As I mentioned earlier, while measuring my balance I’ve been listening to a book called Cod: The Fish that Changed the World. Around Hour 4 of the book I realized it was related to what I was doing: fish, brain food. Duh!
Each test of balance consists of 5 warmup trials followed by 15 regular trials. Each trial generates one number, a duration: how long I stand on one foot before the other foot touches the floor. It’s is a bit like surfing–balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, wipe out. (Surfers, skateboarders, skiers, snowboarders, gymnasts . . . this may interest you.) I enter the stopwatch times directly into my laptop. Each test lasts about 12 minutes. Because of the book, they’re pleasant.
I made several more baseline measurements of my balance with two changes:
1. To reduce fluctuations in the concentration of omega-3 in my brain, I did my best to take the flaxseed oil capsules as evenly spaced as possible. The general rule was to take 1 every 2.4 hours (= 10 per day). I didn’t take the capsules with me when I left home but I did follow that rule when I was home (not waking up to take them, however).
2. To make the distribution of (log) balance times more Gaussian (normal), I raised the maximum possible time from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Previously I had stopped the test at 30 seconds; now the cutoff was 60 seconds. The problem was 30 seconds was too common — my balance was too good. Before the change, 3% of baseline measurements (6 out of 210) were 30 seconds. After the change, 12% of measurements (25 out of 210) were between 30 and 60 seconds and <1% (1 out of 210) were 60 seconds.
The graph below shows results (mean & standard error) for 28 sessions.
The early problem (first 10 tests), discussed in my previous post, was that the means were fluctuating too much. A one-way ANOVA, with each test a different level, gave F (9, 140) = 2.6, p = 0.008. This is why I started trying to evenly distribute the flax capsules over the day. This seemed to work. For the last 18 tests, F (17, 252) = 1.0, p = 0.4. Unfortunately there is obviously an upward trend but that is okay because the change I am going to make — much less omega-3 — should if anything impair balance.
Aren’t you worried that your expectation of worser balance will skew the results?
Seth, what made you decide to use flax and walnut oils instead of fish oil for this experiment?
I tried fish oil one day and got a headache the next morning. Maybe I took too much. Or maybe my fish oil was bad. I’ll try again.