Vitamins and Minerals: the Building Blocks of your Child

Your child's brain is like an elaborate stage production that needs hundreds of people working behind the curtain to provide the supporting framework for the main actors. The difference is that the brain utilizes vitamins and minerals as its supporting cast instead of lighting technicians and prop masters.

Vitamins and minerals are the architects of the brain, creating and re-creating the brain and nervous system. They grease the wheels of brain function by performing the basic work of transformation in the brain, making neurotransmitters from amino acids, energy from glucose, complex fats (GLA or DHA) from simple fats, and phospholipids from choline and serine.

In the early 1980s, Gwillym Roberts, a teacher and nutritional therapist from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, and Professor David Benton, a psychologist from Swansea University, developed a study to chart the effect of vitamins and minerals on the intelligence levels of schoolchildren. Thirty children were given a specially designed multivitamin and mineral supplement containing a high level of crucial nutrients. Thirty children were given a placebo.

The research results were published in a 1988 edition of The Lancet. After eight months in the study, no differences were noted in the children who were taking the placebos, while those consuming the multivitamin supplement saw their non-verbal IQ scores increase by more than ten points! Since the original studies, further research has been conducted using lower, RDA levels of vitamins and minerals. These levels, while far lower than those used in the initial study, still increased IQs by an average of nearly five points.

Giving your child the best nutrition from the very beginning of his or her life can reap endless benefits. Just in case you?re skeptical of the impact vitamins and minerals can have early on, a 16-year study by the Medical Research Council should put your doubts to rest. Four hundred twenty four premature babies were fed with either an average milk formula or a formula supplemented with additional vitamins, minerals and protein. At 18 months of age, the babies who had been fed the enriched formula were doing considerably better than those who had been given the average milk, and at eight years of age, the children who had taken the enriched formula had IQs up to 14 points higher!

So, why do IQ scores increase with vitamin and mineral consumption? One possible explanation is that children think more quickly and focus their attention for longer periods of time when they ingest essential levels of nutrients.