Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fiblye 2054 days ago
Is fish oil anything more than snake oil?

I've never seen concrete evidence that it does anything. Wikipedia also seems to say it's all ambiguous, with studies flip flopping as much as coffee and wine health studies.

2 comments

Snake Oil Supplements [1] has studies to show that fish oil and omega 3 is:

- effective for preterm birth

- promising for colorectal cancer

- inconclusive for cardiovascular disease, low sperm count, depression, psychosis, cystic fibrosis

- slightly beneficial for cancer symptoms

- has no effect on diabetes, Crohn's disease, asthma, alzheimers

- harmful: increases the risk of prostate cancer

Regarding coffee, there is strong evidence that consumption of black coffee reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease -- a massive meta-analysis of 36 studies covering 1.28 million people and 36500 cases of cardiovascular disease showed a nonlinear association with minimal CVD risk at 3-5 cups per day [2].

[1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-...

[2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha....

Have chronic illness.

Fish oil and the other ones parent mentioned are all part of my daily routine. I went from 7/10 pain level to 2/10. Those all get mentioned a lot in various help support groups.