Techies bio-hack brainpower with hot ‘smart drugs’
Like many young tech workers, 24-yearold Dennis Qian wants to have enough stamina to work at peak concentration levels yet still have the energy to maintain a social life outside his long hours on the job.
The San Francisco resident tried highoctane Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy shots while in college, but his caffeine sensitivity made him feel jittery rather than focused. After doing some research, he started experimenting with combinations of supplements known as “nootropics,” or vitamins for the
brain.
“If you’re working in a startup, you’re working maybe 10, 12 hours a day. That leaves me about five or six hours a night of sleep,” Qian said. “I don’t want to make compromises. Sleep is great, but if I can maintain my performance during the day … with just a few supplements like nootropics, I’d gladly do that.”
Nootropics are a broad category of cognitive-enhancing supplements that include a range of compounds to improve memory, focus and mood. They come in the form of stimulants such as caffeine, vitamins like B6 and B12, fish oil and mood enhancer SAMe, and natural extracts as well as chemical compounds and enzymes to increase activity in the brain or boost metabolic function. And as people like Qian seek to gain a mental edge, some turn toward “biohacking” their way to better biology.
Users look for the perfect combination of supplements, some turning to social-networking sites such as Reddit — where nootropics is a hot subject — to seek input on their “stacks,” their cocktail of supplements, or to field questions like which combination combats anxiety or what’s the best short-term memory boost for a grad student.
Others prefer the prepackaged approach where popping a single smart-pill does the trick. Startups offer pills mar- keted to young tech workers in demanding jobs and aging executives hoping to get back vitality and mental sharpness.
“People are going to upgrade themselves with technology. This is the beginning, the technology of the mind that will do what would have taken millions of years,” said Eric Matzner, who last year founded an online San Francisco nootropics startup called Nootroo.
Old idea, new interest
The idea of nootropics, also known as nutraceuticals, memory or neuro enhancers, isn’t new. Even the term — a combination of Greek words meaning “toward the mind” — dates back more than 40 years, coined by a Romanian psychologist and chemist who synthesized a drug designed to boost brain function in healthy people that’s still used today.
But it’s no wonder the interest in so-called smart drugs is on the rise in a world that bombards plugged-in people with ever-increasing streams of information. Anecdotal reports from health experts show an increase in abuse of prescription stimulant drugs like Adderall, Concerta and Vyvanse to enhance performance. The concept of using drugs to enhance mental prowess hit the big screen in 2011 with “Limitless,” a thriller starring Bradley Cooper as an author racked by writer’s block who takes an experimental drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his brain.
Not surprisingly, the height- ened interest in the products has raised skepticism and concern about what’s in these substances and pills. Health professionals question what they believe to be pseudo-science behind the claims and worry about potential adverse health effects.
“With nutraceuticals or natural supplements, you don’t go through as rigorous a testing procedure as a drug. You don’t have to prove safety and efficacy,” said Rae Matsumoto, dean of the College of Pharmacy at Vallejo’s Touro University.
The federal government treats nootropics the same as dietary supplements or foods, meaning they do not need to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before going to market. Still, the government is responsible if safety issues arise.
A key difference between drugs and nootropics is that these supplements for the brain aren’t treating a disease, but rather enhancing some sort of normal physiological function — in this case, cognitive function. But to Matsumoto, nootropics are just “a fancy way of saying we don’t know how these work.”
“You often don’t see any harm being done unless you go crazy and take huge amounts,” she said. “Whether it really causes benefit, that’s where it gets a little more dicey.”
Safety and dosing
Candy Tsourounis, professor of clinical pharmacy at UCSF, said not enough information is available on safety and dosing.
“We have no information on the immediate and the longterm safety,” she said. “We have no information to say these ingredients or combinations of ingredients have been tested to show a benefit over placebo, regular exercise and healthy diet.”
Users and purveyors of nootropics take issue with these criticisms, arguing that a large body of research already exists proving the efficacy of some of the most widely used substances and that millions of people take these supplements every day without harm.
A whole industry of mindbody gurus has been spawned around the concept of biohacking, led by such leading nootropic enthusiasts as Tim Ferriss, the San Franciscan who founded the “4-Hour” lifestyle makeovers, and Dave Asprey, a Silicon Valley investor and tech entrepreneur known for his trademark energy-enhancing Bulletproof Coffee.
Asprey, whose efforts have expanded into the Bulletproof Diet and a line of supplements, has spent the better part of two decades and over $300,000 trying to hack his own biology to make it better.
“You could say these don’t do anything, but we feel the difference,” said Asprey, 42, who says he’s lost 100 pounds and boosted his IQ by 20 points through his biohacking efforts.
“The pharmaceutical industry likes to say we’re not regulated, but the number of deaths from supplements is
like zero while the number of deaths from Tylenol measure in tens of thousands from liver failure,” said Asprey, speaking from his home in Victoria, British Columbia. (Overdoses from Tylenol and other acetaminophen-containing medication send as many as 78,000 people to the emergency room in the U.S. each year and kill about 500, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Tylenol in 2013 changed its labeling to emphasize the potential risks.)
While dietary supplements, particularly those containing illegal substances, have been associated with deaths, Asprey contends those concerns don’t apply to products made with ingredients that are responsibly sourced and manufactured with high quality standards.
Asprey said he’s excited by the wave of young entrepreneurial energy coming into the nootropic space.
Geoffrey Woo, a 26-year-old recent graduate of Stanford University’s computer science program, last year co-founded Nootrobox, a nootropics startup, with ex-Google employee Michael Brandt, also 26.
Anecdotal evidence
The company’s first product, called Rise, relies on bacopa, a plant-based substance with limited but promising research showing cognitive-enhancing properties, combined with the amino acid L-theanine and the amount of caffeine in a half cup of coffee. It sells for $26.10 for 30 pills, and can be taken once or twice a day.
“My productivity is through the roof,” said E.J. Friedman, a 45-year-old operations manager at a Santa Monica production company who also works for a music label, and who attested to a change in the nine months he’s been taking the supplements. “My ability to tackle things I thought were impossible is dramatic.”
He says the improvement is more than any placebo effect. “Is there a magic bullet here?” he said. “Maybe. Maybe not. I guess time will tell.”
Friedman, who is a vegetarian, said he takes care of his health by exercising, sprouting his own brown rice and fermenting kimchi. He doesn’t worry about the lack of regulation of such supplements because he trusts the company and says he takes a similar leap of faith when he goes to a restaurant.
Woo said the company developed the combination based on the best scientific research available, but acknowledged more is needed.
“We welcome the additional scrutiny and want to drive that forward,” he said, adding that funding studies can be difficult. “We don’t want people to think this is backroom shady stuff.”
Nootroo’s 27-year-old founder, Eric Matzner, also wants nootropics to become more validated and to shed any “snake oil” image associated with the field.
Matzner said he’s experimented with the drug Adderall, used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and looked into other prescription drugs like modafinil, which was FDA approved in 1998 to treat narcolepsy but is used off-label as a popular smart drug. But he wanted to take something regularly that he thought would protect and improve his body and overall health.
Gold, silver ingredients
He turned to nootropics four or five years ago and has since developed a combination of supplements geared toward a high-end market, complete with “gold” and “silver” formulations that contain edible 23.5-karat gold and 100 percent silver flakes.
Matzner said his products, which cost $64.95 for a month’s supply, contain patented ingredients and are made in San Francisco. “If I’m putting gold in there,” he said, “you can assume I’m not cutting corners on any other areas.”
The main ingredient in the gold version is Noopept, a peptide known to enhance memory and protect the brain, and the silver compound contains phenylpiracetam, used in humans as a central nervous system stimulant.
While the nootropics business is growing, it remains under the radar. Some users want it to stay that way to give themselves a competitive edge.
But entrepreneurs and others say it’s time for the industry to come out of the shadows. Matzner said he wants to “get these things out to as many smart people as possible so people could get smarter and make the world better.”