From Ergo Log
If you give women 3 g of fish oil daily in capsule form, the fat around their middle shrinks. Researchers at Inserm in France discovered this when they did a two-month-long experiment with thirty women who had diabetes-2.
Fatty acids derived from fish delay the growth of fat cells. If you take fish oil capsules – or eat fish often – while dieting, your weight loss will progress more quickly. Weight loss through exercise also goes faster if you increase the amount of fish oil you take. The effect occurs because fish fatty acids enhance fat burning in the muscles.
Many of the positive results obtained with fish fatty acids by other researchers were the result of high doses, however. The French researchers decided to see whether a more modest amount of supplement – around 3 g of fish oil per day – would have an effect. This amounts to three large capsules per day. In the experiment, the three capsules that the test subjects took provided a daily dose of 1.8 g of n 3-fatty acids. [1.1 g EPA en 0.7 g DHA.]
Half of the women were given fish oil capsules. The other half got a placebo. The effects of the pills are shown below. NS = not statistically significant. Where figures appear in the table the effect was significant.
The fish oil capsule users lost an average of one kilogram; the placebo group remained the same weight. The effect was not statistically significant. But the total fat mass of the fish-oil users decreased, and that effect was statistically significant.
The decrease in fat is especially noticeable in the trunk.
The researchers were particularly interested in sensitivity to insulin. That did not change, but taking fish oil supplements seems to reduce the risk of a heart attack. Taking a supplement halved the amount of the ‘heart attack protein’ PAI-1 in the blood. The higher the level of PAI-1 in your blood, the greater the chance of your having a heart attack. In the placebo group the concentration of PAI-1 increased from 16.9 to 19.2 IE per milliliter, whereas in the fish oil group the concentration decreased from 18.9 to 9.5 IE per milliliter.
The supplement reduced the activity of inflammatory genes in the women’s fat cells, the researchers discovered. According to the French, this molecular effect is the cause of the health effects that were observed.
Sources:
Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Dec;86(6):1670-9.
