My 27 year old daughter has some neurodevelopmental diabilities. She has been taking Lion’s Mane (1000mg/day) for 2 years now, with significant improvement in executive functioning and memory. Because of her many adverse and paradoxical responses to medications and supplements, I have learned it is better to add only one new thing at a time.
I want to add Choline. Two questions:
–I have read various articles supporting CDP Choline and others recommending Alpha GPC. Would be interested in your thoughts about how to decide which one to go with?
and a good daily dose for each one.
–if we did add fish oil as well to her mix, what would be a good recommended daily dose?
For general cognitive function, I’d go with CDP choline. The common daily dose is 250mg once or twice per day, but some people (like myself) respond poorly to such doses, it causes us to develop “brain fog” and depression. In that case, microdosing, with maybe 30mg/day is recommended if you decide to stick with it–I personally just don’t take it, cause weighing out such small doses is troublesome.
For fish oil, 1-2 grams per day is the common recommendation. Some people (again, including me) superdose it (at ~8g/day) to deal with acute issues, but there’s no real research behind that.
Supposedly, omega 3s are better utilized when taken in less frequent bolus doses vs. daily dosing. If she likes fish, just have her eat a portion of fish two to three times a week. If not, you can do a supplement and take 5 grams or so two to three times a week instead of one or two grams daily. The reasoning behind this is that if your body gets an abundance of omega 3, it’s more likely to oxidize it instead of store like we want. As far as choline, I’d probably give CDP choline a shot first. Naturally, if you don’t get the desired effects, you can try GPC instead. CDP choline supplies choline of course but is also a source of uridine. As I recall, it actually improves dopamine function in addition to acetylcholine.
I prefer cdp choline, if you are just going for a choline donor alpha gcp is more effective, but cdp choline has other nootropic benefits(it acts as a pro-drug to urdine which helps with dopamine).
Long story short,
brain function cdp
choline donor AGCP
If you are using something that uses up choline like noopept or piracitam then you could use this dose, but I like 250 mg every 3 days.(around its half life, rounded up for ease). If you notice brainfog or other side effects you can lower this down.
Note this is for just choline supplementation, if you add heavy doses of nootropics that use up choline you may need more.
For fish oil try 250/125 epa/dha to start, work up depending on your funds, I like 500/250 a day. Both epa and dha have their own benefits, and can scale up pretty high depending on their purpose.
But in my opinion 500/250 is the best bang for your buck.