Steeler’s Secret Weapon Could Help YOU!

By on February 3, 2009 in Food & Nutrition, Healthy Living, Parenting & Family

What an amazing Super Bowl game! I am so proud to be a Pittsburger! Why are the Steelers the best football team in the land?

 Is it Mike Tomlin’s coaching? The motivation to be the first team to win six Super Bowls? The brilliance of Big Ben? Maybe. It also could have been Dr. Michael Gross’s fish oil!
 
Yes, the Steelers have been swallowing fish oil as part of a two-year study appearing in the new journal Sports Health: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach.   Why fish oil? Because it is an anti-inflammatory agent that hastens healing, and has been shown to improve attention, reaction time and cognitive processing.
 
For the past ten years or so, doctors have been using fish oil successfully with children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and autism. Drs. Doris Rapp and Billie Sahley were pioneers in using fish oil. The Defeat Autism Now! protocol recommends a fish oil as a foundational supplement in the biomedical approach to autism.  
 
Dr. Andrew Stoll, a Harvard psychiatrist who was looking for an alternative to medications for his patients with depression and bipolar disorder discovered that fish oil raised and evened out their moods naturally, and without undesirable side effects. He wrote about it in his book The Omega-3 Connection.
 
Fish oils are essential fatty acids or EFAs. They are a crucial part of the structure of the nervous system, which is 60-70% fat. EFAs must be ingested, as the body cannot produce them. Unfortunately, the standard American diet is low in EFAs. Furthermore, non-essential fatty acids, such as the hydrogenated vegetable oils used to make margarine, and to fry fast food are high in trans-fatty acids. These “bad fats” may affect neuronal fluidity by virtue of different chemical structure compared to the biologically preferred cis fatty acids, and can interfere with an individual’s ability to make use of the marginal amounts of EFAs consumed.
 
High quality EFAs are mercury-free. Safe ones usually come from Norway. Reliable brands are  Carlsons, Nordic Naturals and Spectrum. They offer many delivery systems from capsules to oils (yes, Grandma was correct in forcing the cod liver oil!) and even pudding-like pastes that taste like a creamsicle from Coromega.    
Maybe it’s time for you and all aspiring young quarterbacks to rethink fat. 
 
 
For more information on fish oils for autism spectrum disorders, read my new book, EnVISIONing a Bright Future. 
 
 

About patricia.lemer

Patricia S. Lemer is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Developmental Delay Resources (DDR), an international, non-profit organization integrating conventional and holistic approaches for children with developmental delays. She holds Masters degrees in both counseling and business. She is a National Certified Counselor, and practiced as an educational diagnostician for over 30 years. Ms. Lemer is the Editor of EnVISIONing a Bright Future: Interventions that Work for Children and Adults on the Autism Spectrum, published in 2008, and the author of many articles on alternative treatments for learning and behavioral problems. She discourages labeling of children and lectures internationally on prevention. She is especially interested in combining a biomedical approach with vision and other movement and sensory-based therapies. Ms Lemer lives in Pittsburgh, PA and is the mother of an adult daughter and the grandmother of Penelope, born in August, 2006.

View all posts by patricia.lemer →

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments are closed.