Should You Be Taking These Smart Drugs
The Amplified Impact Podcast
July 12th, 2023
Today, we’re diving into the world of nootropics, or as I like to call them, smart drugs.
Nootropics are supplements or medications believed to enhance our cognitive abilities.
But the truth is, there’s no magic pill that will turn you into Bradley Cooper from “Limitless.”
But here’s the fascinating part…our bodies are like walking chemistry experiments.
We’re fueled by a complex mix of neurochemicals and hormones, and that’s where nootropics come into play.
They offer a way to modulate and optimize our internal chemistry, but they’re not a substitute for the fundamentals.
Now, let me make this clear—I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to recommend specific supplements.
What I can do is share what I personally do and the resources I rely on.
Bottom line is…nootropics and supplements are not a magic fix, but they can complement your efforts to optimize your well-being.
It’s crucial to listen to your body, document your experiences, and be an active participant in your own health journey.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Take the time to reflect on how do you feel versus when you’re not on the supplements? And then start to document that in as objective of a way as you possibly can.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, yo, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the pod. Today I want to talk about nootropics. If you never heard that word before, nod and just make it up. It’s real. Nootropics. That’s a fancy word for smart drugs. The idea behind it is, what are the supplements or the medications to drugs that we could be taking that would enhance our cognitive abilities? And it’s sexy to think that there is like a pill out there that we could consume and it’s going to unlock this untold potential inside of our brain. You’ve heard that old cliche that we only use 10% of our brains? And imagine if you could unlock the other 90% and then you’d be like Bradley Cooper and Limitless and you’d be unstoppable.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:44]:
Well, the truth is that’s really not how any of that works. However, it is interesting that if you think about the fact that you are just a biological chemistry experiment inside of you right now, all the neurochemicals and all the hormones that are going through your body, you’re just a big walking, freaking lab experiment. And so there are things that we can do that will moderate those lab levels. Now, I’m a big believer. The first three things that you should focus on in terms of optimizing for your energy or your physiological state, your mood, your wellbeing, your mental clarity, all these things. You should start with the three fundamentals of sleep, exercise and nutrition. But supplements kind of fall into this other category where I say, don’t worry about supplements until you really focus on winning the game with those big three. Those are the real levers that are going to move the dial the most.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:44]:
But once you are getting a solid six to seven, 8 hours of sleep every night and it’s high quality sleep, and once you’re eating clean and you’re on point there, and you’ve removed foods that are causing you to suffer from inflammation, let’s say, and you’re exercising regularly, you’re feeling strong, you got good cardio, you got good Tumac, all these things. Once you’ve done all that, now you can start playing on the fringe of supplementation and saying, what am I currently not able to get in my diet? Because there are things, no matter how much food you eat, you’re just never going to get some of these supplements naturally. And there are things that your body can benefit from. Would you find them if you were out there in the wilderness just on your own wandering? Probably not. But we don’t live in that world anymore. And so I’m a believer of using technology, science, medication in ways that are advantageous to not only increasing our longevity, but increasing our health span so that we don’t just live longer and then fall apart when we’re old and live miserably for the last two decades of our life. But we age, we live longer and we live better. We live strong and cognitively clear way into the later years of life, 80, 90s, hundreds and beyond or whatever, and all that’s to say is I think supplements can play a part in that.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:02]:
Now, I am not a doctor. I’m not recommending anything to you. All I’m saying is, like, these are what I’m currently doing. I’m going to share what I know about some of these, and I don’t know much about all of them. I am, again, not a professional in any of this. I take my cues from people that I look up to, that I admire, that I consider mentors and whose judgment I trust, who I deem as experts in their domains, and I do a little bit of research to understand and come to better clarity on my own. But largely this is an area outside of my expertise. I just want to share with you what I do because I think if you’re at that point that I was at about a year ago where I kind of dialed everything else in from those big three levers and I started to look at, okay, what else do I need to be doing? Now if you’re at that place, then maybe this can bring you a little bit of value.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:48]:
So the first thing that I do well, the number one resource that I use or I turn to on this topic, there’s actually two people. One is Dr. Andrew Huberman, who has one of the best podcasts in the world on science related topics. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s called the Huberman lab. He has, I don’t know, a couple hundred, maybe not even 100, I don’t know how many episodes. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of content to go through.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:15]:
What I like about him is that he’s very rigorous. He runs a lab called the Huberman Lab at Stanford. He does a lot of eye based research, but he’s just a student of science and he’s very involved in all different broad swaths. So I love him for learning more on pretty much every topic that’s related to physiology and biology, chemistry. He’s great. Number two is Peter Atia, who wrote a great book that I read recently called Outlive. And again, as a doctor who is really focused on not just increasing our lifespan, but also our health span. So these two people I take a lot of cues from, highly recommend, they both have podcasts, a lot of great content that they put out to the world for free.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:53]:
So I really, really recommend you go support them and check that out. Okay, so I use a protocol from Huberman which he endorses through a company called Momentous. Now what’s interesting about this company, Momentous I have no affiliation whatsoever. I don’t have a link. I can’t get you any kind of discount, can’t help you out, but I do believe you can use like, Huberman has some discount that you can use to get these things cheaper. So the backstory of Momentous, I think, is interesting as a company that was started by a kid who was 18 years old. Back in 2016, he dropped out of Harvard and his goal was to create super premium, top of the line supplements and nutritional AIDS that were tested to the nth degree to make sure that they were the highest quality possible. He partnered with Rob Deirdick, if you guys are familiar with that name, that’s another really badass guy.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:45]:
They partnered for a couple of years, three or four years in. They could not find product market fit to save their life. Couldn’t find it. There just didn’t seem to be a market for people who were willing to pay a premium for their supplements, though. They were clean and super tested and like the best that you could get on the market, ostensibly. So they sold a portion of the company to some other group. They came in, they revamped some things, and they created this relationship with Andrew Huberman. Right at the time that Andrew really started to blow up.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:15]:
Bing, bang, boom. Next thing you know, he has the perfect audience for these supplements. People who are very conscious about the research and about being like, doing the best protocols, right? Suddenly this company blows up and they’re doing fantastic. All that’s to say, this is the company that I buy my supplements from. However, they are expensive. And I’m not even certain that there’s like a ton of value to going directly through these guys versus going somewhere else. I don’t know. But this is the one that I use.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:41]:
So for ease, try it or don’t. And what I like about them too, is that they have two bundles that I personally use, and this is the protocols that I’m on. They’re called Human Lab hormone supplement, hormone support bundle and the Humanmin Lab focus and Cognition bundle. And then I also use a couple of other things I’ll tell you about here in just a second. But let’s walk through these. First one is the hormone support bundle. This includes things like Tongat ali, fidozia, agrestus, and zinc pickle, zinc, whatever. So those are the three Tongat, fidozia, zinc.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:21]:
The idea behind these is that they can help support and boost your testosterone levels naturally. So there is an epidemic of middle aged, 30, 40 year old men who are suffering from low testosterone. If you compare us to the testosterone levels of our fathers, our grandfathers, we are far, far below the curve for whatever reason. It could be environmental, it could be nutrition. It’s hard to say. But what is true is that across the board, more and more men are suffering from low testosterone. I had my testosterone levels tested last year and found that in fact, my testosterone was very low. I plan on going on to testosterone replacement therapy at some point.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:01]:
However, I wanted to first explore what it would look like to try and raise my levels naturally. And that’s where tongue out. Ali and Fidozia come into. These are natural supplements. They’re naturally occurring plants that have been shown in science research to help naturally boost your testosterone levels. And for me, in my case, it has in fact brought them up not a ton. We’re not talking like it’s going to double your testosterone levels, but it can help bring up the baseline just a bit so that if you end up going on testosterone replacement, the amount that you have to take to get to the levels that you’re seeking to get to is just less. As a result.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:36]:
I do feel more energy, I feel more clear of mind. I feel like I’m able to recover more quickly when I’m on these supplements than when I’m off of them. So check them out. Okay, so that is the hormone support supplement. The next one is the focus and cognition bundle. I will be completely frank with you. I have no idea if these even help whatsoever. The idea behind these is that they will help with mental clarity, focus and motivation.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:07]:
I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t say whether or not I’ve really noticed a substantial improvement in focus or mental clarity while I’m on these supplements versus when I’m not. I’ll talk about why that is in just a second, but the supplements in particular are Omega Three, Alpha, GPC and Tyrozine. I can’t tell you much about any of them. I don’t know much, but these are probably the closest thing to nootropics when people come to think of what a nootropic or a smart drug trying to enhance your mental clarity, your focus and all that. Now the reason why I’m not sure that this one has really helped me is that you take them in the morning with a meal. I don’t eat a meal in the morning. The first meal I typically eat for the day is around twelve or 01:00 because I intermittently fast.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:53]:
So I’ll take my supplements around noon or 01:00. But I’ve already done a great amount of my morning heavy lifting before that, right? So I’ve already done a lot of the mental heavy lifting and I’m already kind of tired going into my afternoon. So I’m taking these drugs or these supplements, and then I’m also eating lunch, which tends to put me into a little bit of a food coma for a while. So do these help? Are they effective? I don’t know. I can’t say that I’ve noticed, but I don’t know if that’s the supplements fault or if it’s just a result of my timing and everything else circumstantial around that. So might be something worth playing around with. Experiment and see how does it make you feel. Become a student of your body and of your experience of this thing called life.
Anthony Vicino [00:10:36]:
Like as Aristotle said, the unexamined life is not worth living. So don’t just take these drugs and then just zoom out. Take the time to reflect on how do you feel versus when you’re not on the supplements? And then start to document that in as objective of a way as you possibly can. Okay, so a couple of other supplements that I do take, my personal trainer, Phil, has me on Cortis, which is a cortisol managing supplement. That one’s really amazing, actually, because whether or not we’re conscious of the fact that we’re experiencing stress, our bodies are manifesting that stress. I am under a lot of stress with what I do as an entrepreneur all the time, just constant stress. But I don’t process it. It doesn’t feel like stress to me necessarily.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:23]:
I’m just so used to it. However, my body does feel that stress, it remembers it. And so what the Cortis helps my body do is just to let that go, like to process the cortisol levels that are coursing through my veins. And I’ve noticed a vast improvement on my mental clarity, my energy levels, my mood from that one supplement, Cortis than any other supplement that I’ve taken. It’s amazing. I also take a couple of other things that help with digestion. Something called digest aid, something else called optipure. These are like liver detoxing and supplements that just help you process your food.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:56]:
I found them to be very helpful too, because a lot of times you’re eating stuff, and if your body’s not fully able to process what you’re putting into it, then what was the point? Supplements just help you optimize and get the most out of every calorie that’s going into your mouth hole. So those are the supplements. I think that’s pretty much everything. I also take some fish oil from my joints because I’m old and my ache, and that just happens. But this is my attempt to not age gracefully. I want to age awesomely. So hopefully this brings a little bit of value to you guys, gives a little bit clarity into what I’m doing. Maybe it can implement into your life and help take you just like one small step closer to your greatness.
Anthony Vicino [00:12:40]:
So thank you, as always, for being here, guys. Appreciate you. We’ll catch you back here tomorrow. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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