The wonders of Fish Oils...

One of the things that makes transitioning from a conventional martial artist to an action actor difficult is the fact that on camera, martial arts alone aren’t good enough. In addition to having to learn how to punch and kick for the camera, you also have to learn how to do stunts- and the prerequisite for any kind of martial arts stunt work is gymnastics. Unless you are already famous enough that people want to see your face on camera and not just your kicks, getting your own stunt man isn’t exactly an option, and if you can’t do the stunt falls you can’t get work… and if you can’t do gymnastics, you can do the stunt falls. Such is how it is that I often find my 28-year-old, 200 lb self out practicing backflips on the beach whilst everyone else is tanning.

Such is also how I found my wrists constantly hurting from the hyper-extension that goes along with being the aforementioned age and size and having to learn to do back-handsprings. In any event, to ease the pain and chance of more serious injury, a friend of mine who seemed knowledgable in these types of things recommended that I take fish oil supplements. His reasoning was that among the other myriad positive effects that they have on the body, they also help to lubricate joints, so in taking them along with Calcium supplements to strengthen bones, my chances of injury would be a lot less.

As they aren’t particularly expensive(around $10 for a month’s supply) and I heard they also do wonders for keeping your skin young looking (which as a model and actor is another great benefit), I decided to start taking them. And thus far, they’ve done everything I’d hoped they would- plus one more amazing benefit, and that is what I would like to share with you.

Before I started taking the supplements, I had read that they are also high in Omega 3 Fatty Acid, which makes up the coating around each of the cells in the brain. Generally, we get our largest supply of Omega 3s from our mother’s breast milk, but then after that, our intake of it is few and far between- (UNLESS you eat lots of fish.) Apparently, taking in more Omega 3s aids in everything from preventing depression to fighting off altimers disease, but for myself, and this learning process I’m working through, the greatest effect has been the fact that it speeds up and facilitates intercellular communication in the brain.

Although I’m sure there’s a myriad of factors going into my recent success at learning these new things (i.e. increased confidence, knowing my body better than when I was younger, eating better, etc), I can tell you all this much: I’ve never in my life been able to learn so much so fast as since I started taking these supplements. When I first started, counting the time in between practices to let things ‘soak in’, it took me about 3 weeks to learn to do a backflip. After that, landing my first back-handspring only took me a matter of days, and now I’m picking up gymnastic moves in only 2 or 3 days. That isn’t to say that they still don’t take me a while to perfect… but at this point, the basic mechanics of figuring them out takes also no time at all…and it feels incredible. Beyond that, my Japanese learning curve, and my ability to retain new vocabulary has also sharply increased, and almost all of my Japanese friends have commented on it.
The bottom line: These things are AWESOME. And whether you’re trying to learn something new or not, I for one, would recommend them.

PS. Another simple way to drastically increase your learning curve is to get a really good night’s sleep the night after learning something new and the day after that. As aforementioned in an earlier blog, while you are sleeping, your mind goes through everything that you learned that day, gets rid of any information deemed ‘useless’ and re-organizes all the useful information into a format that’s more easily accessible given the pre-existing knowledge base that you already have. (It has been theorizes that this re-organization process is actually why we dream.) Of course, if you do this WHILE you are taking the fish oil supplements, the effect is that much greater, but even by itself the effect can be dramatic. Give it a try.