Anxiety already makes people feel like their brains are betraying them. Now researchers are asking whether part of that betrayal might come down to a missing ingredient.
A new analysis from UC Davis Health suggests that people with certain anxiety disorders tend to have lower levels of choline, an essential nutrient that helps the brain regulate mood, memory, and cellular health. Choline comes from foods like eggs, fish, chicken, beef, and soybeans.
The research pulled together data from 25 earlier brain-imaging studies, comparing 370 people with anxiety disorders to 342 people without. Using a noninvasive MRI technique that measures brain chemicals, the researchers found that participants with anxiety showed about an 8 percent drop in choline levels in brain regions responsible for emotional regulation and cognitive control.
“An 8 percent lower amount doesn’t sound like that much, but in the brain, it’s significant,” said Dr. Richard Maddock, senior author of the study and a research professor at the University of California, Davis, in comments shared with Fox News Digital.
The thing about choline is that your brain uses a lot of it just to function normally. Your body only makes a small amount on its own, which means most of it has to come from food, and research suggests many Americans fall short, whether they have anxiety or not.
Maddock and his team suspect the connection involves chronic stress rather than a simple nutrient shortfall. Anxiety disorders are linked to prolonged stress responses that increase the brain’s metabolic workload, which, over time, may reduce choline levels in areas that regulate threat and emotion.
The researchers are careful not to oversell what this means. The data doesn’t show that low choline causes anxiety, and it doesn’t suggest people should start downing supplements. Maddock warned that high-dose choline can cause side effects and said more research is needed before anyone talks about treatment.
“Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting about 30 percent of adults,” said Maddock. “They can be debilitating for people, and many people do not receive adequate treatment.”
Other experts see the pattern as intriguing but incomplete. Dr. Nona Kocher, a board-certified psychiatrist in Miami Beach who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital that the drop in choline is “not trivial,” though she views it as a sign of metabolic strain rather than a smoking gun.
For now, choline joins a growing list of biological clues linked to anxiety. It doesn’t offer a cure or a grocery-store fix, but it adds another dimension to how prolonged stress alters brain chemistry. That’s enough to keep researchers and anxious readers paying attention.
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