Amazoniac
Member
Your posts are always so helpful that I don't think you'll ever need to be worried about being ostrichized.For those trying to get enough choline from Whole Foods first, keep in mind that Chris Masterjohn shows that you can get up to half of your choline needs met by the closely related betaine. Now, betaine doesn’t really seem to be anywhere near effected for fatty liver as choline does, however, it appears that betaine is choline sparing in the sense that it is used for methylation by the body, from a choline to betaine conversion pathway. So, if one wants to get enough egg yolk choline equivalents of betaine, they could consume half of their choline intake in that form so that less or very little choline is converted by the body to betaine for its methylation needs. This will leave the choline that you eat from animal products to utilized for things like fatty liver or whatever, providing there is enough have a caloric deficit in conjunction to it for increased mobilization of stored liver fat.
So, for example, if one finds it hard to get 500 or 800mg of choline per day from foods alone because it may push PUFA intake up higher or for whatever reason, you could theoretically consume half of that in betaine and thus need less total choline. So if I am trying to shoot for 700mg of choline or choline equivalents from my diet and 105g of cooked spinach and 57g of canned beets would give me two egg yolk equivalents of betaine. Double that up and I have half of that for methylation and the other have I can get in the form of choline which then will likely be used for liver health and other things, etc. This comes in handy if you want to get most of your choline form the few low PUFA sources of it that are available, such as milk, liver, low PUFA white fish such as cod, kidney, etc., and do not want to smash down 8, or 12 egg yolks a day as that would really add a lot of PUFA on top of your natural PUFA intake from the rest of diet alone. As I handle milk very well and have a high milk consumption, I’m already easily getting around 5 or so egg yolk equivalents of choline from milk alone. An egg and maybe the occasional low PUFA fish like cod or some liver or kidney really increases it more without increasing the PUFA content to a level I personally don’t want. I could add just 3 oz of liver which has about the same PUFA content or one egg and that would be almost 1000 mg of egg yolk choline equivalents from low PUFA food sources alone. And then maybe throw in canned/cooked beets (which are also low PUFA) for my methylation needs so that most of that choline goes towards liver tissue and other needs and I easily can get enough choline without having to jack up the PUFA. But that would be harder for someone who doesn’t handle dairy or organ meets well to do.
Here's what you've just described:
- Grant Genereux's Theory Of Vitamin A Toxicity
Since it's down the stream, it indeed has that sparing effect on choline by diverting it from methylation.
Creatine should be useful in this regard, it was discussed on the 'Choline notes' thread. I think this is particularly interesting for those that get most of their proteid from dairy instead of meats. I'm not sure how calcium and phosphate relate to it, but it's something that's also worth investigating.
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