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Fish Oil and Attention Deficit Disorder: Is There a Link?by Dr. John Whitcomb, Medical Director, Aurora Sinai Medical Center Wellness Institute ADD and Fish Oil? Explain! We know that our brains are composed of approximately 40% omega fatty acids (PUFAs: poly-unsaturated fatty acid, n-3s and n-6s). These critical nutritional components come from your diet and are essentially vitamins as we cannot make them ourselves very well. We also know that in the last 50 years we have been flooded with “fast food” and “junk food” that is rich in vegetable oils containing many omega six fatty PUFAs (n-6s). The ratio of n-3 to n-6 PUFAs used to be 1:2 in our ancestral diet, and still is in “primitive” “pre-Western” diets. In America, the ratio today is 1: 20 and in many urban environments rich in “prepared” foods (aka “junk foods”), the ratio is as high as 1: 50. That’s a 10-25 fold change in our nutritional environment. At the same time, we’ve stopped eating “grass fed” meats or wild meats and have started eating feed lot fed animals that have much lower n-3 fatty acid contents. The n- 6’s get into our brains in place of the n-3s, but they don’t function quite the same. So our brain’s chemistry gets changed. Some research has suggested that our n-3 content in human brains has declined from 40% to 20%. Does that change how we behave? Possibly. To test that, Dr. Lavialle and company took Syrian Hamsters and fed them several different diets either lacking or rich in omega n-3 fatty acids. Then they measured just how much time they spent on their treadmills. Finally, they measured the amount of DHA in their brains, and the amount of dopamine in the striatum part of the brain, the part that manages your activity center. Sure enough, a diet deficient in n-3 changed the brains of the hamsters. The deficient hamsters ran on their treadmills some 85% more (really hyperactive). Finally, they adapted to time shifting some 50% better, suggesting they didn’t have a very good functioning internal clock and could stay awake, or sleep any old time without deep restful sleep in-between. Does this sound like anybody you know? Does this sound like ADD to you, in hamster form? Running all the time, sleeping oddly. This is pure basic science. Hamsters are not humans. But you can sacrifice a hamster and look in their brains and see the effects of changes in diet. And you can keep them in a cage and measure their activity precisely in response to those changes. They eat whatever you give them. These are things we can’t do in humans. It’s my belief that our genes are activated in pregnancy and the diets our mothers eat have an impact on our health. Could this be the beginning of untangling just why we have so much ADD today? What will work for me?I take fish oil every day. This article is another suggestion that our brains depend on the n-3s PUFAs we eat. If we don't get them in our diet naturally any more, perhaps we all need a supplement. Fish oil. It may not reverse ADD, but it suggests that there is real need to make sure our kids get it. It’s my belief that the effects probably start in utero. Pregnant mother too? Grandma used to give us cod liver oil. Perhaps she was smarter than we realized. It was fish oil. Reference: Lavialle et al, J Nutrition, Sept 2008 |
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