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MONDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) -- For older adults, fish oils help the heart by regulating its electrical activity, a new study indicates.
And just a couple of meals a week of the right kind of fish -- rich in omega-3 fatty acids, baked or boiled, but not fried -- will do the job, according to the report in the Aug. 1 Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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The finding "supports studies suggesting that fish intake reduces the risk of sudden death," said study lead author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and instructor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston.
It has long been known that eating fish such as tuna, mackerel, lake trout and salmon, which are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, is good for the heart. Mozaffarian and his colleagues set out to discover why.
They analyzed data from more than 5,000 men and women aged 65 and older in the federally funded Cardiovascular Heart Study. The participants were asked whether they ate fish, what kind, and how often. The researchers compared the answers to those dietary questions with electrocardiogram tests of the study participants.
What they found was that eating fish was associated with a lower heart rate, a slower interval between when the heart received a signal to pump blood and when blood was pumped, and a lower likelihood that the heart would take a long time to reset its electrical system after a beat.
That last effect is important, Mozaffarian said. "The heart resets its electrical activity after every beat," he said. "When there is heart disease, the resetting can be delayed. That is dangerous."
Animal studies have indicated why the omega-3 fatty oils confer their beneficial effect, Mozaffarian said. "The fish oils get into the membrane of heart cells and affect the function of their protein channels," he said. "Potassium, sodium and calcium pass through those channels, controlling the whole electrical cycle."
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