SUPPLEMENTS: A waste of time?
April 10, 2019 • 1 min read
Here’s news to put a dent in the multi-billion dollar omega 3 supplements business – claimed benefits of fish oil look, well, a bit fishy.
At least that’s the view of researchers who have conducted the biggest trial to date of Vitamin D and omega 3 fish oil supplements.
The Harvard trial, known as Vital, monitored 26,000 healthy 50-plus year-olds who dosed up on vitamin D, fish oil, or both. After five years they found pill-poppers experienced the same number of heart disease related events and cancers as the group taking a placebo each day.
Damn! But don’t bin your omega 3 just yet
Fish oil may still benefit people with heart disease, helping to reduce the 610,000 Americans who die of the disease each year.
Another large trial, called the REDUCE-IT study, involved 8,000 high-risk adults taking a fish oil called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), though in a much more concentrated form – equivalent to four-to-eight times the dose in the Vital trial.
The five-year trial found supplementation reduced serious cardiovascular events by as much as 25 per cent, with 20 per cent fewer deaths.
That’s good news for people with heart disease, but for the rest of us – stop wasting your money on fish oil supplements.