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Comment by revelation | Hacker News Reader

Warning: his whole site is an incredibly wonderful time sink :)

I can recommend his extensive research on Nootropics [1] for actionable advice.

A few of these are not nootropics but cognitive enhancers. Difference being that nootropics are extremely non-toxic or neuroprotective. Another way to put it is that nootropics are a subset of cognitive enhancers (safe cognitive enhancers, basically).

The following are not nootropics:

* Modafinil and Armodafinil

* Adderall (Amphetamine)

* Caffeine

* Kratom

* Nicotine (this is a border case, in my opinion)

* Selegiline

Stay away from the above, unless taken very occasionally, if you value your health. Drugs like these rapidly build tolerance and become a liability in the long run. If you insist on using stimulants such as amphetamine, learn about how to reduce tolerance with things such as NMDA antagonists and take things to prevent neurotoxicity.

He should also get on with trying Noopept - it's one of the best nootropics of recent times.

From experience, anybody who is a programmer or does similarly demanding intellectual work will stand to benefit from learning about and using nootropics. They're not a silver bullet but quite a few of them are most certainly effective.

Are you intentionally classifying caffeine the same as amphetamines, or did you overlook it?

Intentional, I believe. It is habit forming and addictive, compared to say, taking Omega-3s before bed every day.

The stranger point is including Modafinil, which is not addictive at all.

You do however build up a tolerance to modafinil, and it has various negative side-effects. But I agree that it's weird to make some sort of hard separation between various types of nootropics, and say that you should never touch some. Everything potentially has its use, and I think that Gwern covers this topic exceedingly well at his site.

I did not advocate staying away from them but using them sporadically as opposed to regularly:

> Stay away from the above, unless taken very occasionally

Just because something is physically addictive doesn't mean it has negative health consequences. Many studies have shown that long term, low to moderate caffeine consumption (especially coffee) has a positive impact on overall health.

Caffeine, amphetamines, and modafinil are not neurotoxic. I believe the others aren't either but I haven't read up on them. Methamphetamine is neurotoxic but non-methylated amphetamines are not.

The problem is that these studies are narrow and only look at a handful of the aspects of consumption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_caffeine

> Short term side effects such as headache, nausea, and anxiety have been shown as symptoms of mild caffeine consumption.

When assessing the health impact of a drug, it is important to look at the whole picture.

Amp is indeed neurotoxic, though the exact effect is a little nuanced and dose-dependent.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15019431

> In addition to the social, cultural and indirect medical complications of amphetamine analog abuse, this class of drugs is also known to have the potential to damage brain monoaminergic cells directly.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17606768

> In early studies, high doses of amphetamine, comparable to amounts used by addicts, were shown to damage dopaminergic pathways. More recent studies, using therapeutic regimens, appear contradictory. One paradigm shows significant decreases in striatal dopamine and transporter density after oral administration of "therapeutic" doses in primates. Another shows morphological evidence of "trophic" dendritic growth in the brains of adult and juvenile rats given systemic injections mimicking "therapeutic" treatment. Imaging studies of ADHD-diagnosed individuals show an increase in striatal dopamine transporter availability that may be reduced by methylphenidate treatment.

I did not claim that caffeine and modafinil are neurotoxic, just amphetamine.

any particular reason to take them before bed? on my bottle of fish oil caps it says to take them with a meal?

  If you insist on using stimulants such as amphetamine,
  learn about how to reduce tolerance with things such as
  NMDA antagonists and take things to prevent neurotoxicity.

  He should also get on with trying Noopept - it's one of 
  the best nootropics of recent times.

Care to expound on those points?

Magnesium and blueberries seem to be the easily within reach stack to take with amphetamine.

Noopept is quite good. I stopped taking it because for me it seemed acutely enough anxiolytic to cause rebound anxiety.

Combine with L-Theanine (increases GABA activity), Lemon Balm (slows down GABA breakdown) and L-Tryptophan (good for social anxiety).

If Noopept causes rebound anxiety, isn't that a sign that it could build up resistance/dependence over time?

Amphetamine neurotoxicity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine

>The increase of cytosolic dopamine appears to trigger neurotoxicity, as dopamine readily auto-oxidizes, so that amphetamine or methamphetamine's increase in cytosolic dopamine can lead to oxidative stress in the cytosol that in turn promotes autophagy-related degradation of dopamine axons and dendrites

NMDA antagonists such as magnesium (as mentioned by rms), zinc, DXM, MK-801, Memantine and Ketamine can reduce/prevent tolerance as well as nerotoxicity.

http://www.acnp.org/g4/gn401000166/ch162.htm

> Methamphetamine toxicity is inhibited by a variety of drug treatments, including: ... 3) NMDA receptor antagonists

http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/f30/evidence-for-n...

In what way is modafinil not a nootropic?

I believe he's using modafanil in the sense of broadly neuroprotective.

However selegine in microdoses is a true neuroprotective in that sense..

Then he's using a strange and novel definition of 'nootropic'. 'Neuroprotective'? Heck, lithium is neuroprotective at some doses, but I don't see many people suggesting its use.

Modafinil has too many side effects to be considered nootropic. It is a cognitive enhancer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Side_effects

Too true. Gwern's whole site is an awesome example of applied critical thinking.

I`m currently lost in that time sink. So many things to read and learn :)

relevant:

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/12/pl_ferrris/

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