Hey Guys,
i found a very interesting post at reddit.com. It´s a little introduction to the world of nootropics, one of my favorite topics :)
It´s from EnLilaSko, so here it goes:
Hey!
Welcome to /r/nootropics, a subreddit that focuses on enhancing the brain through different methods (pills, exercise, meditation, anything). We'll hopefully be able to help you with your problems and get the extra edge you're most likely looking for.
So first some background, it all started with Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea 40-50 years ago (it didn't really, but the history is easier this way). In the 60's Dr. Giurgea first synthesised piracetam, the now well known drug. For almost a decade he must have thought "Hmm, how can I become more famous, make up a new word and start a new class of drugs?" and then it finally hit him! If he made up a new word, added some criterias and then published it, he had it all figured out! So in 1972 he published a study that first used the word nootropic (which means to bend the mind) and decided on some criterias. The criterias are:
- They should enhance learning and memory.
- They should enhance the resistance of learned behaviors/memories to conditions which tend to disrupt them (e.g. electroconvulsive shock, hypoxia).
- They should protect the brain against various physical or chemical injuries (e.g. barbiturates, scopalamine).
- They should increase the efficacy of the tonic cortical/subcortical control mechanisms.
- They should lack the usual pharmacology of other psychotropic drugs (e.g. sedation, motor stimulation) and possess very few side effects and extremely low toxicity.
To make it easier for you, most people don't use this definition, "nootropics" is commonly used as "cognitive enhancers" (which might be neurotoxic, have serious sides, etc). I would like for everyone to stop doing this, but it will obviously not happen but please try.
The real history goes way back. Humans have always been trying to improve their wetware, Ayurvedic, Shamanism, Chinese, Korean, Siddha, Tibetian, etc have all had herbs and the like to enhance cognition in some ways. That's all I'll say, I know way too little about it.
You've now decided to start on your noot (short for nootropic) and improvement journey, great! We're glad to have you! But first of all I want to give you realistic expectations. Most noots will not be super noticable or enhance any brain function by a lot, we're just not there yet. Some drugs that seem insanly good in animal models do not transfer to humans at all. Then we have the problem with noots that you do not feel, but still "works" (an example for me would be LLLT). But as always, people do not respond identically to drugs, you need to try things to know for sure. If you want to feel something you will most likely need to try stimulants or potentially an anxiolytic if you've got anxiety. Also be cautious of interactions, search and read lots before you add new things.
So now that you realise that noots aren't anything like NZT-48 in the movie Limitless we can move on.
Before you start supplementing things you should get your lifestyle in order. The first thing you should take care of is your sleep. Try to get your +-8 hours and enhance the quality. When you got that in order you should start exercising, both cardiovascular (which got a lot proof for being a cognitive enhancer) and strength (not as much evidence, but more is coming). Try to be active during the day (try not to sit all day, exercise for one hour and think you're good), it'll help sleep and everything in your life. When you're done with those two things you have a good foundation, but adding meditation will help even more. It'll help with any anxiety you have, make you happier and a lot more (cognitive enhancing things). If you don't want to try meditation for some reason, look into neurofeedback. If you do not know how to fix these things, check /r/fitness, /r/meditation and /r/sleep, just check our sidebar relevant subreddits.
When you got that fixed you could look into your diet. This part is super controversial due to different schools of thought. First we have the more mainstream, low GI-carbs, lots of "good" fats, lowish saturated, etc. But we also got a bit of the opposite (/r/keto), low carb, high fat (any except for transfats), etc. This forces the body to go into ketosis (your cells run on more ketones (except for a few cells)) which might hold some benefit for different populations. There's some research hinting towards being in ketosis might be good if you have blood sugar issues (which might cause alzheimer's later in life and cell damage all through), but to me, it does not seem to hold more promise than that. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but you need to make up your own mind and do what you want and find practical. Something almost everyone seems to agree on is that veggies and fruits (ketoers does not like the last one as much as veggies), this is backed up by a lot of research. This is due to multiple things, one of which is that veggies and fruits contain a lot of polyphenols with unique effects. Broccoli has been shown to reduce the effects of (some aspects of) autism, blueberries have shown to fight alzheimer's, etc.
There's also a bunch of supplements that are usually not seen as noots but still have positive effects. The first group would be vitamins. There are a few that most people are deficent in, mainly vitamin K and D. Vitamin K (in the form of K1) is usually just found in leafy greens and K2 (which we usually prefer to supplement) in a few fermented foods. The health effects are quite important for preventing cardiovascular, bone and potentially neurological problems. Vitamin D has in recent years been promoted as the cure all, which it's obviously not. It is however very good for you. There are a lot of correlations between auto-immune diseases and higher mortality in vitamin D deficent people. Adding 2000-5000 IU of D3 daily (and keeping your blood levels checked) should fix the deficency for most people.
If we move within the group micronutrients, but don't look at vitamins, we find minerals. The most significant in this category (relevant to us) is magnesium. To describe it in simple terms, it helps you calm down, promotes synaptic plasticity, help depression, long-term memory and a gazallion other things related to enzymes. If you take it before sleep you'll get better sleep quality and fall asleep faster. There are however forms that have been shown to be fairly worthless, mainly magnesium oxide. You will have to look up what form you want to supplement with. Just be sure to not take too high doses, it might act as a laxative!
Another mineral worth checking out is zinc. Deficency might lower testosterone and BDNF levels, both which are highly correlated with depression and cognitive functions. Doing too much might have opposite effects on BDNF levels and be toxic, so try to not overdo it. A normal starting dose would be around 15-25 mg, adding copper at other times might also be worth looking into.
If we leave the micronutrients and look into other supplements that are worth looking into, we quickly find creatine./u/silverhydra calls it a pseudovitamin (because real defiency results in retardation) which means we must look into it! Creatine is a molecule with a phosphate group bound to itself, if you remember your high school biology you'll remember that ATP becomes ADP and needs a new phosphate group to become ATP again. Guess where you can get that group from? Exactly, creatine! When your cells use up ATP your creatine phosphate donates its group and regenerates ATP. This has been found to be extra effective for vegetarians who consume small quantities of creatine. They are one of the few groups that actually might get an IQ increase from adding it! Other groups that would benefit from it would be elders, sleep deprived and potentially everyone else. It's neuroprotective, might raise your IQ, might make you live longer, modulates a billion things, there's really no reason not to take it.
You've probably browsed multiple sites for starting your stack and then found /r/nootropics, so you want us to help you get started. Sure can do! There are four beginner stacks usually mentioned, the caffeine + theanine, noopept, bacopa and the piracetam (+ choline).
But something important before you order ANYTHING, get a damn milligram scale! As you're most likely not doing anything that requires exact measurements, something cheap like Gemini-20 will work. It will run you about $20 and will last you a very long time. This is for your own safety only (and I know you'll get hate/no help if you create a thread asking about what 200 mg looks like in powder form). Be also cautious with what source you use. Scammers pop up all the time in the noot world, some selling things that have caused hospitalisation. Check the sidebar for suppliers that are trusted, a guideline is to mainly buy from sellers than can provide third part CoAs (Certificate of Analysis).
Have you heard about theanine before? If you have, it has probably been in the context of tea. If you have not, theanine is an amino acid analogue that we mainly find in tea. Why are we adding it to our lovely caffeine? Theanine seems to induce a state of calm, but still keep you alert/awake. Adding caffeine to it boosts the alert/awake, thus making the caffeine nicer for you. There are multiple studies on the combo with positive results (and on the individual compounds). If you're already drinking coffee you can pour some theanine in your cup and enjoy it more. The commonly recommended ratio between theanine and caffeine is 2:1 T:C. But be sure to play around with the ratio to see what works best for you. A good starting dose would be 50-100 mg caffeine and 100-200 mg theanine.
Maybe you don't want to use caffeine, you want to expand your stack or have some other reason to add other things. Then you might want to start with piracetam and choline. This stack has less scientific, but a fair amount of anecdotal evidence (if you care about that). Piracetam was first synthesised by Dr. Giurgea and his team and had some success. The mechanism is not fully understod yet (as with many other drugs) and some argue it's mainly good for the older population, fighting off the age related decline in brain function. The choline is added because one of the mechanisms seems to be cholinergic (the scientific evidence for adding it is weak, anecdotal is not as weak, but still not that strong). When you're adding choline you should be mind the dose. Too high dosages seem to induce depression in a lot of people. The dosage here is a bit more spread between users. Piracetam is taken in doses between 800-4800 mg, 1-3 times a day and choline is taken at doses around 200-1000 mg depending on form. You should however not buy any form of choline, there are better and worse sources. The worst source is choline bitartrate, which should be the last waw out (get some other form if you can). The better forms are Alpha GPC and CDP-Choline. You should try with and without choline to make sure how you respond to them. Try adding them one at a time, as you should with any supplement.
Maybe you don't like the former ones, maybe want to try new things or maybe have some interest Russian drugs. Then you might be interested in noopept, a dipeptide. The evidence is even less for noopept, basically zero in humans in the western world. The mechanism for this one is even less researched. The doses for this compound is 5-30 mg 1-3x daily, orally or sublingual. Too high doses seem to impair working memory for some people, so it's best to start low. One of the creators have been interview by Smart Drug Smarts which you can listen to here.
Maybe you're one of those people who prefer to take "natural" things, then we have a herb for you! The herb I'm talking about is the adaptogenic herb Bacopa Monnieri. Bacopa has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for many years, but as with the other drugs, the mechanism is still not fully understod. The dose used is usually 300-500 mg if it's 50% bacosides. Don't get sad if you don't notice any effects right away, it takes time for it to work. Most trials with good results take it for weeks, it's usually recommended to be taken for atleast 8 weeks, then people usually start noticing it.
There are lots of pre-made stacks, but almost all of them have the same problem, under dosed/don't tell the dose, over priced and no proof that the things they use are pure. So research A LOT before buying them.
As I've written before, there are non-supplemental ways to enhance your cognition. Remember the thing I talked about when I said it was important to measure things? It was LLLT, also called Low-Level Laser/LED/Light Therapy. It sounds like something a hippie made up, but there is a lot of evidence behind it. LLLT works by using a light source (in the 600-1000 nm range) and shining it where you want (in my case the skull (for the brain)). The photons are absorbed by cytochrome C which increases its activity and thus increase ATP production. It does a whole lot more related to it and has been shown to improve reaction time, improve memory, etc. For more info you should search this subreddit and get over to lostfalco's thread on longecity. Another thing that is a bit more risk would be tDCS, transcranial direct current stimulation. Exactly how and how good it works is fairly unknown, but preliminary data hints at some great results. If you want a high quality unit you will need to spend a few hundred bucks, if you can build one you'll save a lot. There's really no way to explain this without going overboard (placement, intensity, hormones and a lot of other things plays a role in the effect), so head over to /r/tDCS if you're interested.
There are also other ways that just requires your computer, so called brain games! The current brain game that has most evidence is n-back. To keep it short a few studies has shown that it increases working memory and potentially IQ (which is disputed), it's one of the few games that have evidence behind it. The most common form is dual-n-back, where you are keeping track of a sound and a position. If you want to learn more, /u/gwern has by far the best papers on it which you can read here and here.
This is also a good way to keep measuring how effective some of your noots are. Other brain games have not shown as much potential, but can be a way to measure progress. Sites that offers these are Luminosity (Paid) and Cambridge Brain Sciences (Free), simple apps for reaction time are also worth looking at.
