IQ and nutrition

Tired of doing badly in free IQ tests? Then take heed in the fact that IQ is not static. You can increase (or decrease!) your IQ by taking simple measures. The brain is a muscle and as with any muscle needs exercise to grow stronger. However, instead of providing you with a bunch of links to puzzles and crosswords and free IQ tests and such, I'd like to take a look at IQ and nutrition.

There's a popular saying: "You are what you eat" which couldn't be more true when it comes to intelligence. Health and intelligence are both directly influenced by what you eat and even the simplest diet changes could have a long term effect on your smarts. If you don't believe me take a look at an excerpt from an article by Dr. Bernard Rimland, director of the Institute for Child Behavior:

In 1980 Dr. Ruth Harrell and her colleagues at Old Dominion University, Virginia, gave comprehensive vitamin and mineral supplements to a group of five mentally retarded children. Eleven other retarded children received a placebo. Over a period of only four months, the supplemented children increased their IQ's by 5.0 to 9.6 points. The unsupplemented children showed no significant change. Over a further four months all sixteen children were given the supplements. The previously unsupplemented group showed an average increase in IQ of 10.2 points with a range of 3 to 21 points. Three of the five children supplemented throughout showed further IQ gains in the second four months. Over the eight months they gained 9, 16, and 25 IQ points respectively. These gains are highly significant, especially as they were achieved with a mixture of different retardation syndromes, including Down's syndrome.

And theres more:

Another study compared poorly nourished black children to a matched group of well-nourished black children over a period of seven years. Each time IQs were tested, the poorly nourished group was between fifteen and twenty IQ points below the other group. At the final testing at age eight, the well-nourished group was twenty-three IQ points above the children who had remained malnourished. - Taken from http://www.healingwithnutrition.com/adisease/add-adhd/harrellstudy.html



Recently there has been a dramatic increase in use of Omega 3 in commercial products. I've seen it advertised on products like butters and spreads, cereals and milk. This is because the amazing properties of Omega 3 on intelligence and the brain have only come into mainstream acknowledgement within the past few years. Omega 3 is found naturally in oily fish like tuna, mackerel, sardines, trout and salmon, nuts and seeds like walnuts and pumpkin seeds.

Blueberries have also been found to reduce mental decline and are a great source of antioxidants (which prevent cell damage in the brain).

Take a look at http://www.fi.edu/brain/diet.htm this site which has a "brain food" diet plan and Worlds Healthiest Foods which has a comprehensive list of healthy foods and their properties.