The mighty choline! This is one of the newer nutrients that have been discovered to play an enormous role in the development of our future children. It is in our opinion equally as important as folate ~ almost like it’s long lost cousin! But we are advocating to bring it back into mainstream fertility care!
It’s actually estimated that ONLY 1% of women of reproductive age are getting enough choline! That is huge, that’s meaning 99% of you aren’t reaching the recommendation!
So why is choline so so important in preconception, fertility, pregnancy and beyond!
- Increases foetal cognitive function
- Supports central nervous system development
- Enhances the transport of nutrients across the placenta
- Supports DNA methylation
- Required for the structure and function of all cell membranes
We highly encourage supplementing with this one (check your prenatal ladies ~ many don’t contain this) BUT we also encourage letting food be thy medicine and ensuring you are including food sources of choline in to your preconception nutrition!
Foods rich in choline
~ eggs (one large egg contains 164mg of choline which is about 30% of your daily requirement, the key here is all the choline in eggs are hidden in the yolk)
~ beef and chicken liver
~ salmon
~ cauliflower
~ broccoli
~ legumes and beans
~ peanut butter
How to have a more intelligent baby?
Research showed that infants tested at 6 months old with a higher concentration of Choline and DHA (an omega 3 – we’ll post on this soon too) had a better recognition memory (Mun et al., 2019).
So all this about choline, what else should you know before conceiving?
After our online baby prep course you will feel completely at ease, knowing you have all your basics covered and you are fuelling yourself and your baby with all the required nutrients into pregnancy and beyond!
Conscious Conception: A Baby Prep Journey is a guided 12 week online course hand crafted by two women ~ a Holistic Dietitian and Women’s Health Naturopath ~ aimed to enhance your fertility and prepare your body and mind for creating your little miracle.
Written by Women’s Health Naturopath, Karina (one half of Women’s Wisdom Co) xx
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566660/pdf/nutrients-11-01125.pdf