Brain Hackers Seeking Peak Performance Use Risky Chemical Cocktails – Scientific American

SAN FRANCISCOToms Gutirrez isnt a brain scientist. But each morning, he mixes up a new chemical cocktail that he hopes will sharpen his focus and boost his intellect.

He adds a dash of butter for flavor, stirs it into a cup of coffee, and downs it.

A31-year-old entrepreneur, Gutirrez hasthrown himself into the emerging movement of body hackingor, more precisely, brainhacking. Hes a connoisseur of nootropics, a broad category that includes pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements, and do-it-yourself concoctions, all of them meant to turn the brain up a notch.

They havent been clinically proven to work, and theres emerging evidence that some could be dangerous. But nootropics, also called smart drugs, have become popular amongyoung type A personalities on Wall Street, in the Ivy League, and here in the frenzied startupculture of Silicon Valley.

Enthusiasts arent seeking an altered state of consciousness; they want to become a betterversion of themselves, even just for a few hours at a time. Like Olympic athletes pushing theirbodies, they hope to tune their brains for peak performance. And they want to do it withoutthe jittery side effects and stomach churn theyd get from downing endless energy drinks orpopping prescription stimulants like Adderall or modafinil.

Gutirrez, slender and dark-eyed, swears by a daily stack mixed into his morning coffee.

He throws in some MCT oil, a form of fatty acid that occurs naturally in such foods as coconutoil. He adds BCAAs, or branched-chain amino acids, which are popular among weightlifters.Then theres L-theanine, an amino acid found in green tea.

On the kitchen counter of the two-bedroom house he shares with his girlfriend, Gutierrez keeps100-gram containers of compounds he buys online, along with two scales, one to measure ingrams and the other in milligrams.

Sometimes, his girlfriend prods him to clean up his experiment site. She thinks it looks toomuch like a chemistry set. And Gutirrez admits his kitchen resembles a scene from BreakingBad. It definitely looks questionable, he said. There are liquids and powders and scales.

Like all dietary supplements,nootropics are only very loosely regulated; the manufacturersdont have to prove safety or efficacy before putting them on store shelves. By law, the Foodand Drug Administration can step in to recall a product only if its mislabeled or causing illness or injury.

Gutirrez admits that a part of this untested new drug realm scares him. A skeptic by nature, hesays he fully researches any compound he puts in his body. But he acknowledges that noteveryone follows that protocol.

Youre on your own to figure out the safety of some of this stuff, he says. People might say the negatives are few, but we still dont know what we dont know.

Acompetitive squash player, Gutirrez says his daily stack gives him a feeling of concentration and productivityknown among his fellow brain-hackers as The Flow.

Its a level of focus otherwise unheard of, one you can maintain for long periods of time, said Gutirrez, a partner in a startup that creates and markets teams of tech talent. (He also runs an onlinecoffee salesbusiness.) You can crank out code or do some othertechnical task for hours on end.

A host of companies now sell over-the-counter nootropics, and theyre starting to get big-namebacking. Nootrobox, a startup based here in San Francsico, has financial backing from Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer and the legendary venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz,which is known for its early bets on Twitter, Airbnb, Instagram, and other blockbusters.

But Gutirrez belongs to an active community of amateur scientists who like to experimentwith their own mixesand arent afraid to use their own brains as lab rats. They trade precisecombinations of plant extracts and synthesized drugs as though they were swapping cookierecipes.

To give some idea of the popularity: Thenootropics pageon Reddit, which serves as an onlineforum for the do-it-yourself-crowd, has more than 65,000 readers.

Do the chemical cocktails work?

Who the heck knows? said Kim Urban, a Philadelphia neurophysiologist who has studied theeffects of nootropics. So few studies have been done, and those that have were not the mostcontrolled trials.

Urbansaid there are hints of short-term gain but also signs that overuse could causedamage, such as muscle spasms and brain fog.

A studyshe coauthored, which was published in 2014, found that stimulants such as Ritalinoften favored by brain-hackerscould eventually reduce the plasticity of the brains neuralpathways and potentially cause long-term harm. She found particular risk for children andadolescents, but wrote that even healthy adults run a risk.

Youre dealing with unregulated substances that have no oversight, Urban said. Myself, Iwouldnt take them. Id be leery of them the same way Id avoid taking weight-losssupplements. We just dont know enough.

The other day, Gutirrez was among a dozen brain-hackersmostly lawyers, students, and tech engineerswho attended a breakfast at a coffee house near San Franciscos financial district.

The host was Geoffrey Woo, a Stanford computer science graduate who cofoundedNootrobox.

Woo passed around a jar containing Go Cubes, bite-sized chews containing caffeine and L-theanine. Its the latest Nootrobox cognitive enhancer. Gutirrez took oneand began to chew. Its good, he said. Tastes like coffee.

Woo believes companies like his may be on the verge of providing not only a brain boost but akey to prolonged life. We are all trained as children that we are going to die, he said, buttechnology is reaching a point where death can be treated like any illness or sickness, and agingwill be considered a disease.

(For all his confidence, the Nootrobox website does include a warning that the company cannot ensurethat unforeseen side effects will not occur even at the proper dosages and is not liable for any suchfallout.)

Nootrobox has begun trials to test the long-term effects of its products, which sell for about$40 for a months supply. But Woo knows many brain-hackers are too impatient to wait for thefuture. A lot of people have this intellectual curiosity, trying the more edgy stuff to boost theirbrainsits all about getting comfortable with the risks, he said.

Many are experimenting with drugs such as piracetam and noopepts, which are sold underbrand names such as OptiMind and NeuroFuse. Online forums are filled with comments frompeople who credit the chemicals with helping them achieve new clarity of mind and finish tasksat a record paceand also with warnings from users who said the drugs made them feel foggyand leaden, or causedalarming side effects.

Jens, a 22-year-old advertising student at the breakfast, said his daily doses of piracetam and anutrient called choline, added to his coffee, often induce a Zen-like state.

I can get so deep into something that I forget about the world around me, said the Swedishnative, who asked that his last name not be used because he didnt want his family to know hewas experimenting with the substances. You become one with whatever youre doing I can think deeper and faster. Its not happier,its just more focused.

Joe Cohen is another proponent of pushing the brains envelope. Hes a New York City-areanutritional consultant and bio-hacker who started the website selfhacked.comtochronicle hisadventures with nootropics and other substances.

While he advises caution to readers, Cohen admits having a few of his own fast-lane practices.

I do megadose experiments, he said. Its a curiosity thing with me. If you really want toknow the effect something has on your body, you often cant tell by taking a normal dosage.

And so he sometimes compounds the recommended dosage. The brain is resilient, Cohensaid. It will go back to normal if you dont go too hardcore.

Registered dietician Kamalini Mukerjee, whosbased in Las Vegas, counters that its dangerous to playscientist with your own brain, even with supplements labeled as natural. People die from peanut allergies. Just because itsnatural, that doesnt mean that its safe, she said.

Gutirrez swears by the mental boost he gets from his stacks.

Still, hesometimesquestions his own reasons for needing such a drug regimen, wondering whether work pressures have forced himto become his generations version of a hamster scurrying on an exercise wheel.

I dont think human beings are designed for the hyperproduction that is a product of thismodern age, he said. With so many of those hours-long stretches of hyperbrain activity, Iveburned myself out so many times.

Gutirrez has tried other ways to increase his mental acuity and his sense of well-being. Hell sometimes fast for up to 40 hours straight. He sticks to a mostly Paleodiet consisting of meat, fish, and vegetables. He has also tried meditating, getting more sleep,and even taking more time off from work.

Hes learned, he said, that theres more to be found in the enjoyment of life than chasingproductivity.

But he still pours his stack into his coffee each morning, hungry for brain overdrive.

Republished with permission fromSTAT. This articleoriginally appearedon February 19, 2017

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Brain Hackers Seeking Peak Performance Use Risky Chemical Cocktails - Scientific American