Which Is Better: Fish Oil or a Defibrillator?

September 4, 2006

You probably don't have a defibrillator in your house, nor one

inside your chest either that would shock your heart back to life if

it went into irregular heartbeats and sudden cardiac arrest.

But don't worry. That bottle of fish oil on your table is more apt

to prevent sudden cardiac death, says a new study by cardiologist

Thomas Kottke, at the Heart Center , Regions Hospital in St. Paul,

Minnesota .

Dr. Kottke and colleagues used a computer model to show that raising

body levels of omega-3 fatty acids would save 8 times more lives

than having access to an external defibrillator and about twice as

many lives as having a defibrillator implanted.

Remarkably, many of the lives saved in the computer-simulated

community of 100,000 people, came from raising omega-3 fish oil

levels in healthy people without symptoms of heart disease. Sudden

cardiac arrest kills around 300,000 Americans a year, many of whom

have no previous warning signs. Death is the first and last

symptom.

However, a heart attack or other cardiac event can boost

susceptibility to sudden cardiac death and such patients also would

be saved by fish oil, the researchers concluded.

And fish oil is less expensive. The researchers figured that taking

fish oil supplements to raise omega-3 levels in a population similar

to that used by the computer would cost only $5.8 million a year

compared with $201 million to equip every household with an

automated external defibrillator.

Fish oil helps stabilize the electrical activity of the heart,

restoring normal heartbeats if potentially fatal arrhythmias

develop. A recent Australian study in heart patients suggests that

taking 850 mg of omega-3's DHA and EPA daily for a month can cut

risk of sudden cardiac death by 71%.

Bottom Line: Since a defibrillator may not be available at the last

minute to save your life, taking fish oil or eating fish so you

don't need one is a far better bet for staying alive.

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