Natural health advocates have praised this nutrition for a long time, but it has fallen on the deaf ears of traditional medical practitioners.
But doctors are probably going to wake up soon, as a new study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry revealed the amazing benefits of this nutrition for Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.
Not only will it help those who take it, it will also benefit generations down the road.
Choline is a substance that resembles a vitamin. It is water soluble and, while your liver produces it in small amounts, you consume most of it through your diet. That is why it is called an essential nutrient.
Researchers have known for some time that high homocysteine levels in your body can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. It has also been scientifically established that choline can reduce your homocysteine levels.
This made scientists wonder whether choline supplementation could be used to combat Alzheimer’s disease.
To investigate this, they bred mice to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s, after of which they put them on a regime of choline supplementation.
They then encouraged these mice to breed with each other, producing the first generation of new mice. The new mice did not receive any choline supplements aside from that which they received through their mothers’ intake inside the womb and during lactation.
Still, their brains displayed certain characteristics that make Alzheimer’s unlikely.
The researchers then encouraged them to breed with each other, thereby creating a second generation who never received any form of choline supplementation, not even through their mothers’ diets in the womb.
Surprisingly, even this generation enjoyed the structural brain benefits that reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s.
The researchers concluded that their mothers’ and grandmothers’ intake of choline supplements made the necessary modifications to their genes.
Choline makes two important changes.
Firstly, as mentioned earlier, homocysteine is an amino acid that causes Alzheimer’s-related changes in our brains, such as the formation of amyloid plaques. Choline reduces our homocysteine levels and thus prevents these brain changes.
Secondly, Alzheimer’s sufferers have overactive microglia, which are cells that clean up dead cells and other waste products from our brains. When these become overactive, they cause inflammation and the death of neurons in our brains.
Choline can reduce the overactivity of these microglia and can thus prevent the brain damage that they might cause.
According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey statistics that was released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the choline intake of Americans is far below the recommended daily intake, but due to the fact that choline deficiency does not have any immediate symptoms in the short term, it is generally not recognized as a problem.
If you would rather obtain it from food than from supplements, then you have lots of options.
You can find Choline in liver, eggs, milk, beef, chicken, salmon, shrimp, soybeans, tofu, other beans, wheat germ, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, almonds, peanuts, and sunflower seeds.
So, it is ideal that healthy varied diet should include enough Choline.