Are you getting enough choline? During pregnancy, choline is a key nutrient for
your baby's brain development. If you're not sure stay tuned for more information
about this essential nutrient
I'm very excited to introduce you all to the wonderful Wendy. Thanks for coming
and joining us today Wendy. Thanks for having me. So can you tell everyone just a bit
about what you do and why you specialise in this area? Yes so I'm a dietitian and
the area that I specialise in is women's health, fertility, pregnancy and postnatal
nutrition. I'm also a Mum myself and so I've recently been through my own
fertility and pregnancy experience and I love working with women at all stages on
their fertility and pregnancy journeys and I'm just really passionate about
sharing you know the huge amount of research that we have on the importance
of nutrition in this period. Fantastic. So today we're talking about choline in
particular and so why is there so much buzz about this nutrient in particular?
So choline, it's a really important nutrient it's an essential
nutrient that's part of the B group family of vitamins and when I say
essential it means that we have to get it from food in order to function
properly so we can make a little bit of ourselves but not as much as we need and
it has so many important roles in the body and so one of its most important
roles is as a methyl donor so it's needed for the synthesis of DNA and the
gene expression so whether our genes are turned on and off. It also is
really important for the brain and the nervous system as well and actually all
cells in the body need choline because it's part of the cell membrane so it's
so many important roles but it hasn't had too much attention
up until recently that is because we're learning more and more about just
how important it is during pregnancy. So why is it particularly important during
this time of life? So it's really important for the development of the
growing baby in pregnancy and in particular for the
development of the brain and the brain stem and the spinal cord and so it's
really important in preventing neural tube defects. Just like folate which we
people seem to know a lot more about but studies are showing that even if a woman
has enough folate in her diet if she doesn't have adequate choline she's
actually still at a higher risk of neural tube defects and so that's one
reason that it's so important in pregnancy. It also seems to be
important for cognitive performance and so studies have shown that higher
choline intakes in pregnancy are associated with improved cognitive
performance in the baby that lasts into later life as well. Right, fantastic.
So do we need higher amounts of choline during pregnancy like we do some other
nutrients? Yeah we we absolutely do and at the moment the guidelines only
recommend quite a modest increase in pregnancy so before pregnancy it's four
hundred and twenty-five milligrams that you need and then this just increases to
four hundred and forty milligrams in pregnancy and then it increases again
when breastfeeding. But what's concerning is that there's been some recent
research into the choline intakes of the Australian population and they found
that less than 1% of women are actually meeting these requirements so we do need
to be having more choline and then on top of that those recommendations are
sort of based on fairly old data and more recent research is showing benefits
to the baby at amounts almost double this. Wow that's really interesting.
So what about too much choline, is there a problem with taking too much of it?
Yes so there is an upper level of intake set for choline, which basically is the
amount that we're advised not to have more of
and if we exceed this level then it can cause things like vomiting, fishy body odor.
We don't want that!
Things that aren't very nice. Even liver toxicity at high amounts.
There's also been a study that showed that higher levels of choline
were associated with maternal anxiety and depression but other studies have
shown sort of the very opposite of this and but that being said so although we
don't want to exceed this upper level of intake that's it at 3,500
milligrams so it really is very high and you wouldn't meet that amount with
food intake so just to put it into context, eggs are one of the best sources of choline
and you need to eat 23 eggs. Not too many pregnant women doing that.
High-dose supplements that I would be worried about. So in terms of food so you said the eggs are
one of the best sources of choline, what other foods can we get our choline
intake from? So there are quite a few other sources, eggs are a very good one
and you just need two eggs to make more than 50% of your requirements. Other
sources are beef is another good source, chicken and fish other good sources,
soybeans and some other plant-based sources broccoli and Brussels sprouts
and potatoes as well and quinoa, milk and yogurt are good sources too and so there
are quite a lot of different sources but what's really important because we do
need quite a bit of choline in pregnancy is to try and include them
throughout your day in pregnancy. So like I always say if your if your
diet consists of pizza and chocolate bars you're probably not going to be
meeting those nutrient requirements are we? Yeah exactly right. So it's about
having a varied diet with lots of fresh wholefoods and I guess one other thing to mention
although I say eggs are a great source of choline, in pregnancy we need to
be particularly mindful of food safety so making sure the eggs are
well cooked and that you're storing those properly. Yeah a great tip. What
about supplements, do most pregnancy supplements contain choline then? So at
the moment most actually don't in Australia and that includes the bigger
and more well-known brands they don't actually have choline, you can get it
in there are a few supplements that do have it but the majority don't. I do
wonder if this will change fairly soon as we're becoming more and more aware of
the importance of the nutrient in pregnancy. In America this is
certainly looking to change and the American Medical Association has now
voted to recommend evidence-based amounts of choline in all of the
prenatal supplements there so I think that this will change. Well some
fantastic tips thank you so much for your time today Wendy.
So from you guys a couple of things that I would love you to do first of all
is I would love you to comment in the chat box below what's one of the key
things that you've learnt today because by actually writing it out it really
helps us to cement those messages in our brain and to remember them so yeah let
us know what's one of the best things that you've learnt from Wendy today and
then secondly if you would like help to optimise your pregnancy diet if you if
you're not sure what to be eating one of the best things that you can do is
download my free pregnancy meal plan so for that you just go to www.melaniemcgrice.com/pregnancy
and then make sure that you subscribe so that you do get my
weekly videos to keep providing you with all of the dietary tips on how to really
optimise your diet during pregnancy. so with that I look forward to seeing you
in my next video we really
it is very exciting