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Smarter Children Through Food Supplements
An anonymous reader writes "Baby rats (mmm...baby rats) fed a little extra choline in utero popped out with brain cells dramatically bigger and faster than pups who didn't receive the supplement. Duke University researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning."
Someone needs to read Brave New World
Thousands of parents will be rushing out and getting these supplemets, trying to "help" their unborn children.
10 years from now, a crime wave is going to hit. A bunch of Super intelligent, yet hyperactive and ruthless 9 year olds, with ultra fast reflexes and photographic memory, but total lack of self-control and morals, begins their master plan of taking over the world.
Hey, this may be an interesting Movie plot....
People, I recommend against fooling with the brain until we actually know what we're doing. But Parents are insane anyway (looking into a mirror.)
"Choline is a naturally occurring nutrient found in egg yolks, milk, nuts, fish, liver and other meats as well as in human breast milk."
I remember a study a long time ago that suggestest that children who were fed breast milk as a child, were on average, slightly smarter than those who were fed other substitutes. With so many things, what is natural seems to be beneficial to the body, possibly because we evolved to benefit from our natural surroundings.
Perhaps the time where natural is best is coming to an end. I for one, support this even though it may mean that my natural mind and body may become obsolete. The thought is scary that some day I may find myself left in the dust by a choline fed, geneticly altered, super human. If this is what must be done to better all of humanity; push mother nature aside; finish what God started; then I can only say one thing. May the best man win.
yep- totally agree, troublesome indeed. Also, there are plenty of cases where rat (or mouse) studies don't accurately predict human outcome.
imagine the possibilities: "chlorine supplements", while labeled correctly, would still make a fortune.
I can make the smae statment about aspirin: give 10000mg to an 80 yr old with low blood pressure and see what happens....
So, you have just made the golden argument against dietary supplements and herbal remedies. Namely, there is no control over the industry so one really does not know what they are getting. Am I getting 50mg of the "active ingredient" or am I getting 500mg? There is no way of knowing because there are no controls on the manufacture and no standards that they follow. One manufacturer may provide next to nothing in the pills while another may provide a whopping dose, so how do you know?
By the way, 10000mg of aspirin would likely give anybody problems, not just an 80 year old with low blood pressure. The low blood pressure could actually help out as aspirin is an anticoagulant. So, if one had high blood pressure, there may be a higher incidence of hemorrhage or hemorrhagic stroke with high dosages of aspirin. More likely however for most folks would be an upset stomach, fever and possibly ulcerations and bleeding of the stomach and intestine if you don't puke it all up first.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Smarter children thru:
Playing with them, spending time with them.
Giving them toys, then spending time showing them how the toys work. Toys that challenge them to do something are good - like legos - stay away from "Disney type" toys (yeah, I know, it's a blanket definition. You know what I mean)
Teaching them to read - don't wait for fucking kindergarten, teach them yourself. Added benefit of getting to know your kids better. Books. Lots of books. Share the reading with them. Read to them, with them, and for them.
Answer questions. "Why is the sky blue?" Answer it. If you don't know how to, learn why it is. There are a lot of questions that a kid will ask that will require you to to know at least something about it. The hardest part is translation. I asked that question when I was very young, and my old man told me that it's because it's the color that "comes thru"; later I learned that he wasn't bullshitting me. I really appreciated that. He didn't evade the question, just tried to put it in terms I'd understand.
Which leads to
Don't ever, every lie to your your kids. Don't bullshit them. Not about anything. If they ask you about sex, don't evade the question or bullshit them - they'll find some other avenue to educate themselves, and it will likely be something that's not the best way to learn it. You might have to actually think about it to find some way to explain it to them. Do it. You might learn something, too.
Don't ever, EVER try to bullshit your kids, or evade what they are curious about. You will lose their respect and trust when they find out (and they do, eventually, and that's one of the biggest problems in the US right now, but that's a whole 'nother topic).
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
As well as high fat, and high a number of other things. Corelation does not equal causation. In this case they isolated choline in making the tests, which is at least proper methodolgy.
Oddly enough, working completely from memory (noncholine "supercharged"), human breast milk is the lowest in protein and fat content of any of these, as I recall ( and it's been some years since I specifically looked into this) about the same percentage as is found in brown rice.
Although remarkable omnivores, human beings are still, deep down, essentially grain eaters. It's the Staff of Life. We require far less protein than most other predatious creatures, like cats, dogs and . . . rats. The myth of "complete protein" comes from a study done on rats in the early 1930s, and debunked in the early thirties as well, although the myth has proven nearly impossible to shake. Once something makes it into print it seems impossible to unprint.
I'm naturally sceptical of animal studies applied to human beings, especially when it comes to nutrition. Our physiology is hardly unique, but it seems to have an odd sort of pliablity that gives strength. Like the reed bending in the wind. Unlike most animals we seem to be able to eat nearly anything, anywhere, and so long as it contains at least minimal amounts of the core substances of life, come out of the deal looking and acting basically the same. I'd say this is a prime reason we were able to spread across the earth. Wherever we went, we found food. A chimpanzee in the desert is hosed. A human will turn to snakes and lizards and do just fine. In the semidesert of a prarie, well, we're surrounded by the Staff of Life.
I'm with Mr. Jones on this one. Until such time as there is some real evidence of effect on human development I entirely hold my judgment, and I'm not inclined to hold my breath over it.
KFG
Although remarkable omnivores, human beings are still, deep down, essentially grain eaters.
Oh, horsepucky. Humans haven't been grain eaters until very recently in their evolutionary history, pretty much coinciding with agriculture, and certainly post-dating our domestication of fire. Every try eating raw, unground grain? Bleah. Our teeth aren't made for it either. Fruit eaters, more likely.
I'll buy the rest of it though. Yeah, humans are pretty adaptable. Oh, one other caveat with animal studies, especially rats -- humans can't manufacture their own vitamin C, many other animals can. Human minimum requirement for that was established as somewhat above the minimum needed to prevent scurvy, the optimum dose (as we're coming to realize) is probably an order of magnitude higher than that. (And being fruit-eaters would explain that -- loss of the gene to make vitamin C is no big deal if the diet is high in it. Grain isn't.)
-- Alastair
Right, so you find some third-world country that is desperate for smarter people and let them guinea-pig it for us. Then, if it works, outsource all your workers to a new facility in that country and hire all the smart kids, patent the hell out of it, and then upcharge parents all over the world who want smarter babies. On the other hand, if it simply produces thousands of highly intelligent epileptics with Parkinson's Disease and giant forehead tumors, deny any involvement whatsoever until forced to confess, and then explain that the drug tested was really just a new AIDS cocktail. Isn't that how the pharmaceutical industry operates anyway?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The Inuit didn't eat much fruit and still didn't get scurvy. So fruit eating doesn't necessarily explain stuff.
From what I see, humans that eat lots of fish (at least before fish got PCBs, mercury etc etc) do very well. Better than those that eat mainly fruit (or grain).
I could argue that humans were essentially fish eaters, but I doubt things are always that simple.
This is the kind of science that can easily get hurt by controversy. The press release doesn't say, but what if these neurological differences translate to significant behavioral differences? The implications for humanity would be for nothing so trite as "the future of learning." How about the disparities between social classes and ethnic groups? Do impoverished mothers get enough choline? Are there ethnic diets that include more or less choline, and is it reflected in their average intellectual abilities? (And how to quantify that is a whole other subject for debate!) These are important questions that may go unanswered if the wrong kinds of people get a chance to put their spin on this. Heaven forbid we find out there's a biological reason why the underpriveleged can't seem to get ahead, even if it's brought on by social conditions rather than something intrinsic. Just watch... if the reasearchers get too close to implying something like that, their funding will get cut and the whole thing will be swept under the rug. Remember how the media roasted Herrnstein and Murray?
The sad thing is much of the dietary recommendations by various OFFICIAL/GOV bodies don't really have much scientific backing either.
All that worry about high cholesterol foods being bad for blood cholesterol. If dietary cholesterol really affected bloodstream, why not eat foods with high good cholesterol (HDL) then? Doesn't work that way? So why should it work the way they suggest?
Not too long ago they were saying eggs were bad for you (high cholesterol) then, eggs were ok. then now eggs are good. Fortunately my mom figured eggs and fish were good (amongst other things).
And there are recent studies that have shown that a high protein diet (even with significant fat content) is ok for blood cholesterol and can even reduce obesity.
You get the stupid diet quacks saying, "So we were right after all, weight loss is due to calorie reduction, not because of protein metabolism, low calorie carbo diets work too! etc" in response to studies showing that people eat less on high protein diets because they feel more satisfied. Doh - what do they want, people to be miserable and feel like they are starving on their "recommended" stupid low calorie high carbo diets?
They've made so many people's lives miserable with their diet recommendations.
As for ephedra, if they ban that they might as well ban paracetamol too - paracetamol is rather dangerous stuff for the rather little benefit it does (I can deal with the mild pain, aches and fever, it does hardly anything for the major stuff)- overdosing is easy and the consequences are serious/fatal.
bovine prion disease from melatonin? how about from BEEF? i am willing to bet you are NOT a vegetarian with all the anti-herbal statements you made. now i like proof too, but you are just throwing bullshit around like its fact (yes shark cartilage is BS though). melatonin WORKS for me and a LOT of other people who have problems sleeping and it is also anti-cancer (PROVEN). ephedra also works for fat loss and studies comparing it to other alternatives show it as the clear winner, can you say greedy drug companies? as for cardiac arrest, try not taking 2x the reccomended dose? whats that? you dont know what your getting? GNC STRICTLY checks ALL the products they carry to make sure the claims on the bottle (amount wise) is correct and they arent the only ones. i dont know what aristolochia fangchi is and it may well cause organ damage or cancer. i am in no way saying we should all just take shit because someone else says it does such and such, but melatonin and ephedra are proven, and frankly, if you take Meridia or some other Rx weight loss drug at higher than reccomended dose you will die of heat stroke or cardiac arrest as well (just a note the baseball player who died died of heatsroke and had been fasting for days as well, speaking as someone who has taken ephedra it does not make you not eat). get off this highhorse bullshit of "i want proof" and then not accepting studies that someone else provides. you want some truth? the medical system in the U.S. (and most if not all other countries, no anti-us sentiment here really) is designed to make drug companies money, not make you well. Fen-Phen anyone??! VIAGRA anyone? any of the other medications with side effects such as "spontaneous bleeding", "liver damage without a history of liver problems", etc? Do you know how many people die taking tylenol, compare it to how many die taking ephedra. yes more people take tylenon but the numbers still make tylenol more dangerous. sorry for the rambling nature of the post but i just had a wisdom tooth extraction and this codeine is messing with my thought process and i am aware my spelling is pretty bad (sorry)
dont get me wrong, lots of "western" medicine is great and if i was shot i wouldnt want to be anywhere except an emergency room in a western country, but many M.D.s are arrogent pricks. i work in a GNC, and pregnant women come in and refuse to take mutli vitamins (not buy, but take) because their doctors tell them it could harm the fetus? this is based on some bunk research that too much vitamin E (as in WAY too much) can cause mental retardation. notice how ANDRO and other prohormones have been banned along with ephedra? can someone say cheap alternatives that WORK WELL to Androgel(TM) or Meridia(TM)? wake up and see that neither the F.D.A. or a panel of MD's OR supplement companies really have your best nature in mind? its up to YOU to find studies and rate the effectiveness of something? you really trust a medical association that in the 60s prescribed methamphetamine to people for ANYTHING (my uncle was prescribed dexadrine because he had MONO and was tired??? the -worst- thing to do).
What kind of simpleton thinks that more and faster neurons is better, or makes for smarter children? You get those for free with cancer and epilepsy.
Just give your kids meth if you want to boost their IQs. That'll bring the scores up, but do you think that makes them smarter in any meaningful way?
In my rash youth, I tried a number of different drugs, (here are examples of my own stupidity) including drinking a over liter of whiskey one evening, an unknown pill given to me by a guy in a superhero costume at a SF-Con, and a few things that can either enlighten or precipitate psychosis, depending on your personal biology, and whether you believe that any significant insight comes in chemical form.
However stupid I was, I would _never_ have given significant quantities of neurotransmitter precursors in a fetus or a child.Neurons have to communicate to be useful, and there are good indications that a neuron's rate of fire is actually related to information content. Or do you think we can determine intelligence by weighing people's brains?
The brain is marvelously subtle, and incredibly malleable in youth.
You want your kids to be smarter? Teach them. Play with them. Stimulate their senses. Show them the world that rewards you for paying attention to it and thinking about it. If this isn't enough for you, then you can make them smarter by having somebody else raise them.
Anybody who tries this on a human child should be sterilized, preferably with a shotgun.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
While I don't know anything about how the Inuit prepare their foods, I do know that eating fish can prevent scurvy.
The important thing to remember is that it needs to be eaten raw: baking, cooking, leaching, frying... in short, cooking fish (meat for that matter) breaks down the vitamin C in the food, rendering it useless for nutrition (and the prevention of scurvy).
Careful, Ephedra works exactly the way it's supposed too
True, though interestingly enough, Ephedra, discovered by the Chinese, is not used by them for weightloss. Ephedra (ma huang)can be indicated in Traditional Chinese Medicine for dealing with cold and flu issues, but it's obviously intended for very short term use.
Honestly, TCM doctors are horrified by people using Ephedra for weightloss.
strange brew thats good for you, too.
Of course, keep in mind too, that in a sample of two people I know of (myself and a friend) Choline made the subjects EXTREMELY depressed. Sorry, but I don't plan to experiment on my children like that.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
So you're tellin me that if kids who are bored with the school system applied themsleves and made themselves more bored, they'd be more successful?
Or to put that in lamens terms, if you're hitting your head on the wall to dround out the pain of getting kicked in the nuts hard by some girl, you should hit your head as hard as possible in order to be successful in this indeavor.
How about taking these bored kids, giving them decent books that
A: Aren't Condesending (Because you can't think of it this way, we do it this way)
B: Aren't Filled with groupthink (So WE do this, and WE do it this way, and WE blah blah blah)
C: Don't Creat an image that's desirable to become that ultamatly makes them lose touch with who they really are(The technician does it this way).
D: Actually has good information and is well written.
Then we surround them by teachers who care and are knowledgable and who don't waste the kids time by forcing them to do month long units on egypt including acting out plays and dances and the building of sugar cube pyramids (which is why they're bored in the first place, you dumbasses aren't doing anything useful in the first place), and let them teach themselves. Bored kids are bored because they are being held back and not being allowed to expand to their true potential, and not being allowed to go in the direction that intrests them the most. Forcing an entire class to, for example, read the same book is an example of this. Give the class a list of suggested books and allowing them to read the books they like is a far more constructive means of teaching them to read. If you snuff the fire out long enough in these kids, it'll go out in a puff of smoke and then it takes years and years to get that fire back, if they ever get it back. The bordem is conditioning them to be irresponsable, because when they go home they'll watch TV and play video games and do something fun and stimulating as supposed to reading an uninteresting book or doing boring homework that takes them 10 minutes to do. Learning is then associated with boardom for the dumber people, and for the rest of them who are smart they realise this is bad but they just don't care because they have no control over it. They can't control the fact that when they read any book, they got bored and nod off. They can't control the fact that doing the questions out of a book brings back the feeling of bring bored, it's human conditioning afterall. Trapped like a rat who has to press a lever that gives it a good jolt to get it's food.
They then fail or close-to-fail their classes because they don't give a shit and are ostrasized for not fallowing the system; by their parents, friends, teachers, everyone. They then turn to other means to reduce their depression of being ostrasized and being called stupid, often turning to drugs or media, music or parties, crime of some sort or boarderline crime like malicious hacking or phreaking. Some of them, rather most of them, get involved with good things like computers or electronics or some other difficult task instead of video games or television and they learn skills that allow them to survive.
Heaven forbid they ever learn what I just said because if they did they'd get really pissed. There's no telling what a pissed teenager who knows what you're upto can do, especially if they are smarter than you are and are well and truely, thoroughly pissed.
You can take your "Educational Career" and shove it. Read some John Taylor Gatto, that'll begin you on to understanding how you're disabling your students. Read some of Joan Batley's articles from www.etherzone.com and you'll realize some of the BS you're teaching.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
uh, nobody read that
Now, if you like having the symptoms of autism, that's really great for you. But most people would agree that many of the symptoms of autism are not desireable, such as impairment in social interaction, delay in, or total lack of, the development of spoken language, apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals, stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms, etc. Furthermore, many of the things you named are not strictly associated with autism. Such as, "more active neuronal structure, greater capacity for memory, drastic reduction in age related decline in cognitive/memorization skills". And "heightened sensory reactions" generally means that many stimuli that normal people are indifferent to are PAINFULL to those with autism. Autism is not associated with any particular IQ, although 3/4ths experience "significant mental retardation". There are, much rarer cases where the individuals have "savant" abilities, or are very intelligent. Unfortunantly, some of them are not able to benifit from these abilities because of the aforementioned symptoms. There may be some people who gain avdantages from the disorder, but science and the public at large would like to see people with only the advantages, and none of the disadvantages of autism.
Anyway, the bottom line is that if you can be happy the way you are, that's all you should care about. There's no need to make up delusions of being oppressed by huge organizations, or to deny that autism in general has no disadvantages. If you are lucky enough to be on the "high functioning" end of the autism spectrum, be thankful, and remember the further you go down the autism spectrum, the more and more those individuals are like what people commonly refer to autism, and the more those people are impaired.
And while we're at it, don't forget to let your kid climb trees and play ball in the neighborhood, and be a kid.
Don't schedule your child like they were a corporate executive under the mistaken belief that they're understimulated by normal life, and will be smarter if kept busier.
Love your child, let them be children, and try not to program their lives for some ultimate goal.
It's their life, not yours.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
At any rate, I regardless of the actual model, these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome as there are now going to be thousands upon thousands that will go out and start purchasing choline supplements just like their mass purchasing of melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?), or ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?), Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?), shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?), or any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof) supplement.
What's disturbing here is that while they've documented the physiological effects on the rat's brains, they didn't do any follow-up studies as to how this actually effected the rat's capacity to learn, or any of the effects on the rat's behavior.
So now we know that chlorine will alter the development of the rat's brains, but we don't know if the effects of the change are good, bad or indifferent.
in general it is natural to do everything we can to improve the lot of our offspring.
That was my point. Unfortunately too many parents nowadays seem to think that making their children smarter/nicer/better-behaved involves drugs and therapy rather than stimulation and involvement. Not everyone, possibly not even a majority, but an awfully high minority do.
Considering the attacks on intelligence in the US media and highschools throughout the Western world, I might even buy it, but it's damn sad that you're promoting it.
What, it's damn sad that I'm promoting parents involving themselves in educating their children, and that I consider it more important than rushing out and giving them every new drug/product that comes along? WTF?
And we do so much to improve ourselves with our technology after birth that it is not a significant stretch to apply technology before birth.
It is a bad stretch when we have no idea what the long term effects of that technology are. I'd even go so far as to call it stupid to do so. Fer fucks' sake, raising reasonably intelligent, decent kids does not require umpteen drugs, supplements, special ed, uber-ed, or whatever. It mostly requires that you be the example they learn from, and that you spend time with them. How the hell do you think it was done before all this extra shit was available? Via Voodoo?
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
More on topic, changing one parameter of complex system that is possibly well tuned for what it does, but not well tuned for parameter changes, may result in a system that is far less efficient or even completely broken.
But the human brain, as well as every evolved life form is actually very well tuned for parameter changes. Its a natural side effect of evolution, we are all evolved to, at some level, be robust in the face of tweaking (because thats what evolution is)
That said "more, bigger brain cells" does not nessisarily imply "smarter" and may very well imply dumber. If they put the rats through problem solving test I would be inclined to have much more respect for the results.
I understand your point. However, raising kids is not evolution, and my view on it is that there is far too much emphasis on medication and far too little emphasis on taking responsibility for raising your kids (in this country at least, not sure about elsewhere). Having seen what drugs like Ritalin are doing to the kids of friends of mine, it's something that really pisses me off. I've also heard far too many stories about doctors prescribing this or that to parents who simply can't handle their children, because they aren't willing to try to understand them or to change their stuck-in-the-mud viewpoints about the world.
:)
We have failed if our children are only as intelligent as we are.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. If your kid grows up mentally and emotionally balanced, and makes a good happy life for themselves, what fucking difference does it make how intelligent they are, or how much they "contribute to society" - which is usually what most proponents of enhancing the intelligence of kids mean by their propondering? Have all the child psychs and drugs and all this shit really made kids' lives better?
Look, man, I grew up before this country got overrun by child psychologists and behaviorial modification via prescribed biochemistry. To be perfectly honest I think kids back then were a helluva lot more well off than they are now (and I'm also talking about our fucked up educational system). It used to be anathema to even *consider* letting your kids takes drugs that would alter their behavior
Anyway, thanks for some reasonable discourse...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
"Through my communication with him telepathically and through his delay in arrival I was able to attend a music conference that was very important to me at that time." (Emphasis mine)
After that I'm uncertain whether I believe anything this person has to say.
I do not moderate.
Humanity already has a fairly well-known subgroup of people with brains that have more active neuronal structure,
There are huge organizations decrying how horrible it is that we exist at all, that actively claim it'd be better if we died of cancer, because we don't act just like "normal" people.
I was assuming you were just talking about geeks in general, but this really lost me. What subgroup of people are you talking about? And if it's just the geeks which org is wishign us dead?