Has anyone tried vitamins for improving memory? How about Memo Plus Gold, has anyone tried it?
Do you think it will improve memorizing theories and variations?
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6I don't know the answer to your question, but my gut feel is, ignoring extreme cases where bad nutrition is actually impacting your health, probably not. The nutrition industry has been very devious in promoting dubious claims like these without good empirical evidence (and even in cases where there is evidence, it is usually correlative rather than causative). Take a look at the book "Bad Medicine" by Christopher Wanjek.– firtydankCommented May 29, 2015 at 8:20
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2Eat sensibly, sleep, and exercise.– Tony EnnisCommented May 29, 2015 at 12:05
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3 Answers
There is no credible evidence that supplements benefit cognitive functioning in people who don't have clinical disorders. The only people making those claims are people trying to sell you something. As mentioned above, the only indicated rationale for such treatment is with a nutritional disorder, or some other type of clinical problem.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3311304/
"Dietary supplements are one of the most common forms of complementary and alternative medicine that patients use and although limited, evidence for their potential interactions with other treatments has been documented. Considering the insufficient evidence for their efficacy, potential for interaction with other therapies and costs to patients, physicians should be aware of the use of dietary supplements among their patients so that they can advise their patients on the potential benefits and harms."
This is unlikely to work for adults.
For children it has been shown that giving vitamin supplements produces an overall average increase in IQ over a large population. If this experiment is repeated over a population which is restricted to only include those who are already getting their daily requirement then no increase is seen.
So, if you are a child and you have an inadequate diet then yes, taking vitamin supplements will help your cognitive development and this will likely help you memorize variations.
If you already have an adequate diet then overdosing on vitamins will not help you.
answered May 30, 2015 at 12:52
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For children it has been shown... Any links to back this up? Would be interesting.– user4378Commented Jun 2, 2015 at 8:16
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Jan, Eysenck discusses a variety of research, including his own, on pages 267 - 271 of his autobiography, "Rebel with a Cause". The Dietary Research Foundation (dietresearch.org/Publications.html) lists "Eysenck H.J., Schoenthaler S.J. Raising IQ Level by Vitamin Mineral Supplementation. Sternberg R, Grigorenko E. Intelligence, Heredity, and Environment. Cambridge , UK : Cambridge University Press; 1997" where more detailed results are given.– Brian Towers ♦Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 6:59
I am not aware about the impact that vitamins would have in terms of improving memory but I am sure that it would not affect your chess skills all that much.
Chess is not about memory. Sure there are some things that you need to remember but you remember them through experience or through understanding the reason behind it, and this is not something that vitamins will help with.
If your goal at the end is to improve your tactics, strategies and skill in using various variations of different openings, I suggest that you play a lot of games using the same opening against live opponents or a chess engine and analyze those games. This will help you keep track of the various variations because speaking from expierence, nothing helps like understanding it and actually analyzing and playing it a few times.
