In the ETech panel a few days ago, we dis­cussed some futur­is­tic and some emerg­ing ways in which we can “hack our minds”, mostly from a tech­nol­ogy point of view.

Nei­ther myself nor the other pan­elists thought of sug­gest­ing the most obvi­ous and inex­pen­sive method, proven in thou­sands of research studies.

The secret com­pound?: Belief. Also called “the placebo effect”. Let’s see what Wikipedia says:

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Dr. David Rabiner’s Atten­tion Research Update drew my atten­tion to some recent research arti­cles on the poten­tial of fatty acid dietary sup­ple­men­ta­tion to help treat ADD/ADHD.

Stim­u­lant med­ica­tion for chil­dren with ADD/ADHD has been the pre­dom­i­nant treat­ment for years. Thus far, it has been quite suc­cess­ful, but we have yet to see the long term effects of chronic med­ica­tion. Given that, it is worth at least inves­ti­gat­ing alter­na­tive ther­a­pies that can be used either in place of or in con­junc­tion with tra­di­tional phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and behav­ioral treatment.

As one of the four pil­lars of brain health, nutri­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on both phys­i­cal struc­tures in the body and behav­ior. Stud­ies sug­gest chil­dren with ADHD have lower lev­els of both omega-3 and omega-6 essen­tial fatty acids.
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