Eating Fish Chokes ‘Silent’ Stroke Risk: So Long as It’s Not Fried, Study Says
 |
Well, you probably didn’t need another reason to eat fish, but I’ll give you another one anyway. A new study says that eating fatty fish like salmon, mackerel and tuna as little as two times a week significantly decreases the chances of suffering from a silent stroke, while significantly increasing one’s brain capacity.
The only caveat? Make sure it isn’t fried. I’ll get into why later. First off, the study was conducted by researchers from |
| Finland at the University of Kuopio in Eastern Finland (for those of you who may not be familiar with where, exactly, the university is situated in the northern European country). It looked at approximately 3600 men and women, all of whom were over 65 years of age. At the study’s outset, researchers asked the participants to fill out questionnaires that asked them what their average diet was like and how much seafood they tended to eat in a given week. They then scanned the brains of the participants to see what effect their diets had in their brain formation and anything else they might be able to glean from the brain scans. The participants had another brain scan done five years after the first. | |
Based on the participants’ responses to the questionnaires and the results from the brain scans, researchers found that those who ate salmon and the like on a regular basis revealed brain scans to be far healthier than those who ate fatty fish in limited quantities or not at all. And the fattier the fish, the better (how often can you say that?).
For example, the participants that ate fatty fish once a week had a 13 percent reduced risk of developing brain lesions. But that reduced risk doubled if fatty fish was eaten three or more times per week – to 26 percent.
These brain lesions often lead to silent brain infarction, or what is more commonly referred to as “silent” stroke. Adding “silent” to silent stroke is appropriate because when someone suffers a silent stroke, the effects are not seen. Those that suffer from a stroke typically display symptoms like slurred speech, paralysis, vision problems, weakness or an inability to move freely on one side of the body. Such symptoms aren’t apparent in silent stroke sufferers, but the damage done to the brain is the same. This is why silent stroke sufferers often don’t realize it unless they’ve undergone a brain scan.
However old you are, my hope is that you already like the taste of fish like salmon, mackerel and trout; this study only gives more reason to keep eating it and on a regular basis. But for those of you who don’t like its taste and cover it up by eating it fried, I’m afraid you don’t get the same benefits of it as those who eat it baked or broiled. According to the researchers, the effects of preventing the aforementioned brain lesions – lesions that not only lead to silent brain strokes but an early onset of dementia-related diseases like Alzheimer’s – were restricted to those that ate baked or broiled fish regularly, not regular fried fish eaters.
Exactly why this is the case is grounds further research, but you can probably guess for yourself why this is the case. Other than the fact that fried foods are astronomically higher in calories and saturated fat, they’re also cooked at an extremely high temperature, sapping them of their nutrient value.
You might also be aware of the study that reveals how even the exposure to fried cooking oil increases your chances of developing cancer. According to the 2006 study done by the Royal Society of Chemistry, people regularly exposed to the chemicals and particles released into the air when using vegetable oils to fry food have a 1 in 100 chance of developing cancer!
Fried food certainly tastes good, but you could fry woodchips and they would taste good. In other words, frying grants no nutritional value, it only makes something – anything – taste better. That may be fine in the micro, as your meal will taste good, but in the macro, it’s doing more harm than good.
In the meantime, do your brain a favor and eat more fish – so long as it’s baked or broiled.
Related Posts
- Omega-3 Fish Oils Greatly Reduce the Risk of Three Major Diseases, Study Finds
- Moms that Eat Fish Low in Mercury Produce Smart Kids, Study Finds
- Nasal Decongestant Poses Increased Risk of Stroke Among Women
- Omega-3 Fatty Acids Cut Colorectal Cancer Risk in Men, Study Finds
- Vitamin C May Reduce Risks of Stroke
 
|
Enjoy this article? We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will NEVER be rented, traded or sold. |
Visit my new site: Self Help On The Web
 |
 |
Posted: August 12th, 2008 under Stroke.
