Air pollution is a silent killer, contributing the deaths of around 2 million people worldwide every year. Environmental laws and regulations are designed to keep air pollution within healthy levels but from the continuing high death toll it is clear not every business or organisation is following those rules.
As it’s impossible for us as individuals to keep the air around us clean, we need to find some measures that minimise the risk to our health of being in an unhealthy environment. One such measure could well be fish oil.
Long lauded as a superb dietary supplement because of its ability to burn off fat and improve muscle mass, fish oil has now been identified for its potential to offer protection against air pollution. A team from the University of North Carolina carried out research into the effect of fish oil supplements on the cardiac responses of healthy adults when they are exposed to air pollution.
In the first controlled study of its kind into this effect of fish oil, the four-week study involved 29 adults aged 50 to 72 taking either 3g of olive oil or fish oil before then being exposed to breathing in two hours of polluted air. Their cardiac responses were measured for heart rate variability and lipid levels. The results showed that the participants who took the fish oil showed fewer negative symptoms compared with the other group.
The team concluded that fish oil does indeed offer extra protection against the cardiac effects that exposure to air pollution can bring. Their findings could have significant positive implications for those who live in the world’s most polluted regions where bad air quality is a sad fact of life.
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