HOT TIP: GET YOUR CHOLINE!!!
Choline Rich Meal: White bean salad, Egg salad, and Kale salad trio with a paleo torilla!
I am here to share some critical pieces about health I have learned on my healing journey, ESPECIALLY for my ladies in their mid to late 30s, 40s, and 50s and beyond.
It has to do with hormones and the body and the changes that take place when our body shifts into making less estrogen.
As I talk to friends and family, it is around this time in their late 30s, 40s, perimenopause, and beyond, that many women begin to experience health irregularities and challenges that they have never experienced before. This is often not talked about much amongst women or intergenerationally. When it starts, most women feel confused, alone, and out of their depth in dealing with or improving their situation.
As many may know, the approach of middle age can mean a slowing down of the thyroid, sleep issues, and the dreaded night sweats. But there are other important impacts that this shift creates in the body that have dramatic implications on the health of women.
We often attribute these shifts in our well-being to the approach of menopause. We then feel overwhelmed, under-informed, and shrug our shoulders. We bemoan the unpleasant side effects of being a woman in middle age.
Some may have no idea that these health issues are often linked with the hormonal shifts within our bodies. Another problem is many see part of the elephant and try to address that one aspect of bodily health in isolation, not seeing all the implications of the situation and our interventions on our larger whole.
However, some of these health challenges may indicate a breakdown in critical health functions that needs to be addressed so that health can be substantially improved and disease processes halted. In other words, these conditions may be preventable or at least can be substantially ameliorated.
In fact, sometimes we don’t have the proper nutrients to make our body function well. Yes, it can be that simple. Even if the causes are not.
The following is my public service announcement to all the ladies out there approaching your 40s, 50s, and beyond. It’s what I tell all my girlfriends whenever I get the chance. It’s what I tell my mother, my best friends, and my work colleague.
I want to tell you about an incredible nutrient your body needs, that until recently, I had barely heard of before.
Choline.
It's a nutrient. And we need it. Like every day.
If you are someone experiencing health issues as you age, you may ask, I’ve been eating and living the same way for years and years without problems. Why am I having problems now?
The answer is multi-factored but it comes down to this: As women age, our estrogen declines. But what does this have to do with Choline? When you are younger, if you don’t get enough choline, your body has a stopgap: It converts excess estrogen to choline so that critical bodily processes can continue uninterrupted. However, when you no longer have excess estrogen to convert, if you don’t have enough choline or other required nutrients, some of these critical enzymatic processes begin to break down. For example, choline is a primary methyl donor for the body. Methyl donors are a group of nutrients required for methylation reactions, including DNA methylation. They include folate, vitamin B12, methionine, zinc, betaine, and choline. You don’t want to be low on these!
Add to this the reality that 40% of women maintain a common genetic variation called SNPs, or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, which means they need significantly more Choline and/or Folate, or other nutrients than average because they are unable to make them internally. So the lack of these critical nutrients could lead to serious issues even more rapidly.
When I say critical, I MEAN CRITICAL! Like if they don’t function well, serious health challenges likely will result.
Why? The methylation cycle helps us to operate both physically and mentally, so many different functions in the body use this process. Such functions include nervous, cardiovascular, and immune system activity, as well as energy production, heavy-metal detoxification, and hormone balance.
Just to give a sense, when optimal methylation occurs, it has a significant positive impact on many biochemical reactions in the body:
DNA production
Neurotransmitter production
Detoxification
Histamine metabolism
Estrogen metabolism
Eye health
Fat metabolism
Cellular energy
Liver health
Choline is a key nutrient required for your body to detoxify pesticides, chemicals, heavy metals, and excess hormones or xenoestrogens that are problematic chemical estrogens we get frequently from our environment.
Also significant, without enough choline, your bile does not flow properly, and without proper bile flow, your gallbladder can not function well. Without proper and adequately viscous bile flow, you are likely not digesting fats well and likely have poor fat and nutrient absorption. A lack of critical nutrients can lead to a deterioration of important bodily processes.
Along with malabsorption, poor fat digestion can cause nausea and fatigue after eating, bloating, gas, acid reflux, liver/ gall bladder issues, as well as SIBO (Small intestinal bacteria overgrowth). Yes, bile, helps keep your bacterial balance in check and eliminates parasites and pathogens. Without enough choline, eventually, you don’t have healthy bile flow, and gut pathogen imbalances can arise. This will further erode a healthy gut lining, digestion, and absorption. Enter the vicious cycle leading to increased nutritional deficiencies, despite an optimal diet.
Low stomach acid often goes hand in hand with low bile flow, and acid reflux can arise (a condition now widely believed to be caused by too little acid in the stomach, rather than too much). So as you can see, this is not a road you want to go down.
Methylation also relates to cancer because if we cannot properly detoxify chemicals, heavy metals, hormones, or pesticides from our body, they can create serious blocks to health and immune function, weighing down the body and setting the stage for more serious conditions to arise.
THIS is why the environment OUT THERE is intricately woven with the environment IN HERE. As women - and men for the matter - our reproductive organs are especially vulnerable.
Over 95% of the chemicals approved each year are not tested before approval, and are not tested for cross-reactivity with other chemicals. The more chemicals get added each year, the more we swim in, with increasing challenges to our microbiome and detoxification systems.
Sourcing Choline
Choline can be sourced from eggs, organ meats, fish, and chicken as well as from vegetarian sources, although in less robust quantities. It can be found in beans, cruciferous vegetables, shitake mushrooms, tofu, almonds, quinoa, and more.
My vegan and vegetarian female-sexed friends, here’s looking out: If you are approaching your late thirties and beyond, unless you have stellar digestion and absorption with no issues, and are super conscious of making sure you get adequate choline, and B vitamins on a daily basis, and get tested regularly to make certain your levels are good, please supplement with Non-GMO Phosphatidylcholine, also known as sunflower lecithin. You may have assumed that because you were eating a healthy plant-based diet you were in the clear, but unless you are getting sufficient amounts of choline and B vitamins from food or supplemental sources, you may be suffering due to a lack of critical methyl donors needed for your bodily processes to optimally function. Without animal sources it is more challenging to get enough on a daily basis as we age, hence supplementing can be a great option.
I also recommend all women and vegans or vegetarians include a B vitamin complex that is methylated (unless you don’t tolerate methylated B vitamins.) Please look for Methylfolate, the active form B9, instead of folic acid. In your multi or B vitamin complex, look for a Methylated B12 in the form of methylcobalamin. These are important cofactors for your critical methylation process described earlier that happens in every cell of your body.
Finally, if you have any GI issues like bloating, gas, or acid reflux after meals, chronic diarrhea and/or constipation, please, don’t assume that everything you eat is being absorbed. Nutrient absorption issues can be critical to your health. Consider that a simple vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for cancer.
On top of that, you may have further complicating factors from genetic variants that leave you low in essential nutrients.
I have a health coaching business where we look at your genetics, detoxification and current health markers to create a roadmap for wellness. If you want to do an initial 20-minute consultation to explore whether and how you might want to work together, you can schedule here!
Yours in Health, Vitality, and Living your Best Life,
Sarah
Decoding Health
Decoding CancerCoach
