Creating Success Through Partnership

Greenfield School is proud to have been asked to take part in this study.

What is it all about?   

The description which follows will probably horrify any scientists or psychologists , but it's how I understand what is going on in layman's terms.   The experts can shout at me later!!!

We live, and move, and think, as the result of our brain cells (the 'neurons') sending messages to-and-fro in our brains.   Those messages travel as electrical impulses down 'wires' called axons.   Between the axon and the next cell, however, is a small gap.   The message has to 'jump across the gap', and it does so, not as an electrical spark, but as a chemical stimulus.   

Here is where the 'fatty acids' come in.   For the neurons to communicate efficiently, this gap should be full of the fatty acids Omega-3 and Omega-6, and they should be present in the proportion of two Omega-6 molecules to one Omega-3 molecule.   If they are not, the brain does not work properly.   If the disproportion is severe, bits of the brain can misfire completely.

In the past, people got these fatty acids in the right proportions from Cod-liver oil, oily fish like mackerel ('brain food'!) and butter.   Nowadays, our modern 'healthy' fats and margarines have these fatty acids in hugely incorrect proportions.   The idea of the Fatty Acids trial is that maybe this accounts for some of the educational special needs facing many of our pupils today - dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD and suchlike.   Educational Psychologists have given pupils supplements of these essential fatty acids with dramatic results in improved attainment and behaviour.   You can learn more about this by visiting the Durham Research website.

The Greenfield Trial