Nootropics and Cognitive-enhancement Discussion Area

Thanks. This response is incredibly valuable to me, because it saves me from spending a lot of time reading (another) forum.

6 raw eggs/day? That's got to be about 1 day of unpleasant food poisoning per year :) I cook mine in butter.

But all of the most experienced nootropic experimenters at ImmInst seemed to heavily recommend it.

How much effort did it take for you to learn which ones were experienced?
When I looked, I found a lot who didn't take choline supplementation.

On 50 (full text) - a study of old people in a mental hospitol whose psychiatric illness was considered to be in 'remission' - 2.4g/day and 4.8g/day both improved intelligence, but 4.8g/day slightly degraded "verbal IQ" (which includes working memory) and some "memory quotient" (table 3, pg103).

They speculate that other studies showed no significant benefit for N=20 only because the dose was too low or the timeframe too short (2.4g/day showed P<0.5 improvements after more than 8 weeks (not yet significant at 4 weeks), but 4.8g/day gave significant improvements after 4 weeks and 8 weeks, with a decline at 12 weeks, though not in all measures erasing all the benefit compared to the placebo group).

The analysis seems competently done; the 3 groups (N=20 each) were purely randomly chosen, not balanced for other traits, so for instance the 2.4g/day group was dumber than the other groups before intervention; they corrected for this in analysis.

In table 2 (pg 102), higher scores are worse for SCAG and BPRS, and the opposite (higher=good) for nurse CGI (Clinical Global Impression - some subjective measure of "is the patient doing better") and CGRS. Placebo group had no CGI improvement; both 2.4 and 4.8 had a huge improvement. As for negative effects, 4.8g/day had slightly more diziness (P>.1 however), and 2.4g/day had significantly worse cooperation and sleep. It seems like everyone had worse sleep, so I don't know what to make of that, but they claim it's significant after ANOCovariance.

They also claim an anecdotal dose-dependent decrease in parkinsonian-like facial tremor symptoms (i.e. 4.8g/day was more effective), which seems contrary to 51's claim of 'tremor' as a common piracatem side effect.

Anyway, piracatem definitely helps old and/or in-'remission' schizo/affective people think better (not sure if it's and or or).

Since the net benefit at week 12 of 2.4g/day was much more than 4.8g/day, I really want to know if there's some longer term (e.g. 50 weeks) where an even smaller dose (including none at all) of piracatem is better than 2.4g/day.

There's nothing about headaches or choline in this study either, except in the discussion section, they cite Bartus 1981 (rat study) and Friedman 1981 and Ferris 1982 (senile dementia improved more w/ choline+piracatem than with either alone).

Bartus RT, Dean III RL, Sherman KA, Friedman E, Beer B (1981) Profound effects of combining choline and piracetam on memory enhancement and cholinergic function in aged rats. Neurobiol Aging 2:105-111

Bartus RT (1981) Age-related memory loss and cholinergic dysfunction: Possible directions based on animal models. In : Crook T, Gershon S (eds) Strategies for the development of an effective treatment for senile dementia. Mark Powley, New Canaan, CT, pp 71-90

Friedman E, Sherman KA, Ferris SH, Reisberg B, Bartus RT, Schneck MK (1981) Clinical response to choline plus piracetam in senile dementia: Relation to red-cell choline levels. New Engl J Med 304:1490-1491

Ferris SH, Reisberg B, Friedman E, Schneck MK, Sherman KA, Mir P, Bartus RT (1982) Combination choline/piracetam treatment of senile dementia. Psychopharmacol Bull 18:94-98

I've gotten a couple serious headaches that wouldn't go away with 2 aspirin since I started taking Piracetam. I attributed one of the headaches to oversleeping, but Piracetam might have been the cause in retrospect.

On 51:

5g/day to severe concussion victims

weak evidence for some side effects: anxiety, insomnia, nervousness, tremor (I haven't experienced any of those; these seem hard to separate from the concussion symptoms)

no change in blood pressure or heart rate

gradual and significantly better than placebo improvement over 8 weeks in headache/vertigo symptoms post-concussion. insignificantly more improvement than placebo in memory, tremor, and fainting-from-standing ('orthostatic symptoms'). placebo patients reported 2.1 side effects on avg; 5g piracetam reported 2.3 on avg.

no mention of headaches caused by piracetam or choline

Thanks. That was my plan also. One confound for me, though, is that I can get a mild headache on the 1st or 2nd day of not having caffeine. Now I have an excuse to ensure I have my daily latte.

I told my physician that I have the symptoms of hypersomnia, and I wanted to try Modafinil. My doctor has always been cool about prescribing. :D

If your doctor is uncool, there are other ways. The best way is to just use Adrafinil which metabolizes into Modafinil and has apparently identical effects. Unfortunately it takes as long as an hour before the effects start--Modafinil is much faster-acting. Adrafinil (sometimes branded as Olmifon) is completely unregulated and unscheduled in the US and is totally legal to import. However, it is a bit expensive to buy and pay for shipping out of pocket (my insurance covers most of my Modafinil). I believe the US is somewhat unusual in terms of not scheduling Adrafinil, I know New Zealand schedules Adrafinil, as do most countries in Europe.

Also, I have a friend who imports Provigil branded tablets from online pharmacies, (no prescription). He said that since Modafinil is Schedule IV the (US) government doesn't make much effort to prosecute importers. In the rare event that the shipment is intercepted, if the amount is obviously for personal use (not resale), the government generally just sends a letter telling you not to do it again.