A few days ago I ate a handful of peanuts. Uh-oh, I thought, will this make my brain work worse? Peanuts are high in omega-6. As regular readers of this blog know, when I increased my omega-3 intake several months ago, my balance got better. More recently, when I replaced high omega-3/low omega-6 oils with a low omega-3/high omega-6 oil, my balance got worse; when I returned to the high omega-3/low omega-6 oils, my balance went back up. (Details here.)
To measure the effect of different fats on my brain I have been measuring my balance every morning. The morning after I ate the peanuts, my balance score was within normal limits. Meaning my brain was working no worse than usual. This was reassuring — an unexpected benefit of self-experimentation.
In ten years, will there will be websites that people regularly visit to take a few mental tests? The tests would be a quick and easy measure of brain function. The sites would remember all your scores and would graphically compare your current score with your previous scores. One more way to procrastinate — but it would be good procrastination.
I don’t know about websites, but there’s already a popular game for the Nintendo DS called Brain Age that purports to measure your brain health and mental ability. It keeps two months of data that it can display on a graph (but is otherwise inaccessible).
Glad to hear about the non-effect of peanuts, I’m rather partial to them