If you listened to my recent podcast episode on methylation, you may remember that I spoke about how certain PEMT variants can strongly affect your methylation.
You may have also noticed that PEMT-related recommendations actually show up quite a bit… In some cases, it even shows up more than the famous MTHFR.
But why is that, exactly?
PEMT, Choline & Methylation
The PEMT gene provides instructions to make the PEMT enzyme.
This enzyme, with the help of SAM-e, helps produce phosphatidylcholine (which we’ll call PC), which is essential for brain health, healthy cell membranes, fat transport and metabolism, to name a few.
If you carry the negative variant of PEMT, you’ll produce less PC, which is a key source of choline in the body.
And because choline is a precursor to a molecule called betaine, which is involved in the methylation cycle, PEMT plays a huge role in methylation.
I happen to have variants of PEMT that cause me to have a harder time producing phosphatidylcholine, which means that I’m more prone to low choline levels.
In my Methylation Report, a lot of my personalized recommendations mention how it counteracts both my negative PEMT gene and my negative MTHFR gene.
For example, one of my top recommendations is to supplement with betaine directly, and SelfDecode explains how it helps with both my genes.
Another recommendation is to take choline supplements. Because choline is also used in many other functions of the body, increasing choline will help with my methylation and will also counteract the other effects of my PEMT gene, like cognitive decline and liver function.
Are you getting enough choline?
The thing with PEMT is that most of the variants that are linked to lower choline levels tend to be inherited together, so if you have one of the unfavorable variants, there’s a pretty good chance you have the others also.
It may not be more important than the MTHFR gene, but it’s also not less important. Both genes play vital roles in methylation so it’s important that you optimize your methylation by understanding what genes YOU carry.
The Methylation Report gives you personalized recommendations based on your PEMT, MTHFR, and many other genes that are connected to your methylation cycle.
You can discover what genetic variants you carry and find out what changes you need to implement in your PEMT, Choline, and Methylation reports on SelfDecode.
