Our findings did not show any significant changes in mood states as measured by the POMS. An article by Benton et al. reported that young adults who scored high in measures of neuroticism experienced feeling BX-795 order less stress and had a better mood after PS selleck Supplementation of 300 mg/day for one month [9]. Another study investigated the effects of three different doses of PS (400, 600, or 800 mg/day for 21 days) on pituitary adrenal reactivity and

the psychological response to a mental and emotional stressor [10]. It was observed that the 400 mg/day supplementation level resulted in an attenuated serum adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol, and salivary cortisol response to the stressor, as well as a decrease in distress. These effects were not seen in the other PS supplementation groups (600 or 800 mg/day). The results of our study showed that 14 days of supplementation with 400 mg of PS had no effect on serum cortisol or total testosterone levels. There have been numerous articles published reporting that PS supplementation can Selleck PF299 affect endocrine function, specifically by blunting

cortisol response to stress [3, 10, 11]]. However, several studies have also reported no changes in endocrine function as a result of PS supplementation [12, 13]. Very few studies have been performed examining the effects of PS supplementation on testosterone levels. In one article, Starks found no significant changes in testosterone levels after 10 days of supplementation with 600 mg of PS [4]. These equivocal findings on mood and endocrine response have been attributed to differences in training status, dose and duration of supplementation and the kind of physical and mental stress [1, 13]. Due to the strenuous nature of the exercise

protocol used in this study, only resistance trained individuals were allowed to participate. The lack of significant changes to endocrine response between supplement groups may be due to the fact that the participants were not placed under an adequate amount of physical stress to elicit large enough changes in cortisol or testosterone levels. Perhaps mafosfamide more research is warranted to examine the effects of varying levels of both mental and physical stress on trained and untrained individuals to identify the populations that could benefit most from supplementation with PS. Conclusions Supplementation with PS is an effective means of improving cognitive function in young, healthy college students. PS significantly increased the speed of calculations by 20%, reduced the total amount of errors by 39% and increased the total amount of correct calculations by 13%. Supplementation with PS did not have any significant effect on cortisol, total testosterone, or mood.