The now famous test with rats and discoveries in genetics, nutrition, chiropractic medicine and proactive medical care indicate that memory enhancement begins during pregnancy and proper preventative medicine such as that which Doctors of Chiropractic have advocated for 100 years appears to be the truth. 

New government recommendations relative to daily allowance guidelines, published this month by the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that pregnant women consumer at least 450 milligrams of choline per day.  Doctors of chiropractic have always said that the liver combines choline, inosital and the simple protein methionine to make lethicin.   Remember that if you take over the counter lethicin, your body will break it down and not add to the choline.  However, Methionine is a simple protein which will pass into your system and works well in the biochemical processes within your liver to produce natural lethicin.  This then carries high density cholesterol molecules to the target cells absent the loss in the blood stream preventing disease such as atheroslerosis and arteriosclerosis, both of which shorten the life span.  What is new to preventative care biochemistry are recent trials with mice which have demonstrated enhanced memory and learning capacity in the fetus.  Supplementation with choline during the last trimester of pregnancy, has a dramatic and long-lasting effect on offspring memory.

Choline is one of the B-complex vitamins, and occurs in foods such as meat, fish, human breast milk, eggs, nuts, legumes and soy.  Choline is also an important counterpart of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the chemical messenger that many nerve cells use for communication.  Thus, nutritionists believe that choline is an important building block, essential to healthy development of various types of neural cell membranes during fetal gestation.  The study which can be found in the April 1998 addition of Neurophysiology indicates that animals from supplemented mothers appear to have a larger memory capacity and hold more items in memory.  What was startling was that the animals displayed lifelong improvements in their ability to remain attentive during stressful tasks.  Further, animals who got five (5) days of extra choline during early development actually did not show the same age-related declines in memory that are seen in   normal animals.  Thus better brain-health for the rest of their lives. 

This relates well to recent findings experimentally and found clinically with complementary physicians patients.  Combine the better memory with the increasing life expectancy due to advances in orthodox medicine and genetics through gene manipulation, cell life expectancy may increase by 1/3.  Thus, if you stay thin, avoid processed sugars, exercise regularly, avoid tobacco, drugs and alcohol over consumption, you will probably live longer and remember better according a recent article in the .   1998 addition of Science (280:pp. 395-397).