Fish Oil Might Give Young Brains a Super Boost

Posted: March 15th, 2009 | Author: Dr. Bill | No Comments »

I was pumped up by the weather report I saw this morning which predicted a couple of Florida-like  days could be coming later in the week. I’m going to go out and get some Coppertone and lay out on  the back porch. (Just kidding, like George Carlin once said, I only get in the sun to neutralize the  blue.)

That isn’t quite true either, I just prefer not  to have to put on a jacket, scarf, gloves, and boots just to walk to the mailbox. Or to have to use a snowblower to get there.

When you’re snowed in you get a chance to do a lot of reading, and I’m finding all sorts of interesting information regarding which fish oil, which I thought I had done a thorough study of, while getting my Powerhouse Omega Formula together. But it seems that every day I find more and more information to confirm that I moved in the right direction by putting this company together.

London’s Daily Mail published a small study by Professor Basant Puri, who believes that all of today’s school children need supplementation in order to have a healthy diet. In the study he is referring to British school children, who he believes have an unhealthy diet.

(Things are not so different here.)

Professor Puri believes that the diets of school children are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, and that the only way to insure that they get them is through supplementaion.

He also believes the same thing is true of adults.

Puri is a professor of Psychiatry at Imperial College In London, and a consultant in neurological  disorders at Hammersmith Hospital.

Youngsters in the study were given pharmaceutical grade fish oil, and after 3 months remarkable gains were seen.

The average increase in the children’s reading age was a year and a quarter, while handwriting  became neater and more legible.

In concentration, three child scored perfect results even though they were not at the top of their class.

They also achieved dramatic results in short term memory.

The most striking finding emerged in brain scans, which all suggested they had denser nerve fibers.

According to Puri, “The results were astonishing. It was as if the brains of these children were three years older.”

I’ve known that pharmaceutical grade fish oil helps with brain function for years, and I’ve recommended it without reservation for adults.

And now it looks as though the benefits for children may be as high, or higher, than for fully grown adults. This is really tremendously good news. However, until such findings are confirmed by other studies, I can’t actually recommend this for kids.

I have a follow up study to read, also from England, that suggests that fish oil supplementation also curbs the violent behavior of many teenagers, and is currently being used in psychiatric therapy, with good results.

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