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January 28 - January 28, 2018
From Africa came the antidote. Europeans imported coffee, which altered the course of human history forever.
Cognitive enhancements can range anywhere from 8.6%, as is the case with the nootropic called piracetam (memory formation),5 to 35% in a root nootropic called Rhodiola Rosea (anti-fatigue),6 and even higher.
Three months into my prison stay, I received a letter from my lawyer. After much anticipation on my part, he couldn’t confirm my release. It read: “I don’t know when you will be released, but I know that it will be soon.”
It worked. With the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, I stopped watching rerun TV and started reading books from the library. As my brain became sharper, I read nearly forty books over the next three months. It shifted my mindset and prepared me for release.
We must first start by optimizing all other aspects of our lives, such as sleep and diet.
For many, it’s simply a way to make a lot of money. The more nootropics one takes, the better they can perform in their job and accumulate resources.
This will include sleep, exercise, and dietary factors that affect cognitive abilities, but also other lesser-known contributors, such as evolutionary psychology, community, and positive psychology.
#1. The Brain-Body Connection
A nootropic will not counteract a painful emotional experience, such as losing a loved one, no matter how powerful it might be.
In reality, the brain and body are highly connected, and both require constant care and attention. If we want to optimize our mental performance, we cannot disregard the needs of the body.
#2. Unique Brain Chemistry
Human DNA is 99.9% the same, but within that fraction of a difference are many variations of the human experience. There are two main contributing factors to our unique brain chemistry: Genetic factors Environmental stimuli
The MTHFR is an enzyme that adds a methyl group to folic acid (vitamin B9) to make it usable in the body. Without having an essential vitamin like folate, many suffer from reduced cognitive performance, poor memory, lethargy, and lack of focus.
Harvard Medical School, he has published numerous works including the popular book, The Edge Effect.
Braverman provides a basic understanding of each individual’s unique brain. The book includes a subjective True / False test that helps readers narrow down the causes of certain cognitive deficiencies.
My experience with fasting provides a perfect example. When first starting a fasting regimen, my experience was positive. Over time, fasting for at least sixteen hours per day became one
#3. 80 / 20 Rule
Fasting works for me and I’m a big proponent, but sometimes warmly baked, Icelandic pastries are too seductive and I’ll break my fast early (and throw gluten-free out the window).
There are thousands of biohacks, nootropics, and lifestyle changes that will give us a fraction of a percent better memory or focus. The irony of trying to follow all of this advice is that it hurts us in a few different ways: Resource cost (time, money etc.)
Beyond the loss of time and money, following too much cognitive enhancement advice can also lead to more stress. The idea that maintaining strict self-control and willpower draws from limited mental resources is called “ego depletion.”11
Any stress response will reduce cognitive performance in both the short and long term.12
If we’re bashing our heads against the wall trying to keep up with every cognitive enhancement technique or nootropic drug, we’re going to burn out and create far more problems than we solve.
Mindset – How we view the world and our place in it. Relationships – Our feeling of interconnectedness with people in our lives. Diet – The fuel we use to power our brains. Lifestyle – The habits filling our day that help or hurt our cognitive performance.
The challenge of my six-month prison experience gave me a taste of hardship, which helped me to grow into a more mature, confident, and driven individual.
From a biological perspective, any species has but one focus or goal to achieve throughout their life: reproduction.
According to the pioneer, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, flow is a mental state in which the person performing an activity is fully immersed, creating a sense of enjoyment, focus, and clarity.
One of the main features of flow states is the ability to block out nearly everything going on in the environment.
Flow states can enhance immune health and reduce autoimmune deficiencies.
He found that flow states amplify immune strength. The neurochemicals associated with flow help to reset the nervous system, while stress chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine get flushed out.
There are two ways we can induce more flow into our lives. Chemical combinations and nootropics Organizing life around flow states
The second method of inducing more flow into our lives is what researcher Cal Newport considers “deep work.” This is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task, and it is one of the most effective cognitive enhancers we can use.
While most applicable in the professional world, deep work can be a period of intense focus on artwork or any other meaningful task that brings fulfillment.
Consistent stimulation Poor brain recovery
Research by Nass and other scientists have found that modern things like email and social media over-stimulate our brains. Not only does this cause more stress, it also wires our brains differently than our ancestors.22
concentration. We would like to believe there is an easy solution—a pill or smart drug for unlimited focus and concentration—but often our attention span is a sum total of small tasks and habits like social media.
The more comfortable we become with boredom in our daily life, the greater the likelihood we will be able to concentrate on the things that really matter.
The more we can train our brain to be okay with boredom, the easier deep work becomes.
uninterrupted deep work around one hour per day, while experts manage only four hours.
The answer is to disconnect from work and mentally taxing tasks daily to allow our brain to adequately replenish various chemicals, so it does not interfere with deep work and flow of the next day.
Engaging in deep work doesn’t require a significant expenditure of time, but the investment is worthwhile. Kotler’s research (and a ten-year McKinsey study25) suggests flow increases productivity by at least five times.
An Attitude of Gratitude
In June 2014, the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley launched phase one of their well-funded (tens of millions) project called “Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude.”
To date, only two studies utilize brain scans (fMRI) to detect changes during or after periods of gratitude.
One published in Frontiers of Psychology noted that regions of the brain associated with moral cognition, value judgment, and theory of mind27 were influenced by gratitude practices.28
Perhaps most interesting is the type of brain activity these patients showed during their gratitude practice.
The psychological changes of gratitude have been far more studied than the neurobiology, and results remain similar with focuses on two areas: Reduced anxiety and depression Improved mood and quality of life
of the primary mechanisms of improving cognitive performance (test scores, cognition, etc.) is by reducing anxiety. This is how drugs like bacopa monnieri and others influence cognition.
Famed psychologist, Martin Seligman, contributed evidence that a single act of gratitude could reduce depressive symptoms by up to 35%.
Increased time spent in a positive mood increases our quality of life. Seligman showed how a single act of gratitude could increase the quality of life by up to 10%.31 This results from less envy and less materialism, both fulfilling ways to live. Gratitude is inherently beneficial for our mood.
As with eating a more ancestral diet (which we’ll discuss later), having more “ancestral relationships,” close ties to family and a network of friends, will have drastic cognitive effects.
