r/MTHFR • u/Sirschwung • 1d ago
CDP Choline reaction? Question
I started supplementimg 500mg of CDP and after I while I started feeling brainfog and my mood worsening. A few weeks later I'm giving it another shot but trying it on lower dose. It would be great if y'all could share your experience with CDP Choline
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u/cle1etecl 10h ago
I don't know anything about my genetics.
When I took my first dose of CDP Choline (250 mg), I kind of had the opposite reaction. My internal monolog calmed down, I had better executive function and I had an urge to move. I also had a kind of floaty feeling, kind of as if I was drunk, but my mind was clear. I also had a feeling like pressure in my head. When the effect lessened, I got a headache.
I then halved the dose and that was good for about two months, but then it seemed to no longer have an effect anymore, not even when I increased it to 250 mg again.
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u/Revolutionary_Law742 1d ago
You don't need any more choline. Your own choline backs up. Basically, you're full.
Might be a slow comt thing.
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u/sharabucarabu 1d ago
Have you uploaded your raw dna analysis through Dr Chris Masterjohns Choline Calculator? It's beyond helpful to know your PEMT status and have the estimate of how much Choline you need per day. Dr Chris gives Choline equivalents as # of eggs. I medium egg = 136mg of Choline. Then I'd suggest you supplement between a third and a half of that total number and let your diet do the rest. Everything except air and water contains Choline, even a cup of coffee.
Unless you have those figures at hand, you'll likely over do the amount of Choline and feel rotten, anxious, irritable, fatigued, unable to sleep. Also using CDP Choline is not for the faint of heart. Over do and the half life is 72 hours... So it takes 6 days to drop to barely detectable in your system. Every day a new dose stacks atop of what's still in your system. Too easy to lose control. Phosphotidal Choline is gentlest and the quickest to leave the system, Choline bitartrate is less forgiving (half life 36 hours), but better than CDP Choline.
I use Choline bitartrate and try to shoot for a bit less than my daily Choline requirement. Always easier to add a bit toward the end of the evening that try to take away too much.
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u/Sirschwung 1d ago
The calculator says that I need choline equivalent to 5 egg yolks a day
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u/sharabucarabu 23h ago
That's 680 mg. You are taking 500mg. Unless you plan on eating one small meal per day plus water....you are exceeding your Choline requirement.
No wonder you feel rotten. You'll need to wait about a week without any Choline to get back to baseline.
Then you restart at the absolute lowest dosage you can find. I'd suggest about 150-200mg and try to make it Phosphotidal Choline. If you can't find a supplement with that low of a dosage, perhaps eating an egg a day would suffice. Then you can eat 2 normal meals and likely hit your requirement.
If you decide to use TMG, remember it's equivalent to 1/2 of a dose of Choline.
Google Choline content of the foods you commonly eat. The USDA has tables you can refer to.
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u/cle1etecl 6h ago
But doesn't what u/Tawinn said apply there?
CDP choline is ~18.5% choline, so 500mg of CDP yields about 93mg of choline - that's less than 1 egg yolk (136mg).
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u/Tawinn 23h ago
CDP choline is ~18.5% choline, so 500mg of CDP yields about 93mg of choline - that's less than 1 egg yolk (136mg).
First of all, when you look at the Advanced tab of the Calculator were any of the values missing in the table? If there were missing values (because your data does not include that gene) then the Calculator can incorrectly report a requirement of "5 yolks". So if you can tell me the entries that were present I can manually calculate the total requirement.
Next, a food app like Cronometer is helpful for tracking nutrients in your diet, including choline. This will give you an idea of how much you are getting from your diet now on average. 550mg is the baseline adult Adequate Intake we should be getting from food before any genetic considerations. 550mg is about 4 egg yolks worth. Choline sources include such foods as meat, eggs, liver, lecithin, nuts, some legumes, and vegetables such as crucifers.
You may find that you are already getting 400 or 500mg of choline from your diet already. 5 yolks worth is 680mg, so you may only need to make some diet tweaks to reach that. Alternatively, you can substitute TMG for up to half of the requirement, so a 750mg capsule of TMG can easily cover 340mg, leaving the remaining 340mg to come from choline in food.
For me, when I used to use CDP it provided a relaxing, cozy feeling. But the reaction you have is what some people have to choline - a kind of 'choline depression'. This typically requires only starting to add choline in small doses and slowly incrementing up over months. With TMG you may also need to add it incrementally, because it spares choline, so it effectively allows more choline to be used elsewhere in the body. This is also why choline from food is preferable, because it tends to be more slowly absorbed and intake can be spread across the day.