What Happens When You Stop Treating Symptoms and Start Finding Answers
Let me tell you what my body was doing to me.
My cortisol levels were off the charts. Not slightly elevated — off the charts. My immune system had turned against me, running on fight-or-flight so long it had forgotten what calm felt like. I could not lose weight without essentially starving myself, and the moment I went back to eating like a human being, I gained it back plus three pounds. Inflammation was showing up everywhere — my scalp- causing hair loss, my joints, my blood pressure spiking near 200 every time something upset me. My baseline state is a blood pressure reading.
My doctor prescribed blood pressure medication almost ten years ago. I took it faithfully and remained incredulous the entire time, because the pills were treating a symptom with no interest in the cause. Every time I got upset — genuinely upset, the kind of upset that a Black woman navigating this world earns the right to feel regularly — my pressure would spike to numbers that belong on a news alert, not a wellness journey.
My doctor finally looked me in the eye and told me that if I did not do something, I was going to be a blurb on the news. The woman found dead at home. He suggested meditation.
Meditation did not work. I tried.
So I did what I have always done when the system does not have what I need. I investigated for myself.
In walked peptides. Supplements. Powder aminos to drink, pills to swallow, subcutaneous shots to administer. Almost a year in — New Year, New Shirl is very much on the up. And one of the standouts in the whole protocol, the one I want to talk about today, is Phosphatidylserine.
What Phosphatidylserine Actually Is
Phosphatidylserine — PS for short — is a phospholipid. That means it is a fatty substance that lives in your cell membranes. It plays an important role in cell function, particularly in the brain, and is found in foods as well as being available as a dietary supplement.
PS has been shown to regulate a variety of neuroendocrine responses including the release of acetylcholine, dopamine, and noradrenaline. It has also been extensively demonstrated to influence tissue responses to inflammation.
It is naturally present in your body. The problem is that chronic stress, aging, and a nervous system that has been running on high alert for too long can deplete it. And when PS levels drop, your brain loses one of its most important tools for keeping cortisol in check.
PS has been studied since the 1990s. Research found that PS significantly dialed down the cortisol spike that comes with stress — essentially putting the brakes on the system that keeps your body in emergency mode long after the emergency is over.
What It Does — In Plain English
Here is the short version of what PS does and why it matters.
PS works by maintaining the integrity of the cell structure and keeping the brain’s communication highways flexible and functional. It essentially tells the brain to protect healthy cells and clear excess cortisol, allowing you to calm down and recover faster from a stressful event.
When cortisol stays chronically elevated — not from one bad day but from years of accumulated stress, systemic pressure, and a body that has been in survival mode so long it does not remember any other setting — the damage spreads everywhere. High cortisol can suppress thyroid function, push blood glucose toward dangerous levels, suppress immune function, drive gut inflammation, and disrupt the circadian rhythm, leading to memory issues, mood dysregulation, and insomnia.
That list should sound familiar to a lot of Black women. Because that is not just a medical description. That is Tuesday.
PS addresses the source. It does not mask the symptom. It walks up to the cortisol response and tells it, calmly and specifically, to have a seat.
For me, it directly addressed my cortisol levels, shifted my immune system out of its constant fight-or-flight positioning, and told the inflammation to calm down. My scalp improved. My hair loss slowed. My blood pressure stopped treating ordinary human emotion like a five-alarm emergency.
Why This Matters Beyond Just Me
Black women carry a specific physiological burden that most medical research has historically ignored. The chronic stress of navigating racism, economic pressure, caregiving without support, and a medical system that does not always see us clearly does not just affect our mental health. It lives in our bodies. It drives up our cortisol. It keeps our nervous systems in states of activation that were designed for short-term threats, not lifelong conditions.
The body was not built to run on fight-or-flight indefinitely. When it does, everything starts to break down- your immune system, your metabolism, your cardiovascular system, your hair, your skin. None of that is weakness. All of it is biology responding to an unrelenting load.
And when the medical system’s answer is to treat each symptom in isolation while ignoring the underlying storm — prescribe the blood pressure pills, suggest the meditation, move on — it is on us to go further. To investigate. To find what actually works for our specific bodies.
That is not alternative medicine. That is self-advocacy.
What To Know Before You Start
PS is widely available as a supplement, typically derived from soy or sunflower lecithin. It has a strong safety profile and is well tolerated in clinical studies.
A few things worth knowing: timing matters. Taking PS too close to bedtime can interfere with sleep because of its effect on neurotransmitter activity. And PS works on cortisol regulation — which means if your cortisol is already depleted (low) rather than elevated (high), the protocol needs to be different. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation.
Keep going to your doctor. That part is not optional. But also make your own appointments at a lab in your healthcare network — most of them have websites and your insurance covers it. Go get more labs done on your own timeline, not just when your doctor orders them. Use AI as a tool to research which panels make sense for your specific symptoms. Cortisol levels. Inflammatory markers. Thyroid function. There is a list and you can find it. Doctor plus your own research is not reckless. It is necessary. Yes, they tell you not to do that. But if I had not done exactly that, I might not be writing this post. Advocacy is action — including when that action is on your own behalf.
If your current provider is not asking about your stress load, your sleep, your cortisol levels, and your inflammation markers, find one who will. You deserve a provider who treats the source. While you go through those motions- get to the lab and get those tests done yourself. Run the results through AI so you understand what they mean. Yes, AI can read & synthesize a downloaded document.
This is one piece of what has been working for me. Your body may need a different combination. The point is to keep investigating until you find it.
The Bottom Line
Nobody is going to advocate for your body the way you will when you decide to take it seriously.
I spent years following the prescribed path and ending up with the same problems plus a bottle of pills that addressed none of the root causes. The moment I started investigating for myself — reading the research, asking harder questions, building a protocol designed for my specific situation — things began to change.
Almost a year in, my cortisol is regulated. My inflammation is down. My immune system has stopped treating my own body like the enemy. My hair is growing back. My blood pressure is not spiking when life does what life does.
New Year, New Shirl is not a resolution. It is the result of refusing to accept that the symptoms were the whole story.
Stop accepting the surface answer. Find out what is underneath it.
Note: This article reflects my personal experience and is for informational purposes only. Consult a healthcare provider before starting any new supplement protocol, particularly if you have existing health conditions.
