Can vitamins, omega fats improve behavior?

Study links diet to mental health San Francisco Chronicle Carol Ness Wednesday, January 15, 2003 Nutritional Epidemic?: Studies on animal and human brains... When your parents told you to take your vitamins, they wanted you to grow up big and strong. They weren't thinking it might keep you out of trouble. But listen to this: In a recent study from England, inmates given daily vitamins, minerals and omega fatty acids drastically reduced their bad behavior. Compared to inmates who didn't get the nutritional supplements, they didn't fight as often, break as many rules, mouth off or act out as much. The study, done at an Aylesbury juvenile jail by Oxford University physiology researcher Bernard Gesch, is far from conclusive. But it suggests that the connection between what we eat and how we behave goes much deeper than "too much sugar makes my kids crazy." The logical extension of its findings could reach far beyond prison walls. If good nutrition can keep an inmate in line, think what it could do for road rage and violent crime. "This data is very interesting, although it raises as many questions as it answers," says James Gilligan, an expert on violence at New York University and consultant to the San Francisco jail's anti-violence education program. He adds that the Gesch study, along with a couple of other recent studies of omega 3 fatty acids' effects on mental illness, "at least suggest the possibility that ordinary foodstuffs like fatty fish may decrease impulsive behavior -- which includes a variety of antisocial behaviors." The study isn't the first to connect nutrition and behavior. Small studies have shown that vitamin supplements may raise kids' grades and improve their behavior at school. But Gilligan says the protocol for the new studies is far more rigorous. Most nutrition research looks at the body. We all know how saturated fats strangle our hearts, and studiously track the ways substances like lycopene in tomatoes might prevent cancer. But when it comes to behavior and mental health, the role of nutrition in general and fatty acids in particular is just emerging. Gesch, a former probation officer, runs a nonprofit called Natural Justice, which researches the causes of criminal behavior. His study involved 231 juvenile offenders. Half got a daily multivitamin and four pills containing essential fatty acids. The other half got five pills containing only vegetable oil. Their diets and behavior were monitored both before and during the study, which ranged from weeks up to 9 months. Results appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry last year. Antisocial incidents -- everything from assault and hostage taking to insolence and rule- breaking -- dropped at least one-third among prisoners who got the supplements, but insignificantly among the ones taking the placebo. Gesch says he's not saying nutrition is the only cause of antisocial behavior, but that the results "could not be explained by ethnic or social factors." He cautions that the results need to be replicated -- and then more studies done to explain them. But they show the potential for reducing violence in prisons, and in the community, he says. His study stirred up enough interest that Gesch will present his work at the American Psychiatric Association's annual conference in San Francisco in May. The study drew the interest of Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a researcher on nutrition and behavior at the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. For Hibbeln, who has labored in relative obscurity for 15 years on the effects of omega fatty acids on humans, Gesch's study is like gold. The human brain is made up largely of fat, Hibbeln says. And his theory is that American brains have changed over the last century as Americans have eaten less seafood and vastly more soybean oil, the ubiquitous "vegetable oil" that's in most processed foods. The shift means Americans now consume far more omega 6 fatty acids (present in the oil) than omega 3s (present in seafood) -- and the two affect the brain very differently, Hibbeln says. Omega 6 fats compete with omega 3s, and omega 3s are losing the battle in the American diet, Hibbeln said. And studies on animal and human brains have shown that without enough omega 3s, serotonin levels plummet. Low serotonin can lead to depression and impulsive behavior, and Hibbeln is convinced that our dietary changes are one reason American levels of depression and violence have risen. Gesch's study and new ones underway build on ongoing work by California State University at Turlock researcher Stephen Schoenthaler, who also has run tests on both offenders and schoolchildren that suggest improving nutrition affects behavior. In some of the new studies just coming out, omega 3 supplements helped reverse depression and bipolar disorder. Gesch says his study doesn't prove anything about why the inmates who got supplements acted better -- and much more research is needed. Gilligan cautions against thinking that finding one biological key to bad behavior is the answer to violence, which has deeply complicated social, psychological and cultural causes. And, he says, making sweeping policy changes would be wrong until more is known. But at the same time, adding a nutritional component to RSVP, the San Francisco jail's successful anti-violence program, might make sense. "It's hard to see where it would do any harm," he says. In California, however, the new research is unlikely to affect what prisoners are fed, let alone get them daily vitamins. State law says prisoners' meals must meet government nutrition guidelines, but in fact the regulations only address protein and a couple of the major vitamins like C and A. In San Francisco jails, inmates get 2,900 calories a day, at 99 cents per meal -- which means a lot of starch. Jan Wyatt-Lucha, food director in the Marin County Jail and consultant to the state Board of Corrections, says inmates' minimum diets are updated every few years. But vitamin supplements? "They are not going to do it because it costs too much," she says. Money aside, improving the diet of a captive population is one thing. People in jail already eat better than a lot of people on the street, Wyatt- Lucha says. "Getting the nutrients into people is matter for social policy," says Gesch. And parents. Carol Ness is a Chronicle staff writer. E-mail her at cness@sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/15/FD182842.DTL This article appeared on page FD - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle