Phosphatidylserine 20% Powder, Nootropic, Cognitive Enhancer, Mood Support, Memory, Learning, Focus, Concentration, Boosts Mental and Physical Energy (100g (200 Servings))

Updated review: Dec. 2018About 3.5 years ago I was in the hospital and, I was diagnosed with ADHD so severe I had episodes of amnesia along with some other stuff. I've finally tracked down one of the major causes. I went to a doctor of functional medicine (a rather small field but it's an interesting specialty). She ran a survey of the microbes in my gut (I have some rare and killer bugs in there – luckily this is her specialty) AND she ran a survey of the levels of enzymes in my gut. Apparently rare bugs cause rare types of damage. Most people with gut damage have difficulty producing enzymes that digest protein, fat, carbohydrates.... me, I've got a problem digesting phospholipids. Is this bad? Yeah, it can cause amnesia, depression, loss of mental and physical energy as shuts down your brain and all of your mitochondria run out of phospholipids and your brain just stops.... because it's got nothing left to operate the wetware. Your mitchondria also stop and that's not good. First you get fat. Then as the shortage becomes extreme, you get dead. Let's start at the beginning.What's my amnesia like? Usually, I will completely forget brief periods of time (5 minutes to an hour) and almost everything that occurred. Can supplements help me recall these episodes? Probably not, those short term memories were most likely never converted into long term memories. There is nothing there to recall. Supplements can only help eliminate these episodes in the future. Example of permanent amnesia: On rare occasions, I will receive items in the mail and I have absolutely no memory of ordering. I have even stared at a item and asked "What is it?" Usually, I'm completely unaware of these episodes of amnesia. Am I cogent during these episodes? According to my doctor, yes. And when I manage to reverse engineer why I ordered that item, it's very logical. But even after all that, not one memory of placing the order. When I got out of the hospital, I was so brain-fogged I was unable to access my long term memory unless I was well-rested and had friends quizzing me to keep me on topic.With the help of a good doctor, good nutrition and careful supplementation, I was able to recover from panic attacks, depression, control my diabetes, lose weight, take care of the arthritis, eliminate premature wrinkles (that was an unexpected side effect : ), and blow away most of the brain fog.But the ADHD remains stubbornly untouched. OK then supplements for the brain - phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylcholine. Inositol is covered in a separate review. (I am certainly on the right track here in hindsight).Why so late with the brain? You see I'm bipolar. Anything that works on the brain carries the risk of triggering mania.Can Phosphatidylserine (PS) trigger mania? Well, I figured out that I'm histadelic (under-methylates histamine) so no. But the answer is yes if you are a histapenic-type bipolar.What about phosphatidylcholine (PC)? Yes, this can trigger mania in me. Do I take it? Yes, but it's in lecithin which is so foul tasting overdose is unlikely. Why do I even risk it? Because I can't eat that many eggs without driving my LDL up 100 pts. (Unknown to me, the phosphatidylcholine in lecithin NEEDS to be digested by... my missing enzyme – with my extremely low levels, lecithin is certainly helped but not enough made it threw my gut and into my brain to endanger me).If you are bipolar, odds are close to 80% one of these two will trigger mania. Therapeutic doses of supplements are different for bipolar disorder. I check therapeutic doses using "Natural Healing for Bipolar Disorder" by Eva Edelman. Be careful!I started taking PS three weeks ago and PC about four weeks ago. I take 500 mg of the PS and about 10 - 20 mg of lecithin.Two weeks ago, I started noticing I was catching myself and preventing mistakes. I must have caught about 4-5 potential mistakes. That's really high for me. My usual rate is zero. Still it might just be wishful thinking.Then, a week later, I got angry with a friend who asked me to walk her across the street so she could shop at a new grocery store (she is suffering from anxiety). i was surprised at my overreaction. It's not as if she asked me to fly across the country then walk her across the street to the grocery store. Later, I suddenly had a peculiar dream-like sensation that someone *had* asked me to fly across the country and walk them across the street. Or maybe it was a dream that I'd had. More and more details filled themselves in over the span of about an hour. I really had flown across the country to help my parent across the street and to the doctor's office. And I remember ranting about it for nearly two years. At the end, I recovered most(?) of the memory and was even angrier.That is until I realized what had just happened. Oh, yeah. This stuff works.Now, some of you alert and bushy-tailed ones may have noticed, it's working unusually fast, isn't it? Yes, I wasn't expecting much for another few weeks. I have noticed this same unusually rapid response to other supplements. (most supplements contain the nutrition I needed in free form, no need to digest anything. Smoking Gun! This is a gut problem).Is there an order to addressing these problems? Yes, if you start supplementing your brain but are completely inflamed, this will interfere with healing. Fix your inflammation and gut first because that stops/slows down everything else. Then get the antioxidants online. I recommend the "Eat Fat, Get Thin" book by Mark Hyman. It's explained beautifully. It's really a book about medicine, not just a diet/nutrition book. Check your library. It's popular. (still my best advice) But in addition to the great advice about supplements and diet in that book, if you need to heal you need to eat 30 gms of protein in one meal to initiate protein synthesis. 30 gms of protein can be found in 5 large eggs or 5 oz of lean, skinless, boneless chicken or turkey. Don't forget to get your vitamins. Healing is a massive effort and a shortage of almost anything brings the whole thing to a screeching halt. (The best multi-vite I've ever found is Hardy's Essential Nutrients. They have clinical evidence that it works. There are very, very few companies out that that have proven their formulations deliver what is on the label into your bloodstream – the only place where it counts). Once I tumbled onto the protein synthesis (and all the nutritional support), things really started to turn around.I discovered some doctors do prescribe omega-3 oils and PS (300 mg) for ADHD.After I spoke to my doctor, she said that slow-motion recall more than suggested my neurotransmitters were depleted. I started taking 1 tsp of the PS. to frontload. I've tried it 2x and both times I became light-headed and my vision became a bit blurry. It wore off after about 2 hours.June 17, 2017 My memory is indeed improving but lopsided supplementation of PC and PS created confusion. As far as I can figure, PS helps memory and recall most, PC helps alertness, focus, concentration and I'll talk about working memory in a bit. With the extra large helpings of PS, my recall improved dramatically far outpacing my focus and working memory. I ended up more confused than ever because I couldn't process all that extra input. So I calculated how much supplement I'd eaten (for inositol, it took about 1.6 lbs before I normalized). That's when I decided mania or no, I'd go with tablespoons of lecithin. I did become more alert and focused with 2-3 days. Then, I became aware that I would recall... something.... and I couldn't hold it within my attention so it would disappear. I finally, figured out my working memory was not improving. It turns out working memory is easily affected by stress. I'd already been diagnosed with crap working memory. But I also knew ginseng, ashwagandha, and rhodiola all have adaptogens. Some doctors prescribe them for ADHD. So I started using all of them. It's a bit astonishing but it seems like it only took two days for the level of confusion to drop (later, I read a textbook on alternative approaches in psychiatry: turns out mixtures of the adaptogens work better than massive doses of one alone). Still pretty forgetful and I tire out easily with detail work but this is much improved from always forgetful and completely unable to handle detail work (like entering events into a calendar). ( The low mental energy points to low phosphatidylcarnitine – yup,more missing nutrient due to the gut dysfunction)I healed very slowly but eventually, my psychiatrist decided I had recovered enough to be taken off my ADHD medication: Vyvanse. We started the taper off. Earlier, I'd discovered N-acetyl-L-tyrosine (NALT). Tyrosine is just one of the standard amino acids found in most proteins and the N-acetyl group means it's been tagged for express delivery for the brain. My initial trial resulted in such staggering confusion and hyper-alertness that I crashed and burned out. My doctor later explained, NALT and Vyvanse both stimulate the exact same pathway in the brain, thus my wild overreaction. As I tapered off the Vyvanse, I discovered I could take NALT on the alternate days and it smoothed out my withdrawal. At that, my doctor just took me off the Vyvanse, tossed out my schedule and told me to take some comfortable level of NALT.Fast forward as I explained the results of the gut tests to my psychiatrist. Conclusion: it's all in the gut. We threw up our hands at all these supplements to focus on healing the gut. Is this a weird result? No.Lots of really recent research indicates many psychiatric conditions originate in the gut. Like bloodhounds, my psychiatrist and I barked up wrong trees and we followed the clues until we got our hands on the right doctor, with the right tests and the right information. When you have symptoms of multiple nutritional deficiencies – go back to the point of origin and fix the gut.How to heal a gut:Go on an anti-inflammatory diet – (get some books) Inflammation stops healing. My go to anti-inflammatories are garlic, ginger, hot chili peppers, cinnamon and turmeric.Probiotics – there are many types of probiotics and they are formulated to solve different problems. Some fix diarrhea or constipation. Others like Saccharomyces boulardii will heal gut inflammation. If you have any kind of gut trauma or dysfunction S. boulardii is your best friend. Get a formula that is fresh with many colony forming units. Finding a formula with many probiotics is helpful but its mostly helpful if you don't know why you're taking probiotics.Prebiotics – probiotics need special food. You cannot digest this fiber. It won't increase your weight, it won't raise your blood glucose. Wellbutrix PGX – Konjac is a plant found in Asia. It has the longest fibers that we know about. Long fibers feed helpful probiotics BUT they do not feed harmful invader bugs. I take PGX because it also helps control blood glucose too. Glucomannan – this is the fiber found in Konjac. The only difference between PGX and glucomannan is the PGX has undergone a patented process to preserve the length of the fiber to the max. Metamucil – the “gold” standard for fiber no? Absolutely not. As I upgraded from Metamucil to glucomannan to PGX, my diarrhea went from relentless (only diarrhea) to gone. The fiber in Metamucil is so over-processed and broken down that only healthy people with awesome gut health should take it. But only if they want to risk their gut health.There are lots of sources that list high prebiotic and probiotic foods. Try to maximize consumption if you can. I found eating LARGE servings of fermented foods (2 cups of sauerkraut or kefir or yogurt) produced visible results the next day. It took about 9 months but I consumed so much yogurt and kefir that the cultures colonized my gut. Hey, 30 years of lactose intolerence, GONE! All those people next to me are soooo happy!Protein synthesis – discussed above. 30 gms = an 8 oz steak with bone and stuff included. Eat. It. Now.Glutamate – another amino acid found in most proteins. Glutamate is used directly by the gut as fuel. It's a bit ironic but the gut has limited options to obtain food directly. It's also used to make GABA a neurotransmitter in the brain that balances mood. And it's necessary for the production of glutathione. Some would argue that glutathione is THE most important enzyme in the body; it regenerates all your other anti-oxidant enzymes which protect you from toxicity, free radical damage. In times of high stress, it is possible to strip your body of glutathione. That's when you get these stress induced medical collapses where every condition you have goes off like a firecracker. However, it is preferentially needed to heal the gut or to produce muscle. In times of trauma, it's trivial to strip your body of glutamate. During those times, doctors will recommend 2-3 gms of glutamate ( a small spoonful or just weigh it out). Don't exceed 2-3 gms routinely because excess glutamate is harmful. Taking glutathione with food blocks the gut from using it itself. Take it on an empty stomach. In spite of the warnings about overdosing, when I was experiencing extreme gut pain (couldn't sleep), I'd double the dose and found it eased the pain. I never did this more than 2-3 days in a row.N-acetyl-L-cysteine or NAC. Is required to synthesize glutathione. Also detoxifies some toxins or anti-oxidants on it's own. 3 gms a day for trauma-level supplementation.Magnesium glycinate – 200-400 mg daily. Magnesium is THE most important mineral in the body. It is also THE most difficult to supplement. Standard multivitamins are stuffed with forms of magnesium that are about 3% bioavailable. Thus 97% of that 100% RDA is lost....it's also trivially easy to strip the body of magnesium in times of stress or trauma. Chose magnesium glycinate because you also need the glycinate (glycine) in order to supplement glutathione.Collagen: the gut needs collagen to heal. You can supplement collagen by drinking bone broth or taking collagen supplements.Vitamin C: you need large quantities to heal collagen. The optimal dose for humans is 7-8 gms per day. You can only absorb 1 gm per hour so spread it out just like Dr. Pauling did. I noticed I was healing at about 4-6 gms per day. How do you know you're healing? Healing collagen is very slow. If you're collagen is healing, everything else is healing. You feel collagen damage as pain in your joints (arthritis) or fine wrinkles in your skin (sun damage to the network of collagen just under the skin). Once you dial everything in just right, the fine wrinkles in your skin will start to heal. I thought my vanity was running amok when I saw this cuz no one warned me about it. Yes, you will start to look younger. However, deep wrinkles are for real and they don't go away.Resistant starch: You cannot digest resistant starch, your helpful probiotics digest it instead. Hence, resistant. Bob's Red Mill (unmodified) Potato Starch is one of the highest sources of the stuff. And it's readily available. It's about 65% resistant starch when it was last tested with an independent lab. There are weird claims all over the internet that there is no resistant starch in there at all. But I put the stuff in my gut, my glucose levels didn't go up, my diarrhea improved by leaps and bounds and it works for me as of December 2018. Personally, it works better than the PGX fiber. Start slowly with maybe ¼ – ½ tsp. An overdose of this stuff when you have no helpful probiotics in your gut is one of the most disgusting experiences around. 3 tbsp daily is the max. I've gone over, but then I got constipation instead of diarrhea.This forms the foundation of a very general program to support gut healing. Targeting the infection requires specialized knowledge of who/what's in there.

I decided to try the powder version of PS since it's a much better value than the pills. The dose is small enough to be mixed in a bit of water and downed quickly. The powder does clump up a lot and has a bit of a smell to it. Neither is really a big deal, but they may bother some.

!st shipment had gotten hot and melted into one big glob. WHC prominently replaced it with a new and upgraded package.

Awesome stuff

Great stuff, minimal taste. Drop some in water and you're good to go.

Couldn't find this product from any other supplier, but right in the middle of the day when that fatigue wants you out, it hits the spot

First thing you will notice about this powder is the smell, it is extremely potent.The smell alone seemed like it had some sort of affect on memory. I would almost describethe scent as slightly intoxicating.I think i did notice a slight elevation in mood.

Arrived hard as a brick and could not be used.