Find out more about the benefits of fish oil for your heart. New research has uncovered some more reasons why your heart, and blood, loves it.

There’s no doubt that increasing the amount of Omega 3 essential fatty acids in your diet is good for your heart. It’s well known, and it’s confirmed by the American Heart Association, that maintaining a minimum intake of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids helps reduce your risk of heart disease and dying from a heart attack.

But new research is showing that there are other aspects of heart health that may also benefit from some more of those good essential fatty acids in your diet.

One of the reasons why the essential fatty acids are considered good for the heart is because it is now understood that these fats help thin your blood.

This is good because one of the causes of major cardiovascular incidents is blood clots. For example a stroke is caused by a blood clot.

And in fact most people who have suffered from a stroke are put on medication to help thin their blood to reduce the risk of another blood clot causing another stroke.

And it’s not only strokes, patients suffering from a range of other heart disease is can also be put on blood thinning medication.

A new study just released has shown that the effectiveness of blood thinning drugs can be improved by adding a dose of Omega-3 fatty acids to the diet in conjunction with taking the blood thinning drugs.

This study was undertaken at Jagiellonian University in Poland, and was specifically looking at the possibility of improving the outcome for patients who already had a stent in place for pre-existing coronary artery disease. Find out more about the details of the study here.

A stent is a very small tube made out of mesh that can be placed in arteries in the body to assist in their ability to successfully carry blood. It is used in instances where there is a possibility or a likelihood of a restriction in the flow of blood through a particular blood vessel, and a stent helps prop open that blood vessel to keep the blood flowing.

Commonly people with coronary artery disease are given stents to open clogged arteries where this may increase the likelihood of some form of cardiac events such as a heart attack.

In this study patients who had a stent, or who were being given a stent, and who were taking blood thinning drugs, were also given Omega 3 capsules as well as encouraged to eat oily fish, for it’s Omega 3 content. The amount of Omega 3 given was 1000 milligrams per day for the study group, and of course a placebo for the control group.

The patients were taking aspirin and clopidogrel. Aspirin in particular is well known now for its ability to thin the blood, and is on occasion prescribed to people who have suffered a stroke for its blood thinning capacity.

The intention of the study was to examine whether the efficacy of these blood thinning drugs could be improved by the use of the essential fatty acids which are also known to their blood thinning properties.

The conclusion drawn from the study was that adding Omega 3 to the intake of patients on blood thinning medications “improved clot properties and decreased thrombin [a clot promoter] formation after treatment with the fish oil capsules”.

Of course that’s just one of the health benefits to your heart from increasing your intake of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids. There’s many others.

And almost every month new research is being published, and undertaken, about ways to improve your health, including your heart health, from a daily dose of essential fatty acids.

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