, but it seems to me that it's the long-term dietary (or supplementation) choices we make that are most the important, hence why I am increasingly more inclined to approach studies examining short-term effects (or lack of) with caution.

by tghw 12y ago

evo_9 12y ago

Or it's more profound, positive effects on mood. My wife takes fish-oil daily as a mood stabilizer. When she skips a day or two all hell breaks lose in our house. Hell I take a smaller dose myself and it's amazing how much better I am at keeping my mood in check; I've never had much trouble but I have always gotten little edgy when hungry. That doesn't happen anymore.

r00fus 12y ago
I wonder if the mood stabilization effect has anything to do with blood sugar levels?
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
>My wife takes fish-oil daily as a mood stabilizer. This is why I take it as well. Its incredible how well it works. I hate to engage in conspiratorial thinking, but some of these overly critical analysis really seem to be coming from a big pharma "tell them the shit doesn't work" perspective. In a country with for-profit medicine, non-patented or low-profit treatments often get demonized. Especially by "useful idiots" who follow this ultra skeptical mindset where only what they hear from an authority like the government or academia, has any real value. They refuse to believe these institutions can have institutional fraud, incompetence, groupthink, or unfair motivators to getting published. As someone who works in a healthcare related field, its pretty obvious that industry controls the narrative, at least to me. Or can be gamed by private industry and other benefactors who have a bias or agenda.
- WalterSear 12y ago
  And I've taken it daily, in sufficient quantities, for several months at a time, without noticing any difference at all.
  - moveroovee 12y ago
    Did you consider quality as well as quantity?
    - WalterSear 12y ago
      Yes, I compared brands and didn't buy cheap stuff.
- lanaius 12y ago
  Dietary supplements are, if anything, not low profit.
  - scott_s 12y ago
    Indeed. To close the loop, for those who don't see it: the companies that make "dietary supplements" have all the same incentives that Big Pharma does.
cjensen 12y ago
It is nearly impossible to be objective about your own brain. If you suspect X makes you happier, then it probably will. After it works once, you will probably believe X makes you happier, and if definitely will. In other words, even if fish-oil does work as a mood stabilizer, there would be no way for you, as a consumer of fish oil, to be even slightly certain it works.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  I used to play a trick on myself where I'd hold a particular hand position and meditate on a state of mind, one intended to clear my mind and get centered, the other to get me amped up to go do some work. (I worked in construction at the time) It worked amazingly well, and I spent several weeks / months feeling no other emotions. I'd feel the state slipping, and just hold the hand position and the state would come back. Only reason I stopped was that the emotional monotony got old after awhile. I have no trouble believing that fish oil as a mood stabilizer can work fantastically, and yet have no physiological effect whatsoever.
- narrator 12y ago
  >It is nearly impossible to be objective about your own brain. People can't trust their own perceptions? Isn't that what gaslighting is about? Why do we accept eye-witness testimony in court cases if people should not trust their own perceptions? If a person saw another person strike another person, should we trust their testimony? No! We should have a double-blind placebo controlled experiment where we go back in time and have a large sample size of identical people watching the same person getting struck and not struck in alternate universes and ask them if the person was struck to determine if their perceptions can be trusted.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    Eye-witness testimony is mostly bunk and is often not trusted in court. It's been shown over and over that eye-witnesses can be manipulated (even without their knowledge) and are not reliable. No, you can't trust your own perceptions. You can only really trust that you are having a perception at this moment in time.
sedachv 12y ago
> When she skips a day or two all hell breaks lose in our house. Only a "day or two?" Sounds like the placebo effect. Try swapping her fish oil capsules for something else and see if there is any difference.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ggchappell 12y ago

> The article does not address other potentially beneficial effects, such as decreased inflammation. I'm wondering about that. Particularly given the increasing interest in the anti-inflammatory properties of statins & whatnot, an effective, easily obtained anti-inflammatory supplement should be very much worth looking at. The article does not say any thing about how well tested the claimed anti-inflammatory effects of fish oil supplements are. Does anyone know?

Zancarius 12y ago

The article does mention reduced inflammation, albeit somewhat indirectly (referring to the omega-3s in fish oil). Otherwise, it's rather dismissive. That seems to be a side effect of headline fads along the lines of "studies show X is bad/has no benefit" or "studies show X is good for you!" The best answer, of course, is "we need more data." However, I did find this gem buried quite a ways down toward the end of the article: > Dr. JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the large clinical trials of fish oil focused only on people who already had heart disease or were at very high risk. If that's true, then it appears TFA is looking at it from the wrong angle. In other words, fish oils may have no effect on someone who's already suffered from a heart attack (or is at high risk), but someone who is aiming to use it as a preventative treatment might reduce their risk. Should this be the case, studying at risk populations who may have already had heart problems might not be the best starting point. It's a bit like fretting over a nutritious diet and plenty of fluids being of little use for someone who already has the flu, regardless of how poor their diet was prior. On the other hand, jimrandomh [1] near the top of these comments links to the study and warns there may be something more at work here. This is in the thread where magic5227 points out a comment on the NYT article that the statistical work in the study raises some considerable questions because it may have established too high a burden of proof. jimrandomh's comment suggests otherwise. So, who knows. It's worth reading through that thread as well. Personally, I think the truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes. It's apparently clear the Inuit's diet has influence on their cardiac health, but is it really just the omega-3s and not the wider range of benefits from eating fish? Or is it possibly tied to a lifetime of omega-3 intake rather than starting supplementation on a whim or only after serious health problems? If that's the case, shouldn't long-term supplementation (on the order of decades) be a focus of study instead? (Note: I have never followed fish oil studies, nor do I take it, so perhaps someone will be kind enough to link to such a study.) Anyway, I'm no nutritionist, and I'm kind of an idiot, but it seems to me that it's the long-term dietary (or supplementation) choices we make that are most the important, hence why I am increasingly more inclined to approach studies examining short-term effects (or lack of) with caution.