Can Vitamins Make You Smarter? New Study Proves it

Girl Drinking Vitamins

I grew up in a household that did not focus on any vitamin or mineral supplementation.

It was the golden era of processed foods.

My day typically started with lucky charms or the like, followed by a PBJ along with 3 or 4 processed food “snacks”, soda or fast food etc.

My most healthy breakfast cereal was raisin bran, but I would add about 5 tablespoons of sugar and wait till it got nice and soggy.

It was yummy.

I think my experience was American typical.

These days, households are getting more health conscious.

In sharp contrast to my childhood, both of my children have their “vitamin” drink every AM without fail.

They have been vitamin and mineral supplementing from the time they stopped breast feeding.

They are both smart kids.

I always thought it was because they got my wife’s smarts.

While I think this is certainly true, they also may have been aided by our belief in vitamin supplementation.

As an adult I can notice a big difference in my own cognitive function when I am taking vitamin supplements.

In a new study posted recently on pubmed, researcher found a notable increase in nonverbal intelligence.

Here is a synopsis of the study.

Visit pubmed for the full details

The effect of vitamin-mineral supplementation on the intelligence of American schoolchildren: a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial.
Schoenthaler SJ1, Bier ID, Young K, Nichols D, Jansenns S.
Author details
Abstract

CONTEXT:

Numerous medical, nutrition, and education experts have long suspected that poor diet plan hinders the scholastic performance of Western schoolchildren; scholastic performance often enhances after improved diet plan. Nevertheless, others have actually suggested that such academic gains may be due to psychologic results rather than nutrition. To resolve this problem, 2 independent research study groups conducted randomized trials in which kids were provided placebos or low-dose vitamin-mineral tablets created to raise nutrient consumption to the equivalent of a healthy diet. Both teams reported considerably greater gains in nonverbal intelligence amongst the supplemented groups. The findings were important due to the fact that of the apparent insufficiency of diet they revealed and the magnitude of the potential for enhanced intelligence. However, none of the 10 subsequent replications, or the 2 original trials, lacked limitations leaving this concern in debate.

GOALS:

To determine if schoolchildren who take in low-dose vitamin-mineral tablets will have a considerably bigger boost in nonverbal intelligence than children who consume placebos in a research that conquers the main criticisms directed at the previous 12 regulated trials.

DESIGN:

A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial making use of stratified randomization within each teacher’s class based on preintervention nonverbal intelligence.

SETTINGS AND SUBJECTS:

2 “working class,” primarily Hispanic, primary schools in Phoenix, Arizona, participated in the study. Slightly more than half the teachers in each school dispersed the tablets daily to 245 schoolchildren aged 6 to 12 years.

INTERVENTION:

Daily vitamin-mineral supplements at 50 % of the united state day-to-day recommended allowance (RDA) for 3 months versus placebo.

OUTCOME MEASURES:

Post-test nonverbal IQ, as determined by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), while managing for pretest nonverbal IQ as a covariate. 4

MAIN RESULTS:

First, a substantial distinction of 2.5 IQ points (95 % CI: 1.85-3.15) was found in between 125 children given active tablets and 120 children offered placebo tablets (p = 0.038). Second, this conclusion follows the mean 3.2 IQ point web gain discovered in the 12 similar however less extensive research studies. Third, a considerably greater percentage of kids in the active group got 15 or more IQ points when compared with the placebo group (p < 0.01). Fourth, although 81 matched pairs produced no difference at all in nonverbal IQ gain, the modest 2.5 IQ point net gain for the whole sample can be explained by the staying 24 youngsters who took active tablets, and had a 16 point higher net gain in IQ
than the remaining 19 placebo controls.

CONCLUSIONS: This research confirms that vitamin-mineral supplements decently raised the nonverbal intelligence of some groups of Western schoolchildren by 2 to 3 points however not that of most Western schoolchildren, presumably because the bulk were already appropriately nurtured. This research also validates that vitamin-mineral supplements noticeably raises the non-verbal intelligence of a minority of Western schoolchildren, presumably because they were too improperly nurtured prior to supplementation for optimum brain function. Because nonverbal intelligence is carefully connected with academic performance, it follows that schools with kids who take in substandard diet plans ought to discover it challenging to produce academic performance equivalent to those schools with kids who consume diet plans that come closer to providing the nutrients recommended in the U.S. RDA. The moms and dads of schoolchildren whose scholastic efficiency is substandard would be well recommended to look for a nutritionally oriented doctor for assessment of their kids’s dietary status as a possible etiology.

Killing Our Kids One Happy Meal at a Time

If you are a Youngevity user, then you understand the idea of supplementing for the nutrition we don’t get in our modern diets.

I call this “getting the good”

The other part of the equation many people ignore is what I call “avoiding the bad”

Let’s talk about a very “bad” part of American diets.

OK. I admit that I take my family through the drive through sometimes when life gets a bit crazy and rushed.

Knowing full well that we are about to ingest a nearly toxic stew of processed foods.

I do try to avoid this when ever possible.

It is important to note that most Americans don’t even think twice about it.

Its fast

Its cheap

And makes the kids “happy”

I am not going to go into the nutritional damage that most fast foods can do to your body in this post.

This post is to help raise awareness about how fast food companies have learned to bring your family back…

over and over again.

Kids are very easily manipulated through TV commercials.  Anyone with kids can attest to this fact.

My kids christmas list is derived almost 100% from the ads that are targeted towards them.

Here is some very interesting data that we had better pay attention to.

Fast food companies promote children’s meals on TV with ads that feature toy prizes, and it has been suggested that the use of these toy prizes may prompt children to request eating at fast food restaurants.

In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers discovered that the more kids watched tv channels that aired ads for children’s fast food meals, the more frequently their families visited those fast food restaurants.

who is surprised?

2009, Jennifer A. Emond, PhD, and colleagues from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth

Using a database they compiled of all fast food TV ads that aired nationally in  found that only two nationally-recognized fast food chains engaged in child-directed TV advertising at that time.

According to Dr. Emond, “Seventy-nine percent of the child-directed ads from those two restaurants aired on just four children’s networks.”.

The researchers enrolled 100 children (3-7 years of age) and one of their parents in the study. The parents completed a survey that included questions about frequent their kids watched each of the four children’s networks, if their children requested visits to the two restaurants, if their children collected toys from those restaurants, and how often the family visited those restaurants. Researchers found that 37 % of parents documented more frequent visits to the two fast food restaurants with child-directed TV ads.

Fifty-four percent of the children requested visits to at least one of the restaurants. Of the 29 % of children who collected toys from the restaurants, almost 83 % requested to visit one or both of the restaurants.

Some factors associated with more frequent visits were more TVs in the home, a TV in the child’s bedroom, more time spent watching The Television during the day, and more time spent watching one of the four children’s networks airing the majority of child-directed ads.

Despite the small numbers of enrolled families, this study suggests that the often a child views child-directed fast food TV ads, often involving a toy, the more likely the family visited the fast food restaurant that was featured in the advertising.

These findings also show that children’s food preferences may be partially shaped by a want for the toys promoted television advertisements. “For now,” notes Dr. Emond, “our best advice to parents is to switch their child to commercial-free TELEVISION programming to help avoid pestering for foods seen in commercials.”.