PHOSPHATIDYL SERINE: The smart nutrient

Of all the brain nutrients I use and recommend, phosphatidyl serine (PS) may be the most effective. By maximizing nerve transmission between brain cells and supplying them with this extremely valuable nutrient, PS may reverse, as one researcher concluded, more than a decade’s worth of age-related mental decline.

I think of PS as a biological detergent for our brains. It keeps cell membranes fluid, fats soluble and brain neurons flexible. It can also actually increase the number of receptor sites on brain cells, giving us more docking points and circuits for neural communication. The combined impact improves memory, energizes thinking and counteracts stress-related neurological damage. Mental performance improves even for people with Alzheimer s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

AGE-PROOFING YOUR BRAIN

Our brains are awash in essential fatty acids and phospholipids, one of which is phosphatidyl serine. About 60 per cent of our brain tissue is fat, and if enough isn’t on band, the brain just won’t work right. The relationship between mental health and dietary fat is an important one. Without fats the brain can’t produce and transmit electrical energy smoothly. A lack of phospholipids like PS also slows our mental processes, no matter what our age. As some two dozen studies show, replengishing the PS supply boosts brain power, mood and learning ability, with the most pronounced benefits seen among older people.

The therapeutic effect helps against serious mental and neurological problems, as we’ll soon see, and against ‘nonnal’ agerelated memory loss, as demonstrated in a study of 149 people over the age of fifty. Some of them took 300 mg of PS daily for twelve weeks, while the others took placebos. At the end of the experiment the PS users improved their scores on memory and learning tests by 15 per cent. The people who had greatest impairment in their mental faculties improved the most. The benefits remained for up to four weeks after the subjects stopped taking the nutrient. One of the study’s autors concluded that PS seems to reverse about twelve years of mental decline.

Stress Damage
Taking PS regularly can tame the body’s production of cortisol, one of the hormones secreted in response emotional or physical stress. Intense exercise and the process of aging also generate a larger output of cortisol. While the hormone is essential to our lives, too much takes quite a toll. An excess can prevent the brain from feeding on glucose, inhibit communication among brain cells, injure blood vessels, break down muscle tissue and weaken the immune system, to name but a few of its consequences.

Seasonal Depression

 I prescribe PS for all of the people I treat for depression. It’s particularly useful for easing seasonal affective disorder, the wintertime blues caused by lack of exposure to natural light. Without causing any complications, the nutrient can be taken right along with antidepressant medications, although many of my patients tell me they no longer need those drugs when they’re using PS.

Parkinson’s Disease
Changes in phospholipid levels are associated with a deficiency of dopamine, the neurotransmitter absent in the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease. Medicine has been aware of this for more than two decades, yet it promotes drug therapy with L-dopa to treat this degenerative neurological disease. Supplements of PS, in doses of 300-500 mg daily for three to six months, have substantially increased brain activity, as measured with modern scanning techniques.

Alzheimer’s Disease
People afflicted with an early onset of this memory-destroying condition show a dramatically greater use of energy by their brain cells with regular use of phosphatidyl serine. They recalled names better, remembered the locations of misplaced objects, recounted more details of recent events and displayed more intense concentration. This is front-page news, and all of us should be excited to know that nutrition, not drugs, holds the power to preserve or reverse the brain damage that occurs as we age.

Exercise Recovery
High-intensity physical activity triggers the release of cortisol and other stress hormones that break down muscle tissue. In an attempt to limit the increased secretion, bodybuilders and other athletes are taking PS supplements.

Alcoholic Influences
You won’t find this described in any research studies. Taken before a wine-tasting party or similar event, PS can make you noticeably more resistant to alcohol’s inebriating effect. Even though you will still need to appoint a designated driver, you will be in considerably better control of your senses. PS will not protect your liver or your waistline from the effects of alcohol. I’m not encouraging drinking; I’m encouraging sobriety.

SUPPLEMENT SUGGESTIONS

PS is very safe and has no side effects. As with any brain- energizing nutrient, don’t take it in the evening because it may keep you awake. It’s best used as a brain awakener before breakfast.

– The usual dose is 300 mg per day for a month, after which you can take the maintenance dose of 100 mg per day.

– If you’re depressed, suffer from seasonal affective disorder, or have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, you may need to take 300-500 mg per day indefinitely. Because it’s a fat, PS is vulnerable to free radical damage and should therefore be taken with some antioxidant support from vitamin E, vitamin С and selenium.

You can’t boost your PS reserves through diet. It is present in nearly all foods, but only in trace amounts. That’s why even though soya is used to make the PS products available in health food stores, you can’t obtain it by taking lecithin, itself rich in other phospholipids. The body’s production is also far from the optimal quantity needed.

For the past decade there has been considerable interest in taking ‘smart drugs’, the term applied to pharmaceuticals that enhance brain function. But now that vita-nutrients such as PS, acetylcamitine and NADH are available over the counter the benefit-to-risk ratio has escalated exponentially, and the pharmaceuticals are destined to play a smaller and smaller role.