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Nootropics

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Re: Nootropics

#371

Post by pavs »

astrostl wrote: post #296
pavs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it's very difficult for me to fall asleep naturally. I have tried all the well-known advice and even tried long workouts late in the day so that it would help me to get tired and fall asleep. The only thing that works for me is melatonin and making sure I am away from all kinds of blue lights 2-3 hours before bed. I have been sleeping great for the last 6 months or so. I have tried to get off of melatoni…

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? I see self-help and drugs, but no description of domain-focused therapy

I admit I haven't done any therapy by any therapist. I have read some CBT book and tried to do it myself without any progress. Its also one of those things I probably should look in to (along with sleep apnea suggested by someone else). I just wish benzos didn't have so many issues with it, or it would be the perfect drug. I take such a low dose and I know people who are taking 2-5mg and they are happily chugging alone. I fear for them, if they ever needs to get off of benzos.

Re: Nootropics

#372

Post by beachstartup »

cyphar wrote: post #366
beachstartup wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is quantitatively zero work, buddy this statement is both technically wrong, and stupid because of your inane try-hard elitism. with google you can calculate down to several sig figs how many joules of work was done by picking up a weight, and putting it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics) maybe you meant 'qualitatively'? even then, still wrong. moving heavy shit around is work, even if it ends…

I agree that the statement is elitist, but since gravity is a conservative force I think that the strict definition of "work" from physics (W = \int_a^b{\vec{F} \dot d\vec{s}}) would mean you get as 0 a result.

if we're going to get pedantic, what is the chance that the weight ended up in exactly the same spot that it started in, when moved by a person?

Re: Nootropics

#373

Post by joelmeckert »

Jubjubz wrote: post #360
throwaway__123 wrote: post #117

Zoloft I am afraid of sounding like a shill, but the fact is I'm 30 engineer, who has been trying to feel better my whole life through experiments with: ketamine, CBD, various nutrients, various dietary changes, exercise, being more social, meditation. None of them made lasting improvement like sertraline has, I wish I had been open-minded enough to try it years ago. In retrospect, maybe it was ridiculous to try to f…

The problem with SSRIs is that they can have wildly different effects on different people. Compounding that issue is clinicians misdiagnosing patients quite frequently because it's all subjective. You take a few questionnaires and they score them and say "this number means you're mildly/moderately/severely depressed." In my case, as with many others with bipolar, Zoloft sent me into a hypomanic episode where I didn't…

True that, lamotrigine has been life changing as well, it took the edge off the depressive features. I initially dismissed lithium, but with long-term use, it has reduced episodes, agitation, with mild emotional blunting that I have learned to deal with. I've had to cycle off lamotrigine three times so far due to poopout, they call the protocol a washout, and it gets reintroduced at a starting dose until it is effective again, with a typical dose around 100 mg after washout.

Re: Nootropics

#374

Post by joelmeckert »

I used a stack this summer, noopept, l-theanine, aceytl-l-carnitine (alcar), caffeine, taurine, huperzine-a, l-tyrosine, modafinil, DHEA. I did a year's worth of work in a month and a half. . . My employer benefited, became proficient in PowerShell in two weeks with little coding experience, worked 16 hour days (it was that busy), but lost out on life, although they offered me a development position after the project. Dropped out of road biking as I wasn't eating enough to do group rides, dropped 15 pounds in a month and a half (which isn't a terrible outcome).

At the end of the day, my employer could care less about the hours and outcomes of the project, it was a total waste of time. Stay normal, have good relationships in life, routine, exercise, diet. It didn't result in any net happiness gains, analytical mind took over and I became good at doing things for other people, but not living.

Re: Nootropics

#375

Post by perfectfire »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #363
perfectfire wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Selegiline Interesting. I just moved and my new doctor just recently suggested maybe trying MAOI's. I've found a medication that has been absolutely wonderful for depression, but I have yet to find anything that helps with anxiety other than Klonopin and that's definitely not a long-term solution (I'm tapering off of it for the second time right now). I haven't been taking stimulants for ADHD though, I've been taki…

Modern SSRI's are not more effective at treating depression or anxiety than drugs from the 1960's including MAOI's. In fact, MAOIS raise the level of 3 neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine) while SSRI's usually only effect serotonin. I believe effexor inhibits one more neurotransmitter. They fell out of favor because they required such a strict diet and had severe interactions with many OTC medic…

I've been through so many anti-depressants, but I've found something really works well. It's actually an anti-psychotic. Not an S[S|N]RI combined with an anti-psychotic, just the anti-psychotic alone does the job really well.

When I looked up Selegiline I recognized the brand name and patch delivery mechanism. It sounds good, but I don't really need the anti-depressant effect. I went on to look at Moclobemide which looks like exactly what I need. Unfortunately it's not available in the United States, but if the only thing standing in my way of not feeling panicky and anxious all the time and not having any libido is buying something on the internet I think I need to research what are some good online pharmacies.

Re: Nootropics

#376

Post by Scottn1 »

media-narrative wrote: post #161
mettamage wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard for me to fall asleep. I haven't cracked it yet how to do it perfectly. What helps: view the problem as improving your likelihood to sleep. Before I viewed the problem as falling asleep 100% of the time, which is a really defeating view to have when I can't fall asleep. Sleep tips that help me: 1. meditation: still experimenting with body-scan vs. breath meditation, they both help but have different effects…

I'm of the opinion that stuff like f.lux and Apple's Night Shift are both products that exploit pseudoscience to take advantage of the placebo effect. They're a "gluten free" feature for contemporary software — for those suspicious of childhood vaccinations. Macworld wrote a decent breakdown of the Night Shift quackery when it was introduced: http://www.macworld.com/article/3047121/iphone-ipad/ios-93-t...

All I know is turning the brightness control on my iPad all the way down to far left with lights out and in bed then just browsing boring stuff like news, Car and Driver, etc and it works like a sleeping pill for me. In about 15-20m of this and I can barely keep my eyes open.

Might be this minimized blue light effect as they suggest, or could just be a sort of recognized pattern/habit my brain now associates with bed. I don't know why, but it works for me. I'm getting sleepy now just thinking of it..

Re: Nootropics

#377

Post by gwern »

cariaso wrote: post #103
cavisne wrote: post #16

Its concerning to see Modafinil on the same list of "defaults" as caffeine and vitamin D. They are on a different scale when it comes to the effect on your brain. That aside, my anecdotal experience of mod is its basically a waste of time. Sure you stay awake longer but we can all easily procrastinate a day away regardless, it wont make you any more focused or any smarter. If you for some reason need to improve your…

You suggest that it does work, but that procrastination is still possible. fair enough. But if it doesn't keep you awake, it's possible that you're one of the ~15% of the population who is a non responder due to: rs4680(A;A) aka Met/Met at COMT Val158Met via http://snpedia.com/index.php/Rs4680(A;A) rs4680(G;G) carriers deprived of sleep respond quite well to 2x 100mg modafinil in terms of improved vigor and well-bein…

I should mention that I no longer think Rs4680 has anything to do with modafinil response. It was a candidate-gene study, so it was always in considerable doubt, and when I asked about Rs4680 in my modafinil survey (draft: http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil%20survey ), 216 people had their Rs4680 status available and it did not correlate with their self-evaluations of how effective modafinil was for them (slightly the opposite, actually). This is ~10x bigger than the original study which was also based on self-report and if anything, you would expect a survey to be biased towards finding an effect since people know about the earlier report...

Re: Nootropics

#378

Post by secoif »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #251

Wow.. This dude.. I've tested a couple of the mentioned drugs myself and thought i'd chip in with my results and learnings Modafinil/Armodafinil Definitely works and the side effects are neglectable. It's much as he describes it but im not sure why he can't feel it some of the time as the effect on me is really strong, especially with armodafinil which was almost too much to be hanging around other people :) You feel…

My experience with melatonin:

If I take the normal dose of >3mg, I'll experience incredible irritability the following day. I become sensitive to sound and anything that isn't entirely perfect. Things make me feel unreasonably furious. This is bad. These days I always microdose melatonin.

If I don't fall asleep with the first tiredness crash that happens 20-30 minutes after taking melatonin, I find myself restless and unable to sleep for another 4 or 5 hours. The more melatonin I take, the more intense the initial crash will be, but the harder it is to sleep if I miss that crash.

Re: Nootropics

#379

Post by telotortium »

PeterisP wrote: post #199
afarrell wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to help with sleep that is https://freedom.to/ , which you can use to make a list of websites to hard-block and then schedule them to be blocked either 1) now through 8hours from now 2) every SMTWRarsday from 11:30pm-8:30am

I have a problem with all these website-blocking tools that I want them to behave differently than they do, perhaps you can suggest something? The issue is that I want to block only the main , 'browsing' pages while allowing deep links to that same site. For example, I want to block reddit, when googling some question turns out an answer that's on a niche subreddit I've never seen, I need to be able to read it. Howev…

If you have the patience to manually blacklist URLs, you can do this pretty easily with a regex-based site blocker. (My favorite for Chrome is Simple Blocker, which doesn't document that it uses regexes but in fact does: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-blocker/akf...). For example, the following blacklist regex patterns block the Reddit front page and the main page of any subreddits and multireddits, but still let you navigate to individual threads:

    https://(www|np).reddit.com/?$
    https://(www|np).reddit.com/r/[^/]+/?$
    https://(www|np).reddit.com/user/[^/]+/m/[^/]+/?$

Re: Nootropics

#380

Post by Practicality »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #326
Practicality wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a little ambivalent about that. How about coffee, vitamin d, calcium and tyrosine? All of them have proven benefits, nothing fringe: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-o... That combined with exercise, sleep and eating well is pretty much my "stack." Personally I would rather not risk the possibility of destroying my brain with something unproven. However, for things with proven benefits…

Caffeine, calcium, and Tyrosine can all be found in normal food and beverages. There's no need to supplement them unless you have a terrible diet. You can get vitamin d by going outside every once in a while.

You should check out the research cited on Vitamin D in the first link: "vitamin D supplementation decreases all-cause mortality in adults and older people"

While it certainly is possible to "get vitamin D" by going outside, that doesn't mean it's enough.

The leading theory as to the advantage of having white skin is that it assists in providing more vitamin D in latitudes without as much direct sunlight. This means the amount you get by "going outside once in a while" is not sufficient (otherwise we wouldn't need the advantage of getting as much as possible)

Likewise, drinking coffee removes calcium and vitamin d from your body, so it is wise to replace them, especially if you drink a lot of coffee.

Also, while I might not "need" to supplement them because I am getting "enough" that doesn't mean I won't benefit by taking more. Indeed, we're talking about Nootropics here, not just staying alive.

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