...with fish oil?
I guess it sounds funny, but I was taking fish oil pills for an unrelated reason a while ago and then stopped... Around then, I was learning stuff like crazy, and remembering it too. Then one day it's like I was suddenly dropped. I felt tired out not long after I started studying. So I thought, "Hey, maybe it was the fish oil that helped me before, and now it's effects are worn off?" So I started taking it again, and by the next day I was back on track. Everyone's looking for better methods and programs and such for studying, maybe taking fish oil is a good idea? The omega 3 in it has a lot of great benefits in other areas too.

I was going to have toast after reading this forum.
Now I'm having tuna

Sounds amazing

Didn't think the effects were like "instant" though? :/

The problem with just eating fish is that there's toxic contaminants in it. Apparently people shouldn't eat tuna, etc too often...

Since I was taking the pills for another reason the first time around, I wasn't keeping track of how it affected my learning. I don't know how quickly it 'set in' then. Maybe the results the second time were quick because my body already knew what to do with it?

Placebo effect, ok maybe not but I doubt fish oil has that much of an effect as to have you not learning things as fast.

yukamina Wrote:The problem with just eating fish is that there's toxic contaminants in it. Apparently people shouldn't eat tuna, etc too often...

Mercury, I believe. It's only really a major issue if you're pregnant, though.

Coincidentally, in this week's Parade, there was a letter to the doctor column about fish making you smarter and he replied that, yes, recent studies show that it does help. I just tossed out the newspaper however, so I can't get an exact quote.

Whether you're pregnant or not, you should steer clear of eating big fish (tuna, swordfish) too much, or eating nothing but fish. That mercury is nasty stuff.

The issue isn't the mercury in the fish, as much as you can eat, the volume of mercury won't harm you. Japanese people are the greatest fish eaters and still they are the most healthy in the world.
As for fish oil, if you get a lot of it (and that's what you should do) mercury can be an issue. Fish oil is concentrated and the volume of mercury in it can be very very high because it's like you're eating an huge amount of fish. It's important to be sure the oil fish you get has passed "molecular distillation".

There are even studies that state fish oil (omega 3) could be the responsible of the rising of the human intelligence (and the lack of fish oil in the modern world could be the cause of a decline of intelligence in the future).
Beside "brain function" improvements, there are a lot of benefits from fish oil.

Quote:The issue isn't the mercury in the fish, as much as you can eat, the volume of mercury won't harm you. Japanese people are the greatest fish eaters and still they are the most healthy in the world.

Is that second sentence the only explanation you have for the first one, or is there more you're not telling us? Because you've set up a nice little fallacy there.

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That's the first time ever I hear that eating fish is bad. There's the link Fish Consumption Advisories.

That said fish oil comes in daily supplements nowadays you can buy in pharmacy:

Wikipedia Wrote:For purchasing fish oil dietary supplements, it is highly recommended to seek a label certifying the product to be "molecularly distilled", USP Certified, and therefore free of mercury and other metal toxins.

A while ago I took supplements containing Omega-3, they were not fish oil, but flax seed oil, you might want to look into that as well.

Other people disagree fish oil better than flax seed oil?

In the borders of Scotland, my 8-year-old neice's school has been recommending the kids take an omega 3 (& 6 too I think) supplement to aid concentration & learning. She took it all last year and we did notice it improved her academic performance, but also she's gotten greater energy, she's now a member of 2 sports clubs (karate & rugby) and she's asking to go to a track & field club... believe me we are not a sporty family! An additional benefit is lovely thick, glossy hair!

The highly publicised fish oil trials in the UK have received a lot of flack lately for being very unscientific (no control groups, drawing conclusions from comparing unrelated statistics etc.) While there may be some serious intellectual benefits as well as the health benefits, I'd take fish oil claims with a pinch of salt (and maybe some vinegar) for the moment. A little too close to snake oil right now.

Well, your body runs on what you put in it... if you're lacking some nutrients, it wont run as well. If you don't get enough Omega 3 fatty acids in you're diet, you're brain won't have as much to work with. I feel it works well for me, so I'll keep taking it...

Not eating fish at all has made some pretty clever people too. If you look at the list of famous vegetarians on http://www.happycow.com there are some highly infuencial intellectuals and artists such as Einstein, De Vinci, Kafka, van Gough, Plato etc. But then i saw Victoria Beckham up there, so maybe there is no connection.

kyotokanji Wrote:Not eating fish at all has made some pretty clever people too. If you look at the list of famous vegetarians on http://www.happycow.com there are some highly infuencial intellectuals and artists such as Einstein, De Vinci, Kafka, van Gough, Plato etc. But then i saw Victoria Beckham up there, so maybe there is no connection.

I always find claims like that kind of suspicious though, when it comes down to it they're pretty much always unprovable. If you dig deeper you usually find that it's not complete truth. Einstein for example was probably only a vegetarian for the last year or so of his life.

but don't forget that hitler was a vegetarian and therefore probably didn't eat fish oil either.

so, of course it follows that you should eat fish oil and learn a constructed language that begins with the letter E, if for no other reason than to avoid being evil. any benefits to your study gained from fish oil or constructed languages should be counted as a bonus.

Ditch the fish oil. What you want is amphetamines.

aircawn Wrote:Ditch the fish oil. What you want is amphetamines.

Yes, and what would that be...?

ritalin

Disclaimer: Yorkii does not endorse the casual use of controlled drugs for the use of studying more kanji in one day than a Chinese does during his entire school life.

kyotokanji Wrote:If you look at the list of famous vegetarians on http://www.happycow.com there are some highly infuencial intellectuals and artists.

Some Random Vegetarian Wrote:Oh, yeah, I'm totally a vegetarian! Yes, waiter, I would like some rotisserie chicken with a side of fried salmon. Did I mention that I'm a vegetarian?

Although vegans are actually pretty good on this point, most vegetarians generally aren't actually vegetarians in the strictest sense of the term: one cannot really say the people listed didn't consume fish without additional info.

In any case, Fabrice has stated that flaxseed oil is also a source of whatever this magical substance is that we need to all ingest.

People who are into bodybuilding and other sports use a (legal) substance called creatine. Although the research is kind of old here is an article on its potential brain-boosting abilities:
http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/200...erformance
Since creatine is mostly absorbed by eating meat, vegetariens are supposed to have a lower natural level of creatine. So becoming a vegetarian and starting to supplement with creatine sounds like a good idea for my final exams in university ... or maybe not.

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(mega thread necromancy! =))

So I am in Northern India at the moment and I found this "Himalaya" brand shops. They store a lot of herbal medicines based on Ayurveda.

I did some research and this led me to the Wikipedia page for Nootropics which I suppose are the crux of this topic.

I'm tempted to buy one herbal supplement called "brahmi" (Bacopa monnieri), which enhances cognitive ability. Mostly out of curiosity, Im interested to see how it would affect me on a one day mediation course here. It's only one euro or so per bottle and seems harmless as a herbal supplement.

There is also "ashvaganda", which has anti anxiety effects. I bought it in Belgium in paste form, you can eat a table spoon once or twice a day. It tastes really sweet, rather boring to take in pill form. The effects can be felt, those of you who feel stress may want to try it as a natural and totally harmless supplement. It could also help with memory and study by reducing stress.

Japanese people are thin because of rice, not because of fish.

There is a new drug LOVAZA (omega-3 ethyl esters, 1 gram capsules) that I've seen advertised on TV. It is indicated in the treatment of high triglycerides (blood fat).

If you eat fish, you should also avoid high predator fish like tuna since they are increasingly becoming extinct and need to eat many smaller fishes to grow:

http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/sos/red-list
http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/so...r-business

Once in another life I launched a business around a Nootropic product targeted at athletes and martial artists. Fish oil was a prime ingredient. The effect is real, albeit not well understood (omega-3 isn't the only active ingredient). I would recommend it to anyone, although it's rare that the effects are as drastic as they have been for the OP.

EDIT: the problem with tuna isn't the size of the fish, but how high up on the food chain it is. Fish that eat other fish have much higher concentrations of mercury and other poisons, and that's not something you want in your body, pregnant or not.

I thought only Thora had an interesting life story but you're getting pretty close. Going from marketing snake oil (or was that fish oil?) based products to designing mysterious things at Lockheed for NASA. I can't imagine what happened in between those two occupations but it must involve Japanese bar hostesses.

About nootropic drugs: I don't think that drugs can improve your thinking. Besides those that might be classified as nutrition, that is. I've yet to meet someone who benefited from drugs in any way.