Omega-3: Intervention for childhood behavioral problems? (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Omega-3: Intervention for childhood behavioral problems? (2015)

sciencedaily.com

95 pointslxm44 comments

Endocannabinoids are produced by the body when Omega-3 is consumed.

Too much Omega-6 seems to limit the body's ability to utilize Omega-3.

Reducing inflammation (which is good for hyper-inflammation, which pollution can cause or worsen) is one function of the endocannabinoid system (ECS).

A search for `Omega-3 endonannabinoids` on GScholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=ome...

The Omega-3 wikipedia page lists a number of foods sorted by Omega-3 content in descending order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Dietary_sou...

The top two sources (flax and hemp) are plant based and thus have ALA but not the DHA or EPA that some animal sources have.

Fish don't produce Omega-3: they eat algae and then the PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) are stored in fat.

Fish and cheap fish oil may have other contaminants due to pollution in our lakes, streams, and oceans.

It's important to eat a balanced diet. Eating anti-inflammatory (and anti-oxidant) foods is one way to regulate hyperinflammation.

Any form of combustion (burning carbon matter) produces carbon monoxide. CO is terrible for most living things in part because the unbound oxygen binds to whatever it finds (oxidization).

I wonder how much of the association of poverty with crime can be explained by poor nutrition.

I wonder how much of the association of poverty with crime can be explained by how capitalism works.

I wonder how much of the world's dearth of personal responsibility can be blamed on an incredibly meaningless definition of economic systems.

I wonder how much self deception exists in western society when the evidence suggests you live in a lawless oligarchy, one example from endless copyright extension.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...

But first HN, you can be told the facts and the figures and you won't reason to the right conclusion see the science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Does the upper class and the business community believe in Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY

IMF subsidies for the rich and their corporations

https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/Environment/energy- subsidies

So looking at all that free cash from the state, did the upper class really "earn" all that cash or could it be they own the government and can just rubber stamp whatever they like because the average HN poster and person on our planet is illiterate and well indoctrinated?

Pretty sure there's only one economic system. Try another one and get bombed, couped, sanctioned, etc.

Not to mention systemic racism...

Poor nutrition, more likely to live in more heavily polluted areas. Can't be a good combination. We now have a pretty good understanding of how bad leaded gasoline was. Maybe in another fifty years we'll look back at junk food and wonder "how could we have been so stupid"?

I think it would be wise to increase funding of nutritional science. Many of the most basic controversies remain unresolved (fat, sugar, salt). The most bizarre conditions can sometimes be treated using supplements of seemingly unrelated nutrients (behavioural problems: omega 3, migraine: b2). But sample sizes are always small, double blind studies are hard and rare, there are tons of confounding factors.

I agree. Nutritional science is in its infancy but it's impact could be huge in a few years if it's properly funded. Unfortunately there are lots of vested interests in nutritional science not advancing and remaining a gray area. The main contenders are fast food companies, companies that produce unhealthy foods for the supermarket and big pharma who can't patent a food or food supplement.

To be blunt it's just not a profitable business to sell good nutrition, much more profitable to get people hooked on junk food and pain pills.

To make it even worse:

A major improvement for a lot of people would be to eat way less.

Add to this that it would probably be better to replace a lot of what is left by some of the cheapest items we find - plain vegetables, not any kind of "superfood" and I can see why big companies don't line up behind this.

Sadly, vending machines are filled with mars bars and not celery stalks. Cities are overflowing with McDonalds' and Pizza Huts. You can stuff 2000kcal worth of fast food down your gob for under a tenner of whatever currency. But if you want a healthy salad, you'll be paying a premium. I feel like there's a business opportunity in healthy fast food, but as far as I can tell there's no such thing, at least not in any of the cities I've lived in.

Healthy fast food is not that appealing (to current consumer preferences).

Tetraethyllead was added to gasoline to reduce knocking. Unleaded gasoline wasn't appealing to consumers at all, but the market for that is now dead and consumers continue to fill up their tanks. The evidence for its harm was overwhelming. The evidence for fast food being harmful is a lot less overwhelming at the moment. Maybe once that becomes clearer, consumer demand will shift, hopefully without requiring legislation?

I don't see the analogy. Evidence for fast food being less healthy than a salad is pretty overwhelming, consumers don't care and choose fries anyway.

Lead pollution harms everyone, not just the person who burns it. And, lead isn't really needed to avoid knocking. If you want consumer preference to change you need to make a salad that is as delicious and cheap as fries.

> I think it would be wise to increase funding of nutritional science. Many of the most basic controversies remain unresolved (fat, sugar, salt).

Yep, just be careful. We are just now recovering from the phase where one actual scientists mislead others to think that fat was bad and sugar wasn't :-/

In the eighties many children died because of SIDS because of one scientist who convinced others that infants shouldn't sleep the way they had always slept - face up.

etc etc.

Yes completely! Medicine has done wonders but also has some serious skeletons in the closet when it comes to medical reversals.

I’ve found this book to be fascinating and super enlightening about what has gone wrong even in recent history.

https://www.amazon.com/Ending-Medical-Reversal-Improving-Out...

I’m hopeful one day that fat demonization will be formally reversed.

It is thought that wide spread contamination of food with lead, caused by lead cookware used by the elite, is the origin of the demise of the Roman empire.

It’s a pretty fringe opinion. Lots more info here: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wi...

That was an interesting read. Thanks for posting.

Sure it is only an assumption. However the linked study seems to ignore the fact that lead accumulates in the body over time. Which causes a decrease of cognitive functions in the long term with no acute symptoms.

Omega-3 is not a single thing. There are three important acids, ALA, EPA, and DHA. The first can be found in some plant sources, I mostly get it from flax, soy, and kale.

The latter two are only found in fish, and for the vegetarians, algae. A few people have mentioned cod liver oil. I supplement with an algae oil, it contains the omega-3s and I believe avoids the worry of toxic metals.

> avoids the worry of toxic metals.

And, more importantly, of overfishing. When I looked into supplements a year ago l, the algae capsules named "Opti3" had the highest EPA & DHA / Cost ratio and are fully vegan.

Yup, go straight to the source (where fish get theirs)

The fish or marine invertebrates synthesize EPA and DHA by consuming microalgae that {1}do not contain both.

{1} https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24152561

You can also get omega-3s from grass fed beef and pastured eggs. 3 quality eggs in the morning and I get 210mg+ DHA. The more people knew this the more demand there would be for local meat and away from factory slaughterhouses, especially now that the pandemia exposes their vulnerability. We've got workers risking disease to bring us low quality, nutrient sparse meat.

Sardines and anchovies eat mostly plankton so there is no toxic metals there.

Wow, this is amazing. My parents use to give me 2 or 3 capsules of cod liver oil daily growing up (since I was 4 or 5). I didn't know realize it had such a huge health benefit. The other daily supplement I took was liquid Feroglobin, an iron supplement.

I'm feeling thankful that they were so health-conscious.

How is cod liver oil made? Is it extracted from cods livers? :)

If yes, is there a risk of heavy metal poisoning?

Yes this is one of the reasons why many avoid. The other is the high vit A (4500 per spoon fill) which interfears with vit d.

I've read stories that they just dump fish remnants in a large pot with boiling water and scrape the oil from the top. But it may be FUD spread by the more expensive brands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_liver_oil#Manufacture.

And the liver is a filter, so heavy metals and PCBs do accumulate there, yes. I wouldn’t know whether that is a big concern.

I used to get cod liver oil as well: a spoonful a day in the morning, served with half a glass of orange juice for vitamin C and to get rid of the taste :-@

It only helped so much, here I am, just a software engineer, not a millionaire yet :-p

Many formulations now contain lemon oil which really does (for me at least) completely mask the totally disgusting (for me) taste of cod liver oil. Worth a try for those who can't stand it otherwise.

Oh, so cool, from first impressions it looks like solid good scientific method at work:

- 200 participants, which is not super many, but already something to at least start talking about in terms of statistics & non-fluke probability;

- your gold standard of: "put forward a theory, then run an experiment that can falsify it" (vs. e.g. retroactive)

- according to the article's title, randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled.

I didn't read the actual article, and I'm not a scientist myself or good enough in statistics to be able to validate it further for no errors, but the initial signals already make me so happy that in nutritioning there are people trying to do good science! <3

I've seen similar studies bouncing around. The results are always kinda promising, maybe.

The important thing here is fish burps.

Omega 3 pills are relatively inexpensive with the really only negative side effect being fish burps. So maybe it does work for aggression, antisocial behavior (heart disease, protection from Nuero cognitive disorders later in life), or maybe it doesn't. But if all it costs is a few bucks and some fish burps, isn't it worth trying?

Omega-3 can also be had from unprocessed vegetable oils, especially colza/rapeseed. But because not only omega-3 matters, a mix of olive and colza oils is advised for a good balance of omega-3-6-9.

I have not read the full article. It just reminds me of my mother's view where food decides everything else.

EPA and DHA can be had from plants? Which ones? Rapeseed only has ALA. As far as I know, those other omega-3s are only found in fish or algae oil.

ALA converts to EPA and DHA to some extent.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

It’s important to note that not all omega 3 is equal; plant derived omega 3 (ALA) is hard for the body to synthesize and use where animal derived omega 3 (EPA & DHA) is easier to synthesize for use.

"The researchers caution that this is still preliminary work in uncovering the role nutrition plays in the link between brain development and antisocial behavior. The changes seen in the one-year period of the experiment may not last, and the results may not be generalizable outside the unique context of Mauritius."

Wish articles/research papers/etc would put such warnings at the beginning of the article rather than towards the end.

Also if omega-3 is truly a miracle "food" then can't we simply compare the populations that consume a lot of omega-3 ( fish primarily ) vs those who don't? Can't we compare nations that consume a lot of fish vs those that don't? Are one more antisocial than the other? Are the children better behaved in one vs the other? Are the brains healthier/more developed in one compared to the other? If the answer was yes, maybe then we should do further research on omega-3?

If you compared children in Japan to children in some poor country that doesn’t eat much fish, would the strongest correlation likely be fish consumption?

>can't we simply compare the populations that consume a lot of omega-3 ( fish primarily ) vs those who don't?

That's how we came up with the hypothesis in the first place. But that's all such a study can do, give us a hypothesis. There are too many confounding factors (smoking rates, alcohol consumption, poverty, environmental toxins, ethnicity, other dietary differences, etc) to answer the question of omega 3 relevance. We need studies like this one, only with objective measurements instead of asking subjective questions to draw conclusions.

Weston Price touched on this a bit in "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration". He did find increased "antisocial" behavior as traditional diets were abandoned in favor of modern diets.

Fantastic book. Highly recommended.

Another study (from 2006): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandp... "Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat ... Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour ... Demar has been taking part in a clinical trial at the US government's National Institutes for Health, near Washington. The study is investigating the effects of omega-3 fatty acid supplements on the brain, and the pills that have effected Demar's "miracle" are doses of fish oil. The results emerging from this study are at the cutting edge of the debate on crime and punishment. In Britain we lock up more people than ever before. Nearly 80,000 people are now in our prisons, which reached their capacity this week. But the new research calls into question the very basis of criminal justice and the notion of culpability. It suggests that individuals may not always be responsible for their aggression. Taken together with a study in a high-security prison for young offenders in the UK, it shows that violent behaviour may be attributable at least in part to nutritional deficiencies. The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. Although no one is suggesting that poor diet alone can account for complex social problems, the former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham says that he is now "absolutely convinced that there is a direct link between diet and antisocial behaviour, both that bad diet causes bad behaviour and that good diet prevents it." ..."

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