Eating Fish Twice a Week Lowers Cancer Risk: Study

Eating plenty of fatty fish can help prevent the most common types of cancer, a new study review finds.

Researchers know that daily aspirin helps prevent adenocarcinomas by modestly decreasing the activity of a type of enzyme (cyclooxygenase-2 or cox-2), which leads to the development and growth of these tumors. Most cancers arising in the breast, prostate, pancreas, colon, and the rest of the gastrointestinal tracts are adenocarcinomas.

But aspirin also increases bleeding risk so the researchers wanted to find out whether eating fish high in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, mackerel, herring and lake trout, had the same benefits.

The researchers found this indeed to be the case. They cited one study, for instance, which found that people who ate fish at least twice weekly as compared to those who ate fish less than once a week were at a at significantly lower risk for many types of cancer. But in order to get the benefit, the fish could not be salted or fried, they stressed.

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