Lecithin Granules for Life's Little Lapses

Have you ever walked into a room and paused, forgetting momentarily why you'd wanted to go there? I'll be surprised if anyone says no. I suspect it has happened to all of us at one time or another. As we get older, it can happen more and more. We do remember, usually within a second or two, so I wouldn't call it a memory issue, necessarily; more like a lapse in attention. The older I get, the more I understand the true literal meaning of "absentmindedness."  :-)

This summer I've dealt with numerous tick bites and resulting symptoms, including brain fog. Brain fog feels like there's a vaseline-coated barrier between your brain and the world around you. Thinking slows down, and as my son said to me last month, "It seemed like you couldn't pay attention to anything, not even a conversation." I couldn't.

Another facet of brain fog was an extreme form of the the brief blank moments described above. Not only would I forget why I'd entered a room, but I would forget why I'd walked seven steps across the kitchen. Or I would overshoot my goal and walk 9 or 10 steps before I realized I'd walked right past it. As with the other example, I would remember almost immediately, but that "almost" was beyond annoying. After weeks of this, it was scary.

Then I remembered something I learned about back in the 80's. A study showed that lecithin, a food product present in egg whites and soybeans, greatly improved this exact kind of mental lapse in the elderly. It improves neurotransmitter contact, and only the granules (not capsules) were effective. My dad was in his 80's at the time. I told him what I'd read, and he started taking a couple of tablespoons of lecithin granules a day. It's cheap and easy to take. He lived to be 90, and never had a memory issue that I'm aware of. (His insistence that teenagers were having sex in his garage doesn't count.)

I took it for a while back then, too, and so did my husband. But we did it mostly for lecithin's other benefit: It breaks up blood fats and is very good for heart health.

One of my stepdaughters took lecithin as well—not on my recommendation, but because the instructor in her LSAT course (the course she'd paid $$$ thousands for) told the class to start taking lecithin granules two weeks before the test to improve their scores. She did, and she got into Harvard Law.

So a couple of weeks ago I remembered all that, and I got myself a container of non-GMO lecithin granules. I started taking two heaping teaspoons a day, which I figure is more or less the equivalent of two tablespoons. Like I said, it's easy to take. You can eat it plain, by the spoonful, but that's sort of like munching on tiny pieces of wax. You can add it to beverages or just about anything, but these days I've been mixing it into yogurt.

Results are supposed to be noticeable in two weeks, but in 10 days I was the biggest fan of lecithin granules you could ever imagine.

Here's a brief article on lecithin and its benefits. The author isn't an MD . . . but can you imagine med school including a lecture on lecithin granules? I can't.