During pregnancy, nutritional requirements change, and although a proper diet should be followed, it is not always possible to obtain the necessary amounts of food, which is when nutritional supplements come into play. A study by Cornell University (USA) has discovered that one of the key nutrients during pregnancy is choline – present in lean red meats, egg yolks, poultry, fish, legumes, cruciferous vegetables and nuts – as it helps to improve sustained attention in children.
As early as 1998, recommended amounts of choline during pregnancy were established, which were intended to prevent liver dysfunction in men. Now they have discovered that the indicated doses may not be sufficient, and that in order for it to have a protective role in neurocognitive development, supplements of this nutrient must be taken.
The research looked at the children of a group of 20 women, where half consumed 480 mg of choline per day, which slightly exceeds the daily intake of 450 mg/day, and the other half took 930 mg of choline per day. day, almost twice as recommended. When the offspring were seven years old, they were tested to measure their sustained attention, that is, how accurately they tackled an attention task from start to finish.
90% of pregnant women consume less choline than recommended
The results, published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, indicated that 7-year-olds performed better on a task that needed sustained attention if their mothers had taken nearly twice the recommended amount of choline during the pregnancy. In addition, they observed that more than 90% of pregnant women consume less than the recommended amount of choline, something worrying.
Seven-year-olds have better sustained attention if their mothers have taken almost twice the recommended amount of choline in pregnancy
Previous studies using rodent models have shown that choline supplementation during pregnancy is beneficial for long-term cognition in the offspring. In addition to improving the attention and memory of children throughout life, adding additional choline to the maternal diet in rodents had a neuroprotective role in the offspring, as it was able to mitigate cognitive problems derived from prenatal stress, autism , fetal exposure to alcohol, epilepsy, Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s.
“By showing that maternal choline supplementation in humans produces attention benefits in the offspring that are similar to those seen in animals, our findings suggest that the full range of cognitive and neuroprotective benefits demonstrated in rodents may also be seen in humans.” explained Barbara Strupp, co-lead author of the research.
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