I always read people claiming on here but also other subreddits, how important Choline is, and that it is essential (in the meaning of you NEED to supplement it or eat enough food with it on a daily base). I know Choline is classified in the USA as an essential “vitamin”. But here comes the point, maybe not many Americans know this:
In the EU, Choline is NOT classified as essential. There are no guidelines of how much or how less you need or should eat per day. Therefor, in most vitamin supplements you can buy in EU there is no Choline included actually, sometimes maybe, but just in tiny amounts of around 5mg.
I would assume if it was really so important and also if the medical studies were really clear on this, EU would also classify it as essential.
Can someone maybe explain a bit on this matter?
When I read in EU data / articles, it always says your body produces enough Choline on its own and there is no need to supplement it.
Choline is essential to your bodies health as it is one of the precursors for acetylcholine, which is probably fair to label as the most important ‘neurotransmitter’. Neurotransmitters are Essentially the method a lot of nerves in the body use to communicate.
Beyond that I say If you eat what most individuals consider a healthy varied diet you have no worry about having too little, mainly because choline is recyclable for the body’s primary function for it.
It is important but studies show different people requiring different levels(low sample size),making it hard to figure out an rda ,so they have gone with an adequate intake level (AI).link efsa
> The Panel considers that none of the biomarkersof choline intake or status is suitable to derive DRVs for choline. The Panel considers that AverageRequirements and Population Reference Intakes for choline cannot be derived for adults, infants andchildren, and therefore defines Adequate Intakes (AIs). For all adults, the Panel sets an AI at 400 mg/daybased on the average observed choline intake in healthy populations in the European Union and in consideration of the amounts of choline needed to replete about 70% of depleted subjects whoshowed signs of organ dysfunction in a depletion/repletion study
> The amount of choline needed to replete subjects with signs of organ dysfunction differed betweensubjects (Fischer et al., 2007) as shown in Table 2. In all the other studies mentioned in Appendix D,this was not reported. Disregarding missing data as well as sex differences because the numbers aretoo small, 10 out of 39 choline-deficient subjects were repleted with 137.5 mg/70-kg bw per day, threewith 275, five with 412.5, and 13 needed 550 or more than 550 mg/70-kg bw per day (or anad libitum diet) including the six men with signs of choline deficiency already on the baseline diet with550 mg choline/70-kg of bw, while the data from eight subjects were completely missing.
> the Panel notes that 18,i.e. about 70%, needed up to about 400 mg choline/70-kg bw per day for repletion. The Panel alsonotes that this percentage decreased to 58% when the six men with signs of choline deficiencyalready during the baseline period with 550 mg choline/day (and therefore presumably with a highercholine requirement) were taken into account (Fischer et al., 2007).
Anecdotally and as an American, choline has helped me a lot.
This is 100% a guess based off stuff that I am more familiar with, but Americans are exposed to far more environmental toxins than in the EU because the EU has much tighter regulations. So I don’t know about choline specifically, but this is the biggest reason why Americans are much unhealthier compared to most (if not all) European nations. Based on toxins’ abilities to mess up really everything in the body including our ability to regulate and produce hormones, balance neurotransmitters, and absorb nutrients, I think it could be plausible that Americans body’s really just suck at producing and/or using choline. You’d have to find some raw data obviously to compare. But I think this could explain at least some discrepancies.
But like I said, I’ve never seen anything on toxins impacting choline specifically. It’s just a little bit of context of the difference between health in the USA compared to the EU.
I found out my diet was low in choline from myfooddata.com. Started eating 1 boiled egg a day. I think it’s very important from my reading articles like this.
https://www.superbakrill.com/blog/what-is-choline-and-what-is-it-good-for#:~:text=LiverCholine%20helps%20remove%20fat,affecting%201%20in%204%20people.