Nootropics, a topic near and dear to me. On the USENET group rec.drugs.smart, I once frequented it under the handle "INFOHAZARD."
The number of extracts, compounds, vitamins, hormones, tingtures and drugs said to enhance cognition are legion. Availability varies from country to country.
My cat has done his best to get his paws on as many as possible and he reports back to me what he notices.
Regarding the now hoary old post about what to use to counteract the ethanolic lifestyle?
FIRST- DMAE is lovely stuff if you really, really like placebos.
Ritalin? Illegal for that purpose in most precinct. Keed Spills! Say for it what you will. Just don't come down with a bad case of cops.
The brain happens to interact with a number of other organs and I think it's a good isea to step back a bit and say hello to our old friend, the liver. The liver is a hard working organ that, unlike the brain, usually doesn't complain much. It's the second major organ that has to deal with alcohol after ingestion. The first is the stomach, which breaks down a surprising amount of alcohol in some people. The liver gets the next crack at it before the brain ever sees any. It also breaks down the vast majority of the alcohol as it makes the rounds through the blood-stream.
Some people do not have a liver designed to handle alcohol. In these people, the liver gets damaged as it does its job. Although not completely understood, this is likely because the liver does not make enough of a compound called SAM-e. SAM-e is converted to glutathione in the liver. Glutathione PROTECTS the liver from things like alcohol. SAM-e also turns into Serotonin, Norepinepherine and Dopamine in the brain. In fact, it is used by the body as a building block for a myriad of important chemicals in the joints, the stomach and elsewhere.
Where SAM-e is required to do these things, typically B12 and Folate (two B-Vitamins) are also needed to catalyze the biosyntheses.
If you want to detoxify crap, treat your liver right. That's its job and it does it well if you don't mistreat it. If you take out your live (drinking, Viral Hepatites, drugs, mushrooms, tylenol ODs, genetic problems etc., you will build up ammonia in your bloodstream from protein metabolism. Not a bad way to die- you just drift-off to never-never land as the brain is overwhelmed in a sea of toxins. The trouble is, the other half of people in liver failure die from ralphing their body's blood-supply onto the floor from the varicose veins in their esophagus (long messy story- I won't bore you with fruther details).
Where was I? Brain=> Liver... Oh, yeah.
So take a supply of B-Complex for sure. Add to that one from the following list:
1) SAM-e. Easily available at Wal-Mart in the US, but because of the instability of the molecule and difficulty handling, coating, etc. is very expensive.
There are other compounds that convert very nicely to SAM-e much more cheaply; namely
2) TMG (Trimethyl glycine, also called betaine). This is a good one. Cheap, stable, becomes SAM-e, not bad tasting. Toss a gram in your drink. Your liver will thank you. http://www.easycart.net/BeyondACenturyInc./Amino_Acids_Single_M-Z.html#0340
3) N-Acetyl Cysteine. Sold as a supplement in the US, this is what is used in emergency rooms across the country when someone has OD'd on Tylenol (deadly, I assure you, but you take a week to die) or mushroom poisoning. NAC rapidly becomes glutathione. Tastes like skunk. Yuk. Pretty easily available in the US since the Dietary and Supplement Health act of 1994 (Yea, Clinton!)
There are a lot of other compounds in the biochemical cycle that these are involved in. For instance, Taurine probably helps and is anti-arrhythmic.
Stick with SAM-e or TMG. Brain, liver. What more could you ask for when you are a modern drunkard?
Then there's piracetam, aniracetam, Omega-3 fish oil, centrophenoxine, ALCAR, Yadda-yaddaine and many more...
My cat tells me that if you stack these right, you can approximate the mind expanxion of MDMA
I await your next quextion. |
) and you will wake up the next morning feel bizarrely fresh. you won't be clever, but you won't be hurting. interestingly, it's heavily present in eggs, fatty meat like bacon or pork sausages... oh, look, the english breakfast...