Kind Nutrition Co.

31/10/2025

CHOLINE 🍳

We need choline to make cell membranes. If we don’t have healthy cells, the downstream effect is unhealthy tissues > organs > body systems > unhealthy individual. It all starts with healthy cells!

We need choline to produce acetylcholine which plays a role in neurotransmitter production (think our happy and reward hormones, serotonin and dopamine), for gut health and motility and for brain development. Choline is also required for memory and muscle control.

Post menopause we need more choline due to oestrogen loss. If there’s not enough folate in your diet (leafy greens and veggies, legumes), choline will step in and act as as methyl donor in the methylation cycle, a crucial chemical process that’s happening constantly in the body.

Impaired cognitive function, brain fog, ADHD, depression states all need adequate choline in the diet, it’s SO important!

For women we need 425mg/day, for men 550mg/day of choline . The best sources are eggs (147mg each), but swipe to see more sources to include in your daily diet to ensure you’re getting enough 😊

16/10/2025

Impact of long-term medication use on the gut microbiome. It’s not just antibiotics that ruin the gut. Common medications negatively impact our microbiome diversity as well, some worse than antibiotics, and often for years after we’ve stopped taking the medication 💊

Beta-blockers, benzodiazepine derivatives, glucocorticoids, PPIs (Nexium and others used for reflux), biguanides (metformin).

Hot off the press: For the first time, researchers have systematically assessed the impact of long-term medication use on the gut microbiome.

This 2025 retrospective study, "A hidden confounder for microbiome studies: medications used years before sample collection," found that multiple medicines affected the gut microbiome for many years after use.

Typically, we think of antibiotics as the primary medication that alters the gut ecosystem in the long term. However, this study found that beta-blockers, benzodiazepine derivatives, glucocorticoids, PPIs, biguanides (metformin is the most widely prescribed drug in this class), and antidepressants affected the gut microbiome for several years after discontinuing use. And for many of them, the effects at the microbiome level are additive.

Overall, of the 186 drugs analyzed, 167 were found to be associated with the microbiome—affecting alpha diversity, beta diversity, or the abundance of at least one bacterial species—and 78 of those exhibited long-term effects on the gut.

Of note, benzodiazepines—nervous system depressants commonly prescribed for anxiety—impact the microbiome even more than several broad-spectrum antibiotics. The impacts of benzodiazepines and broad-spectrum antibiotics were detectable even when the drugs had not been used for over three years prior to microbiome sampling.

Read the full study at PMID: 40910778