We’ve all heard that seafood should be part of a healthy diet. It provides lean protein and healthy fats that reduce your risk of heart disease, depression, joint pain and other problems. A new international meta-analysis has found that people who eat fish a few times each week are less likely to suffer a stroke than those who only eat a little or none at all.
The study, published in the journal Stroke, found the omega-3 fatty acids in fish may lower stroke risk through their positive effects on blood pressure and cholesterol. The analysis is based on 15 studies, which followed a total of 400,000 people ages 30 to 103. Each study asked participants how frequently they ate fish, then followed them for between 4 and 30 years to see who suffered a stroke.
The analysis found that eating three extra servings of fish each week led to a 6 percent drop in stroke risk. That translates to one fewer stroke among a hundred people eating extra fish over a lifetime.
While the research provides an interesting link, it does not prove that adding fish to your diet will keep you from having a stroke. People “could have healthier diets in other ways, people could exercise more, people could have better education that could lead them to see their doctors more,” Dariush Mozaffarian, a Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist whose research was included in the analysis, told Reuters this week. But it’s likely that people who start out eating no fish or very little probably have the most to gain by putting it on their plate more often, he said.
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