If you're exploring options like skinny shots to aid in your weight loss journey, you've likely encountered lipotropic compounds, with choline being a prominent one. Lipotropic compounds are substances that the body requires to metabolize or break down fat. Choline falls into this category and is a common ingredient in many skinny shots. While the choline content in these shots is unlikely to be harmful, the extent of its effectiveness is still up for debate.
What is Choline?
Choline is an essential nutrient present in various foods. Although your liver produces it, the quantity is insufficient to meet your body's needs. Choline plays a vital role in maintaining the structural integrity of cell membranes and facilitates the transmission of signals between the brain and nerves through neurotransmitters. Furthermore, choline aids in breaking down fat and transporting it away from the liver, preventing potential fatty liver disease.
Does Choline Promote Weight Loss?
It's crucial to acknowledge that choline research is still in its early stages. The Institute of Medicine recognized choline as a vital nutrient in 1998, making it a relatively recent addition to the list of essential vitamins and minerals. Some studies suggest that choline may assist in weight loss because it helps the body break down fat. However, other studies indicate that while choline deficiency increases fat accumulation in the liver, it doesn't necessarily increase fat elsewhere in the body, suggesting that choline may not be a universal weight loss solution. Further research is necessary to determine choline's true effectiveness as a weight loss tool.
Choline and Belly Fat Reduction
The scientific community is still divided on whether choline can specifically reduce belly fat. While choline can help reduce liver fat, it's not the same as targeting belly fat. Although supplement manufacturers may claim that choline reduces belly fat, many doctors and scientists remain skeptical. While choline can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological disorders, there's no definitive proof that it can melt away belly fat.
Choline's Impact on Metabolism
Metabolism is the process by which the body converts food into energy. A key part of this process involves breaking down fats and lipids, which are then either stored or removed from the body. This breakdown occurs in the liver, and choline is essential for this metabolic process, helping the liver break down fat more efficiently. A sluggish metabolism can lead to the accumulation of fat and cholesterol in the liver, potentially causing fatty liver disease. Choline helps prevent this by accelerating fat metabolism.
Read also: Comprehensive Guide to Choline and Inositol
Dietary Sources of Choline
Since the body doesn't produce enough choline on its own, it's essential to consume choline-rich foods. Some of the best sources include:
- Liver
- Eggs
- Cod
- Salmon
- Chicken breasts
- Milk
- Yogurt
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Sunflower seeds
As this list shows, protein and choline often occur together in foods.
Choline and Skinny Shots
Some skinny shots, such as those administered at Mia Aesthetics, do not contain choline. Instead, they contain vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), which, like choline, supports metabolism by helping the body break down proteins and carbohydrates more efficiently. This can increase metabolism and provide an energy boost. Vitamin B6 can also help you burn fat more effectively during exercise, which is easier when you have more energy. However, vitamin B6 and other lipotropic compounds alone are generally not enough to cause significant weight loss.
The Importance of Choline
Choline is a vital nutrient, and many people don't consume the recommended intake. Beef and chicken liver, salmon, and eggs are among the richest dietary sources of choline. Choline was only acknowledged as a required nutrient by the Institute of Medicine in 1998. Although your body makes some choline naturally, you need to get it from your diet to avoid a deficiency. Many people are not meeting the recommended intake for this nutrient.
Choline: An Essential Nutrient
Choline is an essential nutrient required for normal bodily function and human health. While the liver can produce small amounts, most of it must be obtained through diet. Choline is an organic, water-soluble compound, often grouped with the vitamin B complex due to its similarities, although it's neither a vitamin nor a mineral. This nutrient affects several vital bodily functions, including liver function, healthy brain development, muscle movement, the nervous system, and metabolism. Therefore, adequate amounts are needed for optimal health.
Read also: Understanding Choline's Role
Choline's Role in Bodily Processes
Choline plays an important part in many processes in your body, including:
- Cell structure: It is needed to make fats that support the structural integrity of cell membranes.
- Cell messaging: It is involved in the production of compounds that act as cell messengers.
- Fat transport and metabolism: It is essential for making a substance required for removing cholesterol from your liver. Inadequate choline may result in fat and cholesterol buildup in your liver.
- DNA synthesis: Choline and other vitamins, such as B12 and folate, help with a process that’s important for DNA synthesis.
- A healthy nervous system: This nutrient is required to make acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter. It’s involved in memory, muscle movement, regulating heartbeat and other basic functions.
Recommended Intake of Choline
Due to a lack of available evidence, a Reference Daily Allowance (RDA) for choline has not been determined. However, the Institute of Medicine has set a value for adequate intake (AI). This value is intended to be sufficient for most healthy people, helping them avoid negative consequences of deficiency, such as liver damage. Nevertheless, requirements differ according to age, gender, and genetic makeup. In addition, determining choline intake is difficult because its presence in various foods is relatively unknown.
Here are the recommended AI values of choline for different age groups:
- 0-6 months: 125 mg per day
- 7-12 months: 150 mg per day
- 1-3 years: 200 mg per day
- 4-8 years: 250 mg per day
- 9-13 years: 375 mg per day
- 14-18 years: 400 mg per day for females and 550 mg per day for males
- Adult females: 425 mg per day
- Adult males: 550 mg per day
- People breastfeeding: 550 mg per day
- Pregnant people: 430 mg per day
Consequences of Choline Deficiency
Choline deficiency can cause harm, especially for your liver. One small, older study in 57 adults found that 77% of men, 80% of postmenopausal women and 44% of premenopausal women developed fatty liver and/or muscle damage after going on a choline-deficient diet. Another older study noted that when postmenopausal women consumed a diet deficient in choline, 73% developed liver or muscle dysfunction. However, these symptoms disappeared once they began getting enough choline.
Choline is especially important during pregnancy, as a low intake may raise the risk of neural tube defects in unborn babies. Another older study determined that a higher dietary intake around the time of conception was associated with a lower risk of neural tube defects. In addition, low choline intake may raise your risk of other pregnancy complications. These include preeclampsia, premature birth and low birth weight. While most Americans do not consume adequate amounts in their diets, actual deficiency is rare.
Read also: MIC Injections: A Comprehensive Guide
Sources of Choline
Choline can be obtained from a variety of foods and supplements.
Food sources
Dietary sources are generally in the form of phosphatidylcholine from lecithin, a type of fat-like molecule found in lecithin. The richest dietary sources of choline include:
- Beef liver
- Chicken liver
- Eggs
- Salmon
- Codfish
- Shiitake mushrooms
- Red potatoes
- Wheat germ
- Kidney beans
- Navy beans
- Quinoa
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
Additives and supplements
Soy lecithin is a widely used food additive that contains choline. Therefore, it is likely that extra choline is consumed through the diet via food additives. Some additive and supplemental forms of chlorine include:
- lecithin
- phosphatidylcholine
- choline chloride
- CDP-choline
- alpha-GPC
- betaine
Some sources claim that choline in nutritional supplements may reduce body fat, but there is little to no evidence supporting these claims.
Choline and Heart Health
Elevated levels of homocysteine in your blood have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and strokes, as well as lower blood pressure. However, evidence is mixed, and more studies are needed to confirm any positive link. Choline helps convert the amino acid homocysteine to methionine. Therefore, a deficiency of choline can result in an accumulation of homocysteine in your blood.
Choline and Brain Function
Choline is required to produce acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in regulating memory, mood and intelligence. It’s also needed for the process that synthesizes DNA, which is important for brain function and development. Therefore, choline intake is associated with improvements in brain function and cognitive performance. Observational studies link higher choline intake to better brain function and a lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. However, further studies on this subject are needed to better understand whether choline supplementation would affect cognitive function.
Potential Risks of Excessive Choline Intake
Consuming too much choline has been associated with unpleasant and potentially harmful side effects. These include drops in blood pressure, sweating, fishy body odor, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. The daily upper limit for adults is 3,500 mg per day. This is the highest level of intake that is unlikely to cause harm. It is very unlikely that someone could ingest this amount from food alone.
Choline: Separating Fact from Fiction
Many online sources promote choline as a miracle supplement that can boost brain power, prevent Alzheimer’s, detox your liver, and even extend your lifespan. While choline is indeed an essential nutrient with a crucial role in various bodily functions, it's important to separate fact from fiction.
Choline helps build cell membranes, is needed for the synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (which is key for memory and muscle control), and assists in the heroic task of hauling cholesterol and fats through your bloodstream. Although our bodies do synthesize small amounts of choline, this endogenous production is not sufficient to meet all the body’s needs. Therefore, obtaining choline through dietary sources is necessary. Animal-based foods like eggs, beef, chicken, and fish are rich sources of the nutrient.
Despite its essential role, choline has not been assigned a Recommended Daily Intake (RDI). Instead, the Institute of Medicine has established Adequate Intake (AI) levels based on limited evidence. The significance of choline becomes particularly evident when the body is deprived of it. In one study, healthy male subjects placed on a choline-deficient diet for three weeks exhibited elevated levels of serum alanine aminotransferase-a marker of liver dysfunction.
Choline and Pregnancy
Pregnant bodies are basically choline black holes-sucking in choline to support fetal development. Choline is transferred in large quantities to the fetus via the placenta, and concentrations in amniotic fluid are up to ten times higher than maternal blood. Some observational studies suggest a potential link between low maternal choline intake and a higher risk of neural tube defects (NTDs).
But before we hand out choline supplements like prenatal candy, newer research gives us pause. A 2014 study found no significant differences in plasma choline or betaine (another essential biochemical synthesized from choline) levels between women with NTD-affected pregnancies and those without. Even women who had previous NTD pregnancies but had no such problem in their current pregnancy showed no notable difference. Although one genetic variant (PEMT rs7946) appeared more frequently among NTD cases, the takeaway was clear: choline levels alone don’t strongly predict NTD risk. So, while supplementing during pregnancy might still be helpful-especially in the context of an overall balanced diet-it’s not the miracle pill that some headlines might lead you to believe.
Choline and Cognitive Function
Can choline help you think faster, remember names better, or ace a trivia night? The jury’s still out. One clinical trial found that older adults with relatively poor memories showed improved verbal recall after supplementing with citicoline, a choline derivative. Unfortunately, science rarely sticks to a neat script. Other studies found little to no benefit from choline supplementation in healthy individuals or people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Measuring Choline Levels
If you’re thinking about testing your choline levels-good luck. While a blood test is the main prescription for this request, plasma choline is a notoriously unreliable marker. It fluctuates wildly depending on whether you’ve eaten, fasted, or popped a supplement. It doesn’t drop drastically even with prolonged fasting, possibly because your body starts breaking down cell membranes to keep plasma levels stable.
Choline and Chronic Diseases
Choline has been flirtatiously linked to lower risks of dementia and Alzheimer’s. A 2022 prospective cohort study found that low choline intake was associated with a higher risk of these conditions. Sounds exciting, but it’s important to understand that association does not equal causation. There’s also the issue of self-reported dietary data. Most nutrition studies rely on food frequency questionnaires (FFQs)-aka asking people what they ate last week and hoping they remember. A 2024 study found that these self-reports often don’t line up with actual biomarkers in the body.
Choline has also shown potential in cardiovascular health. Phosphatidylcholine, a choline-containing compound, supports cholesterol clearance through activation of lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase. Human studies have demonstrated modest cholesterol-lowering effects. Additionally, choline and its metabolite betaine help reduce homocysteine levels, a known cardiovascular risk factor. Beyond the heart, choline’s role in cancer prevention remains murky. Some observational studies suggest that high choline intake may be associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer, while others found no significant link.
Choline: A Balanced Perspective
Choline is not a miracle nutrient, but it certainly deserves more respect than it typically receives. That said, choline is no cure-all. Some of the most exciting claims about memory enhancement, disease prevention, and athletic performance remain under-researched, inconsistent, or inconclusive. The most practical approach to ensuring sufficient nutrient intake remains a varied, balanced diet, rich in whole foods.
The Carnitine Connection
If you were to open up a biochemistry textbook and try to figure out what would be the best supplement to take in order to increase fat loss, you would likely pin it down to l-carnitine.
The Role of Carnitine
Carnitine is intimately involved in getting fatty acids into the mitochondria where they can be burned for fuel. There are two different types of carnitine transporters in the membrane of mitochondria that allow the fats to get from the cytoplasm into the heart of the mitochondria so that they can be burned to make ATP.
If you are lacking in these transporters, then your body will be unable to get the ATP it needs from fat and will use carbs instead, allowing your fat to stay right on your hips. If you over-express these carnitine transporters (like they did in the rat model in reference 1) you will get an increase in fatty acid oxidation, a lowering of triglyceride levels, and an increase in skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity. This supplement seemed like it could be a cure-all for fat loss, at lease if we put our faith in the biochemistry.
What did the studies show?
Unfortunately, the early human studies using a carnitine supplement to increase these transporters produced disappointing results. The studies showed that after either acute or chronic ingestion of carnitine (even if it was the supposedly more bio-available form, l-carnitine-l-tartarate) there was no effect on fat or glucose oxidation.
These results pretty much had everyone give up on carnitine. It wasn’t because the carnitine didn’t work at the cellular level like the bio book said it would, but rather because the carnitine just got excreted whenever the subjects took extra. The muscle cells were not retaining the carnitine that was given to them.
Choline To The Weight Loss Rescue!
Choline is a necessary nutrient that our body needs in order to protect the liver, go through the methylation cycle, produce acetylcholine for our neurons, and is involved a many cellular enzymatic interactions. There are high amounts of choline in eggs.
A 1978 study first showed that carnitine concentrations were decreased in rats when the rats were on a choline deficient diet. They showed that this was likely not due to a reduced synthesis of carnitine in the body, but due to a decreased transport and uptake of dietary carnitine. This made researchers think that maybe the carnitine is not having an effect on humans because they do not have enough choline to sufficiently uptake and transfer the carnitine to where it needs to go, like the muscles!
Researchers later tried a combination of carnitine, choline, and caffeine on rats to see if it would have an effect on fat mass. They added the caffeine because caffeine stimulates fat breakdown, while the carnitine will oxidize the broken down fat. At least, that was the theory, and it worked!
The supplement combination reduced the fat in every body part of the rats. While it was only “statistically” significant for the mice who did not exercise, a quick look at the chart above will show that the combo had a beneficial effect whether the rats exercised or not. The rats who exercised and too the supplement had 7.0 g of total fat, while the rats who exercised and did not take the supplement had 9.3 g of total fat. That’s about 25% less total fat!
One of the ways that this combination works is by increasing “fatty acid dumping”, which is literally “peeing out energy” in the form of acylcarnitines. This could help explain the fact the supplemented mice were able to lose fat without a reduction in calorie intake.
Furthermore, in both humans and guinea pigs (a better model for humans than rats) choline supplementation increases carnitine conservation and decreases fat mass.
Human Studies on Carnintine + Choline
Now, unfortunately there has only been one human study testing both carnitine plus choline. However, the researchers did note significant effects of the combination:
“We conclude that the choline-induced decrease in serum and urinary carnitine is buffered by carnitine preloading, and these supplements shift tissue partitioning of carnitine that favors fat mobilization, incomplete oxidation of fatty acids and disposal of their carbons in urine as acylcarnitines in humans.”
Yet, the researchers also used a dose that was much lower than the dose used in the animal studies. For a 176 lbs (80 kg) individual, the human study would have used 1.2 g of choline bitartrate and only 0.08 g of carnitine-l-tartrate per day! The human equivalent doses used in the rodent study above would be 7.84 g of choline with 4.16 g of carnitine plus 80 mg of caffeine. Hopefully you can see just how underdosed the human study was, and it did not include the caffeine to get the fat out of the fat cells in the first place.
Since humans and guinea pigs actually need less choline to retain the carnitine than rats do (do to less choline oxidase enzymes in our liver), we can actually modify the amounts used in the positive animal studies somewhat so that we see optimal results.
Recommendations
Here would be my personal recommendations. Of course, always speak with your health care professional before adding in any dietary supplements into your daily regiment to make sure there would be no contraindications for you personally:
- 5 g of choline bitartrate per day
- 4-5 g of carnitine per day
- Max. 500-600mg of caffeine a day, in any form (coffee is fine)
Aany form of carnitine should work. My two favorites are carnitine-l-tartrate and acetyl-l-carnitine. While there is a myth going around that acetyl-l-carnitine only increases carnitine levels in the brain and central nervous system, this is not supported by the literature; muscles will absorb it just fine.
Message To Remember
Now remember, these supplements are unlikely to cause significant fat loss effects on their own without having a proper diet and exercise regiment with them. In fact, this combination was actually found to be synergistic with exercise in the human study, via increasing the amount of “potential fat” (read: acylcarnitines) that was “peed out”.
If you notice any side effects, stop the supplements immediately. If you wish to return, start at a lower dose. Also, it could be beneficial to supplement with choline for a few days before adding in carnitine in order to maximize its retention, but at this point it is unclear if this is necessary.