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Comment by alien_player | Hacker News Reader

People should remember that all kinds of stimulants do not deliver energy by themselves. Instead, they push the organism to produce\overwork on what it already has.

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My son is young and is dabbling with various things, mostly at raves and such. One thing I said about this which he said has stuck with him: stimulants aren't giving you energy -- they are borrowing tomorrow's energy.

Sure, but a lot of people would be perfectly happy eating 15% more calories to support a more energetic and healthy lifestyle.

Our biological limits evolved in a calorie-scarce environment; evolution made tradeoffs about what we should be capable of doing based on whether we would starve to death.

Those tradeoffs sometimes are maladapted to the 21st century, and the metabolic hack of "eating a bit more" is not a hardship.

Running your metabolism 15% faster might give you more energy in the short term, but I expect the additional oxidative stress would damage long term health. There's no free lunch.

This is pretty speculative. Jogging and doing hard word puzzles both use extra calories, and both help people live long and healthy lives.

Yes but the increased metabolic effect is mostly just during the activity. Resting metabolic rate doesn't change much. I am speculating that the extra oxidation would damage cells.

How can one learn more about which stimulants have the “right” impacts?

None really. All they do is "borrow" with interest.

Take a look at Modafinil. Not a traditional stimulant. I've been taking it routinely at the start of the workday for focus with great success. No "come down".

Are you worried about building up tolerance? Although not 100% clear, it looks like it might potentially be an issue:

https://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#tolerance

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