The Complete Unbiased 10 Points Guide On Stimulants
#3 Fake Reviews
These are my study notes and experiences on stimulants/ enhancing substances. This is not an opinion of whether or not you should take them.
- What they are
- Why they don’t work (and why they sometimes do)
- What to make of reviews
- Dosing
- Why everything has caffeine somehow
- On doctors
- Whether to go for cheap or expensive
- The data science behind it
- A note on environmental issues
For some things, there isn’t enough unbiased scientific research to start with, so let’s get some context first.
1. What are Nootropics?
This one can be tricky. By definition, Nootropics are boosting cognition, but so do vitamins or prescription medicine. Depending on where you look it up, you will get a different answer. Not good. Let’s put it this way: Nootropics are cognition-enhancing substances with little to no side effects that you can take over a long time e.g. multi-vitamins, coffee, or l-carnitine.
Sugar is certainly enhancing and gives you energy in the short-term too, but it’s cognitive destructive in the long run for obvious reasons.
2. Over 90% of Nootropics don’t work
Some contain made-up ingredients, too much caffeine, and/or are completely over- or underdosed.
Potentially dangerous
Unlike stimulants such as coffee or vitamin supplements, the vast majority of supplements are too new and haven’t been researched well enough yet — or the research hasn’t caught up with the products yet.
You could be feeling nothing or even great because of a placebo effect, but in reality, slowly destroy your body without knowing it. This leads us to the 3rd problem:
3. Fake reviews
Sometimes it’s obvious. 100 five star reviews saying “Greet produKt. Muhst bui”. Uh, okay. Sadly, it’s way harder to tell with “experts”.
And while there are certainly many real ones out there, it can be very hard to distinguish the genuine ones from the money grabbers.
Consider
- They could be cherry-picking benefits to promote subpar or even dangerous products
- Preferably promote products with a higher commission
- Copy reviews and pictures instead of actually trying a product
4. Overdose
Supplements are not 100% safe and without side-effects. Nothing is. Too much is always too much. Be it Nootropics or pizza.
It’s common sense. 3000% of your daily need is 30 times too much. It should be plainly obvious recommended amounts of substances with reliable quality. Somehow, it isn’t. Be it nootropics, vitamins, or regular food. There are cases of micro-dosing or slight overdoses that make sense, but these are highly contextual. Taking 3000% of a random vitamin because one article said so is simply dangerously neglectful. Nootropics are in a way like a tool. Use it responsively or you can end up hurting yourself.
5. Caffeine. Caffeine everywhere.
Caffeine is well researched and known. It has good associations, and it works. But you only need so much — and it is everywhere. Every product has it, virtually all of them have too much.
Also highly underestimated and often forgotten: how concentrated caffeine can be.
If you google the recommended daily amount you will find answers anywhere from 100 to 700mg. If it’s pure caffeine, a gram of caffeine can mean a gram of caffeine. This too should be obvious. If you take multiple substances containing caffeine and/or if you drink coffee or green tea, you will end up with a higher amount of caffeine in your system.
Even for so-called “dream combos” like caffeine + L-theanine. You need to know what you are doing. Bottom line: research, read the label, and do the math.
6. (Don’t) Ask your doctor.
You will read it all the time. On the labels, in articles, books, comment sections etcetera. “Consult your doctor”. Sure, if you go to see your doctor for a regular checkup or because it is absolutely necessary and, while you are at it, you pick your doctor’s brains for a minute about something, why not.
But that doesn’t mean you should ring up your understaffed, overworked, and burned out doctor about the safety of taking L-theanine with your morning coffee. Google it.
7. The price is (not) right
Just like a $0.05 tea-bag can give you diarrhea, so can one for $10 bag. This is especially true for products where people are less knowledgeable about and easily confused.
Chinese tea, cosmetics, medicaments, and supplements have this in common: words you never heard on their label. It’s frustrating to google 50 different things to buy your first nootropic, but it can’t be avoided.
For people with allergies, their life literally depends on reading the label and knowing what they say. There are many ‘premium’ products that contain the same or even worse ingredients than their cheap counterparts. This might sound like a broken record, but it is just that important: Read the label. (And learn to understand what you read)
8. The (data-) science behind it
Goes right out of the window.
“Since the FDA does not regulate Nootropics, any start-up with a budget of $10.000 can start selling their new “limitless brain pill.”
Coffee is well researched by now. Newer substances are not and it will take quite a while before we know what we are dealing with.
Add alt text
The research you started decades ago finally confirming your hypothesis. In a way a case of an old dog, new tricks.
This isn’t one of the cases where we can just apply our machine learning magic and predict the outcome — regulators would fry you.
It’s a mix of established and establishing. You can’t get rusty. Side-note: If you are a data scientist looking for employment, check out this brand new job-board from bitgrit or message me.
9. Waste
More often than not we face unnecessarily complex pills that are actually just 96% caffeine. The rest are fancy ingredients that do nothing and act as a buzzword on the nutrition table.
A lot of the above-mentioned stimulants are complicated products that involve production, logistics, and assembly in many places — similar to a car — but without the benefits.
On top of that, they often come packaged in hundreds of little plastic sachets.
Once you found what works for you, you ought to buy a considerable amount. It needn’t be much more than a box of powder.
A shaker and a digital scale will save money, enable adjustments, and as a side product prevent waste. Unless you own a futuristic “magnetic field line garbage incinerator” from a Japanese tech company like Cool Japan Holdings.
But for those that don’t live in the year 2030, co2 reduction might be the better approach.
10. “What Is Your Favorite ___”
Here, at the bottom of the article or review is where you are objectively told what the author's favorite products. I too am no exception and want to share some of them, but please take this with a grain of salt. I did my due diligence and I genuinely use and like these, but as mentioned you should be very careful about recommendations within guides and reviews.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with any of the following nor am I in any way sponsored and none of the links are referral links or something similar.
While I am not a big fan of ketones and pills, I love their little drinks and bars. They make for great snacks and I can feel their impact. I mainly buy them simply because of how delicious they are.
This is the background music that improves focus that I was looking for for a long time. Coding, studying, or simply to blend out outside noise. There are many melodies that are fine-tuned to boost your brain. They also have amazing research papers and their highly qualified team makes you wonder if they are a subsidiary of Neuralink.
This one caught me by surprise. It’s unique, a nice boost and the novelty factor alone makes this one one of my occasional favorites.
Conclusion
So basically that leaves us with simply “try it”. See how you respond to it, do your homework, measure, and take steps. Don’t get swayed into some random purchase and apply common sense.
Remember that every person is unique all the way down to the last bit of DNA. Some people have longer arms and problems doing a bench press, for some, it’s deadly to eat cashews, and then there are people that climb Mount Everest in boxer shorts.
Take the recommended daily amount, see if it works for you, and beware of placebo effects. Read the labels and look up the ingredients you don’t know.
“Start from fundamental basics, the laws of physics, and take it from there.” -Elon Musk
