Why it's time we faced fats (long article)

[Guest guest]

Got this from a WAPF member's personal blog.

~Joe

New research establishes a link between nutrition and the management

of many behaviour and learning disorders. Felicity Lawrence investigates

Thursday May 5, 2005

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,,1476219,00.html

It takes about four months to get an appointment at the dyslexia

clinic at Oxford University's department of physiology. 's turn

has finally come - he is eight-years-old, clever, well-behaved and

doing well, but an energetic special needs teacher at his primary

school has picked up that, in some areas, he is underperforming for

his ability and suspects he may have dyslexia.

In a tiny room, barely more than a cupboard, Sue Fowler - who has a

doctorate in visual physiology - is using simple equipment to check

his vision. The clinic is free, funding is short, and it's all a bit

make-do. She positions the prongs of a long, fork-like stick on

's face so that he has to look down the stick's length at a

small box with a black dot on it. As she pushes the box up the stick

towards his face, he has to tell her when the one dot becomes two. It

does so almost immediately.

has already passed his NHS eye test but one vital point was

missed by the optician - " It often is these days... " sighs Sue. " He's

got a problem with convergence. His eyes are working separately and

seeing double, which means that when he tries to read, the letters are

blurred and jumping around. "

She gives him a pair of blue glasses from Taiwan worth 50p that make

things better immediately. " Blue quietens down the magnocellular

pathway in the brain, " she says.

The magnocellular pathway is the one by which the brain perceives

motion or where things are, as opposed to the parvocellular pathway

that sees fine detail and colour, or what things are. We still know

little about how the two pathways interact or about how colour works,

and the treatment in 's case is as simple as the neuroscience

behind it is complicated. This is the cutting edge of brain research.

The Oxford scientists estimate that about two thirds of the children

they see have difficulty with controlling eye movements and with

visual attention, which arises from problems with the magnocellular

pathway of the brain. About a third benefit from another low-tech

intervention - supplements of fish oils, high in the Omega-3 series of

essential fatty acids vital to the brain's structure and to the

functioning of the magnocellular pathway but deficient in most modern

diets.

The lab buildings here in Oxford are where Stein, professor of

physiology and brother of chef Rick, has gathered a team of

researchers whose studies into the brain are beginning to challenge

the very notion of free will.

In a series of trials, they have found that dyslexia, dyspraxia,

attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can all be

dramatically improved by simple nutritional supplements. Their work

exploring the biological basis of personality and behaviour suggests

we may need to rewrite the books on crime and punishment. Revealing as

it does that mood, behaviour and achievement are affected by whether

the brain has enough of the right kind of nutrients to function

properly, it throws into doubt how far anyone, from the disruptive

child to the convicted criminal, can actually control their behaviour.

The department's latest work was published earlier this week by

Stein's colleague andra . She studied more than 100

children of normal ability in mainstream schools in County Durham, who

were underachieving and suspected of being dyspraxic - that is of

having problems with coordination or motor skills. In some cases, the

children were also disruptive.

Once they had been assessed, they were divided into two groups for a

randomised double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Half of them were

given fish oils high in Omega-3 essential fats for three months. The

other half were given placebos. Some 40% of the children given

supplements made dramatic improvements in reading and spelling,

averaging progress of more than nine months in just three months. The

control group made just the normal progress of three months.

Although none had been diagnosed as suffering from ADHD, a third were

found to have sufficient problems to put them in this category. But

when given fish oils, half of them made so much progress they no

longer counted as having attention disorders - a change on a par with

improvements made when children are prescribed stimulant drugs such as

Ritalin.

The raw data disguises the excitement and relief experienced by many

of the parents whose children were being treated. After three months,

the control group switched from placebos to active supplements, and

showed similar leaps in progress.

The physiological mechanisms by which deficiencies of essential fats

in the diet might affect the working of the brain are becoming

clearer. Apart from water, the brain is largely made up of essential

fats. The Omega-3 essential fatty acid DHA is concentrated in the

synaptic junctions and signalling system of the brain and retina, for

example. Another Omega-3 fatty acid, EPA, is also vital for cell

signalling.

These essential fatty acids are so called because they cannot be

synthesised in the body, but have to be eaten in the diet. Fish is the

best source. Nuts, seeds and leafy vegetables also provide them.

Modern industrial processing strips many of the vital Omega-3 fatty

acids from our food because they are unstable and liable to go off.

Hydrogenating fats also wipes out Omega-3s.

In the past, the ratio between Omega-3s and Omega-6s in the diet would

have been in balance, now we consume between 10 and 20 times as much

Omega-6 as Omega-3 fat.

As these changes in our diet have taken place, a range of disorders

have become alarmingly common: current evidence suggests that up to

20% of the population may be affected by dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD or

autistic spectrum disorders. These conditions are in fact, as

points out, little more than descriptive labels for a range

of traits and features that overlap with more severe disorders such as

full autism, schizophrenia and manic depression. Other studies into

these three conditions show that taking essential fatty acids

supplements is an effective treatment for them, too.

But our approach to many of these disorders is still hung up on

pharmacological or psychological treatments. " Food affects behaviour,

but at the moment, nutrition is neglected or ignored, even in children

whose needs are obviously not being met in the education system. But

if you paid attention to diet, you could really make a difference, "

says.

The implications of a study conducted by another researcher in Stein's

department are even more startling. In another randomised,

double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, Bernard Gesch gave a course of

supplements containing essential fatty acids and key vitamins and

minerals to prisoners in one of Britain's maximum security prisons.

The inmates were responsible for some of the highest levels of prison

violence in the UK. The number of serious offences, including

violence, by the prisoners, fell by nearly 40% in those taking the

supplements but not at all in those not taking them. To Gesch, the

case is just " bleeding obvious " . " The brain is a metabolic powerhouse,

which despite being only 2% of our body mass, consumes around 20% of

available energy. To metabolise this energy requires a range of

nutrients, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. These are

essential for the normal functioning of the brain, which means there

are likely to be consequences if we don't get enough of them from our

diet. "

The Dutch government has been so impressed by the results of the

prison study that it is starting its own programme. The American and

French prison services have expressed interest too, but so far the

British Home Office is not convinced. It says it wants to see the

study replicated on a larger scale but there is no funding to do the work.

Stein finds it very frustrating. " Our mindset is so sociological, we

don't look for the physiological explanations. An awful lot of money

goes into cognitive approaches to criminology, though they've never

been shown to work. " He speculates that it's no coincidence that most

crime and antisocial behaviour is committed by young pubescent males

when their rapidly growing bodies have to compete with their brains

for nutrients inadequately provided by junk food diets.

" Around puberty is a really crucial time - it's the second big burst

of brain development [after foetal development]. "

But the ideas are being taken up with enthusiasm elsewhere.

Oliver visited Stein while preparing his series on school dinners. It

was the hard-slog science of the physiology department that gave

credibility to the link between children's diet and their behaviour

that Oliver made so powerfully in his TV programmes.

Ordinary people are desperate to know more about the way our food

affects our mental state. But unless new money is found soon, the

Oxford department's researchers will be unable to continue.

Meanwhile, Stein's best advice to the rest of us might be to cut out

the junk food and try his brother's fish recipes at least twice,

ideally three times, a week instead.

www.fabresearch.org Details of Dr 's and others' research on

food and behaviour

www.dyslexic.org.uk Dyslexia Research Trust charitable website

www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/natural.justice/index.html Details of the

research in prisons conducted by the charity Natural Justice

Chemicals that keep the brain sharp

The brain, the nervous and vascular systems, and to a lesser extent,

all cells in the body use a special kind of fat in their construction,

known as essential fat. The brain alone is comprised of three quarters

of this fat, which has a different chemical composition to the visible

fat the body uses as a way of storing energy. At a molecular level,

fat is comprised of a string of carbons, saturated with hydrogen and

with an acid group at one end. The carbon atoms are normally joined by

single bonds. With some fats, some of the hydrogens can be moved to

form double bonds between adjacent carbons. Essential fatty acids have

more than one double bond and are called polyunsaturated.

There are two different types of essential fatty acids:

· Linoleic acid and its derivatives, including arachidonic acid (AA),

are known as the Omega-6 series of fatty acids;

· Alpha-linolenic acid and its derivatives are the Omega-3 series of

essential fatty acids, which include EPA and DHA.

These essential fatty acids cannot be made in the body and must be

eaten in the diet. Animals and fish eat the plants containing the

shorter chain fatty acids, and their digestive systems change the fat,

extending the length of the carbon chain. When people eat meat or fish

they build on these building blocks again. It is the long chain fatty

acid derivatives that are used in human brain construction, in

particular in the construction of cell membranes. These different

chemical structures give the fats different properties: saturated fats

are hard and inflexible, while polyunsaturated fats are liquid.

Essential fats are unstable, so they are stripped from foods by

industrial processing where shelf life and stability are considered

more important.

In 1972 Crawford showed that both AA and DHA were used in

forming the structure of the brain. DHA is concentrated in the

synaptic junctions and signalling systems of the brain and retina. EPA

and its derivatives are vital for cell signalling.

All chemical and electrical signals have to pass through the outside

walls or membranes of the brain cells that are made mostly of fats.

When the cells react to a stimulus, little holes in the membrane open

and close to produce electric impulses. With the right kind of fat,

that is a lot of DHA, they are more elastic and signals can be passed

rapidly and efficiently. The cells also release signalling molecules

derived from EPA, so for the brain to work well, you need to have more

EPA to replace them.

Stein's theory is that a whole range of neurophysiological

conditions and disorders from dyslexia and dyspraxia to depression and

schizophrenia relate to problems with the magnocellular part of the

brain's visual system and how signals are passed within it.

People no longer consume enough essential fatty acids for the brain to

function properly, and some people inherit a vulnerability to Omega-3

deficiency.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,,1476219,00.html