Further evidence that fish oil can help boost learning and memory for the O Levels.

In my previous blog post, I recounted a story about how a dumb (I say again, I didn’t use the word; his mum did) boy managed to boost his learning and memory through a daily overdose of fish oil, which is NOT recommended no matter what.

Too much of a good thing is bad, and too much of a bad thing is deadly. ~ Lee Lin Cher.

In this blog post, I will relate a story of a father’s dilemma as to whether fish oil is the best option for his son.

My Friend, the Foot Reflexologist

I have this friend, he is a foot reflexologist.

You know what foot reflexology is.

It’s an alternative, complementary therapy – with origins in Traditional Chinese Medicine – where you massage specific points (on the foot) which correspond to specific organs in the body, to boost their self-healing powers.

My friend has been (I believe he is still doing. I am not sure, since I lost contact with him when he quit the centre he was working at) doing this since he ROD (Run Out Date)-ed (yes, we are that old) in 1992.

Just in case you think and assume that I met him during National Service, no, I didn’t. In fact, I met him through foot reflexology, and we accidentally stumbled on the fact that we came from the same camp, with the same superiors.

He is one year older than me, which means that he was one batch ahead of me.

So I never knew him in camp; our first meeting was a foot reflexology centre at Lavender Street.

“My Son is Slow”

One time, when he was massaging my foot (I can’t remember if it was the left or right foot)(and yes, it sounds wrong, but essentially if you want to do foot reflexology, you allow the man or woman across from you to get on the nerves of your feet; and as masochistic as it sounds, the belief was “no pain, no gain”), he blurted out: “My son is slow.”

Such an accusation.

I had to confirm with my friend – we used to call him Mr Bay (not his real name; I am supposed to cloak his identity) – what “slowness” meant to him.

Unlike the mum in my previous blog post, the slowness Mr Bay was talking about wasn’t about grades.

Foot reflexology is a skill-based trade, and as far as my friend was concerned, if his son decided to follow his path, he was fine. So academic performance wasn’t top of his list.

But memory was.

According to Mr Bay, his son had a bad to no memory, because he floundered badly at all the matching games they played together.

Please see below for a sample of a matching game.

I know there are many ways to measure intelligence, but using a matching game as a barometer, that’s sort of beyond me, even now.

Anyway, being the very helpful person as I always am – and I have been hurt badly because of that – I recommended, once again, fish oil.

Somehow, the mention of fish oil would always trigger a reaction in the listener, which in this case, was my friend.

He started expounding on the secrets about what his seniors had told him about fish, and how fish bones can be made into stock, and how the stock is beneficial for us.

I can’t really recall how I did it, but I kinda over-rode him in his tirade about head, bones and broth, and told him – once again – to purchase a bottle of 1000-mg fish oil capsules from ~ no prizes for guessing ~ GNC (LAC nowadays).

Why the Magic Number of 1000 Mg?

You might be wondering where I derived the magic number of 1000 milligrams from?

Well, it was actually revealed to me by my spirit guide when I was deep in meditation. I saw this bright light appear in front of me, and suddenly, I heard someone or something whisper into my ear, “1000…1000…1000…”

LOL.

I should stop arsing around like this, lest it materialises and becomes real.

In any case, the general consensus among healthcare practitioners is that healthy adults require about 250 to 500 mg of EPA and DHA combined each day.

A typical 1000 mg fish oil softgel contains approximately 300 mg of Omega-3 fatty acids. To achieve the recommended intake of 500 mg of EPA and DHA, you would need to take at least two softgels.

Alternatively, one can eat about 8 ounces of fatty fish per week, which is about 227 grams. Fatty fish would be anything from salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna, herring, to trout.

Why Not Just Eat Fatty Fish Then?

Well, we can. If we are disciplined enough.

I guess the most common problem faced by city folks like us would be our “unbalanced” diet.

Take a look at what we can buy at the hawker centres for our lunch and dinner.

Char kway teow, chicken rice (or the Malay version, nasi ayam), mee soto, kueh chap, mee goreng, nasi briyani, mee siam, duck rice…

And if you are not in for hawker fare, how about some burgers from the golden arches, or chicken from some dead army colonel or some sailor who transforms into Hulk after (ironically) some spinach.

Do you see any fish in there? Let’s not even bother with fatty fish.

Modern food fare is made for convenience.

A balanced diet is inconvenient.

Fatty fish is very inconvenient.

Mr Bay is Pissed Because…

A few months after my fish oil-suggestion, I met up with Mr Bay again, because I was in desperate need for some old school, hard-core foot-rub (yes, maybe I am a masochist).

Before I could even enquire about the outcome of his fish oil-experiment, Mr Bay opened his mouth and affirmed the effectiveness of the fish oil capsules he had been giving to his son.

His son’s memory had ostensibly improved, because not only was he managing the matching game, he was also beating his father at it.

So there is strong, concrete evidence to his son’s boosted memory, but something else was also cropping up.

His son had become nasty.

That once pleasant son of his began cooking up plans to irritate and agitate his father, and took pleasure at the sight of his handiwork.

So Mr Bay was pissed, and also had a dilemma.

Should he cut off the fish oil-supply, so that the previous angelic incarnation of his son could return – and risk restoring the version of the (now) lost-son who had a low hard disk – or should he continue with the fish oil-programme, and just live with the effects of a smarter, nastier boy?

This was the same conundrum the mum faced, in my previous blog post.

I don’t think I ever got the answer.

Or maybe I have forgotten about it, which means that I might also need fish oil.

Multiple Words of Caution

Please hold.

No, you are not in a rush to buy truckloads of fish oil and stock them up as though apocalypse is arriving.

There are quite a few things you will have to take note of.

Firstly, much research has been done about the positive effects of fish oil and its effects on cognition and learning.

In fact, in my previous blog post, I highlighted how this research has been ongoing since the 1970s.

And one of the most conclusive studies was published in 2020, which you can access here.

Due to the extensive studies done, there is a high chance that you might have been feeding your child fish oil since he or she was a kid, without you knowing it.

Cod liver oil is one such example.

Cod liver oil is derived specifically from the liver of codfish and is particularly rich in vitamins A and D, along with omega-3 fatty acids.

So if you have been feeding cod liver oil to your child for quite a number of years, there is a chance that feeding more of my 1000 mg might not trigger any significant improvement in your child’s learning abilities.

But that’s just my theory, and it’s based on personal experience, not any scientific research.

I, for one, do not take fish oil. In fact, I don’t take any fish at all, and any other kind of seafood.

And there was once when this Korean mother who cooked lunch for me, and wanted me to sit down to eat with her family after I had coached her two children.

Of all the dishes on the table, I could only partake in the chicken dish, and this Korean ajumma was already offended, thinking that I didn’t find her cooking tantalising enough.

I had to explain to her my aversion to fish, and in general, seafood.

She was rather amused when she heard my explanation, and offered the Korean narrative to my conundrum.

Reason 1: Your Ancestors are Seafood

According to this Korean, the first reason why I might actually not consume seafood is because my ancestors are seafood.

Now, I am really not that sure what that means.

Did she mean that I actually evolved from some creature from the oceans? That instead of the ape theory that we all subscribe to, I was some evolutionary fluke that took its heritage from the creatures of the sea?

Or did she mean that in my past life, I was actually a creature of the oceans, and that, because I created enough good karma, I evolved and reincarnated as human. Since past life memories remain, I refuse to eat my own kind, and therefore her “your ancestors are seafood” theory.

What she really meant, I will never know, since she had a rather limited command of the English language, and that asking for clarification would trigger more uncertainty about what she was actually expounding.

In either case, I imagined my ancestors – or rather, one of my ancestors – to be the Dragon King of the Eastern Seas in Chinese mythology. Of course, if either of the theories is true – especially the latter – it’s more likely that my so-called ancestor is an anchovy, or more affectionately known as the ikan bilis in our local, Malay language.

We all want to romanticise that our ancestors were someone or somebody. The truth is, they were likely to be no one or nobody.

Why?

Because there are more ikan bilis-es than Dragon Kings.

😂

Reason 2: You Don’t Need It

The second reason sounds way more logical.

According to this kimchi mum (I love kimchi by the way. Not the authentic one, but the toned-down versions customised for Singaporeans), if I don’t eat it, I don’t need it.

I subscribe to this theory more because my dad used to be a sailor in his youth.

In the oceans, the most common food that you are gonna eat ~ drum roll please ~ would be seafood.

I guess he ate all the seafood he could eat in anyone’s lifetime within a few years of sailing the oceans.

And I guess that information got downloaded to me when he inserted his thumb drive – the neutral name would be USB flash drive – into the USB port of my mum’s computer. (sorry for the description)

So I kinda don’t eat seafood, possibly because it’s already embedded in my genes.

What am I Driving at?

Parents, if you are considering acquiring fish oil for your children – because ~ ahem! ~ you are a kiasu parent who wants the best for your children (which I respect, because that’s what a parent configuration should be) – you need to be aware of your children’s bodily composition.

With everything that you put into your children’s mouths, and with everything that you put into your own mouth, it’s better to listen to a doctor than to listen to some random writer on the internet.

Because after writing such a lengthy treatise on the benefits of fish oil, I neither take fish, nor fish oil.

So please exercise discretion, even if you are bought over by this article. And this would be the official disclaimer for this article.

So Where Can I Get the Fish Oil for My Children?

For those residing in Singapore, we are spoilt for choices as to where we can acquire the fish oil from.

But since you are on my site, allow me the liberty to provide you with some of my links to Shopee and Lazada.

Purchasing the fishy capsule from my links won’t jack the prices up in any way, but it will drop a few coins (it’s really just a few coins) in my coffers so that I can still have the luxury of writing articles (such as these) that might make all the difference in the trajectory of your child/ren’s life.

Here are my Shopee and Lazada links for fish oil:

What If I Prefer Good Old Fish?

If you really want fish instead of fish oil, allow me to recommend salmon, a fatty fish.

You can buy salmon from my Shopee and Lazada links below:

But I won’t be happy even if you purchase your salmon from my Shopee and Lazada links.

Reason?

Because you might be eating my ancestors.