I think I've made an interesting realization this past week.  As I noted earlier in this blog - early on in our child's life (when he was 6 to 9 months old) we noticed that if he had extra choline during the day (typically by way of an egg yolk) he would not have his normal nap schedule - and would typically skip a nap, or (if he had two egg yolks that day) skip both scheduled naps that day.

This is consistent with what the research has shown in other mammals - as I've read in the research papers.  After a certain point - I forget exactly when - but perhaps around 14 months or so - I noticed that the additional choline provided by egg yolks no longer seemed to provide the same increase in waking energy and reduced sleep.  He'd eat his egg yolk(s) and his nap schedule was no longer impacted.  This has been the case for most of the last 6 months or so - but this week I noticed something unusual.

Early in life - the impact of the added choline on our son (who was exposed to about 3.5 grams of choline / day during pregnancy) was very clear and rapid; he didn't get tired during the normal times, and with two egg yolks would skip his naps entirely and stay wide awake and playful until a late bedtime (8 or 9pm if I remember correctly).

This week I realized that the additional choline received from the egg yolks does seem to still be having an impact on his sleep patterns.  The past few weeks I've been giving him the occasional omelette which consists just of three egg yolks (no whites) - or about 350 mg of choline.  When I do this there is no change in his daily sleep habits - he still sleeps his normal 2 to 3 hour long nap from about noon to 3pm, and goes to be around 7/8pm.  This is, I think, why I thought the "Choline Effect" had worn off and was no longer effective. 

But for most of the past few months our son has been a very regular 12 hour a night sleeper - if he goes to bed at 7pm, he wakes up at 7am.  If he goes to sleep at 8pm, he wakes up at about 8am.  But then I started giving him these 3-egg omelettes and suddenly he was waking up at 5:30am or 6am in the morning.  I've now noticed this every time I give him the three egg omelette.  It seems that the choline effect is delayed now that he's older - so that it hits him about 20 hours after he consumes the eggs and added choline.  Interesting. 

I've backed off on his three-egg breakfast omelettes now because I need the sleep - but I'll be trying some 3 egg-yolk omelettes at lunch and dinner and see what happens, and will report back.

More good news about taking choline during pregnancy.  A new research study out of Cornell University showed that in a mouse model of down syndrome (a mouse that is genetically designed to develop downs syndrome like disease) the pregnant and lactating mice that received additional choline had babies that fared much better than those whose mother's did no receive choline. 

More choline during pregnancy and nursing could provide lasting cognitive and emotional benefits to individuals with Down syndrome and protect against neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, suggests a new Cornell study of mice.

The findings, published June 2 in Behavioral Neuroscience, could help lead to increasing the maternal dietary recommendations for choline (currently 450 milligrams a day during pregnancy, 550 milligrams for lactation), a nutrient found in egg yolks, liver, nuts and such vegetables as broccoli and cauliflower.

"We found that supplementing the maternal diet with additional choline resulted in dramatic improvements in attention and some normalization of emotion regulation in a mouse model of Down syndrome," said lead author Barbara Strupp, professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology. The researchers also found evidence for "subtle, but statistically significant, improvement in learning ability in the non-Down syndrome littermates."

In addition to mental retardation, Down syndrome individuals often experience dementia in middle age as a result of brain neuron atrophy similar to that suffered by people with Alzheimer's disease. Strupp noted that the improved mental abilities found in the Down syndrome mice following maternal choline supplements could indicate protection from such neurodegeneration "in the population at large."

Strupp and her co-authors tested Down syndrome model mice born from mothers fed a normal diet and those given choline supplements during their three-week pregnancy and three-week lactation period, as well as normal mice born from mothers with and without additional choline. The choline-supplemented mothers received approximately 4.5 times more choline (roughly comparable to levels at the higher range of human intake) than unsupplemented mothers.

At six months of age, the mice performed a series of behavioral tasks for about six months to assess their impulsivity, attention span, emotion control and other mental abilities.  

In addition to dramatic improvements in attention, the researchers found that the unsupplemented Down syndrome model mice became more agitated after a mistake than normal mice, jumping repeatedly and taking longer to initiate the next trial, whereas the choline-supplemented Down syndrome model mice showed partial improvement in these areas.

"I'm impressed by the magnitude of the cognitive benefits seen in the Down syndrome model mice," Strupp said. "Moreover, these are clearly lasting cognitive improvements, seen many months after the period of choline supplementation."

Strupp noted that the results are consistent with studies by other researchers that found increased maternal choline intake improves offspring cognitive abilities in rats. However, this is the first study to evaluate the effects of maternal choline supplementation in a rodent model of downs syndrome.  This is also one of the few studies that has evaluated offspring attentional function and effects in mice, rather than rats, Strupp noted.

Previous studies of humans and laboratory animals have shown that supplementing the diets of adults with choline has proven to be largely ineffective in improving cognition. "Although the precise mechanism is unknown, these lasting beneficial effects of choline observed in the present study are likely to be limited to increased intake during very early development," Strupp said.

Source: Cornell University

Our toddler's 18 month doctor's checkup has come and gone and things are going well.  Our little guy is at about the 70th percentile in height, 75 percentile in weight, and 95 percentile in head circumference. 

Everything seems to be going really well development wise.  He has a vocabulary of about 150 to 170  words in English now, and perhaps around 50 words in Mandarin Chinese (we have a Chinese nanny who speaks to our son exclusively in Chinese - and he's quickly becoming quite fluent in the language - at least from the point of understanding what she's saying (for for me - a non-chinese speaker - is rather amazing.  I have no idea what our nanny is saying most of the time - even when she tries to speak in English).

Our child is  a real talker - commenting on everything he sees around him and hears.  Watching kids grow up is truly an amazing experience.  My wife and I are going to try to see the new movie "Babies" that is showing this week at a local theater.

I've read quite a bit of the research on how Choline and other B-vitamins (when taken during pregnancy) add methyl groups to the child's DNA - allowing over expression of some genes (thus the better memory), and reducing expression of other genes.

Some researchers I've talked to have seen in their research that when they subject pregnant rodents (mice and rat models that are predisposed to what seem to be schizophrenia and autism ) to moderate stress over multiple generations - there are very high rates of disease and disorders.  When they feed these same strains of mice and rats Choline during the pregnancy - they eliminate this risk.

I've also read about research stress demethylates genes (removes methyl groups) - and stress and poor nutrition during pregnancy could result in 5% or higher rates of demethylation - which, I hear, is a huge impact on the mammal's (mice or humans) genes.  Research I've read also suggests that rates of anxiety and fear significantly increase in mammals (animals and humans) that have experienced high rates of stress during pregnancy and during early life.  In fact I've also read that early life stresses (poverty, stressful family environment, etc.) greatly increases the risk of PTSD later in life (a fact that has been born out in studies of army vets, I believe). 

All of this I find very interesting - because in our own child we see, I believe, the positive impact of high levels of choline during pregnancy.  One of the most visible and common situations I see this in, is if our baby boy (now 17 months) stays up past his normal birthday - which happens occasionally when we are traveling, or visiting with friends on the weekend for a dinner party.  What I find very interesting - and which I suspect is in part due to the extra choline during pregnancy that my wife took - is that while after a certain time all our friend's children start "melting down" and becoming very sensitive and prone to crying  - our child just keeps on playing and exploring like it is mid-day.  As our child gets more tired - his mood doesn't change much.  We see him start rubbing his eyes a bit - but for the most part you couldn't tell if he had just woken up from a nap, or has been up for 8 hours.  He's still just a happy, playful little boy.  Its interesting because on occasion we've gone to afternoon parties with our group of friends who have young kids - and our child is always the last one standing, sometimes until 10pm at night (his usual bedtime is between 6:30pm and 7:30pm) with no crying, no increased sensitivity - and no problems.  Our other friends have to start putting their kids to bed at 7:30 or so as they start becoming more sensitive and crying more frequently. 

Now - I also suspect that the increase in Choline during pregnancy might have some downside.  One downside I suspect is that these children are less prone to fear - which in many situations might be good - but in which many situations might also be not so good. 

What got me thinking about this recently was when were visiting friends the other day and were sitting at the dinner table. I was sitting on a bench seat with my son beside me and windows immediately behind us.  While I was eating, he turned around - reached as high as he could - and proceeded to climb up on the window using his fingertips on a 1 inch ledge, and his feet on another 1 inch ledge (if you've ever rock-climbed, you'd recognize this as a classic "front-pointing" stance).  He had his little running shoes and was totally happy hanging out hanging by his finger tips and toes.  No problem, no fear.  One side of me thinks "great - he'll be a good rock climber" - but the other side of me knows that a healthy fear is a good thing.  I'm not sure yet what this experience indicates yet - but it bears more monitoring.   

As I've mentioned - with our first child my wife took approximately 3 grams of Choline per day (50% Lecithin, 50% Choline Bitartrate) during the second half of her pregnancy. 

One interesting result we've seen - in addition to what we believe is better memory - is higher levels of energy and less need for sleep in our child - especially when additional choline is consumed by our son. 

Let me give you a little more information by way of an example.  At around age 5 or 6 months we began feeding our son egg yolks - mixed with organic plain yogurt. We'd boil the organic (typically high DHA) eggs - for about 10 minutes until the yolk was hard - then we'd take them out and crush up and mix just the yolk with yogurt. (Note, we had talked to our pediatrician about feeding young children eggs - and she said that there really was no standard well-researched answer in this area; in Europe they frequently do feed eggs to their children at a young age - whereas in the US the pediatric community tends to not recommend this - but (she said) there isn't really compelling evidence of risks (e.g. allergy impact) from either approach.

 At this age he had two naps per day, each nap between 2 and 3 hours typically.  What we noticed very quickly is that if we fed him an egg yolk as part of breakfast (this was the first solid food he was taking in addition to the rice cereal that all kids seem to start on) our son would skip the first nap entirely - maintaining the same energy level and curiosity that he had early on in the day when he first woke up, until late in the afternoon - when his second typical nap time came up.  The second nap was as it normally was - 2 to 3 hours, and we saw no impact on the night sleeping house - which was typically 11 or 12 hours (straight through without waking at this time). 

A few times we mixed 2 egg yolks into his morning breakfast (again with yogurt) and we saw an even more interesting result - he would stay energized, happy and curious for the next 12 hours without any nap. 

Then - to be sure that the result we were seeing was in fact due to the choline - one morning at breakfast I squeezed out the Lecithin from a triple strength capsules (into the yogurt) which was a total of about 350mg of Choline.   And - the same thing happened as when we fed him the egg yolk - the little guy was full of energy and curiosity for the next 7 hours or so.

Interestingly, this impact in significantly increasing the energy/stamina of our child only lasted until he was about 14 months old.  Now - at 17 months - the addition of choline doesn't seem to change his stamina/energy much.  He phased into one nap a day (typically from around 11am to 1pm or 2pm)  at around 11 months (earlier than most babies I've hard of).

Interestingly - this increase in energy (and reduced need for sleep)  is exactly the same result that I've read in the research papers (I've read ALL the research papers on Choline - and continue to as they come out).

Its still early - and our child is only one data point - but from our experience it does appear that choline has the same impact on humans as it does on other mammals that it has been tested on.