Another article on fish oil was recently published saying that fish oil causes prostate cancer!
Many news outlets including Fox News, Health News, Nursing Times and CNN picked this study up and immediately warned people about a prostate cancer risk from taking fish oil.
Unfortunately, this was misrepresentation by the news media (once again). In point of fact, in the study no fish oil supplements, or any kind of supplement for that matter were were even given! What the study did was look at blood levels of long chain fatty acids such as those found in fish, in otherwise healthy people.
What the study did find was that there was an association between higher blood levels of DHA levels and prostate cancer. DHA is one component of fish oil. Again this was an associational study and certainly does not prove cause-and-effect. All the hysteria was just the news media wanting attention.
The lead scientist in the study Dr. Alan Krystal, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle is quoted as saying “We’ve shown once again that use of nutritional supplements may be harmful”. How can he say that when fish oils were not even used in this study? One can only impute that he was using this as a way to criticize the use of supplements, which in my opinion is just reflective of a strong anti-supplement bias as well as a desire for shocking headlines by the author. There were NO supplements used in this study!
What to do?
As you can tell from the previous article, that shows no benefit for protecting against heart disease by taking fish oil, I’m not a big advocate of everybody continuing to take fish oil.
However I’ve gotten so many emails about this “Fish oil–Prostate Cancer” link, that I feel it only fair that I give you my perspective that this study does not show a relationship between taking fish oil and prostate cancer, because no fish oil was given!
In summary, I encourage all my patients and readers to learn more about the Parent Essential Oils, which I think is the future of our taking oil capsules for our health.
Let me know what you think. I look forward to being in dialogue with you about this.
About Dr. Soram Khalsa
As an MD, Dr Soram specializes in Integrative Medicine combining diet, nutrition, acupuncture, herbs and nutrition. Visit Dr Soram’s Healthy Living Store where you’ll find high-quality nutritional supplements:
