The most annoying thing about pieces like this is how easy it would be to actually test the hypothesis. They could just give people choline (double blind placebo including some participants who are not anxious). And test the effect on both choline levels and anxiety.
It’s also ready sold OTC.
Instead people just sit around and do meta studies on meta studies on correlation and publishing whatever statistical anomalies they can find.
But also be careful about taking too much choline. There's lots of anecdotal reports of people taking too much choline supplements and becoming massively depressed.
My first-hand experience of the healthcare system in the USA leads me to conclude we don’t have good data on pathological anxiety levels. Psychiatry is over-incentivized to positively diagnose.
You can get diagnosed with ‘anxiety’ when you’ve been in a hard circumstance for a while, since it’s simply a self-reporting questionnaire on levels of concern. That’s not a way to determine pathology - how do they tell when it’s appropriate behavior, eg when you’re actually in a dangerous situation.
This economy, since the financial crisis, has had weak employment (when you factor in not-in-workforce trends over the last 50 years), being under-employed for a long time is a threat to life. You can be in a location or situation where you’re blind to a loss of economic opportunity because there is so much misinformation. Anxiety is not maladaptive then.
This happened to me, and when my situation finally began to improve after a change in direction, my anxiety went down. Before I made that change, I found anti-anxiety meds put me in a dysfunctional ‘happy’ state, that made it harder to course correct or care about my reality. So I quickly stopped taking them last year, shortly after receiving them. And yet a diagnosis was made then, and looking at my medical report, this so called disease remains on my medical record. Ridiculous. All that self-reporting showed was normal human behavior.
Luckily, at the worst time, I also hedged by seeing separately a psychologist who helped me understand through a series of interviews that all my behavior was appropriate to my situation.
I am suffering from medium levels of general anxiety and fighting with severe anxiety (panic?) in situations that stress me out, e.g. conflict or interviews. If I know I have those 2 hours beforehand and I can tranquilize myself with the betablocker propranolol which makes the relevant adrenaline receptors in your body immune to all the adrenaline your gland secrete and turns me into a cool and smooth operator.
Choline gives me a severe stiff neck and makes me unable to sleep. I have experimented with many supplements and it was one of the most consistent and unfortunate effects I ever got from one.
A supplement that I take and comment about frequently is (Spirulina & Chorella), this is a study that shows the level of choline in Spirulina. Improving my diet and using a supplement like algae has had the most impact on my anxiety levels and focus.
Mindfulness meditation also helps with consistent action to understand where my mind and body are at each day.
A word of warning, while the issues of low choline tend to be what shows up in a search, too much can also have negative effects, such as inducing strong depression. Because choline touches so much in the brain/body, there are other things that can happen as well, such as subtle mental effects and changes in blood pressure. TMAO generation may also a concern.
So be careful trying supplements, and monitor your mental/physical state.
Choline from normal food sources isn’t typically a problem, but supplements and additives like lecithin can push people over the edge.
A lot of things are going to be different in a brain in constant fight or flight mode. It isn't surprising that flooding your system daily with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline has an effect on brain chemistry. But this doesn't mean causation, and especially doesn't mean causation with regards to dietary choline intake.
Choline and it's more active similar, acetylcholine, is present in wide areas of the central nervous system. Definitely this is a correlation not implying anything about any mechanism. Especially because they didn't try to test giving choline to the same subjects. At the moment you cannot hack pathological stress with food. Maybe only a mild one and the effect will be indistinguishable from placebo.
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[ 406 ms ] story [ 3059 ms ] threadIt’s also ready sold OTC.
Instead people just sit around and do meta studies on meta studies on correlation and publishing whatever statistical anomalies they can find.
You can get diagnosed with ‘anxiety’ when you’ve been in a hard circumstance for a while, since it’s simply a self-reporting questionnaire on levels of concern. That’s not a way to determine pathology - how do they tell when it’s appropriate behavior, eg when you’re actually in a dangerous situation.
This economy, since the financial crisis, has had weak employment (when you factor in not-in-workforce trends over the last 50 years), being under-employed for a long time is a threat to life. You can be in a location or situation where you’re blind to a loss of economic opportunity because there is so much misinformation. Anxiety is not maladaptive then.
This happened to me, and when my situation finally began to improve after a change in direction, my anxiety went down. Before I made that change, I found anti-anxiety meds put me in a dysfunctional ‘happy’ state, that made it harder to course correct or care about my reality. So I quickly stopped taking them last year, shortly after receiving them. And yet a diagnosis was made then, and looking at my medical report, this so called disease remains on my medical record. Ridiculous. All that self-reporting showed was normal human behavior.
Luckily, at the worst time, I also hedged by seeing separately a psychologist who helped me understand through a series of interviews that all my behavior was appropriate to my situation.
Choline gives me a severe stiff neck and makes me unable to sleep. I have experimented with many supplements and it was one of the most consistent and unfortunate effects I ever got from one.
I feel like a lot of the studies coming out lately are trying really hard to corelate information and join the meta-studies wagon.
Mindfulness meditation also helps with consistent action to understand where my mind and body are at each day.
Research - Functional properties of bioactive compounds from Spirulina spp.: Current status and future trends (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9513730/)
that's how most people never experience anxiety in most parts of the world.
no need for drugs, medicines etc.
So be careful trying supplements, and monitor your mental/physical state.
Choline from normal food sources isn’t typically a problem, but supplements and additives like lecithin can push people over the edge.
This looks like a decent summary of why it may cause depression: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6fdb/adf596271afea393659cbf... (World Nutrition 2019;10(1):54-62 “Too much of a good thing? Lecithin and mental health”)
"Meta-analysis finds people with anxiety disorders have lower levels of choline in their brains"
There's no evidence (yet) of anything being "tied to" anything else.
Dammit.
<puts down spoonful of choline>