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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Health officials have long noted a lower risk of heart disease in Japanese people living in Japan. But why?
Investigators from the U.S. and Japan think they've found the answer: the high rate of fish consumption is keeping their arteries from clogging up.
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They arrived at that conclusion after studying omega-3 fatty acid levels in Japanese men living in Japan, white men living in the U.S., and Japanese men living in the U.S. Omega-3's are abundant in fish and fish oil, a staple of the Japanese diet. Japanese men living in Japan had twice the level of the heart-protecting fatty acids as white or Japanese men living in America.
The finding was independently linked to a lower risk of the artery clogging condition known as atherosclerosis. The results also held true despite similar blood levels of cholesterol, similar blood pressure readings, and similar rates of diabetes among all the men in the study -- and significantly higher rates of smoking among the Japanese men living in Japan.
"The death rate from coronary heart disease in Japan has always been puzzlingly low," study author Akira Sekikawa, M.D., Ph.D, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh and adjunct associate professor at Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan, was quoted as saying. "Our study suggests that the very low rates of coronary heart disease among Japanese living in Japan may be due to their lifelong high consumption of fish."
SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, published online July 28, 2008
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