Reversing Brain Shrinkage with Choline, Homocysteine, And Fish Oil

Summary

Dr. Karl Goldkamp embarks on an exploration into the critical role of choline, homocysteine, and fish oil in reversing brain shrinkage and combating diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. The video delves into the history of choline in medicine, the physiological processes it influences, and its modern-day significance, emphasizing its role in brain health. Through captivating anecdotes and expert insights, Dr. Goldkamp underscores the treatability of brain atrophy and the simple steps one can take to boost brain health and prevent cognitive decline.

Highlights

• Choline's historical medical significance dates back to the 1930s. 📜
• Choline was lacking in early medical nutrition, leading to fatty liver in patients. 🍽️
• Choline deficiency impacts the hippocampus, shrinking memory-related areas. 💡
• High homocysteine levels are linked to dementia risk, yet can be adjusted with diet. 🥗
• Choline as a key transporter for DHA, vital for brain's white and gray matter. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Choline plays a pivotal role in preventing brain shrinkage by facilitating DHA transport. 🧠
• Brain atrophy is treatable by addressing choline deficiency and omega-3 fatty acids. 🐟
• The hippocampus, crucial for memory, is most affected by brain shrinkage. 📉
• High homocysteine levels pose a risk for dementia and are treatable with diet changes. 📈
• Choline deficiency can start as early as age 20, affecting long-term brain health. ⏳

Overview

Dr. Karl Goldkamp explores the reemerging importance of choline in reversing brain shrinkage and improving cognitive functions. Through compelling anecdotes, he provides insights into how choline, alongside omega-3 fatty acids and properly managed homocysteine levels, can counteract the effects of dementia and Alzheimer's. Diving into medical history, he brings to light how the medical community's oversight in the early inclusion of choline led to long-term impacts on liver and brain health.

Choline’s role extends to being a crucial transporter of DHA, a major component of brain matter. Dr. Goldkamp highlights how deficiencies in choline lead to decreased DHA transportation, directly causing atrophy in brain areas such as the hippocampus, which is vital for memory. He draws attention to the treatability of such deficiencies through manageable dietary changes, emphasizing that these advancements debunk the once inevitable fate of dementia.

Recognizing the onset of choline deficiency as early as age 20, Dr. Goldkamp warns of the long-term implications on brain health, drawing a correlation to the rise in chronic diseases and cognitive disorders. Throughout the discussion, he presents a hopeful narrative that making informed dietary choices can revolutionize our approach to Alzheimer’s and dementia, making proactive brain health a tangible reality.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Choline The chapter 'Introduction to Choline' emphasizes the importance of revisiting foundational research papers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic. It highlights the historical significance of choline, noting its remarkable properties and its recognition as valuable in veterinary medicine from the 1930s through the 1960s.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Early Choline Research and its Implications Early research on choline focused on its effects across various animal species, ranging from guinea pigs to cows and pigs, and eventually progressed to human studies. The exploration of choline’s significance began gaining attention in the late 1990s, sparked by observations in patients receiving parenteral nutrition, highlighting the necessity to delve deeper into its potential health implications.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Choline Deficiency and its Effects on Health The chapter discusses the historical oversight of choline in nutritional planning and its resulting health impacts, such as fatty liver disease. Patients receiving nutritional support without choline supplementation suffered from fatty liver for the rest of their lives. This issue wasn't corrected until the late 1990s and was further analyzed in pediatric and neonatal cases. Blood work and cord examinations were part of the process to understand the postnatal implications of choline deficiency.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Feeding Turtles and Choline Discussion The chapter discusses the importance of choline in infant formulas, indicating that previous versions were lacking in this nutrient, leading to deficiencies. When choline was added, notable improvements in children's spatial reaction and learning cognition were observed. This discovery led to further investigations into the dietary impacts on mothers and broader implications for cognitive development.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Impact of Choline on the Brain The chapter titled 'Impact of Choline on the Brain' explores the significance of choline during different stages of development. It highlights its crucial role both during pregnancy (in utero) and after birth (postnatal). The content transitions into a lighter, more personal note, where the narrator shares a casual experience of stepping outside to feed turtles, introducing a turtle named Roxy. This anecdote offers a relatable break in the scientific narrative, blending information with personal experience.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Choline's Role in DHA Transport Choline plays a crucial role in the transport of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), which is significant for brain health. In this chapter, the dynamics of how choline aids in DHA movement across cellular membranes are explored, highlighting its importance in cognitive functions and dietary recommendations. The discussion includes experimental studies and findings on the transport efficiencies and biological pathways involved.
• 05:30 - 06:30: Brain Shrinkage and Dementia This chapter discusses the behavior of a turtle that exhibits aggression by biting other turtles. The environment typically consists of approximately four or five turtles. The aggressive turtle is scolded and told to stop, emphasizing that some turtles may need a timeout to correct their behavior. The narrative illustrates an analogy or segue into discussions about behavioral challenges potentially linked to issues like brain shrinkage and dementia.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Alzheimer's and Elevated Homocysteine The chapter discusses the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and elevated levels of homocysteine. It begins with a reference to autopsies of brains of Alzheimer's patients, which typically show signs of brain shrinkage. This is a well-documented phenomenon and can be observed not only through autopsies but also via MRI scans on living patients. The chapter suggests that there are new aspects of choline being explored in relation to Alzheimer's, although specific details on these new aspects are not provided in the current transcript excerpt.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Addressing Choline and DHA Deficiency This chapter discusses the importance of choline in regulating DHA, an essential fatty acid crucial for brain health. DHA comprises 90% of the brain's essential fatty acids. The text highlights the misconception of directly consuming fish oil for DHA and instead points out the pivotal role of choline in the absorption and utilization of DHA.
• 08:30 - 09:30: Importance of Acetylcholine The chapter focuses on the importance of acetylcholine, highlighting that EPA and DHA are essential fatty acids crucial for the brain. It states that 40% of the fat in the brain is made up of white and gray matter combined. A deficiency in choline negatively impacts the brain's ability to transport DHA, leading to potential brain shrinkage. This indicates that adequate choline levels are essential for maintaining healthy brain function.
• 09:30 - 10:30: Choline and Cognitive Impairment This chapter delves into the effects of choline deficiency on cognitive function, particularly its impact on the hippocampus—a critical area of the brain responsible for memory. The transcript highlights the link between inadequate choline levels and brain shrinkage, especially in the hippocampus. The discussion portrays how such shrinkage is closely associated with memory issues commonly seen in dementia, where long-term memory may be retained but short-term memory significantly deteriorates.
• 10:30 - 11:30: Choline Research Studies The chapter discusses research studies focused on choline and its effects. It highlights that the hippocampus is the area of the brain that experiences the greatest shrinkage associated with certain symptoms observed in aging populations such as parents and grandparents. The narrative briefly shifts to a mention of running out of turtle food and observing turtles appearing in the water, possibly used as a metaphor or abstract thought related to the study context.
• 11:30 - 12:30: Choline Deficiency Statistics The chapter discusses the effects of choline deficiency on the brain, specifically focusing on how the hippocampus is affected. The speaker explains that as the hippocampus starts to atrophy, memory-related functions decline. An example is provided involving a personal anecdote about the speaker's mother, who experienced memory loss and confusion about people's identities due to this atrophy.
• 12:30 - 13:30: Choline Intake Requirements The chapter discusses the association between choline intake and cognitive health. It highlights research findings that link elevated homocysteine, identified as a neurotoxin, with dementia, specifically Alzheimer's disease. The research, originating from Cambridge, emphasizes that elevated homocysteine levels, which are a risk factor for dementia, are treatable. It also notes that brain atrophy, another concern in cognitive decline, is treatable. The chapter aims to explore these findings further and provides supportive data and illustrations for better understanding.
• 13:30 - 14:30: Men and Choline Deficiency The chapter titled 'Men and Choline Deficiency' explores the relationship between choline deficiency and its impact on brain health. It notes that choline is essential in producing DHEA, which constitutes 40% of all fats and 90% of the essential fatty acids required for brain function. The transcript suggests that addressing choline deficiency might alter the progression towards conditions like dementia or Alzheimer's disease, particularly due to its effect on brain atrophy. It encourages exploring various variables that might help mitigate these issues.
• 14:30 - 15:30: Women and Choline Deficiency The chapter explores the role of choline deficiency in women's health, particularly focusing on its impact on the brain. It discusses how the lack of choline can lead to brain atrophy and reduced levels of acetylcholine. The text emphasizes the critical connection between choline and brain health, suggesting that choline deficiency may be a significant factor in brain atrophy.
• 15:30 - 16:30: Chronic Choline Deficiency Effects The chapter discusses the effects of chronic choline deficiency on the brain, highlighting the importance of acetylcholine over 'fossil tidal choline,' the latter being responsible for transporting essential fatty acids like DHA into the brain. The chapter compares normal and Alzheimer's-affected brains, emphasizing the atrophy seen in Alzheimer's and the impact on the hippocampus. This atrophy affects memory and learning, which are faculties lost in dementia and mild cognitive impairment.
• 16:30 - 17:30: Choline Study Conclusions The chapter discusses the Choline Study Conclusions, which is tied to dementia and Alzheimer's research. The information comes from the 2017 Vitacog vitamin and cognitive study, which spanned around a decade. The study involved researchers from both pharmaceutical backgrounds and academic institutions like Cambridge University, providing a well-rounded perspective. The chapter mentions the use of PET scans to study glucose, indicating a focus on brain imaging in the research.
• 17:30 - 18:30: Choline and Brain Atrophy The chapter titled 'Choline and Brain Atrophy' discusses the differences in brain uptake between a normal brain and an Alzheimer's brain. It emphasizes the parts that are not functioning properly concerning glucose uptake. Mild cognitive impairment affects between five to twenty percent of Americans aged 65 or older, but some believe this figure could be much higher. The chapter also highlights the importance of identifying and treating risk factors associated with brain atrophy.
• 18:30 - 19:30: Choline and Aging The chapter discusses the relationship between choline, homocysteine levels, and aging. It highlights that high blood levels of homocysteine and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. The content mentions that understanding and managing these factors does not require extensive education, implying that the information and approaches are accessible to the general public. This suggests the importance of awareness and proactive management of health factors in reducing Alzheimer's risk.
• 19:30 - 20:30: Choline and Overall Health This chapter discusses a study related to health, focusing on homocysteine levels. The author sorts through data from randomly chosen clients to analyze health risks associated with high homocysteine levels. While the chapter does not delve into client lab details due to information overload, it emphasizes that homocysteine is a significant risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
• 20:30 - 21:30: Impact of Choline Deficiency on Society The chapter discusses the impact of choline deficiency on health, highlighting its role in lowering homocysteine levels, along with folate and B12. The connection between essential fatty acids like EPA and DHA from fish oils, and choline is hinted at but not fully elaborated. It also identifies men with high homocysteine as having significant risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.
• 21:30 - 22:30: Conclusion and Personal Insights This chapter covers an analysis of women aged between mid-40s to mid-70s, focusing on optimal levels and measurements. It suggests aiming for a sweet spot around six, somewhere between five and seven, when considering certain health indicators. The transcript also reveals a link between high homocysteine levels and poor omega-3 fatty acid status, specifically related to EPA and DHA, which are critical components for health. These findings could be significant for understanding correlations in health metrics as one ages.

Reversing Brain Shrinkage with Choline, Homocysteine, And Fish Oil Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this should be fun today we got things to talk about but i want to show you a few things as well you know it really pays to go back to the really the first papers that are produced on a particular topic and build your way up to understand a whole topic instead of just looking around for something topical that comes up and it is about choline but choline is remarkable in so many ways that in veterinarian medicine it was long considered valuable back in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s and the 60s
• 00:30 - 01:00 and it was so impressive for so many different things we're speaking guinea pigs and certainly rodents and mice but cows bovine and porcide pigs and now we're getting pretty close to humans and so it wasn't until the late 90s did they find that it should be worth looking into and there's a couple things that set them off one was they found that those patients that came to hospitals that had what they call parenteral nutrition they have a port put in and
• 01:00 - 01:30 they're given nutrition that uh choline was never included and so they found all the patients that were so too weak to eat and needed this kind of nutrition that they all developed fatty liver for the two three four five and the rest of their lives so it wasn't until the late 90s was that corrected and also when it came to pediatrics neonatal they found that in looking at a lot of postnatal you know blood work and cord
• 01:30 - 02:00 work and so on that and the formulas are made for babies the baby's formulas which we don't have much in this country now apparently um were devoid empty deficient in choline and when they changed that a lot of the kids reaction what they call spatial reaction and learning cognition changed dramatically so and then they looked into the mothers and so on and so forth but the important thing there was that making a change at any
• 02:00 - 02:30 stage you're at whether it's in in utero when the mother's pregnant or postnatal after it's born was was tremendous now i want to show you something it's just fun to step outside our backyard and and to feed the turtles every so often here we go all right that's roxy oh sorry that's see this guy here that guy there he doesn't have a name he's well there you go roxy roxy is a veteran
• 02:30 - 03:00 female and this guy here there you go roxy this guy here is a male and you can tell by the long long fingernails he has and he's pretty aggressive he can get on with one other other turtle but if it gets to be more than that because of his size he's pushed underwater and he doesn't get his he doesn't get his his share
• 03:00 - 03:30 and so consequently what he turns to is being pretty aggressive he will actually bite the other turtles and there's usually about four or five other turtles around here see there he goes there he goes he's not being nice hey you you can't do that you can't do that hey you stop you stop be stop look at that yeah you go away some turtles need to time out you know what i mean so here you go roxy come on
• 03:30 - 04:00 i know so back to colleen one of the the new aspects of choline is that you know when we look at autopsies of brains of those who had alzheimer's dementia in general we find that the brain has shrunk that's pretty much not new and you can get a lot of images on that certainly you can see it in autopsies there's a brain but an mri while they're living you can see it's a smaller brain inside and that's how you check that here's another male showing
• 04:00 - 04:30 up he's new to the area he's probably a little bit shy see how much smaller he is and what what is profound is that colleen actually is responsible for transporting in dha which is one of the essential fatty acids that you get from fish oil so before we used to think about oh have fish oil it's good for your brain especially dha so dha is 90 makes up 90 of your brain essential fatty acids so that's
• 04:30 - 05:00 epa and dha are your essential fatty acids 90 but of all fat in the brain white and gray matter combined it is 40 so that's a big deal so when you get choline deficient you get deficient in essence of the transportation the means of getting the dhea into your brain slightly simplified but not by much and so consequently what we're finding and what is kind of the new edge is that is brain shrinkage due to choline
• 05:00 - 05:30 deficiency because it can't transport in dha that's amazing because when you look at the brain it's a shrunk the place that it shrinks the most look at these guys the place that it has shrunk the most is at the bottom in the hippocampus which is the area which is responsible for memory so what happens when people get demented they forget they just they just have they forget their long-term memory but actually they have long-term memory they're short-term memories is shot there he goes there he goes he hasn't learned a lesson wow
• 05:30 - 06:00 okay and but that's the greatest shrinkage so they find that it's the hippocampus is the area that shrinks the most and therefore those are the symptoms that we find in our partners our parents our grandparents our great-grandparents you know this is the thing it's like so is there a cause in fact now they're all starting to come in and i'm i've run out of my turtle food you know it's you stay here long enough now there's three or four out there look at the heads on the water and they're coming in
• 06:00 - 06:30 they'll go after my fingers for the same color but um this is what we're looking is sometimes it is pretty straightforward we don't i mean you'd be scientific about it need to look into all these things but when the hippocampus the bottom of the brain so to say where it's located start your atrophy more than the rest of the brain that those functions obviously are going to be the first to go that's why they can't remember your name or in the case of my mother she thought i was her high school boyfriend maybe that was a good thing i don't know
• 06:30 - 07:00 but i thought i'd share that and what i want to do is to go in and show you some of those illustrations and just a little bit of a of a data supportive sort of thing because what they find out is that dementia alzheimer's specifically is associated with things like elevated homocysteine it's a neurotoxin and that was directly out of cambridge in england and they did it called vitacon would they did vitamins but mostly it was about homocysteine being associated with dementia and that's treatable is the point so is brain atrophy it's treatable
• 07:00 - 07:30 when you start looking at oh it's choline deficiency and choline takes in the dhea and the dhea makes up 40 of all fats 90 of the essential fatty acids for our brain maybe there's something we can do about that too so let's go take a look okay so the connection is that i wanted you to see if there are obviously variables that you can do to change this whole sort of slide down to dementia or alzheimer's one is about brain atrophy very
• 07:30 - 08:00 specifically right so specifically brain atrophy shrinking of the structure shrinking of or having less of the acetylcholine having less of the ability to all the things that choline does and i'm trying to deliver to you the connection that choline is more responsible than probably anything else for brain atrophy choline deficiency specifically choline deficiency because it deprives you of acetylcholine
• 08:00 - 08:30 acetylcholine is a higher priority than fossil tidal choline which is the carrier of dha the essential fatty acids into the brain we're going to go more into that detail later but i want you to know that concept and so let's look at this so this is what we're looking at this is normal brain versus alzheimer's brain you can see that it's atrophy and i want to point out these two areas down here the hippocampus that's going to be about memory and learning and these are the faculties that you begin to lose in dementia in mild cognitive impairment
• 08:30 - 09:00 into dementia into alzheimer's okay so this comes from as i mentioned what they call the vitacog vitamin and cognitive study 2017 and it was really about a 10-year period of them really digging into it it's really interesting these are people that especially the guy who was ahead of i don't know what the pharmaceutical company was in the uk but he now worked at cambridge university has his own research squad that must be tremendously exciting to have both sides of that understanding down but anyway here's the pet scan which is the glucose
• 09:00 - 09:30 uptake of a normal brain an alzheimer's brain so we we see it in two ways right we see that there's parts that are not functioning in the sense of taking up glucose the tracer of glucose so mild cognitive impairment confronts five to twenty percent of americans age 65 or older my guess it's a lot higher and it's just tremendous they did this and they saying one of the risk factors and so identifying risk factors they can be treated very easily so this is like oh
• 09:30 - 10:00 my gosh this is like a phd you have to you know go to school don't learn to do all this no not at all not at all they're simple things it's like raising your hand more or less the risk is higher among people who have high blood level of homocysteine i'm going to show you basically the last 10 or 15 patients clients that i have seen high homocysteine and mci mild cognitive impairment both predict a higher risk factor higher risk for developing full-fledged alzheimer's you ought to
• 10:00 - 10:30 look up that study it's just fun to read too okay so this is basically a spreadsheet of a portion of you know randomly chosen clients that i've seen what i did is i sorted all this i'm not going to show you all their labs just a little snapshot here it's not that it's private it's just it's too much information to go over right now and so i sorted this by homocysteine highest versus lowest that's really all you need to know and i want to see does anything else fall in place we just stated that homocysteine is a high risk factor for alzheimer's what
• 10:30 - 11:00 are one of the things that helps homocysteine go down choline but also folate and b12 so they knew about folate and b12 they didn't test for choline and they knew about essential fatty acids that is fish oils epa and dha but they didn't know about the choline and dha connection to be elaborated on later so there's homocysteine what else falls in place so these are the people that have the highest risk factors for alzheimer's and they're all men and
• 11:00 - 11:30 women from in this particular swath uh between mid-40s to mid-70s really interesting so what you're looking for is a range of ideally think of six that's the middle five to seven is the sweet spot so call it six clearly over 18's like three times that and so down here is rather normal so you have over down here it's okay so what else do they have in correlation well these people who have terrible homocysteine clearly have terrible fish oil epa dhea they're what they call the epa
• 11:30 - 12:00 panel is just your epa the ratio of omega-6 to three is terrible 17 you want one to one there's 1701 so you can see other factors uh insulin resistance i would say so there's your insulin is 26 what do you want it to be two you want it to be two we can go into the homo ir is basically saying insulin resistance it's a formula but it's the same thing up here so that's what we're looking at there so we got that as a clear la and you can address that you can go get your own blood work done you
• 12:00 - 12:30 can go find out what your homocysteine level is i would at least start there so notice where brain atrophy is happening this is what i'm trying to point out to you here there's healthy brain versus for alzheimer's about the third or fourth picture i've shown you of this there's a hippocampus down here brain atrophy and advanced alzheimer's disease down there notice that it is not symmetrical it's not always bilateral in some cases it is somewhat bilateral but um it's usually a left it's usually worse on one side or the other relative to the hippocampus atrophy which means
• 12:30 - 13:00 relative to what they can remember or not remember or learn or not learn okay so the hippocampus is a structure you know deep in the temporal lobes temple there's your temple right temporal lobes here so it's deep down there so give you a few other shots there kind of at the bottom of your brain off to the in there and so atrophy of the hippocampus corresponds to the loss of function and dimension alzheimer's so the hippocampus is deep and it has to do with learning and memory now it's going to get interesting let's return to the study that showed us about uh choline deficiency in the first first place and
• 13:00 - 13:30 how it affects humans and that was from dr stephen zeissel up at the university of north carolina here was his experiment i'm not going to go deep into this and if you want to look at it it's called sex and menopausal status influence on human dietary requirements for nutrient choline in 2007. he's elaborated on it and it's pretty much a first chapter in a book he's done a number of really nice studies so what they did is they had 57 people men women they were premenopausal postmenopausal he brought him made sure
• 13:30 - 14:00 they all for 10 days were at the level of what they call adequate intake which was set by the in essence nih institute of medicine sets that the united states so they're all at the same place and then he dropped them down and made them deficient depleted them if you will depleted them for a month and a half and then brought them up step by step by step until they were back to one of 550. so 550 is the level for men it's the level for lactating women so it's the highest level and though it isn't stated it really should be the level for
• 14:00 - 14:30 postmenopausal women so it's kind of the highest level but adequate intake means if they have this amount they should never be deficient and i'm going to show you and i've showed you before in past videos and here's a link above of of why that's not quite the case so some men have higher choline requirements so what we did is this is from the study now they're saying from that 550 right that from the 550 milligrams of choline some men here's men up here men postmenopausal women premenopausal women still didn't get
• 14:30 - 15:00 enough choline they needed more they didn't need more so out of 6 out of 26 that's a little over 20 a little over 25 still didn't get enough postmenopausal women were fine pre-menopausal women were fine but when then when they depleted everybody who suffered the worst clearly men suffered the worst 20 out of 26 that's about 80 were were hurting what does that mean hurting that means they had muscle dysfunction and you can tell that by labs cpk cholecystokinin and
• 15:00 - 15:30 the level has to be five times higher than their baseline than when they came in five times higher so it's not a little bit it's a lot different and so for liver function means their liver enzymes liver function tests have also increased five times from their baseline so that means they did have dysfunction uh six however we're still fine at that low level for that period of time and everybody everybody 100 of everybody had elevated uric acid for long after the experiment was over long
• 15:30 - 16:00 after the study was over it took them a long time to get back to baseline and why is that because it affects your immune system and it kills your lymphocytes apoptosis which is cell death so i've talked about that before that's what i'm going quickly here i've shown you this before but i'm going to show you this a little bit different now this is the recommendation recommended ai levels right men 550 notice men over 75 50 men 550 women which are premenopausal women 425 pregnancy it's a little more 450 and lactation 550
• 16:00 - 16:30 coequal with men so why is that difference in this pretend world of all women are the same which they clearly are not is that their women can make their own choline because they're high estrogen years it doesn't exist for all women but most women so that's why that's lower and this is where we got that institute of medicine so it's pretty straightforward and these were the averages of the kids which were the only ones that were quote good enough they were all deficient so
• 16:30 - 17:00 men were different young men were deficient women were deficient premenopausal pregnant women were very efficient they noticed the pregnant lactating women were basically equally deficient but the requirements for lactating women breastfeeding women was a lot higher so let's look at this a little bit differently i just want to say the conclusion to that study was that have a daily intake of the ai so everybody following directions and taking their ai they found that it was still not sufficient to prevent organ dysfunction of 19 of the subjects which were men so
• 17:00 - 17:30 they were hurting so it still wasn't enough so 19 out of 57 people a third of the people ai the institute of medicine nih amount of choline was not sufficient to make them not have fivefold increase in their various lab problems okay that's amazing a third okay so now we're going to look at this a little bit differently what i did here took that same picture you saw and i said all right here's how far below so they're for premenopausal women
• 17:30 - 18:00 for instance men sorry this is men young men they had roughly 400 and they're supposed to have 550 so that's roughly 30 below the ai or if you want to say it another way they had 70 of what they needed they were still short they're not making their own choline so premenopausal women that can make their own choline were 60 of what they needed so we're assuming that they made up the difference which isn't true for everybody and now same with the lactating women and pregnant women they were equally they had the
• 18:00 - 18:30 same number uh that they were taking in but because the demand was higher the requirement was higher for lactation they were about 40 deficient 40 deficient of what they're supposed to have so we're hoping they can make some up for themselves but still they're deficient so that's taking that into consideration as well and of course for older men it says men over 70 they were hugely deficient look at that they're getting half of what they needed so the question then is if men were deficient when they were young younger than 70 and they're
• 18:30 - 19:00 really deficient when they're older what does chronic choline deficiency look like times 30 40 50 60 70 years that's a problem do you think that has anything to do with brain atrophy i'm thinking it does all right so now we're going to go back to that and i'm going to plug in those levels of people into like if they were doing the experiment where are they right remember the baseline then they depleted them well here's where men over 70 and premenopausal women both had about the same average intake level and this was
• 19:00 - 19:30 their level they were at 50 percent so they would have really been terribly hurt in this particular experiment this is now lining them up they wouldn't worked out very well a little higher were pregnant and lactating women their average was 337 remember they're only getting 75 percent of what they needed do you think that's a problem do you think that's a problem for the fetus do you think that's a problem for the for the child that's born prenatal postnatal it is a problem and here's where we're getting that information from of course chronically colon deficient men are so there we go there's the men
• 19:30 - 20:00 under 70 they are about 30 deficient there's the men over 70 they're over 50 deficient and they're not making their own choline so what do you think would happen if you were chronically deficient in choline for nearly all of your life except for maybe the first fifth uh 10 or 15 years stretch to say if it's 20. it would not be good so now i plug this back in remember this is we're looking at the data from that experiment and they're saying of all the men's section now
• 20:00 - 20:30 at this level this is how many people there's how many men were still having dysfunction so that means six that's over times five so five still at five fifty still we're getting still had a problem at um that's over five fifty at five fifty another one so it's six together um at 412 which is the 75 percent there were three that were deficient so when you add up all of those above 275 milligrams which is i'm trying to average out what the men had 50 of all
• 20:30 - 21:00 the men of men in general now in the united states are deficient and they would have dysfunction they would have literature dysfunction and they would most likely have muscle dysfunction what about women how chronically choline deficient women are here we go so for average premenopausal women below what they're required to get that's ai ai is a bottom line they are nearly half they're about 40 percent too low they're only getting 60 of what they need women who are pregnant are getting
• 21:00 - 21:30 75 of what they need they're still low still deficient women who are lactating who have the highest level of 550 milligrams per day is they're now down 40 percent that's huge so premenopausal pregnant and lactating the three levels of choline requirement for women so postmenopausal is suggested to be 550 which is the same as men okay here's what it looks like for postmenopausal and premenopausal their data how many people were deficient so what i threw in right the 337 that's
• 21:30 - 22:00 what women had anybody you know above that were certainly deficient so i'm showing you here where out of the post-menopausal women and the pre-menopausal women more than half were deficient what do you think that lifetime deficiency looks like phenomenally so i put them i super impose them back into that study saying here's the levels that nih the institute of medicine says that we all have in the united states why would they be
• 22:00 - 22:30 if anything they would be better numbers in the reality with is actually so fewer menopausal women were deficient due to being able to make their own choline of course and that's assuming they don't have the snips that we've talked about before okay that was another video and there you go that's the big deal we'll continue on the idea of brain atrophy and dhea and fast total choline and choline is very important and i'm hoping you follow on this until next time so what you saw basically is how we get
• 22:30 - 23:00 older and by the way in case you thought that that particular process started at age 70 or something that's roxy that no it doesn't it actually starts oops it actually starts at age 20. so your choices of being and the reason i'm talking about choline different than any other nutrient because it has so many different functions and it really is a grand slam in the fact that it talks about methylation i've talked about that before and it's
• 23:00 - 23:30 about making phosphatidylcholine which is what i call the wrapping of all the cells which is really important and now really and of course making acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter for muscles and for your brain that's been pretty much the story for the last uh well actually not up till now but the last 60 or 70 years that's been it and everybody believed that even back in the 20s when they started noting that phosphatidylcholine lecithin was in
• 23:30 - 24:00 the brain and the lecithin was in the liver and then when people don't get enough of choline via phosphatidylcholine they suffer liver damage muscle damage and what is only now recently being studied is brain damage so they know that there's a correlation of diminished acetylcholine with dementia that's pretty much across the board and there's many ways to get there but the fourth part of it being a transporter for an essential nutrient that provides the if you will the
• 24:00 - 24:30 building blocks the actual physical occupation fat of the brain that's a big deal and let me just help these guys out for a second there you go they like going once they get the once they get the message that they got free food in the water and they don't have to jump for it they're they're all over the place there they go and they can swim fast so these turtles by the way are yellow belly sliders so these are the little pet turtles that you used to be
• 24:30 - 25:00 sold in pet stores and now they're big pet turtles well so to say and this is kind of the dominant turtle down here so it actually this is the native habitat there's two little two little males over there native habitat for yellow belly sliders whereas if if these little kids buy them in the store and they release them locally it ends up being an invasive turtle so it's fine to do that here with this turtle food and they love it and they
• 25:00 - 25:30 need to learn to get on but so anyways a choline acetylcholine is so impressive because i think the deficiency which is really over the last 70 years we don't know before that correlates with the obesity epidemic it correlates with the huge incline of chronic diseases certainly alzheimer's certainly dementia in general but um really it's much more it's bigger than that in the 50s they studied
• 25:30 - 26:00 choline deficiency as associated with cancer that those papers are old and i'm sort of looking into them because i think that's really interesting but i thought that it was worth sort of looking at this whole cooling deficiency in a new way i don't know where turtles are relative to choline but i'm sure they have their i'm hoping that they get their part they'll get it through animal foods from the shellfish they eat and the fish that they eat and the turtle food we give them until next time so if this is something that you're
• 26:00 - 26:30 interested in that is a topic that i obviously go deeper in in terms of labs in terms of how to do it in terms of why you would want to do it various topics as you've seen that i've done in the past then please let me know below in a comment till then