Why Choline is Important

Choline is the Key to Optimizing Everyday Energy

Maintaining Your #1 Performance Vehicle

While we don’t all drive a sports car, everyone definitely appreciates the convenience of having reliable transportation. That’s why so many people take great pains to maintain their car – because they’ve felt the pain and inconvenience of not having it available when they needed it. Ultimately, the most important vehicle that gets you through your busy day is your body itself. Just as a car takes fuel and converts it into horsepower via combustion, our bodies are constantly transforming the food we eat to extract the energy we need to keep us active and alert. After we’ve eaten, our food is converted into fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, and then into energy through a series of complex reactions in our cells. That energy helps power our muscles, our brain and a host of other body systems that get us through our busy daily routine. So what’s the bottom line? We all need to make sure that our body is firing on all cylinders and producing the most horsepower possible, both physically and mentally. That’s where choline comes in.

Choline: The Fuel Pump

We need choline to help us get the most of our food and to help provide the fuel that keeps us going strong. Choline’s role in fat metabolism is critical to good liver health, because it packages lipids and mobilizes them for conversion to energy. Much as a fuel pump moves gasoline to the engine for combustion, choline exports triglycerides from bulk storage in the liver. So not only does it keep the fuel flowing, it also helps reduce the unhealthy accumulation of liver fat. 

Choline: Filtering Impurities 

Another important function of choline is to help our body get the most out of the B vitamins. Choline and the B vitamins perform a number of complementary functions, so one can stand in if the other is in short supply. Both the B vitamins and choline help manage homocysteine, a kind of ‘spot rust’ that can accumulate the body. Choline actively converts homocysteine into the benign amino acid methionine, which is used to repair and build proteins. By taking over primary responsibility for homocysteine management, choline allows the B vitamins to focus on converting nutrients into energy. Without enough choline, the B vitamins are forced to do both of these jobs, reducing efficiency and potentially overtaxing our energy production.

Article Source: Vaneeghen.com