Mood and Behavior Problems May Be Linked to Vitamin Deficiencies

Recent studies at California State University in Stanislaus have found a correlation between behavior problems and vitamin deficiencies.  The researchers gave children in 803 schools and nine juvenile correction facilities more fruits, vegetables, and whole grain foods and less sugar and fat.  The results were remarkable.

The school children achieved a 16% rise in grades and the number classified as learning disabled fell by almost 50%.  The juvenile offenders had a 48% drop in disciplinary incidents.  Additional studies on both children and adults showed that good nutrition could help with: anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue, and mental clarity.

Vitamins and nutrition are controversial subjects in both medicine and psychology.  Common sense tells us that good nutrition is important but for some reason when we talk about a person?s mood, or a child?s attention span, or disorders. That are seen as ?psychological? the experts begin to line up on one side or the other.

Proponents of vitamins and good nutrition may blame the controversy on the greed of the ?medical industrial complex.?  In this view the large pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment have a vested interest in promoting drugs to cure what ails you.  The argument is essentially that they have spent their lives and considerable sums of money finding artificial ways to help people so they attempt to block any effort at something you can control yourself.

The other side of the argument is that science is objective and before someone spends their hard earned money on something promoted to help it should be ?proven? by the scientific method of experimentation and replication by other scientists.  Some go even farther and say that the alternative health care movement is populated by greed or even fraud and that money is the bottom line.

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