Fatty fish, and omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, can lower blood pressure and triglyceride levels, known risk factors for heart disease. Less is known about how consumption of fish or fish oil might protect against heart failure, a condition in which the heart cannot adequately pump blood.
To find out, researchers led by Emily B. Levitan of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center followed more than 39,000 Swedish men to see if their fish or fish oil consumption would affect their rates of heart failure. After seven years, almost 600 of the men, who were 45-to-79 years old, developed heart failure.
The men who ate fatty fish – herring, mackerel, salmon, whitefish, and char – about once a week were 12 percent less likely to develop heart failure, a difference not considered statistically significant. But men who consumed about one-third of a gram per day of omega-3 fatty acids, from cod liver oil or other fish oils, were 33 percent less likely to develop heart failure, an association that was statistically significant.