Education Update

Neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter told a story at a recent luncheon I attended about a six-year-old child who had been diagnosed with ADHD. He was not doing well in school, had a short attention span, was overly physically active, and couldn’t focus — the typical syndrome of problems. Instead of putting him on Ritalin or some other drug, Dr. Perlmutter’s prescription was to change his diet. All sugar and refined flour were eliminated, along with gluten and gluten products. Fresh vegetables and fruit were added, but the most significant ingredient was a nutrient that has been proven to be critical to the ways the neurons in our brains send messages to each other. It has a long name (ducosahexaenoic acid, DHA for short), it is made by algae in the sea and it is found in the fat of certain fish, like salmon. It’s also found on food and supplement labels as a “long-chain, omega-3 fatty acid.” It’s extracted from algae and sold as a dietary supplement over the counter in any pharmacy or health-food store. Dr. Perlmutter told me that, according to anthropologists, the human race suddenly got a lot smarter about 60,000 years ago when we started eating marine organisms on a regular basis. The doctor’s new diet had a very dramatic effect on this little boy. Within three weeks his intellectual and social behavior were noticeably improved. School was something he looked forward to. But anecdotes are not enough. The purpose of this luncheon was to reveal the results of a much larger study of the effects of DHA in the diet of children on learning.

The University of Oxford has just released the results of the effects of DHA on the reading and behavior of underperforming children, aged seven to nine, in the UK. The most significant finding was the improvement in the reading skills of children whose initial performance fell within the lowest fifth of the general population range. Of the 224 children who were reading at or below the 20th percentile at the beginning of the study, the improvement was 20 percent higher than would normally be expected and among the really deficient students, in the bottom 10 percent, the reading was 50 percent greater than expected. In addition to improved reading skills, their parents reported an overall improvement in behavior. The study also looked at the effect of DHA on kids with ADHD symptoms and reported significantly less hyperactivity and oppositional/defiant behavior than parents in the control group. I found these results astounding. How come I’d never heard of this before?

This is yet another reason to scrutinize the diets of young children. Fast food restaurants, one culprit in the obesity epidemic, are venturing into new areas. MCDonald’s “Nutrition Evolution” is slowly changing its menu to healthier offerings. Improvement in school lunches is making news at a time when there is a dramatic increase in the demand for special education teachers. It’s starting to look like dots are starting to connect.

Dietary fads seem to come and go. When I was a child in the 1940s, I remember taking a spoonful of cod liver oil every day. (I actually liked the taste.) I now know that it was full of DHA, an essential ingredient for the proper development of my young brain. For the past year I’ve been swallowing a 1000 mg capsule of fish oil in my daily vitamin regimen. I’ve been taking care of my brain health on faith. Now that there’s real science to back up an old wives’ tale, I’m helping to spread the word.

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Real Science Backs Up Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Learning

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