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A recent sudy in
Lipids, a U.S. scientific journal, says eating fish appears
to protect
people against Alzheimer's
disease and other forms
of dementia.
According to a
new University of Guelph study, of 70 elderly Toronto people,
one-quarter of whom have Alzheimer's disease, found the healthy
people had high levels of a fatty acid from fish
in their blood and the group with dementia had much
less of it.
Julie Conquer,
a biology professor at Guelph and the study's lead author,
said people with some form of dementia had on average 30%
to 40% less DHA
in their blood than the healthy group.
She doesn't know
why. And she acknowledges there's another possible interpretation:
that whatever causes Alzheimer's also breaks down DHA in the
blood.
DHA is from the
same group of omega-3 fatty acids that also lowers
your risk of heart disease.
Red meat has no
DHA. The only other source is eggs, where the amount of DHA
depends on what the hens eat. Still, her group concludes that
this is pretty strong evidence that most
of us should eat more fish, especially the higher-fat
species such as salmon, trout and tuna.
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