HEALTH Fishy Diet Comes with Lower
Risk of Stroke By Alison McCook
to experience a stroke, a new study sug- gests.
W Specifically, fish-lovers in Sweden
were 16 percent less likely to experience a stroke over a 10-year-period, relative to women who ate fish less than once a week.
“Fish consumption in many countries,
including the U.S., is far too low, and in- creased fish consumption would likely result in substantial benefits in the popula- tion,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of the Harvard School of Public Health, who re- viewed the findings for Reuters Health. When choosing fish to eat, it’s best to
opt for fish that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, found most abundantly in fatty fish like salmon, mackerel and albacore tuna. “But any fish is better than none,” Mozaf- farian noted. Indeed, these fatty acids likely underlie
the benefits of fish on stroke risk, study author Dr. Susanna Larsson of the Karo- linska Institute in Stockholm told Reuters Health. “These fatty acids may reduce the risk of stroke by reducing blood pressure and blood (fat) concentrations.” This is not the first study to suggest
that people who eat more fish have a low- er risk of stroke, and experts already rec- ommend a fishy diet to reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems, Mozaffarian added. “This study supports current rec- ommendations.” Earlier this year, for instance, a study
showed that middle-aged and older men who eat fish every day are less likely than infrequent fish eaters to develop a suite of risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. In the current study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
52 PROFESSIONAL WOMAN’S MULTICULTURAL MAGAZINE
Larsson and her colleagues looked at 34,670 women 49 to 83 years old. All were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at the beginning of the study, in 1997.
During 10 years of follow-up, 1,680 of the women (4 percent) had a stroke. Stroke caused by blockage of an artery
that supplies blood to the brain -- also known as a “cerebral infarction” or “isch- emic stroke” -- was the most common event, representing 78 percent of all strokes in the study. Other types of strokes were due to bleeding in the brain, or un-
CELEBRATING 11 YEARS OF DIVERSITY
specified causes. Women who ate more than three serv-
ings of fish per week had a 16 percent lower risk of stroke than women who ate less than one serving a week. “Not a small effect,” Mozaffarian said in an e-mail, noting that it was roughly equivalent to the effect of statin drugs on stroke risk. Furthermore, the researchers asked wom- en about their diets only once, using a questionnaire, which might have caused errors that would underestimate the link between a fishy diet and stroke risk, he ex-
WWW.PROFESSIONALWOMANMAG.COM
omen who eat more than three serv- ings of fish per week are less likely
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