Raena Morgan: Hi, I’m Raena Morgan with iHealthTube. Today we’re visiting with Dr. Parris Kidd. He is the author of PS: Nature’s Brain Booster. And I’m going to try to say PS Dr. Kidd. Welcome. It’s PhosphatydylSerine, right?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Absolutely correct Raena.
Raena Morgan: Okay, thank you Dr. Kidd. You say in your book that the brain is like a “gas guzzling organ”. How much energy does the brain need to be productive?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, Raena it really is quite amazing because we don’t know think about it this way, but the brain, at rest, uses about 20% of all the energy that the body makes. When we’re concentrating, when we’re going through the course of a workday, we’re using up to 60% of all the energy that we can generate in the body.
Raena Morgan: 60% of all the energy in the body goes to the brain?
Dr. Parris Kidd: And this is why people like myself and yourself are so tired at the end of the day because we’ve been using our brains, and it sort of goes against our instinctual feeling, right? We usually think that people who are doing manual labor are going to be more tired, but I say the brain is burning up that much energy—well more than half of all the energy we make. And, that’s because the cells in the brain are the most energy intensive; they’re the largest cells, they need a lot of blood sugar to function, they need a lot of other co-factors, and they’re just burning up a lot of energy.
Raena Morgan: All right, so, how does PS—PhosphatydylSerine—how does that figure into the energy that’s in the brain?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, Raena, we have little compartments within ourselves, little sub cells if you like, little energy factories called mitochondria and this is where the energy currency of the body is produced, a small molecule called ATP, and in order for the mitochondria to do that they have to have a supply of PS.
Raena Morgan: That’s where PS comes in?
Dr. Parris Kidd: PS goes into the mitochondria and is converted to other substances that then facilitate the production of energy.
Raena Morgan: So, it really is a brain booster?
Dr. Parris Kidd: It really is, literally, a brain booster, and we can do energy scans in the brain that actually show this. So, literally, energetically, it’s a brain booster. And, then it’s a brain booster in terms of the way that the brain can generate electrical signals, and transmit those signals, and PS also facilitates the action of the chemical transmitters that carry information as well.
Raena Morgan: It sounds complex.
Dr. Parris Kidd: So, this is a molecule, a relatively simple molecule as far as (unintelligible) molecules go, and yet it has so many different mechanisms of action that boost our brain function.
Raena Morgan: So, is PS a brain nutrient?
Dr. Parris Kidd: PS is a brain nutrient; it’s also a body nutrient. It’s a nutrient that’s found in all living things, all the way down to the simplest material. It’s a fundamental nutrient for life, that’s why I call it an orthomolecule.
Raena Morgan: Orthomolecule, because it’s a molecule for life, that’s what that means?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Yes. In the definition of the late Dr. Linus Pauling, it’s a molecule orthodox to the body, that means that it’s intrinsic to our functioning; it’s part of our fundamental life processes, and this makes it very useful clinically, and also very safe to take because it’s been around a million things for the last 4 and a half million years or so, depending on how the experts may feel.
Raena Morgan: So, why are we necessarily depleted of it, or is it something that’s age related?
Dr. Parris Kidd: We’re actually not depleted of PS. Even as we get older the ratio of the PS in our cells stay constant, but I believe that what may be happening is that when we don’t have more PS to go around then we can’t make new circuits, and we can’t make new connections. So, as we lose our existing connections we’re not able to replace them as well. That’s what I think the key is. We’re not really deficient in PS, but the more PS we have the more adaptable the brain can be.
Raena Morgan: Okay, well, thank you Dr. Kidd, that was very informative. We’ll come back and visit with Dr. Kidd again.
Dr. Parris Kidd: You’re very welcome.
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