By combining the vegetable based substance of the rhodiola and the phosphatidylserine in the correct way, according to the formula described in part I of this book, you boost the resilience of your brain. By managing certain substances (neurotransmitters), you help your brain reduce the effects of long-term stress. That’s how you push the reset button all by yourself and how you wipe out the mental and physical effects of stress.
These are not drugs, but supplements. This is why we definitely advise you not to suddenly stop taking other medicines. However, this combination could be a good and efficient addition. Should your complaints disappear completely, you can, of course, discuss reducing or stopping the intake of medicines with your doctor. Also make sure to stick to the dose described in part I. If you take a higher dose, complaints such as constipation may occur.
The combination of rhodiola and phosphatidylserine may help with a series of ailments, provided that they have a psychosomatic cause. These can be very diverse. Just think of:
However, often these complaints could also have a different cause than a psychosomatic one. This is why we suggest you to always consult a doctor first and to do the necessary tests as to rule out other causes and severe diseases. When nothing can be found, the specialist will judge whether or not you are suffering from psychosomatic complaints. When your complaints are indeed psychosomatic, they will disappear after applying the formula described above.
What exactly are psychosomatic complaints? ‘Psyche’ stands for mind and ‘soma’ means body. They are, in fact, physical complaints that have a mental cause. Because of this reason, doctors can’t find a physical explanation for your complaints. Even though there still appears to be a taboo around psychosomatic complaints – I’m not crazy, am I! – it’s an everyday phenomenon, which we all encounter one way or another. Who has never come home after a long day’s work without a headache?
An additional difficulty of psychosomatic complaints is that the link between the physical and the mental complaints isn’t always very clear, let alone demonstrable. Stress, for example, can be the cause for aches in your head, your neck and your back, but all these complaints can have a whole series of other explanations as well.
Just about all of the bodily functions can exhibit pseudo symptoms. Because of that, it is quite easily assumed that it’s all ‘in your head’. Usually the solution is looked for in medicines such as antidepressants or in relaxation exercises like mindfulness or meditation. Healthy eating, practicing sports and alternative therapies also form a source of hope for a lot of people with psychosomatic complaints. Although some of these things do definitely result in the alleviation of some complaints, the true cause is not dealt with: the blockade in your brain doesn’t get removed.
Rhodiola rosea is a herb that grows high in the mountains in the north of Asia and Europe. It is an adaptogenic herb. Adaptogens help your body adapt to the feeling of stress, no matter whether it is caused by mental, physical or environmental factors. Rhodiola is the most efficient herb of this group of adaptogens. Because of this, the herb is also sometimes called ‘the golden root’. Rhodiola is famous because of its ability to help you burn more fat, to make you feel energized and to give your brain a boost. Back in the day, the Vikings already used the herb to increase their physical strength. The Sherpa people – a people that originally hails from Tibet and that has been living in the highest region of Nepal, the Himalaya, for five centuries and is known for being mountain guides to tourists – use rhodiola to improve their mountain climbing performance. The Russians have been using the plant for more than seventy years to improve their working performance and physical endurance during sports and as a remedy against insomnia, depression and fatigue. Rhodiola contains a lot of active components which together generate some remarkable benefits for our health.
Important effects
1) Burning fat more quickly
Rhodiola causes the fat that is stored in your body to be used for fuel. That way you can deal with stubborn fat such as stomach fat. We owe this effect to the active component called rosavin. This is a so-called cinnamyl alcohol glycoside, which in turn stimulates the hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), an enzyme that plays a big part in burning fat. If you combine the intake of rhodiola with light physical strain, your stomach fat will burn even more quickly. This has been proven repeatedly by clinical studies on people.
A research with 130 overweight patients that took place at the Georgian State Hospital showed that taking rhodiola could lead to a weight loss of up to 19 pounds and a decrease in the body fat percentage of up to 11%, while a placebo group only lost 8 pounds. During the research, both groups followed the exact same diet plan.
2) Increasing your energy and performance during sports
Rhodiola causes an increase of the erythropoietin (EPO) in your body, a hormone that is produced in the liver, kidneys and macrophages and which affects your bone marrow and boosts the production of red blood cells there. This increase of red blood cells is important, considering that red blood cells take care of the transportation of oxygen to your muscles. This way, rhodiola helps in increasing your endurance and resistance. Because of this, your performance during sports may improve drastically and fatigue will be postponed. After all, EPO is known for a reason, since it is sometimes administered used as a doping drug, more specifically in cycling.
A study, published in 2004 in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition, has shown that rhodiola also works against inflammation and helps restoring the muscles after physical strain.
People who don’t practice sports, however, also seem to gain quite a few benefits from taking rhodiola. The supplement has a proven positive effect on our endurance, not only for top performance during sports, but also with everyday activities such as working, studying and performing household chores. Furthermore, it nullifies the effects of sleep deprivation on your body. Especially this last benefit is very interesting for people with chronic conditions, which often have a direct, negative influence on one’s sleeping pattern.
3) Reducing cortisol levels
People who have experienced emotional or physical stress during a longer time are at great risk of having high cortisol levels. Cortisol makes our bodies enter the so-called ‘fight or flight’-mode. Walking around with high cortisol levels for a long time can have a lot of negative effects on your bodies, such as:
As you can see, keeping your cortisol levels under control has quite some benefits for your health. It also helps by counteracting premature aging. Scientific research has found that too high cortisol levels cause premature aging and symptoms of exhaustion in the long run.
4) Beating depressions and improving brain functions
Rhodiola also plays a big role in improving the health of your brains and at fighting depressions. Rhodiola heightens the sensitivity of the neurons in your brains and nerve system, including those of the important neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. These, in turn, cause an improvement of your ability to concentrate; they stimulate your mind and heighten your ability to experience joy, as well as improving your mood. In addition, dopamine helps fight your craving for sweets and addictive substances, while also keeping our brain from processing too much information at once. This is how over stimulation can be avoided, which, for example, comes in handy for people who are highly sensitive.
For this reason, rhodiola is already being prescribed by a lot of doctors nowadays as an alternative medicine instead of antidepressants. During a clinical study with 150 people who suffered from a depression, the symptoms disappeared completely for two thirds of the patients who had been given rhodiola for a month.
Suggested use
The intake of rhodiola can be done through capsules. It’s a completely vegetable based product that is simply available at the pharmacy.
Phosphatidylserine is a natural substance that can be found in a highly concentrated form in our brain and in nerve tissue at the inside of cell membranes. The substance is categorized as a food supplement and is completely vegetable based. Phosphatidylserine is naturally present in small amounts in various types of food, such as oily fish, beans and brown rice. Because of the work of a team of Israeli researchers, it can now be drawn from soy lecithin after treating it with an enzyme found in biological coleslaw.
Phosphatidylserine causes an increase of phospholipids in your brain cells, essential substances that form the base of all biological membranes. Our brains are continuously working and therefore consume a lot of energy. Because of this, like any other organ that requires a lot of energy, the brains are susceptible to damage caused by free radicals. Diverse researches have shown that phosphatidylserine represses free radicals in our brain cells and acts as an antioxidant for the brain cells.
Phosphatidylserine works both for acute and chronic stress and reduces students’ exam stress by 30% according to recent studies.
Important effects
Chronic stress causes more cortisol to be released into our body. These stress hormones cause a higher blood pressure, among other things and may lead to over strained nerves, aggression, fear and other neurotic symptoms. Phosphatidylserine will improve your mood and improves your cognitive capability, as well as making you less likely to overstep your body’s boundaries.
Therefore, as the list of effects above illustrates, phosphatidylserine is not just something that can be used to help people with a chronic condition caused by stress. Already since the seventies, the effects of phosphatidylserine have been researched worldwide. As of the eighties, there have also been tests on people, including on healthy elderly people, people with senile dementia, as well as Alzheimer patients. Older people naturally tend to have a much higher cortisol level. Both European and American researches have shown that the daily intake of this supplement can help you preserve your cognitive abilities when getting older. The dozens of researches all present positive effects, for example when it came to remembering names, faces and numbers, concentration, orientation and other cognitive functions. To measure the improvements, they used widely recognized memory tests.
An example of this is the double blind clinical research conducted by doctor Jacob Gindin, head of the Geriatric Institute of Education and Research of the Kaplan hospital in Rehovot (Israel). He followed a group of healthy elderly people consisting of 72 persons between the ages of 60 and 80 for a period of three months. Half of them received phosphatidylserine while the other half received a placebo. After the research, they had to take cognitive tests and were checked for symptoms of depression. There were striking improvements in the group that had received phosphatidylserine, especially regarding their memory and mood. A sudden, positive side effect was the fact that the placebo group did suffer from the usual winter depression, which did not occur in the phosphatidylserine group. They showed no symptoms whatsoever.
This also appeared to be the case in a research conducted in 1994 by Crook, in association with the University of Stanford and the Vanderbilt University. In this research, 149 healthy older people between the ages of 50 and 75 received phosphatidylserine for twelve weeks, except for a subgroup that received a placebo. Their finds show that especially people with memory problems experienced the positive effects of the supplement.
Researchers also took note of substantial benefits for people with Alzheimer in diverse scientific researches, such as the one of doctor Gindin of the Kaplan hospital in 1996. For example, improvements were seen in their ability to recognize faces and persons and in restoring the normal day-night rhythm, their mood and sanitary needs.
By now, there are a lot of doctors who prescribe phosphatidylserine for a number of complaints such as cerebral infarction, consequences of a coma, dyslexia, study problems, whiplash and damage to the brain after an accident.
Suggested use
Apart from phosphatidylserine, every capsule also contains other phospholipids such as choline, lecithin, ethanolamine and phosphatidic acid. It is suggested to continue taking the supplement, because the positive effects will otherwise gradually disappear. During the many researches that took place during the past decades, both on people as well as animals, no negative side effects have been found.
The only side note would be that taking phosphatidylserine could lead to a mild stomach ache for some people who have a sensitive stomach, because the supplement gives off the substances acetylcholine and dopamine. When you take it during or immediately after a meal, this risk disappears.