Aquaculture? Farming of the Good Health

Last week while attending the Alltech conference in Lexington, Kentucky, I listened to a wide range of speakers that challenged my thinking.  Some ideas weren’t new and others really made me think about food and farming and how things are changing at such a rapid pace.  I usually go to the sessions about beef or crop production since that is where I am the most comfortable.  This year I challenged myself to go to a session outside of my area of knowledge and comfort. 

Last year I was so fascinated with the research using algae and Omega 3-DHA, that I chose aquaculture to learn more about.  I will say that the session was some of what I expected and some that was not where I thought the conversation would go.   This is normal for sessions at Alltech.  The speakers talk about current productions and then challenge you to think about where farming will go in the future.

 

Aquaculture currently produces 50% of the fish consumed globally.  There are 237 species that make up aquaculture which is pretty impressive when you compare it to the few species that are farmed on land around the world.  China produces 58.7% of the world’s aquaculture and people were eating two times as much fish in 2012 as they were in 1960.  I was surprised to find that 17% of the animal protein consumed is fish. 

Last year, I learned about the effect that that Omega-3 DHAcan have on children (and adults) with ADHD.  This year, I learned that eating seafood can decrease the negative effects of diabetes, asthma, heart disease, stress, depression, and obesity while improving brain development and intelligence.  Wow!  That is a lot from consuming fish. 

 

The bioactive component of seafood and fatty fishes are a good source of Omega-3 DHA, Vitamin D, Protein, Selenium, Iodine, Vitamin B-12 and Vitamin D.  In fact, fish is an important source of Vitamin D in populations in the Northern latitudes. 

Around the world, people are looking to raise more farm raised fish than wild caught fish for important reasons.  Farmed fish has a more controlled nutrient content.  The nutrient content of the fish is affected by the water temperature, maturity, season, genetics and the diet available.  Farmed fish is much less likely to contain organic pollutants, such as dioxins.  With so many variables affecting wild caught fish, it is easy to see why so many people are looking to aquaculture. 

So how much Omega-3 do we need in our diet?  According to this video from the IFFO, we should try to consume 3-4 grams of Omega-3 per week.

Alltech is working as a company to find ways to replace the need for fish oil and fish meal in the diets of farm raised fish.  As fish consumption in the form of both fish and fish oil supplements continues to increase, the availability of fish oil continues to shrink.  We saw results of studies testing different diets for the fish that tested both the nutrient content of the fish as well the filet size and quality.  The results look promising to feed an algae high in the Omege 3- DHA and EPA to replace the fish oil and meal. 

 

Now, here is where the presentations pushed my thinking.  I knew that Alltech had an algae plant and was producing algae to feed fish and possibly produce beef and other proteins higher in Omega 3-DHA, but I had never considered seaweed being cultivated and eaten.  Nine metric tons of seaweed are eaten annually in China, Japan and Korea.  Seaweed is a source of protein, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and growth hormones.  Ninety percent of the seaweed harvested is actually cultivated and demand has outpaced the ability to supply the world’s need for seaweed from wild stocks. 

 

Seaweeds and algae are used every day for gelling agents, prosthetics, dental impressions, laxatives, clarifying agents in wine and beer, cosmetics, and finishing and sizing agents in the paper and textile industries.  

My family continues to strive to eat more fish each week with the possibility of improved immunity, heart health, cognitive function and eye development, but I think it will be a struggle to get them to eat seaweed if they know it.

 

Did you know all of these things were included in aquaculture? 

Go to the Alltech blog to learn more about all the exciting things going on in aquaculture, algae and agriculture.  

 -A Kansas Farm Mom

How do I sift through all this Dyslexia and ADHD Information?

The response from my recent posts about ADHD and Dyslexia have been overwhelming.  I am happy to share our family's story if it helps just one more child get the help they need to make school an enjoyable place to be.

Several questions I have been receiving I covered earlier in the summer, so instead of covering them again, I will put links to all the posts here.

My son has struggled with reading since first grade.  After lots of searching and help from friends we got an answer to the question Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!!

Then we had to figure out How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

Everything started to fall into place with a trip to the Alltech Symposium where they posed the question What if We Could Eat Our Way Out of ADHD?  Then later in the summer we saw the results of using ADHD and I had to make myself ask the question Did That Really Happen?

 After a summer of reading tutoring and adding an Omega 3-DHA supplement to his diet, I needed a way to document the changes and not just what I thought I could see happening I needed real numbers.

If you are wondering what the signs of Dyslexia are and why we had our son tested please remember that 1 in 5 kids are born with Dyslexia and there are a number of signs not just flipping numbers and letters.

Pittsburg State (Pittsburg, Kansas) has an amazing Center for Research, Evaluation, and Awareness of Dyslexia.  If you are not lucky to leave close to Pittsburg State University or you leave close to a Dyslexia testing facility, but have been told it would be 6 months before your child could be tested, know that Dyslexia testing can be done anywhere there is internet with a great online testing tool that only costs $25!!

I have a friend in California that did lots of research and decided to bring her son to Kansas for a week of testing and tutoring.  She shared her story about what she found.

I hope this puts everything in one place where you can find what you are looking for.  If you have further questions, please let me know and I will continue to update this post as I have 3 guests posts about dyslexia next week already scheduled.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Documenting Change

I am college educated as an Animal Scientist and while I knew I saw changes in my son while taking an Omega 3-DHA supplement, I still needed to see real numbers.  In April, he had taken the TOVA test, which gave me a baseline from which to judge progress.

Before school started, we finished his reading tutoring.  I insisted that we travel back to Pittsburg State for a follow up evaluation of the Dyslexia and ADHD.  His reading had improved over the summer (more on that in another post).  His TOVA score had gone up dramatically which is a good thing!  It went from -6.73 in April to -2.44 in August.  Anything below -1.80 is considered some level of ADHD.  I have been told by several professionals that to see that much change in the TOVA score without medication is absolutely amazing.  Most of the studies that I have seen had the children on Omega 3-DHA for 16 weeks.   Dr. Hurford at Pittsburg State was great to work with and was amazed with the change.  He is willing to work with us and retest him whenever we want or need. 

Now, we are through the first month of school and I see a young man that is more confident than ever.  He is the one who knows where things are kept in the house and can go find them.  He is the one who knows where his shoes are when we get ready to leave.  He was the one that was reminding me what projects needed finished for the fair.  He has struggled with tying his shoes and suddenly he can even do that!  I had no idea that ADHD kids have trouble tying their shoes until he was diagnosed.  I cannot begin to express how excited I am that I am getting a glimpse of my whole son now that we know how he ticks inside.

I am still trying to get him to eat fish, so he doesn’t have to take so many pills, but I am not winning that battle.  He does like the English walnuts my friend brought him from California and boiled shrimp is definitely a favorite.  If you have a good fish recipe, feel free to share it with me. 

I am sharing our story at the urging of several of the professionals that I worked with.  Over the last few months, I have had more than one person tell me 

“Let the child lead you.  Don’t lead the child.”

And 

“Parents are the best advocates for their children.  Help other parents find what might help their kids, too.”

I am not saying that everything we tried will help all the children struggling with ADHD and Dyslexia, but it is what has worked for us.  It has reduced the stress in our household 100% (not kidding) and homework has disappeared from his backpack.  I hope that something I shared here with you can help someone in your family or someone you know.  Feel free to share with anyone who might find it useful.

I do want to say thank you again for Alltech for inviting bloggers like myself to their symposium.  This year I learned about cutting edge info on dyslexia and last year I found something that has made a huge difference in our cow herd.

Throughout the month of October I will focus on Dyslexia as it is Dyslexia Awareness Month.  I have several guest bloggers lined up and welcome anyone who would like to share information about dyslexia either as a parent, student, tutor, teacher or researcher.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!! 

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

When we heard the ADHD diagnosis, I needed to reach out to ever resource I had that could help our family help him and I did that night.  I have a cousin who has 2 sons and a husband that are ADHD she pointed me to the Facebook page ADDITUDE and while I do like some of the ideas on the site others seem a bit out there for our family, but what works for one student may not work for the next one.  

I called one of our farm owners who happened to be the director of children’s services for a local mental health facility.  She was amazing at calming my fears and giving me suggestions of things to try before medications. 

I called a close friend who is a teacher.  She confided in me that she was ADHD.  She gave me suggestions of how to help in the classroom and with homework.  The first thing we did that night was make a morning routine list and put it in a plastic sleeve.  He could check off when he put on his socks, brushed his teeth, put on his shoes, etc.  It worked.  I wasn’t yelling 2 minutes after we should have left for school for him to find his shoes. 

What happened next, I never could have predicted.  I never dreamed anything could be placed in front of me like here is the next thing to try, the one thing that is on the breaking edge of ADHD research that could be the key, all while sitting at the Alltech Symposium opening session.  A conference I was attending as a blogger to help them with their social media and where I was supposed to be learning about animal health and animal nutrition.  I know some people don’t believe in higher powers, but something placed me at that conference to hear those words from Dr. Pearse Lyons, “Omega 3 DHA could be the key to ADHD.”  What?!  No medication?  No stimulants?  Nothing that will stop his desire to eat?  If you haven’t read it, please read my thought right after symposium called What if we Could Eat Our Way out of ADHD?  

We figured we had nothing to lose and everything to gain for our son, by starting him on a DHA supplement.  I worked with our local pharmacist, who is awesome by the way, to find a small capsule size and a high amount of Omega 3-DHA.  Then we waited to see if we could really see a change and then the unthinkable happened in the middle of wheat harvest the supplement that he could/would swallow was back ordered.  I didn’t have time to go anywhere else.  We were only a few weeks in to this trial, so we stopped.  My parents who were skeptical of this type treatment took them for an evening at the end of the week.  They demanded to know why I hadn’t called them to go get the pills from another store.  They couldn’t believe the change and the biggest thing was that my son could see the difference.  He told them that he was out of DHA and when he got more he was taking a WHOLE BUNCH!  OK, so we weren’t imagining things.  Skeptics saw it too. 

When we started the trial, we both agreed that we would evaluate him at the county fair.  If he could stay focused at the county fair in the show ring, then we might be on to something, if not we would talk to our doctor and get him started on a medication before school started.  Two weeks before the county fair at another local fair, I had to ask myself Did that Really Just Happen?  I wish I had a video of him showing the first week of May and the second week of July.  He is not the same child.  We practiced maybe 4 times…it was not practice that took him from kid staring off into the crowd to a showman.  I fully believe it was DHA.

I knew what we saw in him, but I still wanted further proof.  I need scientific data, so the next post is what the TOVA score said after 8 weeks on Omega 3-DHA.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!! 

Documenting Change

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Is it Dyslexia? Is it ADHD? Help!!

As the school year began again this year, I had to look back on our summer and the month leading up to summer break.  While others were planning their summer vacations, I was trying to figure out what to do with a diagnosis of Dyslexia, something we suspected, and a potential diagnosis of ADD, something we did not see in our own son. 

Over the last 2 years, we have went through a change in schools hoping it would help a bright kid who couldn’t seem to figure out how to get that intelligence out if he had to read or write.  Verbally, he was/is brilliant.  I asked numerous times in both schools to have him tested for Dyslexia only to be told he was too young, they would inquire with other contracting agencies or to just be ignored. 

Luckily, a fellow 4-H mom with a son the same age struggling with the same issues and dealing with one of the same teachers suggested that one of the nearby state colleges might be able to help.  They both are “teacher colleges” and I happened to know that our long time babysitter was studying Elementary Education at Pittsburg State University.  A quick Facebook message to her started a ball rolling that would dramatically change our summer and one son’s outlook as we start the new school year.

 

What most people in the area don’t know is that PittsburgState University has a Dyslexia testing and tutoring program.  The program isn’t some high priced thing out of reach and only for the wealthy.  The testing and tutoring fees are on a sliding scaled for the parent’s income level and totally on the honor system.  They never asked for anything proving our income.

Our son went through 3 hours of testing. 

They started him with a test for ADHD.  Why?  Did you know many schools think kids are ADHD because they won’t do their work and they are actually Dyslexic and can’t read the worksheets given to them? 

He did extensive reading tests including: sounds, nonsense words, letter recognition, reading sentences and so much more.

The graduate student that administered the test gave him several short breaks to come out and sit with me while she set up the next test.  Each time he came out you could tell his brain was getting a real workout.  By the time he finished, he just seemed to stare into space sitting next to me and his favorite sitter that found the testing facility for us.  They really tested him and trying to reach everything in his little head.

We waited a week and got the results.  Let me say this:  Knowing your kid has a hard time learning and hearing someone list off all the things that he can’t do correctly may or may not be handled with the same amount of grace.  I have a wonderful friend who happens to be ADHD and Dyslexic.  She is actually on ADHD medication as an adult.  I messaged her immediately hoping she could give me a glimmer of hope because at that point in time I was about to lose all grace that I had in me and it was about to stream down my cheeks.  The Facebook message she sent me said this, 

“Remember the diagnosis doesn't change who he is or who you are. 

It's a huge step in helping understand how 

he ticks and helping him learn and grow.”

Oh wow!  Did I need to hear that!  She was right.  He is still the same kid he has always been and understanding how his brain works and what it needs to function is going to help him in the long run.  I can honestly say that hearing that he was seriously delayed in reading was hard to hear from someone else.  I wanted to make all kinds of excuses for the score he had on the TOVA testing (the ADHD test), but I also knew that I needed to be proactive.   

Over the next week, I will share with you what helped my son and our entire family.  I will cover resources we found concerning ADHD and how a writing this very blog got me an invitation to an animal health company’s, called Alltech, conference that would change how we went about treating the ADHD.

 You might find these other articles helpful:

How does one deal with an ADHD diagnosis?

Documenting Change

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Did That Really Happen?

In May, I wrote about the possibility of eating our way out of ADHD after attending the +Alltech symposium.  I have a son that has really struggled with focus and we decided to try our own trial of adding Omega-3 DHA to his diet.  We have switched back to whole milk in the house, a natural source of Omega-3.  He has been eating lots of walnuts which are also a great source of Omega-3 DHA.  He has also been taking a daily supplement of Omega-3 DHA.

We started all of this after school was out for the summer.  I have seen little changes here and there.  He isn't as impulsive and quick tempered.  He wants to work on projects.  He reminds me what needs to be done and where things are when I have forgotten.

None of these little things could have prepared me for what I witnessed in the showring yesterday.  He has shown before, but his focus has always drifted from the judge to what is going on outside of the showring.  Not yesterday.  He went in the ring with professionalism and confidence that I have never seen in him before.  He knew exactly what to do.  He only wavered once, but the loss of focus was nothing compared to the loss of focus we witnessed in his competitors and he regained focus...something I have NEVER seen him do without some prompting from outside the showring. 

He remembered how to stand, how to get his calf to stand, to watch the judge, and stayed with all of it for at least 10 minutes.  That is a long time for an 8 year old with nothing, but a 300 pound calf to keep him on task.  A calf that has less focus than the boy and would like nothing more than to put his nose down and eat grass.  It left me asking myself, Did that really just happen?

This kid has tried my patience as a parent and as his calf showing coach, but today this young man showed me that possibly with the correct nutrition he is ready to take on the world.  I can not wait until school starts to see what he accomplishes this year.

If you would like to know more about the studies that I talked about in the last blog post, go to the Alltech Symposium Audio page, scroll to the bottom of the page to the Health and Wellness podcasts.  They do take a few hours to listen to, but I certainly encourage you to take the time.  Section 1 has Dr. Patrick Wall, whom I have spoke with personally, speaking about the Omega-3 and Omega 6 imbalance.  Section 2 has Dr. Aoife Lyons, clinical psychologist, speaking on brain development and studies looking at Omega-3 DHA supplementation and its possible effects on ADHD.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

What if we could eat our way out of ADHD?!

One of the most exciting things I learned about while at Alltech's 30th Annual International Symposium had nothing to do with animals, and everything to do with my most important job in life -- my boys. I have thought for quite some time that they do not have the level of focus they should and wondered if there was anything I could do to help them.  As it turns out, there just may be! 

What if our switch to a more urban society (less hunting and gathering) has caused much of the ADHD epidemic?  Thirty-six to 52 billion dollars are spent each year on research and treatment of ADHD, yet research reported at Symposium has shown that giving kids who exhibit signs of ADHD an omega-3 DHA supplement for 16 weeks greatly decreased their inattentiveness and helped them to get an additional 57 minutes of sleep each night. 

Throughout history, humans have eaten fish.  It was abundant, easy to catch and easy to cook.  We could get fresh fish year around even if the water was iced over. Now, with 50 percent of the population worldwide living in urban areas, it is no longer necessary to catch your own food.  Any food you want is available 365 days a year at the corner grocery store.

Oily fish, such as mackerel, tuna and salmon, are naturally high in omega-3 DHA, not because the fish produces it, but because the fish eat algae that is high in omega-3 DHA.  What if our change in diet, thanks to ever increasing urbanization, has transformed the health of our children? 

Naturally-enriched milk is also a good source of omega-3 DHA when it is consumed in its whole form. Drinking enriched or fotified skim milk has some of the fat removed.  That shouldn’t be news to anyone, but did you ever think about the fatty acids that are removed with that fat?  Like omega-3 DHA?  We have been lectured to for decades to limit fat, but as Dr. Patrick Wall, professor at UCD Dublin said at Alltech’s 30th Annual International Symposium, “Not all fat is bad.”  Fat is essential for hormones, catalysts and many other functions in the human body. 

Not only has omega-3 DHA been linked to helping with ADHD, it has a whole list of positive benefits:

·         Anti-inflammatory

·         Increases in cognitive function

·         Anticancer

·         Antimicrobial

·         Neurobehavior

·         Decreases blood pressure

Now is the time for all farmers and ranchers to ask themselves: Are we in the business of agriculture or are we in the human health business?  Could farmers and ranchers start to produce foods that are enriched with the nutrients we are all missing in our diets?  After all, we are what the animal ate and we are what the animal did not eat. 

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could get the needed Omega-3 DHA
by eating beef or pork instead of fish?

What if +Alltech had the algae put in a capsule form so we could get our daily Omega-3 DHA without having to eat fish or take a fish oil capsule and in turn putting less pressure on already shrinking fish populations?  Would you take it?

It is time for us to put ourselves in the human health business and make good food and supplement choices for our families.

 -A Kansas Farm Mom