Decoding Brain Energetics: Neurohacking For Motivation, Focus & Drive

Nick Urban [00:00:06]:

What are brain boosting nootropic supplements, and do they actually work? In this week’s episode of the Mind Body Peak Performance podcast, that is exactly the topic that we are going to explore together. You’ll learn about how nootropics work, the benefits, the risks and side effects, common ingredients, how to optimally combine ingredients to get a synergistic effect, the one single most important factor you can use to determine if your biology is currently responding well or poorly to a nootropic, and then how to design your own nootropics experiments. Later in the episode, we discussed one particular ingredient that does not do well in my system for whatever reason, and our guest broke down how he would evaluate the issue, and we got sidetracked before we could really elucidate the actual process. So you can use this methodology or framework later in your own experiments to make sure that everything goes well and you find the source of any particular possible problems. Our guest this week is Dr. Greg Kelly. He’s the Director of Product development at Neurohacker Collective, a Naturopathic physician, and author of the book Shapeshift. He was the editor of the journal Alternative Medicine Review and has been an instructor at the University of Bridgeport in the College of Naturopathic Medicine, where he taught classes in advanced clinical nutrition, counseling skills, and doctor patient relationships. Dr. Kelly has published hundreds of articles on natural medicine and nutrition, contributed three chapters to the textbook of natural medicine, and has more than 30 journal articles indexed on PubMed. His areas of expertise include nootropics, antiaging and regenerative medicine, weight management, sleep, and the chronobiology of performance and health. This is the third episode I’ve recorded with the folks at Neurohacker Collective. You can find the previous episodes@mindbodypeak.com, the number 119, most recently with Dr. Nick Bits, and then episode number 80, Mindbodypeak.com 80, also with Dr. Nick Bits on a different subject. Everything we discuss, the links to the resources will be in the show notes. This one@mindbodypeak.com the number 122. If you’d like to try out any of neurohackers products, you can use the code Urban, and that’ll save you 15% on anything in their Qualia line. If you find this masterclass on Nootropics helpful, go ahead and hit the thumbs up if you’re on YouTube. Or drop a review for the show on whatever podcast platform you’re using. That’s what helps the show grow and how I continue bringing you thought provoking guests like Dr. Kelly. All right, let’s bring in Dr. Greg Kelly. Greg. Welcome to MINDBODY peak performance.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:03:27]:

Thanks for having me on today.

Nick Urban [00:03:29]:

So I don’t know if you know this, but Qualia, your Mind product was one of the first nootropics I used when I was getting started and was looking around for the most thorough formulations out there. So today we’ll be discussing all things brain, cognition, and nootropics.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:03:46]:

Sounds awesome. One of my favorite topics.

Nick Urban [00:03:49]:

Yes. Let’s set the stage. What is an interesting fact about the brain or cognition or cognitive decline that will lead into what we’re talking about today.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:04:03]:

I think many people have heard the idea of 10,000 hours. You put in 10,000 hours. And because of practice, neuroplasticity, et cetera, we get to be expert at something. But one of the things I think that I’d like the audience to know is we need to put in the effort, but it needs to be both focused effort and then our brain has to have the resources to change. So, like, one of the sayings is, without acetylcholine, 10,000 hours would be wasted. So acetylcholine becomes a big emphasis in nootropics stacks.

Nick Urban [00:04:33]:

Yes, and we’ll talk about the basics of an effective nootropic stack. And you guys have gone above and beyond the basics in your product before we do. What are the unusual or non negotiables you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance, and your Bioharmony?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:04:51]:

So I started in my day listening to what I think of loosely as ceremony music from Rhythmia is a plant medicine place in Costa Rica and they play certain soundtracks during their ceremonies. So that’s how I start my day. Always. I wake up and then shortly after put on some ceremony music to just get my head and heart in the right space for the day. And then after that, I live in a wonderful place near the ocean in San Diego County. I just go out and walk, usually to a coffee shop to get some coffee, but something to get me outside and get that morning light. And then I like to caffeine is a really powerful thing. We’ll talk a bit about caffeine, but it also tends to anchor us to things that we have with it. So products that it’s in places we have it, people we share it with. And so I try to be intentional about my caffeine use and have it mostly in a social environment as a way to just anchor myself into getting around people early in the day as well. So those would be the three things I did today to start my day. So one of the cool things about our brain is it’s always trying to predict the future like, that’s its job. One, if you remember nothing else about the brain, it’s a prediction machine. And so one of the things it does to predict well is pair things together. So think of Pavlov’s dog, that classic conditioning, and certain things act as really stronger conditioning factors than others. And caffeine is one of those strong conditioning mean you could get into the weeds and say, oh, well, caffeine promotes dopamine and things like that, which dopamine is the molecule that does that pairing of things. But fundamentally, the key thing to remember about caffeine, aside from its physiological effects that it’s most well known for, is its very strong anchoring ability. So when we have caffeine, especially if we repeatedly do it, our brain learns like, oh, this is a dopamine environment. Right. During, say, lockdown, during that time period, I just drank my coffee here at my apartment and looked out over the ocean. But over time, it got so my brain learned, like, oh, caffeine solo. We don’t interact with people, and that’s not what I want. I want my use of caffeine to largely be something that drives some type of social connection. So I try to be intentional where I have it, what I’m doing when I have it, and even with who I have it. Right. Like anything, that’s a strong conditioning factor. We pair that with the experience. And so when we have that, our brain will want more of that experience, if that makes sense. Right. So if we only drink caffeine, like me in my home, we learn to only want caffeine in our home. And if we only have it in a social environment, we learn to want to have more of that social environment.

Nick Urban [00:08:14]:

What if you mix it up and you have caffeine or coffee in your house half the time and half the time in a social environment?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:08:20]:

Yeah. So then it wouldn’t be as strong a pairing. Right. So then that would be ideal if we wanted to be more neutral. I do that once in a while. So sometimes if I have an early podcast or meeting, I’ll have coffee here. But mostly in terms of trying to create that strength of anchoring, it’s easy for me to just get into my grind and focus and get stuff done. I want to start my day with some more social connections than I would have since I live by myself. So I’m just using caffeine as my little nudge in that direction.

Nick Urban [00:08:54]:

Yeah. This is getting into the weeds a bit. But if you were to take, say, a metabolite of caffeine, like paraxanthine, and you were to use one of those in the home and the other socially at a coffee shop with friends, what would happen to the anchoring effect there?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:09:08]:

I don’t think parazanthine, honestly, is strong enough. Like, no one’s really studied what metabolites of caffeine would do. The anchoring, they’ve always just looked at caffeine. But this is how I understand it. About 80% of what caffeine is metabolized into is paraxanthine. But relatively little of caffeine gets metabolite, if that makes sense. So most of what we’re feeling isn’t the paraxanthine or the other metabolites. It’s the caffeine molecule that gets to our brain and does things.

Nick Urban [00:09:39]:

All right, let’s rewind a bit now and talk about cognitive decline specifically, because that’s an increasingly big concern and issue in today’s day and age, and that’s like the opposite end of the spectrum, and nootropics is more on the performance side. So what would you say is important to know and understand about cognitive decline?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:10:01]:

For me, fundamentally, energy is at the heart of everything, whether it’s like nootropics. So the original term nootropic came from a Romanian chemist that created at the time, he synthesized paracetam like the original aracetam. And then in animals, it worked as a nootropic, right? Nootropic means mind shaping, mind bending. So neuroplasticity think of that as a good synonym. But what he was trying to then determine was, well, what is paracetam doing in these animals that’s allowing them to learn and remember a lot better. And one of his explanations was ATP. So energy, that it was doing something with brain energetics. And so whether we’re talking that nootropic angle like more focus, concentration willpower to put into our day or cognitive issues as we get olding, energy would unite both, with more of it being something that’s going to allow our brain just to perform at a higher level. And do you know the book thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman?

Nick Urban [00:11:06]:

Yeah.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:11:07]:

So for the audience, he introduces two characters. So don’t think of these as real, think of them as useful. But his characters are System One and System Two. Thinking. And by System one, what he meant was basically think of somewhat being zoned out and our brain just on autopilot, just going with whatever requires the least amount of effort. And System Two was what I would think of in what we’ll talk about later as executive function and attention domains. It’s when we’re focusing our attention, we’re avoiding distractions, we’re digging into memory, we’re maintaining good self control so we’re not tempted by distracting things in our environment, and we’re maintaining good emotional self control and things like that. Those take a lot more energy for the brain to do. And so when energy is in short supply, system One thinking takes over. And System two, we just don’t get to. So most of what we want our brain to do to be high performing biohackers are things that require System Two to say, no, I got this, and step up, and energy becomes probably the most limiting factor. And then the other thing, what you’d see with aging, but you’d also see this with a lot of challenges at an earlier age, is some degree of inflammation, for lack of a better way to describe it, right, that there’s these other things going on in the brain that are also interfering with it, performing at its best. So those would be just shared things in both of those. And the last piece is we tend to think of our brain as this one big thing, right? But our brain has many different jobs. So what neuroscientists would do is they’ll drop or they’ll describe these big cognitive buckets or domains. So executive function would be one another’s. Social cognition, learning and memory is a third. Attention is a fourth, visual sensory. So think of our visual and movement centers interacting together and then language. And then under each of those big buckets, then there’s specific skills. So in attention, we have things like focusing our attention, right? Sustaining it for long periods of time, avoiding being distracted, processing speed. So how quickly we can respond to things in our environment, those are all in that domain executive function that’s our working memory. And working memory is a little bit like the Ram on our computer. It’s the ability to hold something in our memory as we’re using it. But willpower is another part of executive function and setting goals and being they call it cognitive flexibility, but fundamentally being able to change our mind or our perspective. So these big categories, they take a lot more energy and they require resources. And so when I think of Nootropics in the barest sense, they’re providing those resources. They’re allowing our brain to be more efficient. They’re working on things like neuroplasticity so the brain can not waste energy unnecessarily.

Nick Urban [00:14:27]:

And so what are the main ways that Nootropics work to promote better brain function, like there’s blood oxygenation or brain oxygenation, there’s better nutrient delivery, there’s reducing the amount of damage occurring in the brain. What are the big ones?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:14:44]:

I think all those are fair. Another one that you wouldn’t have mentioned there would be neurotransmitters. So when you think of, okay, what’s the brain using all this energy for? Because the brain is by far the biggest energy consumer. It’s estimated about 20% of our calories that we consume each day are used by the brain for energy. So our brain weighs a couple of pounds, but it’s just churning through energy. And so one of the big things it’s using that for is to make neurotransmitters and then do the signaling that neurotransmitters do. And neurotransmitters are things like the acetylcholine I mentioned in Dopamine or Serotonin. And each neurotransmitter has somewhat different roles. But at any point in time candice Pert was famous and she was a PhD, but for her term molecules of emotion. So at any given point in time, our different brain regions, but our brain as a whole would almost have this soup of neurotransmitters and other molecules that it’s make. And that soup is going to dictate to a large extent. Like, are we focused? Are we having great ability to stay in those code executive function suites or not signaling neurotransmitters? And their signal is one. Another huge one is our senses. Because fundamentally, like I said, the brain is about prediction. And one of the things that it cares most about predicting is, is this place safe for the person that I’m living in? So even when we’re asleep and you think, oh, the brain can’t be using much energy, we’re asleep, right? But the brain is using a crazy amount of energy during sleep. And some of that, a lot of it’s dictated or put into auditory to make sure that our brain is constantly scanning the environment to make sure it stays safe during sleep. It’s why loud noises or unexpected noises can cause us to wake. So that sensory signal and then you touched on another one, which was that repairing damage or cleaning itself up is a big part of how brain energy is used. So those things, if there is not enough energy, one or more of those always would be sacrificed. Which is why often I come back to a core part of nootropics. Is there’s some energetic component, right? They’re either improving signaling, they’re doing something to decrease like oxidative stress or something that’s sucking up resources, or they’re helping to build neurotransmitters. All these things that our brain needs to do and has to dedicate most of its energy into.

Nick Urban [00:17:27]:

Yeah, it’s complex and at the same time so every nootropic will improve or modulate at least one of those.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:17:35]:

Yes, I think that’s safe to say. And often most of the mechanisms studies on Nootropics and frankly, everything is done on animals, right, because that’s where you can dissect a brain and look at pathways and things like that. But yeah, even something like ginkgo as an example, right? I’ve been a naturopathic doctor since 96 and was a student before that. But ginkgo was among the most common herbs when I was in school and still is. And one of the things ginkgo is well known for doing is increasing blood flow, something else you mentioned. Right. So with more blood flow, more resources, more building blocks for making energy can be carried to regions of our brain and when our brain’s working hard. So think of our brain as having regions that are networked together. But one you’ll often hear about for focus and executive function is the prefrontal cortex. So that’s right here in the front of our brain. And I like to think of that part of the brain as the part that lets us do the hard thing when it’s the right thing. In a simple sense, is if we’re not getting enough nutritional support, right, enough blood flow, enough nutrients, enough building blocks to make neurotransmitters, you need it, then we’re going to do the system one thing. We’ll do the easy thing instead of the right thing. And so you see that a lot in the world and in our daily lives, right? Like how often do people step up and do the hard thing when it’s the right thing? Not as much as doing the easy thing because it’s convenient. And the way I encourage our audience to think about it is don’t blame someone for doing the easy thing instead of the right thing. Think of that as, oh, their brain probably didn’t have the resources it needed to do the hard thing when it was the right thing.

Nick Urban [00:19:22]:

Is there a risk of combining different nootropics and, say, stimulating blood flow too much in the brain?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:19:29]:

I’m a big fan of thinking of almost everything unless proven otherwise as following a goldilocks principle. So there’s likely to be a just right range of something. And caffeine is a good example. So there’s two general dose curves that you’ll see in pharmacology. One is think of as more is better up until a point and then more beyond that isn’t worse, it’s just not any much better, right? Like you just hit a plateau and stay there. And so if you think of that attention bucket, especially like reaction speed, more, caffeine past a certain amount won’t make you do something faster, but it won’t slow it down. Like those simple types of attention tasks, caffeine, you’ll probably peak somewhere between 52 hundred milligrams an average person. If you had 400, you won’t get worse, but you won’t get like, oh, twice as much better. You’ll just get about the same you would have at 50 to 200. But there’s another curve and think of like an upside down U and it’s a biphasic curve and it’s called Yerkee’s dots and blonde. Caffeine was what they originally looked at for a lot of executive functions. Caffeine past a certain amount actually makes you worse, so it improves it up to a point and then after that amount, caffeine would worsen it. So caffeine for simple tasks, reaction speeds, processing speed, more is not better, but more is not worse. But for some of the things I would care most about, which would be sustaining focus work, being like that, cognitive flexibility, good working memory, caffeine past a certain point is counterproductive. And so I tend to think of like the nootropic range of caffeine as 50 to 200. Now, if you were going to go to the gym and try for your personal best weightlifting, you could probably do more of that, but you’re not using your brain in the same way. So yes, to answer your question, I think a really useful way for our audience to think about it is with nootropics there’s usually a just right range that is going to be the sweet spot and that more is not going to be better and that we would see the same with choline. So choline is the best food source of choline by far would be eggs, like most people’s diets. And the Institute of Medicine going back about say like 1518 years ago, estimated that somewhere about 80% to 90% of male and female adults didn’t get enough choline in their diet. So we get some, we’re just not quite in that sweet spot. And choline is important because among other things, it’s the building block for acetylcholine. And the way to think about acetylcholine is acetylcholine is the neurotransmitters we make and secrete when it says, oh, this is really important, like do better at finding this in the environment or learning about it. So that’s why going back to what I mentioned, 10,000 hours without acetylcholine is just wasted. The acetylcholine is what then marks relevance and causes us to have the neuroplasticity to learn through that focused effort. And so choline is important for that. But choline is also as part of phosphatidal choline, what makes membranes that separate our mitochondria from the inside of cells and our cells from the world around them. And so because of those two roles, choline is really important, but that doesn’t mean that we need to get two or three times what the Institute of Medicine would say is a useful amount. We need to get in that range. But too much choline and you start to see often, like cramps or tension building up. We’re too cholinergic is how you think of so absolutely, yes. When I think of putting a nootropic stack together or even using individual compounds, I’m always thinking like, well, what’s the sweet spot to be in? As opposed to I think a lot of people, if x is good, two or three x must be better is definitely not the way nootropics work.

Nick Urban [00:23:50]:

And that’s actually a question I wanted to ask you because it’s easy if you’re doing one compound in your formula, maybe two or three. But once you start adding up to 28, like you guys have in Qualia mind, how do you know that that ideal goldilocks dose is what it is? Because, say you’re taking one thing, they both work in the same two things. They both work in the same pathway. If you take the same amount of each of them as you’ve seen the research, then you’re going to be overloading that pathway.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:24:18]:

Yes, that’s a great question. So one of the things I know that we do at Neurohacker Collective is when we look at science or studies. So ashwagandha is an example. I remember looking so sensorial. It’s not in qualia mind, but we don’t have ashwagandha in that. But when we were creating qualia life, there was a sensorial ashwagandha study that had placebo had 125 milligrams and had, I want to say it was 400 milligrams. And what was the case in that particular study? For what they were measuring, somewhere about 80% to 90% of the benefits happened at 125 milligrams. So there was a little bit more with the higher dose. But now if you’re going to combine ashwagandha with other things and there may be some overlap, let’s default to like, let’s not chase those small fringe of benefits. Let’s go for the lower dose when we’re combining it with multiple other things. And then ultimately the proof is in when the recipe is all put together. How do people feel when they take it? So one of the things we do as part of our pre, moving a product into production, actually making it and bringing it to sale, is we do something like Diet Mind. I think there was about four different small studies, but what we’ll do to start is we’ll make enough to take it ourselves and see how we do. Right? Like, oh, how was my productivity today? Maybe measure something that’s like finger tapping speed or reaction times. Right. Is it changing that in a meaningful way? And then if the answer is yes, then we’ll get it to more people. And then if the answer is still yes, then we’ll do some kind of a small pilot study.

Nick Urban [00:26:00]:

Yeah. And I hear that a lot. And it’s sad to hear scientists saying, just trust the science. It’s like the hallmark of bad science. You don’t just trust that. You actually have to verify it yourself. And I’m glad to hear that you guys actually do that. And your formulas aren’t that they don’t just go through one prototype based on what you read. Each ingredient can do by itself because you create a whole new compound for a better word, whole new products when you combine a bunch of them together, and you have to actually verify that the real world effects are everything that you’re expecting.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:26:30]:

Yeah. So I think of studies as the starting point. As an example, I’ve been working along with Nick, who’s been on Nick Bitz, who’s been on your show in the past. We’ve been working on what may turn into, at some point, a joint health product. So our process for that is our process for everything. We’ll start like, all right, let’s understand the mechanisms of what’s going on here, like what’s happening in aging, uncomfortable joints. Those give you somewhat of your targets. And then we’ll make a crazy long list of potential ingredients or substances to study, which for that product, I think we’re like in the mid eighty s. And then we’ll read for each of those, the human studies, some of the animal studies, and rated each ingredient one to five. So five means, like, that’s a rock star. Right? Like, it did well in multiple studies. And I think know, Nick and I were both in practice as Naturopathic physicians at one. Like, to me, a study could show statistically significant effects. I also want to know, was it clinically meaningful? Did it move the needle enough? If I had given this to a patient, would they have come and said, oh, Dr. Greg, I felt this. It made a difference? And so, like, a five means yeah, it did that in a bunch of different studies. A one means lol. Like, anyone’s using this, this is nothing. And then the hard ones are threes, or ones that get to three or four because they’re doing something, but probably just not robust. Right. So then what’s their goal? Like, as an example, in a cognitive or nootropic stack, maybe they’re just providing building blocks for a neurotransmitter. So we’re not expecting them on their own to really be noticeable, but they play a role. And so that’s kind of how our process starts. And then once we get that menu ingredients figured out, okay, these are the underlying mechanisms. These are the ones we want to support, then it’s, all right, let’s start to play mad scientist and put some of these together. And now we’ll actually like, for joints, we’ll probably do at least a four to six week study. And if it doesn’t do a pretty significant job, it’s like, all right, this just isn’t good enough. And then what we do to augment that is because a lot of cool things happen in what I think of as the end of one. Like the subreddits, especially the nootropic subreddit, right. They’re the people out there that are trying combinations of things. So we also look to see what other self experimenters are doing and saying, especially when it comes to some newer things where there’s just frankly, not what you’d want for the scientific studies. And we have an ingredient qualionite called polygala, which is there’s not much. I mean, it’s been used in Chinese traditional medicine as a cognitive enhancer and for sleep. And there’s definitely some animal research. There’s just not a lot of human. Right? So then it’s like, okay, well, these things look really cool. Its mechanisms look very unusual. Right. It’s hard to find another plant. What are the people taking this alone or stacking it with other things experiencing? So we try to weigh all of those things at the end of the day and make our best guess. But like I said, it’s why I think I was excited when I first joined Neurohacker because of their commitment to testing out products before selling them. Because that at least in my experience in the supplement industry going back a couple of decades, most other companies just like, oh, let’s just put a label on our good idea and start selling it.

Nick Urban [00:30:22]:

And I want to underscore you just said about not ignoring those, say, three star ingredients, because back when I was starting to formulate my own nootropics, I would just find five star ingredient here, five star ingredient here, combine them, maybe a third or fourth one, and completely neglect the precursors and building blocks. And that might work well in the short term, but ultimately you’re going to deplete certain neurotransmitters and things you don’t want to deplete if you’re not also paying attention to what’s downstream or upstream of all that.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:30:52]:

Yeah, I think understanding how systems interact together may change. Like a three star from its human study on it to like, oh, this is a core thing, we need to make sure it’s supported. And the other thing, quite often, again, you’ll see with a lot of building block types of things, like these are your amino acids. The studies often will be really high doses and that’s used alone. So, like Tyrosine as an example. One of my favorite studies on Tyrosine was I don’t know if they were special Forces or just regular pilots going through search and rescue training, but as part of that, they get captured and interrogated. And in that particular study, they gave a high dose of Tyrosine and then put these people through this intense interrogation. And the ability to sustain anger was a lot better. Like, you should be angry. Right. When getting beaten up and mentally harassed, it gave them more resources to sustain that. And Tyrosine is a building block. For something like dopamine, but also for epinephrine. And it was funny. I saw then some influencers misunderstand that study, like, oh, don’t take high amounts of Tyrosine. It’ll make you angry. It’s like, no, it allowed you to be more angry when that was the right thing to be under the circumstances, which is very different than taking it and make you angry. So that’s the other piece, too, when I read studies is, what’s the context? Because often I see that piece missed a lot.

Nick Urban [00:32:41]:

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of those studies where it’s like, I’ve looked through them, like, oh, this is so promising, so cool. Then I’ll look at the subjects that they’re studying, like, I don’t know if that applies to me, and it may.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:32:52]:

But it’s that context. I use the word context a lot. I use the word relationship a lot in my normal life. I think the relationship we have with things matter, the context that something’s done in matters. And so all of those things influence. Quiet Mind was created very much as a nootropic with that focus, concentration, more executive function goal in mind. It wasn’t created to say, oh, what’s the best thing we could put together for someone 65 worried about declining memory? Now, is it useful for that? Yeah, Heather Sanderson, she’s a Naturopathic doctor that owns a medical home here in San Diego County and a practice. She recently did a study using the Brednason Protocol approach to helping people that already had some degree of cognitive decline. And in that she used qualia mind as kind of her brain multivitamin is how she described it. So everyone was put on it not to necessarily do something to reverse what’s a very challenging health situation. But her thought was, okay, I’m going to do personalized things with all these people and do a bunch of integrated things because these are challenging, complex people, and I want them all to have good baseline support for their brain. I’ll use Diet Mind for that piece.

Nick Urban [00:34:24]:

A couple of minutes ago, you mentioned that when you’re designing studies, you look at certain endpoints and you decide if the formula makes sense based on what you’re seeing. As a result, there like, say, reaction time or memory, like working memory. How do you decide those? And are you ever worried that you might miss something that’s important? Like you might forget to look at reaction speed? And that’s one of the variables that does change, and the things you looked at didn’t change.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:34:55]:

There are certain things, like caffeine, since we mentioned that, like caffeine where it’s most, I would say most reliable in terms of where it’s going to move the needle is in and think of, again, go back to that attention domain. Right. So this is your ability to get focused and avoid distractions and to have quicker or faster reaction times and processing speed. Like caffeine in studies just does a really robust job at that you just see study after study, it does well, working memory. Caffeine is much more like mixed would be the fairest way. Like in some studies it improved it, others it did nothing. And then you start to think, okay, well, why? And then the general thought is, again, that idea. There’s a range. If someone’s really habituated to caffeine versus new to caffeine, that makes a difference. Caffeine is much more likely to do positives on executive function when you’re sleep deprived than if you’re rested. Like, that contextual. And so then for me, it’s like, okay, well, I can rely on caffeine to do these things, but not so much the working memory. What’s an ingredient that might stack with caffeine that’s much more predictably going to work on that piece? Because caffeine may, but it may not. It’s more context. And so that’s how I’ll think of these different cognitive skills and be looking to see if an ingredient is good at a certain thing and then, okay, is it like ashwagandha as an example? I love ashwagandha. We have it in a couple of products, but there’s a subset of people that ashwagandha over time is almost too relaxing. So what you’ll see in comments sometimes on reddit, and this isn’t most people, but it is some people, is that it almost feels like they’re not as motivated. Like it’s kryptonite for motivation for them is a way to think about it. And that doesn’t mean ashwagandha is bad for everyone, but for those people, it’s not the motivating thing. So I think of Ashwagandha. We have it in Qualia Knight as an example. We have it in our stress product Qualia Resilience. But even in diet resilience we sourced it’s called Nugandha, and it was an ashwagandha made to be a cognitive ashwagandha. So what they did is when they made the extract, they extracted it in a way so that the more common things, the things that work on more of the GABA system were things they extracted out. Like they wanted those other things that help with stress, but not those things that were too relaxing. So we think of diet resilience as an example, as a nootropic for stress, right? Like I’ve taken at the beginning of the day, every day for a month, instead of diet mind, I’m still productive alert all day, right? It helps with stress. But we didn’t want to sacrifice focus to get more stress relief. We wanted our cake and to eat it too, right? So that caused us to go for a different ashwagandha, where Sensoril and KSM 66 are great ashwagandha, but they would be much more the ones that an individual, and again, this isn’t most individual, it’s a thin sliver would take and feel like, oh, it’s SAP my motivation to get things done. So, like I said, we use KSM 66 at night because that’s for nighttime, right, where you want relaxation. We don’t really care if someone’s crazy willpower motivated at night. We want what little they have just to be turned into getting enough sleep. Daniel Smocktenberger is one of our founders, and he was the one that said this to me at the get go when he hired me. What what I want is that I think that there’s always super responders or potentially super responders responders, non responders, and negative responders. And what you’d see in most things is a bell curve with most people as regular responders and non responders. And what I want to do is shift the bell curve. So I want way more super responders than you’d normally see. I don’t want the negative responders and I’m okay if we get like one out of five people that are non responders, as long as we shift things in that direction. So that’s always our goal.

Nick Urban [00:39:36]:

So two things here. How do you guys go about shifting the curve to get more super responders? And then also on a personal level, are there ways besides trial and error, which is what I primarily do to determine if you’re going to be a super responder to any particular ingredient or to any class of ingredients? I’ve previously used something called the Braverman test, which is like a long questionnaire and assesses your neurotransmitter dominances and deficiencies. And lo and behold, I do very well with Gabaergics, the compounds that increase GABA. And they tend to work great for me, just as the questionnaire predicted. But I get that it doesn’t work perfectly for everyone. Are there any tools or ways that you like to look at it?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:40:21]:

So there was two questions in there. Let’s go to the Braverman first. So I think of things like that as useful. They’re not perfect, right, but they might give us an insight that we can build off. And genetics potentially, right? But that’s a lot of that still being sorted out. And then the other piece again, I go back to context. So I spent most of my time in the Navy, fairly sleep deprived, not by choice, but just by shift work, rotate. There was about a two year period. I stood a watch in engineering that only two of us could stand. So when our ship had its boilers lit off, which was a fair amount of time, we called it Port and Starbucks. About 6 hours on, 6 hours off watch. And then you still had to do your job, you still had to exercise, eat, you name it, right? So you never even got like a full six hour window in 24 hours to sleep. The Greg that might respond to something as a super responder in that context may be different than the Greg that’s getting enough sleep and that pays attention to circadian rhythms and other things. So context always matters and what I’ve seen fairly routinely in my life and diet like a useful thing. So one of my diet mentors was of the opinion that there can be a big difference between a diet that takes you from the diet you are on to healthier and a diet that will then keep you at healthier, right? And so I always try to think in terms of let’s not get too attached to the tool, right, to the thing that we’re using to get better health. Because our response to that may change. Let’s pay attention to how we’re responding. And so I know, like for nootropics, for me, when I first started as an example on Qualia Mind, there was a few things I paid attention to every day. But one was that tendency that many people have to that post lunch mid afternoon slump, right? Like that almost feeling like oh, my brain is a little bit like running in slow motion, right? Maybe even needing a nap. And so I paid a lot of attention to that. What happens when I take Qualia mind? And to this day still, if I take Qualia Mind, I just power right through. I never have personally, I don’t experience that. I think most nootropics, you would feel something fairly shortly, right? Like an hour, two hour, like, oh, I’m ready to go, right? So I pay attention to that. But we talked about brain energy earlier in the day and a story that I like to share is about my dad. So my dad, I grew up in about 35 miles outside of Boston near Plymouth, Mass. Little beach town. But my dad had a crazy commute to Boston, 35 miles, but probably two hour drive each way. And was an executive, was in charge of a 5000 person engineering company. So demanding job. And my recollection of my dad, he’d come home and be like, we’d be on eggshells. Because sometimes, like, best case, it would be neutral. He’d just do his own thing. But other times he would just be more irritable, right? So something that we would do would be upsetting to him, right? We’d get yelled at or told to quiet down, whatever. And the way I think of that now with what I know about the brain is my dad’s brain had just depleted most of the resources, right, that would allow him to be that better version of himself that he was at the beginning of the day or would be on a Saturday night as an example. And that if he was given an opportunity to rest and recover, the brain does a good job of then moving things from where they weren’t used to where they’re more needed, right? So if my dad was given that space to shine his shoes and tinker, my dad liked to do things with his hands, like leather work and things like that, then he would get into that better space. So, long story short, one of the things I think is a great test for Nootropics, like while you mind is at the end of our day, are we still able to be a better version of ourselves, right? Because that’s the test, right? Did the brain have more resources to get through the day and still at the end, when we show up for our significant others, instead of them getting the worst version of ourselves for an hour or two, are they still getting a decent version? So those are the things I pay attention to. Even when we do tests on a new Nootropic stack, I’m always looking like, okay, what happened an hour or two, 4 hours later? But what’s happening at the end of your day?

Nick Urban [00:45:08]:

I have a question for you about how you would approach this. And it’s going to be, I’m sure, unique to me, but hopefully your thinking, your methodology will help people. So there’s an ingredient in Qualium Mind called N acetyl ltyrozine, or NALT for short, I believe. And I first used that probably about ten or so years ago, and I bought like a 50 grams bag of it and used a normal dose and used it one time and felt like a robot and never touched it again after that. And I’ve noticed when I take Qualia mind, every once in a while, I’ll feel that same robotic feeling, but for the most part I don’t. And I’m curious how you would approach this and figure out what about that compound is causing this effect. If I’m deficient in something and when I have adequate levels, I no longer feel it or why it is that I’m feeling this and how I can go about preventing that. So that when I take quality, it feels good consistently every single time.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:46:08]:

So not just for the audience. So anacetyl tyrosine is a form of tyrosine, and tyrosine is mostly thought of as the building block for Dopamine and for norepinephrine. So it could be either of those systems, right? Those are pretty important systems for especially daytime brain performance. And then NALT doesn’t have many human studies, very few, even relatively few animal studies. So most studies are just plain tyrosine, not the acetylated NALT version. And like, I guess NALT versus tyrosine mostly that’s the end of one. Like the self experimented people, like nootropic communities that people will oh, for some reason, NALT at lower doses, I seem to feel more dopaminergic than I do with tyrosine. So usually you think of NALT as something that 400, 800 milligrams is sufficient. But like I mentioned, with choline, we try to be in the sweet spot for choline, making up for that gap that the average person isn’t getting their diet. But if someone was eating, say, like a lot of eggs every day, the chances that they need choline are lower. Right. So my first thing is your diet high in protein?

Nick Urban [00:47:35]:

Yes.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:47:36]:

In which case you’re probably more than adequate in tyrosine because tyrosine is relatively high. And so you maybe don’t need any of that precursor tyrosine. Then I would think, oh, if they’re getting this once in a while then. Are you taking a break from qualiumind periodically, like I said earlier? Like five days on, two off? I’m guessing yes, but then one of the things with qualia we often do ourselves. I know I do. It is every about two months I cycle off it just like I would do a deloading week for exercise and just take a break from it. And so that would be another and then the last is often our recommendation is seven capsules a day. And that’s the most common dose that customers take. But my most common dose is four because through trial and error, I found, like, oh, four is sufficient for me to have a really productive day. So, I mean, I could take seven. I don’t need seven. But if, you know, driving to Las Vegas for something or had to do a trade show or something much more demanding for my brain, then I’ll do seven those days. So the way if I was working with you as a patient back when I was in practice, my first thing would be, okay, let’s do less. You probably don’t need as much of this. So instead of seven capsules, I often like to err on the conservative side. So let’s just go to two and see how you do on two capsules. That may be sufficient for where you’re at. And then we can always work up a little from there if it’s not quite delivering what you hope. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:49:22]:

Based on all this, what I’m imagining is I think I have tried the non Acetylated version of Tyrosine, just normal ltyrozine in Alpha brain or something. And it had the same effect. So it’s probably not just the Acetylated version, it’s both versions. So for me, I guess the first thing I would try is to, I guess, the day before and the day of consume a little less protein in my diet and make sure I’m not getting too much of any one amino acid, like ltyrozine from diet. And then to see how I react to that. My sweet spot tends to be around two to three capsules anyway. So I prefer that dosage. I find that if I go too high, then it’s more likely to bring out that side effect. So for me, that’s like the sweet spot.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:50:07]:

And then the other thing, too is so qualia focus, as an example, is another one of our nootropic stacks. And I am like, almost 100% certain that has no NALT in it. Right. That was just built in a different way to be a two capsule thing, right. And a precursor like NALT you need enough of to make a difference. So that would be a different experiment. Try quiet focus. Maybe that works. It’s a simple and nootropic, but it works great. Right. It’s one that I often will cycle in myself, and then the other one would be when I think of what prevents most people from getting into that flow state that focus and this oversimplifies it. But think of one group, the challenges that they don’t have the motivation, right? They’re almost like a little lethargic, right? It’s just not that exciting to get into. It another group. What’s causing them from getting focus is their brain is too frantic, there’s almost too much going on. Right? So qualia of mind helps move people towards focus from either end, but it was more created to overcome that lethargy to actually think of adding motivation and willpower in with Nootropics, right? Like the NALT and the mukuna and things like that that are more like dopamine forward where diet resilience, our stress product, was more designed for helping people that were on that frantic end come to balance. So diet resilience acts as a nutrient, it’s our stress product, but it will help with focus for a lot of people because for that end they actually don’t need those things that would help to overcome lethargy. They need something that’s going to somewhat and this is oversimplifying but quiet, that frantic activity of the brain. And so for me, I’ve done like a month straight of only qualia resilience instead of qualia mind or diet focus. And it still works, right? I still am productive. It still does what a good Nootropics would do. It’s just designed or optimized for someone maybe more like yourself, that it’s the gabinergic end of things that they need a bit more support on. So that would be another experiment, is that diet mind just might not be a product that is ideally situated or for your brain, it still does something useful, but that qualia resilience a diet focus might actually be more optimal for you.

Nick Urban [00:52:47]:

Yeah, I found that. And I still really like the effects I get from quality of mind when I don’t have the side effect. But when I have the side effect, it tints the way I see things. All right, so I’ve gotten some questions from my audience about the side effects and safety of Nootropics and particularly of the quality of line. They were just curious about how this fares and how you make sure that this is a safe product. Because if you actually Google nootropics. I did some consultancy work for a nootropics startup a while back and the first article when you search are nootropics safe or do they work? Was like a WebMD or something that said that they don’t work and they have no efficacy, no science, which is ludicrous because there’s a lot out there. But how do you make sure that this is safe? I know you do the clinical trials or the in house trials that you’re mentioning, but what can people expect when they use Nootropics?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:53:39]:

So Nootropics is a category as opposed to a thing, right? And I think of it as a category primarily. Focus, motivation, memory would be the things people usually want when they’re talking about a Nootropics. But like Rasitams, which are more drug like compounds would be a very different nootropic than caffeine, which would be different than ginkgo or althanine, right? So, like an analogy that I tend to use, I mentioned that upside down U curve earlier. And when I think of that curve, the bottom I always think of is like a duration of time. So exercise, we start exercising today, we’re going to improve. We’re going to go up that beginning of the hill, right? Keep doing the same exercise. We may at some point plateau, right? So we’re not getting worse, but we may not be getting improvement anymore. And then if we keep doing that same thing, we run the risk of maybe overtraining, right. Performance starts to suffer. So I tend to think of most things as having the potential to go through that curve. Right. And that what I think of then as what’s going up this side of it is the intensity. We’re doing something which in a nootropic is the dose, like the amount of the substance we’re taking. And so I think when I think of things, my goal is, all right, well, if I said, hey, Nick, why don’t you go run a marathon every other weekend for the next six months, and then we’ll just check in, right? Are marathons good or bad? Well, let’s see how Nick does. Probably not good. Now, if I said, like, Nick, could you, I don’t know, walk every day for 20 minutes for me for the next six months? Let’s check in probably at the end of the six months, it’s like, oh, I’m doing great. And a difference there is then the time was the same, right. Six months. But the intensity, the amount of what we’re doing varied substantially, right. So I know when I create formulas, the goal is let’s keep people on the walking side of things when we choose the amount of something. So one of the things that I think allows things like nootropics to be safer is when we’re not trying to go to the extreme top end of a dose range for something. Right. We’re more conservative when we do things like, oh, don’t take this every day. Like, let’s build in mind vacations once a week for two days, right. Those things, instead of that time period being crunched down like it would be in a marathon, because six months would wreck most of us, it spreads that time out longer. We can still get the benefits without getting past that peak. And so when I think of whether it’s vitamin C, exercise, a purely nootropics compound, I’m always thinking of that upside down U curve and how we can get the benefits, like being moving up the hill with spreading out that time so we can enjoy it for long periods of time. So when nootropics, what I would say for your listener or the person that asked that is whenever you’re concerned about that, do less and then take many vacations more.

Nick Urban [00:57:00]:

Yeah, I think that’s a very safe and prudent strategy. I personally take two weeks off of caffeine every quarter, and then I will also rotate off all of my nootropics for a different two weeks, because sometimes the non caffeine nootropics are nice to have when you’re going through the two weeks with no caffeine. And it seems that it resensitizes my body, my neurotransmitters, to the effects of these compounds to begin with, which is like a win win and makes it so I get better results from less smaller doses.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:57:27]:

Absolutely. And I think that’s the best advice I could give. Exactly what you’re doing.

Nick Urban [00:57:33]:

Greg, we’ve been on this for over an hour already. I want to be respectful of your time. I have a couple more questions for you and then a rapid fire round.

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:57:41]:

Sure.

Nick Urban [00:57:42]:

Well, first of all, if people are interested in connecting with you and checking out the neurohacker line of nootropics and other products, how do they go about that?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:57:51]:

So our website’s, neurohacker.com, we’re biggest on social media on Instagram. That’s where we put the most content and do the most for our community. And a lot of what’s put there would be things like new studies and details on those or cool things. So I would say follow us on Instagram would be number one. But check out neurohacker.com like you, we have our own podcast that we do things to try to educate the community. And then whenever we do have a product, I’ll blog about that product. So for something like Qualiumine, the title will be something like Qualiumine, the formulator’s view of the ingredients. And so I’ll talk about each ingredient, why I chose that dose. So if you ever want to get nerdy about one of our products, just look for those blog posts.

Nick Urban [00:58:41]:

And if people are interested in trying out quality of mind or focus or resilience, I believe we have the code Urban, which will save them 15%. So the link to that will be in the show notes below, as well as all the resources we’ve discussed so far. All right, Greg, if there was a burning of the books and all knowledge on Earth was lost, but you got to save the works of three teachers, what would you pick and why?

Dr. Greg Kelly [00:59:10]:

Taleb, for sure. Anti Fragile. I mean, all his books. Anti fragile skin in the know. Fooled by randomness. I think his models for thinking about uncertainty, and we all want more certainty in life, but health is an uncertain thing. Right. It’s much more like investing in stocks than it is black or white. And I think he’s the best, in my experience at giving useful models for that. So him for sure. I’ve always been a huge fan of The Prophet by Khalil Gabran, just a little like Vignettes, right. I think there’s so much wisdom in that, and I think wisdom holds up. I read a lot, a lot of things that I read 510 years from now aren’t going to be particularly useful. And then I think something enjoyable. So for me, it’d be Lord of the Rings. I think different things for different people, but something like it’s the one book or book series that I’ve read the most times in my life. I think wisdom that you get from seeing people do noble works, right? Like helping each other and overcoming obstacles. And sometimes it’s in stories that we learn those things the best. So those would be the three.

Nick Urban [01:00:43]:

Nice balance. All right, Rapid Fire Round, in your qualia of Mind product, which would you say are the five star ingredients and what are the most essential supporting ingredients?

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:00:56]:

So I think for me, caffeine and Thainine, clearly five stars. Cognizant, which is acidicoline, which is a choline precursors, and other five stars, there’s others, but those three for sure, those are fundamental for a good stack, complementary ingredients. So I think like the NALT that you mentioned, the Makuna, things that are supportive for the dopamine system all fall in that range. But I think things that get overlooked a lot is a huge amount of the health of our neurons and the health of the supporting cells. The glial cells in our brain is the health of their neurons. And things like phosphatidal serine and the omega three DHA, fatty acid just make up such a high percentage of those and that I think of them as brain essential nutrients. Meaning if we don’t get enough in our diet, our brain is going to be starved for them. And so they’re not things that would show up as five stars in human studies because they just play a different role, but critical role.

Nick Urban [01:01:58]:

Phosphatel serum is pretty interesting. I was looking into the anticortisol effects for that, like, post workout, if I work out in the evening. That’s a great one. Okay, what ingredient supplement substance are you currently researching these days?

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:02:12]:

So I’ve mostly been focused on joint health, but the one that I most recently read, it’s a combination of boswellia extract and terminalia shibuya, which they’re both Ayurvedic. But boswellia usually think of more for either gut health or for joint health and terminalia in Ayurvedic, you often see it combined with amla fruit and another, it’s trifala. It’s called the three mirror balls. But that stack that thing, and part of the reason it grabbed my attention is they just released a cognitive study. It’s actually now in the process of being published, so they’re only sharing a little bit of the information. But what they shared was really exciting because I read a lot of studies on cognitive ingredients and mostly I come away unimpressed. And this one is like, wow, if the study is doing what you’re sharing that it did, that’s pretty impressive. So that ingredient is the one that I guess I was allowed to see the study. I signed an NDA, so I can’t really talk. About it, but I was very impressed with what that delivered.

Nick Urban [01:03:35]:

So we’ve talked a lot about the more advanced stacks and the things ingredients you have in qualiumind. Can you rattle off a few essential beginners nootropics that you recommend? The combination of caffeine, the amino acid, altheanine is like a popular one, like a good intro to nootropics. Anything else?

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:03:54]:

Yeah, so I think choline, like some source of choline. So, again, a lot of biohackers eat eggs, right. They getting enough choline, but an average person no. Right. So it doesn’t mean they’re getting none. But there’s usually somewhere like about 100 milligram, 150 milligram gap between what would be ideal and what they’re getting in their diet. So something that’s going to supply some choline for a lot of people is a good thing to consider if they’re not getting eggs. I tend to like adaptogen herbs a lot. And rodiola is so different, adaptogen. We talked about ashwagandha, which can be almost too calming for a small subset of people. rodiola is from the Balkan area, right. Northern Europe. And that tends to be more energizing, for lack of a better word, to think. So that can be a good addition to a nootropic stack as it’s adaptogenic. Right. It helps with stress, but it’s a more invigorating than ashwagandha would be. So even like a simple stack like that could be a really nice place to start. And then often like, a little magnesium. B vitamins are the foundation. Right. So you’ll see those in qualia focus, you’ll see those in qualia resilience. You always put a B vitamin stack into those because when you think of making energy, that’s where the bees we need them.

Nick Urban [01:05:27]:

Well, Greg, this has been great. What is one thing that the Neurohacker tribe does not know about you?

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:05:34]:

I don’t know. I’m pretty much an open book, but let’s see. Well, no one on neurohackers tribe has ever seen me with hair, but that’s too easy. So everyone knows that I’m a huge sports fan. I don’t know, honestly. Long story short, I went through alcohol rehab my last beginning of my last year in the Navy, and one of the things I came out of that able to drink again, this was 1988, so a long time ago. Right. Like, if I was delusional, it would have shown up by now, but I’m by nature a T totaler now. But part of what changed is things that I was in my closet, right. Afraid that other people might know or found out about me. I just revealed it all.

Nick Urban [01:06:21]:

Well, are there any conclusions, any takeaways you want to leave listeners with today?

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:06:25]:

So I would say do your own experiments. So don’t rely on the experts. Like, see how you respond. Be attached to how you’re responding, not how you’ve responded. Right. So be flexible. What may have worked great for you may not continue to. Right. And it’s why you and I have we figured out our own dose for quality of mind and our own ways to go rotate it in and out to get the best for it. And then the last piece would be that bandwidth piece. So I think many of us are our brains aren’t performing the best that they can because there’s lots that we are ruminating on, right? Like our bandwidth is being consumed. So the last piece of advice would be if that’s you right, if your brain is ruminating on things most of the time, and not all the time, but most of the time, there’s something we can do that will cause that rumination to quiet, to not take up so many resources. And the brain, as we talked about at the beginning, is something that thinking about in terms of resources and energy is a useful model. And if we’re consuming a lot of that ruminating about something, then there’s going to be less resources and energy to go to the parts of the brain we want to do more so we can be more. So, anyways, that would be the last piece for the audience. If you feel like, oh, my bandwidth’s being consumed by something, figure out if there’s something you can do to shut that down. In most cases, there is.

Nick Urban [01:08:05]:

Well, Dr Greg Kelly, it has been a pleasure chatting with you and hosting you on the MINDBODY Peak Performance podcast.

Dr. Greg Kelly [01:08:12]:

Well, thanks for having me today. It’s been my pleasure.

Nick Urban [01:08:15]:

Until next time, I’m Nick Urban here with Dr Greg Kelly, signing out from Mindbodypeak.com. Have a great week and be an outlier. I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and hit the thumbs up. I love knowing who’s in the 1% committed to reaching their full potential. Comment 1% below so that I know who you are. For all the resources and links, meet me on my website@mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate, appreciate you and look forward to connecting with you. As a reminder, please tell your prior health professional before making less health changes.