Anxiety disorders tied to low levels of choline in the brain
(medicalxpress.com)67 points by clumsysmurf 2 hours ago
67 points by clumsysmurf 2 hours ago
Would you mind sharing the brand, and how much of it you take?
Yeah for sure, this is what I buy on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FAB10ZI) and the dosage depends on what you are experiencing. I was doubling my dosage, but have lowered it back to the recommended dosage on the package (10 pills, they are tiny). I have also taken the powered version but the umami taste is really strong, so I went back to the pill version.
I like to take it with Psyllium Husk Fiber / Metamucil to help increase the fiber in my diet since the higher dosage is like eating a lot of kale at one time, it can move through you super quickly.
Here are some studies that I commented before that I have read that has helped with learning more about the supplements and the dosages depending on what you are experiencing:
- High-dose supplementation of Chlorella and Spirulina increases beneficial gut Bacteria in healthy ICR mice: A 90-day feeding study (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2025.106796)
- Spirulina in Clinical Practice: Evidence-Based Human Applications (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3136577/)
- Effect of spirulina and chlorella alone and combined on the healing process of diabetic wounds: an experimental model of diabetic rats (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8212205/)
- Beneficial Effects of Spirulina Consumption on Brain Health ( https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14030676) This is a new study that I found, that I'm going to read, but it shows the impact on neuroinflammation, and from experience the supplement has helped me with inflammation, and why I think it has helped with my ADHD/Anxiety.
Amazingly helpful, thank you so much!
On a meta note, I have a deep love and appreciation for people like yourself who share this kind of info. It's been quite helpful for me on my own health journey.
People have to stop trying to depend on supplements for what a diet should provide.
Neither spirulina nor chlorella are good sources of choline. For example if you had to take spirulina you'd need about 6 cups per day to reach RDI. Way to risk getting elevated uric acid, vitamin A overload or a slew of other intestinal issues.
Compare with 3-4 eggs... or 90g of beef liver I know what I would take.
Eggs are gross and I'd need a much better reason than "someone said it was better than supplements" to take a life.
> Way to risk getting elevated uric acid, vitamin A overload or a slew of other intestinal issues.
I thought vegatables = good? You can never eat too many greens I think youll find is the prevailing wisdom
Spirulina is not a good source of choline. You'd need about 6 cups of it per day to get it. I think the person commenting is just interested in spirulina itself and is misguided about its benefits.
The studies listed as part of this thread show people taking 3-4 grams per day for 8 weeks... that's less than 1% of choline RDI. Not very relevant to our conversation.
I agree, from what I have found in studies for anyone that have autoimmune diseases or are on heavy medications, it can make them worse. Thats been the main area that have been the negative impact of the supplement.
It's something that should be watched as you take it and/or discussed with a doctor if you are dealing with other health conditions.
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 went to a psychiatrist to be evaluated for ADHD. He diagnosed me with anxiety, saying that being anxious made it hard for me to focus.
Uh.
I went to another doc who diagnosed me with and started treating me for ADHD. Boom. Anxiety gone. Turns out I was just super anxious about having a hard time working on the un-shiny things I needed to be working on.
It makes me uneasy how people with ADHD shopped around until they got a diagnosis like this. Surely you let the doctor tell YOU whats wrong with you, rather than you tell the doctor?
I guess experience depends. If positive diagnosis, is attached to some sort of compensations.
If psychiatry can sell you cheep medicine for a huge profit, they will overdisgnose.
If employer, institute, state, or university would have to pay compensations, they will under diagnose.
About 20% of US population went through horrible sexual abuse (documented fact). I would not discount the amount of people who have anxiety and PTSD from past events.
> Got no compensation
Did you bring a lawsuit? In such a situation you don't need to rely on the kindness of people's hearts.
Yes, I did, no result. First bite is free!
If animal has no documented history of attacks, owner has no way to know their aggressive animal could harm people. And they are not responsible!
No, rabbit. Dogs are amazing smart creatures, they would never harm anyone!
The other problem with supplementing with too much choline may be elevated TMAO:
"Dietary Choline Supplements, but Not Eggs, Raise Fasting TMAO Levels in Participants with Normal Renal Function: A Randomized Clinical Trial"
It helps to mention what TMAO is:
> Choline is a dietary precursor to the gut microbial generation of the pro-thrombotic and pro-atherogenic metabolite trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03206-7
> This suggests that chronically elevated arousal in AnxDs may increase neurometabolic demand for choline compounds without a proportionate increase in brain uptake, leading to reduced tCho levels. Reduced cortical NAA suggests compromised neuronal function in AnxDs. Future studies may clarify the clinical significance of reduced cortical tCho and the possibility that appropriate choline supplementation could have therapeutic benefit in anxiety disorders.
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.
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.
I can understand why this may seem simple, but when it comes to the brain almost nothing is simple.
Choline a key component in Acetylcholine is the primary neurotransmitter used in your hippocampus. Its an excitatory neurotransmitter meaning it turns neurons on. The hippocampus is a massive parallel feedback circuit that when over stimulated can and will begin to seize. In fact many people who suffer from seizures have over active hippocampal circuitry. Simply "flooding" the brain with more choline could have very very bad effects.
Likewise, taking choline might not work as the brain actively controls and regulates the contents of the cerebral spinal fluid. Unlike the rest of your body, the capillaries in the brain are not leaky, but instead are enshrouded in the blood-brain barrier and there are active transport proteins for anything that isn't lipid soluble.
Choline is actively transported into the brain and the brain has additional internal mechanisms to regulate the levels of choline.
Lastly, neurotransmitters aren't just floating around in the soup of your brain. They are released by specific neurons which are integrated into specific circuits. Parkinson's disease is a perfect example here. There is tiny region of the brain involved in regulating voluntary movements that is rich in dopamine neurons. For Parkinson's these neurons die off while the rest of the brain remains relatively strong. Simply putting dopamine into the brain doesn't fix the issue you need to up the dopamine released by these specific neurons.
The treatment here is l-dopa which is a precursor to dopamine which does this, but once those neurons are gone they're gone and there is little we can do to stop the disease.
So if this works for l-dopa why won't it work for choline? My guess is because of the tight regulation the brain has around choline levels as its needed to prevent the hippocampus from seizing up.
Trials are really different skill set compared to the scanning for these chemicals or in this case meta studying. Trials involve large numbers of people you have determined do and do not have the condition you are trying to treat and then having your treatment and having some way to measure if the treatment is impacting the thing you expect it to (brain choline levels) and whether that impacts the symptoms (anxiety).
Trials cost millions and in this case would require a number of different expertise, meta studies on the other hand is just reading and statistical analysis with knowledge of the biases of papers and assessing them critically and they don't cost millions.
Anecdotal, but I've had life long issues with anxiety. First time hearing about choline, but about a year ago I started taking omega 3 capsules on a whim, and its been a game changer. Eating salmon as they suggest has a similar positive effect. YMMV.
This is how research works. Someone, somewhere, someday will see this study and do just that. Or it could be the next step for the researchers at UC Davis who published this.
As anxiety is an umbrella diagnosis for anything doctors can't diagnose, I doubt just adding choline solves what is an institutional problem. I remember clearly how my long covid was "just an anxiety" but coincidentally choline helped a lot and now acetylcholine dysfunction is increasingly pinned down as a major cause of neurocovid.
I would add exercise and sunshine.
But yeah, our ancestors lived in constant danger of getting eaten by sabre tooth tigers, freezing in the snow, catching maalria, and, in general, watching terrible things happen to their tribe.
They had no therapy, no supplements, no self help section on the cave wall art.
They were forced into a continual outward focus with no time for navel-gazing.
They carried on through all exigencies, and succeeded mightily.
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.
Research - Functional properties of bioactive compounds from Spirulina spp.: Current status and future trends (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9513730/)