Fish oil cuts heart attack risk, vitamin D lowers odds of cancer death, Latest Health News - The New Paper
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Fish oil cuts heart attack risk, vitamin D lowers odds of cancer death

A large US study to gauge the health benefits of vitamin D and fish oil supplements concluded that the omega-3 oil can dramatically reduce the odds of a heart attack while vitamin D's benefits seem to come from lowering the risk of death from cancer.

Neither vitamin D nor fish oil lowered the odds of stroke or of getting cancer in the first place in the trial, whose participants did not know whether they were taking the real supplements or a dummy pill.

The heart attack rate in fish oil recipients was 28 per cent lower than among those who got the dummy pill, or placebo.

For people taking vitamin D who developed cancer, the death rate from cancer was 25 per cent lower, possibly because the vitamin "may affect the biology of the tumour so it's less likely to spread and become metastatic", said lead author JoAnn Manson, chief of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Medicine in Massachusetts. - REUTERS

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