5/16/2023 0 Comments Adium brain enhancer![]() “So few studies have been done, and those that have were not the most controlled trials.” “Who the heck knows?” said Kim Urban, a Philadelphia neurophysiologist who has studied the effects of nootropics. To give some idea of the popularity: The nootropics page on Reddit, which serves as an online forum for the do-it-yourself-crowd, has more than 65,000 readers. They trade precise combinations of plant extracts and synthesized drugs as though they were swapping cookie recipes. Nootrobox, a startup based here in San Francsico, has financial backing from Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer and the legendary venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is known for its early bets on Twitter, Airbnb, Instagram, and other blockbusters.īut Gutiérrez belongs to an active community of amateur scientists who like to experiment with their own mixes - and aren’t afraid to use their own brains as lab rats. (He also runs an online coffee sales business.) “You can crank out code or do some other technical task for hours on end.”Ī host of companies now sell over-the-counter nootropics, and they’re starting to get big-name backing. “It’s a level of focus otherwise unheard of, one you can maintain for long periods of time,” said Gutiérrez, a partner in a startup that creates and markets teams of tech talent. “People might say the negatives are few, but we still don’t know what we don’t know.”Ī competitive squash player, Gutiérrez says his daily stack gives him a feeling of concentration and productivity known among his fellow brain-hackers as “The Flow.” “You’re on your own to figure out the safety of some of this stuff,” he says. ![]() But he acknowledges that not everyone follows that protocol. A skeptic by nature, he says he fully researches any compound he puts in his body. “You’re dealing with unregulated substances that have no oversight.”Gutiérrez admits that a part of this untested new drug realm scares him. By law, the Food and Drug Administration can step in to recall a product only if it’s mislabeled or causing illness or injury. Like all dietary supplements, nootropics are only very loosely regulated the manufacturers don’t have to prove safety or efficacy before putting them on store shelves. “There are liquids and powders and scales.” And Gutiérrez admits his kitchen resembles a scene from “Breaking Bad.” “It definitely looks questionable,” he said. ![]() She thinks it looks too much like a chemistry set. Sometimes, his girlfriend prods him to clean up his experiment site. On the kitchen counter of the two-bedroom house he shares with his girlfriend, Gutierrez keeps 100-gram containers of compounds he buys online, along with two scales, one to measure in grams and the other in milligrams. Toms Gutirrez making his daily nootropic coffee beverage with butter, cream, and powdered coconut oil. Then there’s L-theanine, an amino acid found in green tea. He adds BCAAs, or branched-chain amino acids, which are popular among weightlifters. He throws in some MCT oil, a form of fatty acid that occurs naturally in such foods as coconut oil. Gutiérrez, slender and dark-eyed, swears by a daily “stack” mixed into his morning coffee. And they want to do it without the jittery side effects and stomach churn they’d get from downing endless energy drinks or popping prescription stimulants like Adderall or modafinil. Like Olympic athletes pushing their bodies, they hope to tune their brains for peak performance. “It’s a level of focus otherwise unheard of, one you can maintain for long periods of time.”Įnthusiasts aren’t seeking an altered state of consciousness they want to become a better version of themselves, even just for a few hours at a time. But nootropics, also called smart drugs, have become popular among young type A personalities on Wall Street, in the Ivy League, and here in the frenzied startup culture of Silicon Valley. They haven’t been clinically proven to work, and there’s emerging evidence that some could be dangerous. He’s a connoisseur of “nootropics,” a broad category that includes pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements, and do-it-yourself concoctions, all of them meant to turn the brain up a notch. He adds a dash of butter for flavor, stirs it into a cup of coffee, and downs it.Ī 31-year-old entrepreneur, Gutiérrez has thrown himself into the emerging movement of body hacking - or, more precisely, brain hacking. But each morning, he mixes up a new chemical cocktail that he hopes will sharpen his focus and boost his intellect. SAN FRANCISCO - Tomás Gutiérrez isn’t a brain scientist. ![]() Editor’s note: PBS NewsHour is a partner with STAT, a new national publication reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |