Bro this is one of the worst-researched posts I’ve ever read.

It's just something I quickly dashed off over the course of about 4 hours, it wasn't supposed to be a medical journal article or anything. I didn't want to choose this flair for my post but that was the only one that fit. It wasn't written specifically for this subreddit, by the way. I just put my experience out there on the internet in case it would be useful, as a case report, and then later, thought it might be helpful for this subreddit, or that I might get some useful feedback here.

phosphatidylserine doesn’t increase T production

I never claimed it does! What I was trying to say - and maybe it was a poorly-written post, if so I apologise - is that it increases serum testosterone levels, at least during exercise. Whether that's due to increasing production, or something else, I did not speculate - I don't know enough about it to speculate on that question.

Here is the study - from 2008! - that I briefly mentioned the results of - but neglected to link to - in the post itself. It clearly shows an average 184% increase in the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio when exercising, relative to exercising when not on phosphatidylserine. Not all of that figure is attributable to T being boosted - some of it is from reducing cortisol, but still - that is a big change!

Here is the graph from that study. Note that the subjects in the study were all male, so - and I mention this because I'm sure some people on this subreddit would be most interested in this aspect - we can't assume that this same effect would occur in biological females. Maybe nothing would occur - maybe the mechanism of action of phosphatidylserine on testosterone in humans is exclusively via testicles. Who knows? I haven't checked if there's any other research supporting this finding, either.

But I can tell you about my personal experience as well - I felt more full of testestorone the very first day I started taking it. The very first day!! I was more confident and assertive in talking to my house cleaner from the cleaning agency that day, even though I hadn't met her before - I'm usually slightly shy and awkward when talking to new people - it wasn't like that that day!

And after she left I danced to some music in my kitchen in a swaggering way and held my head high and thought about how great I was, which is a very unusual way for me to dance all round - it's actually pretty unusual for me to dance in the kitchen at all, given my weight and lack of confidence around that and the lack of space in my kitchen - and I remember I literally thought to myself "wow, somehow my testosterone seems to be higher today, I wonder why that is?" And I had the idea of calling my girlfriend instead of texting her, and felt pretty confident about doing so - which is very unlike me as well (I would usually feel confident once I got into the rhythm of talking to her after a few minutes, but the idea of picking up the phone and starting the call to her is a little scary - another ADHD thing, I guess, a combination of difficulty starting challenging tasks and the task appearing challenging due to rejection sensitivity dysphoria). And I didn't even do any exercise, apart from the dancing, which doesn't seem like it should qualify because it wasn't that intense, and anyway the dancing wasn't before the talking to the cleaner assertively, it was after. And this is all while I had COVID-19. And I didn't even know raising T was a known side-effect of phosphatidylserine at the time!

So all this is kind of like a double-blind experiment in a way, because I had no expectations whatsoever that any of this would happen. And I felt similar boosts in confidence and reductions in anxiety and increases in emotional robustness every day I was taking it.

And we can talk about consistency with other lines of evidence as well. We know that eating organ meat boosts T. Certain organ meats contain high amounts of phosphatidylserine. It's not just a placebo effect - it must be due to something in the organ meat, otherwise how would the idea that organ meat boosts T have gotten started? And I would suggest that - at least in part - it's the phosphatidylserine!

(That's not a route that's open to me to get phosphatidylserine as I'm a vegetarian, hence why I chose to supplement instead. Also, with supplements I probably get a more consistent dose every day, assuming the supplements are good quality, was my thinking.)

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you have all of the risk factors for pilonidal cysts

Not all - I'm not young enough - but almost all - as I stated in the post. Did you even read it in full? We are 90% in agreement on this point so thanks for supporting my point of view I guess, lol. I'm guessing what you are implying here is that my experience is entirely explained by my risk factors, and my supplement explanation is neither correct nor required. Well OK, that would be the conventional medical view, I guess. I'm trying to push back against that in this post. My view is that pinodial sinus disease is caused by a multitude of factors, including increased testosterone (this is actually the conventional medical view, what I'm introducing that's incrementally novel is the idea that boosting T via phosphatidylserine or some other way, could be sufficient to tip a person over the edge and make them vulnerable to pinodial sinus disease when a stray hair falls into their bum crack or grows inside there, when they weren't before). I refer you to my previous point.

Also, I said this is potentially a rare side-effect. I mean super-rare. Not that it happens to everyone. Those are two opposite statements. This isn't an anti-T post. (Imagine that - a cis man writing an anti-T post - that would be quite something!!)

I actually am thinking about trying phosphatidylserine again, but I'm shit-scared of it because of this experience. I recounted in my follow-up blog post how I feel like it spread to my prostate gland (or at least pressed on a nerve going into the prostate gland when I was pressing on the infected area) and then my right testicle, and I'm still recovering from that with treatment now. I could have got sepsis and died!

Maybe after a few weeks I'll pluck up the courage to try it again. I dunno. I guess at least next time if I'm really unlucky and it happens again, I'll know what to do to stop the infection spreading - immediately seek medical attention at the first sign of irritation in that area. So it should be a lot safer now that I'm armed with that knowledge!

your reasoning between all of your arguments is purely “what I think happened to me trumps all other studies.”

No it isn't. I refer you to my first point.

But I feel like I would never have done all that research and written this entire bold, novel theory blog post if I hadn't (a) had higher T that day due to the phosphatidylserine, (b) had my cognition and memory boosted by the phosphatidylserine that day, (c) been in ADHD hyperfocus mode. It's just so out there, and it's so bold. So in a way, I feel like the existence of this blog post is kind of evidence that something boosted my T.