Four decades ago, Danish medical students Jørn Dyerberg and Hans Olaf Bang traveled west across the Greenland ice sheet on dogsleds to test a theory. For many years prior to their journey, there had been anecdotal reports that Greenland Eskimos had an extremely low incidence of heart disease, and Dyerberg and Bang speculated that this was linked to the high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the fish the native people consumed on a daily basis. After collecting and analyzing scores of blood samples, their hypothesis was borne out, and ever since, the medical and scientific community has been on a quest to determine exactly how PUFAs impart protective effects, and what amount must be ingested in order to achieve such benefits. Nearly 40 years and thousands of published studies later, however, these questions remain largely unanswered.

To read the original article: Omega-3s: Fishing for a Mechanism | The Scientist Magazine®