← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
Dave Solo Pod: The Original Smart Drug Masterclass : 1518
00:41:29
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Picture a molecule so unusual, scientists had to invent a new word for it, something that was invented back in the 60s, but no one knew about it. This molecule got me through my career in Silicon Valley and through Wharton Business School, even though no one else was using it. 60 years later, people still take it, including me, for memory, for focus, for creativity, and for mental endurance. And it isn't very potent by weight, definitely not a stimulant, so you have to take a good amount of it. In fact, typical dosing is between about 1 and a half and up to 5 grams per day in divided doses. Because it's the most studied is the safest. People who've had stroke or dementia, neurologists are using it, rehab physicians, air traffic controllers, and anyone who's got an aging brain and wants it to keep working. It's not a sedative, it's not a classic stimulant. It doesn't flood your dopamine, it doesn't increase your heart rate, and it seems to subtly change how your brain learns. And that molecule is called. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Every week, someone asks me, what's the best peptide? There isn't one. Peptides are signals. Different peptides send different instructions to your body. Some affect metabolism. Some are for tissue repair. Others influence your brain recovery or aging pathways. The right peptide depends on what you're trying to change and what the research shows. My new peptide guide explains what the major peptides do, where the evidence is strong, and what to know. If you're just getting started, whether you're a peptide veteran or a total newbie, there's something for you. Download it free at daveasprey.com peptide guide lemonade multi pet discounts are way better than multi pet group chats. Hey, it's Bubbles.
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Your cat.
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Your idiot dog, Jingles just barfed up a sock puppet. Hey, it's Jingles. I'm fine. Just that stupid sock was looking at me. Fun. Oh, he's doing it again. Jingles. He ate it again and puked it up again. He might need a vet. Yeah, I might need a vet. With Lemonade Pet insurance, you save 10% per policy when you protect multiple pets. Get a quote@lemonade.com pet picture a molecule so unusual, scientists had to invent a new word for it. Something that was invented back in the 60s, but no one knew about it. While this molecule got me through my career in Silicon Valley and through Wharton Business School, even though no one else was using it, it's Not a sedative. It's not a classic stimulant. It doesn't flood your dopamine, it doesn't increase your heart rate. And it seems to subtly change how your brain learns and how it adapts and how it recovers. It's neuroprotective, even. And that molecule is called Piracetam. It is the original nootropic, and it is the single molecule that launched the smart drug movement. Sixty years later, people still take it, including me, for memory, for focus, for creativity, and for mental endurance. And there's a really weird paradox. Decades of data. But the community of biohackers out there still splits into true believers versus total skeptics. But after 60 years, there's plenty of data to say the skeptics may not feel it themselves, but that there's something going on. So there's a better question than do racetams work? It's what kind of brain do they work in and when? And what do they actually change in the brain? And where are the claims? A little too big? Well, there's a little story as we get into Piracetam. I ordered my first box of Piracetam, made by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Europe back in the late 90s, because my brain was cooked. And I eagerly opened the box and I took it. I took it every day for a week. And I thought to myself, I just wasted a lot of money. Nothing happened. So I stopped. And the day I stopped, I noticed I was having a hard time remembering things. I was grasping for words. And I realized, wow, all week when I was on Piracetam, my brain just flowed. It was effortless. So a lot of people, when you take a subtle nootropic like this, because it's not ampy, you just feel more like yourself. Unless you have cultivated a lot of inner awareness, you're not going to notice. But you'll notice the lack of it, because when things are smooth, they're smooth. When they're just a little rougher, you notice the lack of smoothness, but you might not notice the improvement right away. I've been on something in the Roustan family almost every single day for 25 years. And it's one of the reasons that I can be the leader of the biohacking movement. With eight companies, I've done a billion dollars in revenue, and I'm happy and I'm not stressed because my brain works at levels I never would have imagined. This isn't the only reason by far, but it's one of them. In this video you're going to learn where racetams came from and why the existence of this medicine forced a rethink of cognitive enhancement in the world. Even a new word, how racetams affect acetylcholine and glutamate and the membranes in your brain and even blood flow. I'll teach about the five big racetams and what people are doing for dosing these days. Who benefits versus who probably doesn't benefit, how to stack them if you're going to do it yourself, and regulatory reality and sourcing risk. Because not everything is as it seems. We'll talk about starter protocols and where you should put racetams in your own hierarchy of upgrades of cognitive function. They're probably not the first thing you should do. And a little nuance on the changes in what Rastams do based on how old you are. Back in the 1960s, a guy named Corneliu Georgea at UCB in Belgium was looking at GABA related molecules and he was trying to find a new sedative for the drug industry. And as you may recall if you listen to my videos, GABA is a common amino acid that's also neurotransmitter. You want more of it to chill, more of it for sleep, and more of it if you're stressed. Problem is, piracetam didn't behave right because it affects learning and brain function. But it doesn't sedate or stimulate. And the scientist, after a lot of examination said we need a new name for this category of drug and he coined the term nootropic which we all use today and it means mind plus bending or shaping. So this is a mind bending or mind shaping being pharmaceutical. And here's the original list of what makes something a nootropic. It needs to enhance either learning or memory. It should increase your brain's resistance to disruption. It should protect your brain from some types of injury or chemical stressors. It should improve higher order control and it should have low toxicity or other psychoactive effects. So if LSD did all this stuff but you were tripping balls all day, well that might not be a nootropic, but microdosing it could be. Now that definition, I like it, but it's way stricter than the way marketing companies will throw the word nootropic around. Reddit often calls caffeine stacks and Adderall nootropics. Gojea meant something that made your brain function better and protected it. So I do not believe that caffeine or certainly amphetamines are nootropics they're just stimulants. And nootropics are not stimulants by definition, but you may benefit from stimulants as well. Now, the original Racetams weren't built for you to study, although they sure worked for that. For me, they were built for neurological use and clinical use, which is why the first ones launched back in the 70s were made by Big Pharma and the Silicon Valley. Smart drug identity arrived later largely in part to my friend and mentor Steve Fowkes, who was one of the big voices and wrote the Smart Drug News Actual newsletter throughout the 80s and 90s and taught me a lot about this stuff, which is why I can share with you today. Thank you, Steve. And yes, Steve's been on the show. So what is a racetam? It's a synthetic compound that has a pyrilodone ring which is a chemical signature of all Racetams. They're cyclical derivatives of gaba. So they're related structurally to gaba, but they don't actually hit the GABA receptors. So chemically related, but functionally unrelated. And that's why they were such weird drugs and why even today we don't quite know all of the reasons they do what they do and it benefits or and it helps that they're small molecules that go into the brain easily. One of my favorite tweaks to the original piracetam was adding a fat soluble group which makes it into aniracetam, which is the only one that increases memory. IO that's the one that I take almost every single day and sometimes others. The ampiest of them is when you add a phenyl group called phenylpiracetam which goes into the blood brain barrier faster and you feel like you're on a stimulant because it really does act that way. The Racetam backbone also shows up in some anticonvulsants like Levitaracetam and Brivaracetam. It's the same ring, totally different mechanism. Those aren't things you would take for studying. But there are some very interesting derivatives of the Racetams that we're using in the nootropic community. So here's the difference between a nootropic racetam and a conventional stimulant. Stimulants, huge shifts in dopamine and norepinephrine and global arousal in the brain. Racetams, they have very weak affinity for the receptors that you would normally hit with sedatives or stimulants or opioids or benzos and rastams work because they change the efficiency of signals you already have. They don't just pound on the receptor the way that some of these more powerful psychiatric drugs do. Or you can think of it like this. A stimulant is stepping harder on the gas in your car, but a racetam tunes the engine and the wiring so that there's just less friction and the car goes faster. So think of it like a tuning fork. And that's why subjectively I missed the effects the first time I took it, because they were subtle. And if you're super healthy, you may not really notice it, even though you're getting neuroprotection from it. Next, let's get into how ras attempts work. What are the mechanisms? And I won't get too nerdy on you here, but I am going to talk about neurotransmitters because many people at this point have heard of things like acetylcholine and dopamine or gaba. So I'll reference those, but we won't go too far into biochemistry because I think you would get bored. And I want you to stick around to the end because there's a lot of knowledge and this is knowledge that actually changed my life. I think it's helpful for you. So acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that is the core messenger for attention, forming memories and for processing the world around you. Sensory processing. And some of the racetams push your brain to lean harder on acetylcholine so you don't have to necessarily add more acetylcholine like you could with a common nootropic formula that contains any of the cholines like CDP choline. But if you're leaning harder on that, you might want to. And then there's Pramaracetam. This one helps memory related regions pull in choline faster. Think of it like maybe a supercharger lets you pull oxygen in faster to a supercharged engine. The first time I took Pramoracetam, I remember very, very well because it was before a think tank put on by a large Silicon Valley vc, the Mayfield Fund. And we were meeting in Pebble Beach. I was at least 20 years younger than everyone else in the room, but I was an expert in data centers. But I took Pramoracetam. My brain was so smooth and so fast. I think I talked a little bit more than I should have. But I just remember going, man, everything is just right here. And as far as I can tell, they liked me because I ended up being on an advisory board, but that was. That was rocket fuel. And it's really important to understand that Rosinibs aren't making acetylcholine in your brain. They increase demand on the system that makes it and uses it. So especially if you're over about 35, you might want to take more choline donors. But if you're young, you may not need them, and you're going to have to test yourself. Some people will take choline from egg yolks and alpha gpc, and my favorite is citicoline or CDP choline. So if you take those and you're young, you may get jaw tension and muscle tension because you already have enough acetylcholine. Too much acetylcholine equals like, like clenching of your muscles. And on Reddit, you'll hear people say, oh, if you get headaches from acetam, it's because you're out of choline. That's probably the case. It isn't proven in a study. But it's funny how things can be true even without studies, because we have this other form of evidence called observational or clinical evidence. So if a bunch of people say, I got a headache from Racetam, I took some alpha GPC and it went away, that's good enough for me. And best practice, try taking with alpha gpc. If you don't get muscle tension, you probably needed it. Now, the next thing that Rastams do is they change your glutamate and AMPA signaling. Now, I'll tell you what that means. Glutamate is really important. It's the main go signal in your brain. In fact, if you've ever heard of monosodium glutamate that turns the go signal on so fast, a lot of people get migraines from it. But you need glutamate working in the brain, or your brain just won't go. And the AMPA receptors are, think of it, the things that catch the signal. So if you get a clean handoff of glutamate, the AMPA receptors are going to be happier. And what aniracetam and the other drugs like it do is they keep those AMPA receptors responsive longer so that they can take better advantage of energy in the brain. Or you can think of it like this. Glutamate's a key, and the AMPA receptor is a door. And. And Racetam oils the hinges and the lock, so the key just slides right in. And learning happens when neurons strengthen connections. So if you have a better handoff of glutamate to ampa, you get more plasticity and you can learn better. Very, very different from root stimulation. And you can think of stimulating everything in your brain as adding random noise. And what you want to do is turn up the music, not the sound of the crowd. That's what we're doing here. Now. It gets really interesting when we look at the next mechanism of these nootropics. And it has to do with membranes and mitochondria and blood flow. And if you've been following me for a while, you know that I'm all about membranes and mitochondria. They're at the core of biohacking. Neurons inside your brain actually have their own membrane. And the function of their receptors depends on how flexible that membrane is. So if your neurons have a flexible membrane, then they can plug into everything. But if they had a rigid membrane, they'd be kind of locked in and aging and stress stiffen membranes. Think of it like aging skin or stiff arteries. And if you've read Superhuman, my New York Times best selling longevity book, I talked about cellular stiffening as one of the big pillars of aging. While here it's happening inside your neurons, you don't want that. So piracetam very likely improves membrane fluidity. It gives you better receptor function, and that means more resilient cells. It also improves microcirculation, which is small vessel blood flow. And it lets cells move more easily through capillaries. And that's going to change how you feel in a major way. Because if your cells can't get to micro capillaries in your brain, you're likely going to have brain inflammation and brain fog. Think of it like water versus cold molasses. So if you have a stiff membrane or sluggish microcirculation, everything inside has to push hard to get anything done. And why would racetams work better in brains that have a problem? It's because young, healthy neurons haven't had time to get stiff. They already have flexible membranes and good flow and they haven't had a chance to age yet. But if you took a young brain, put it on racetams, would it age less because it was less subject to insults? I think so. Now there are some studies that support what I just said. Lunar et Al in 2010 in Frontiers in Neuroscience showed specifically that piracetam improves mitochondrial mitochondrial function. They were looking at aging and Alzheimer's affected brain tissue, and that's a big deal. If you read Head Strong, my New York Times best selling book about cognitive function, that was sandwiched on the science list between Homo deuce and sapiens. Yes, I was the meat in the sandwich, which was kind of funny given that I used to be a vegan. Anyway, that book I talked about specifically Alzheimer's and mitochondria and what you could do about it. And since then the research has been profound about it. This is one of the first papers and it showed piracetam does do that. And if I had Alzheimer's or some of my family did, would I give them P. Yeah. Would I give it to them if they didn't have Alzheimer's? Yeah. Then about six years later, Stockburger et al improved on the study and they linked that earlier mitochondrial effects to measurable improvements in neuroplasticity and mitochondrial movement and division. And if you have looked at what mitochondria do, they're this vibrant community immunity. And especially in neurons, the brain will shuttle them around. Think of if you go to a big concert, there's a whole row of big generator trailers to make extra power. Well, your brain does that. So mitochondria can move around to be power generators when you need extra power. Perazztan helps with that. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. This episode is brought to you by ALP Drifters, the newest line from ALP nicotine pouches. These are tobacco free. They're flavorful pouches. 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And Peak is really serious when it comes to sourcing, which is why I like them. Peak exists because their team spent years traveling the world to some of the most pristine environments to source clean ingredients. And nadhaka makes you feel good after you drink it, and it tastes good. So if you're looking for something new that actually works for your morning ritual, give it a shot. Head on over to peaklife.com Dave they'll give you 20% off your order. That's P I Q U E-Life.com Dave now, there's five main racetams and a bunch of small ones that people use experimentally. But let's go through the big ones. Piracetam is the oldest, it's the original. It is the most studied cognitive racetam and it isn't very potent by weight, definitely not a stimulant, so you have to take a good amount of it. In fact, typical dosing is between about 1 1/2 and up to 5 grams per day. In divided doses, that's a really big window to go from about 2 to about 5. So what do you do? Well, you start low and go bigger. And if you get a headache or something, take more of the acetylcholine donors and see how it works. You may find that either you're overstimulated even though it's not a stimulant, or you may find that everyone around you is acting really, really slow and stupid. That's not the case. It's that you're faster and you need to work on being more patient. Racetams will make you more of what you are. If you're a dick, they'll make you a big dick. So be warned. Now, if we look at the studies and keep in mind, I've been mentored by one of the fathers of nootropics, and these things absolutely work. We understand mechanistically how they work, but clinical studies can add some interesting data. So in a 2002 meta analysis of 19 double blind placebo controlled trials of piracetam looking at almost 1500 older adults with cognitive impairment, they took between 2.4 and 8 grams a day, and there was a statistically significant improvement. That is meaningful, especially because we can observe it in ourselves and we have some mechanisms for what it does. But a newer Meta analysis in 2024 of only 18 studies and half as many patients only looked at memory, and it found that process didn't help with memory. And they said that there was massive inconsistency in the underlying studies because the trials disagreed wildly. So I don't think there's a lot to be learned from that other than that we could handle some more research on the whole Rastan family. But given that most of them are not patentable, I'm not going to count on that happening anytime soon. But something else did come out in 2016 that's useful by Zhang et al. And it was published in a journal called CNS Drugs. And this was a systematic review that found piracetam specifically helped for a after stroke. Now, this is how I use the Racetam family. Whenever I go in for a procedure where I am going to be put under sedation, I always take either piracetam or aniracetam because it's neuroprotective and protecting your brain when you may have low oxygen or you may have micro strokes, which do happen from general anesthesia and procedures, that would be a good idea. Now, if you're going to do that, you really should tell your anesthesiologist. Your anesthesiologist will know nothing about these drugs and will probably tell you not to do it. So then my advice would be do it your anesthesiologist says, or do what you think is best. I always tell them I'm doing it and it's not up to you. You can do the research if you want to. It's not going to affect what your drugs do. If not, you're a pro. And then they are. They've always been willing to work with me on it. So the protection post stroke is very important though. So if you know someone who just had a stroke or is having a stroke, I would literally pound the prostate during the stroke. But ideally you're on it before the stroke. If you're an athlete who gets hit in the head, you should be on this before you get hit in the head. I have no idea if these things are WADA listed. If they are WADA listed, it simply means that they work. The World Anti Doping Authority is actually anti human and we need to crush them and put them out of business so our professional athletes can maintain their health, their brains and their hormones and practice longevity principles as long as they tell us what they do. The next one of the Rastatams is my all time favorite. It's aniracetam and you could just say this is the AMPA one because it's more focused on ampa. It's fat soluble and it is shorter, acting only like about four hours. And it touches on your glutamate system, your acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin. So you get actually an anti stress effect. It affects your mood, just gently and it's about 750 to 1500 milligrams a day. It helps to have it maybe with danger coffee with some butter put in it. So you just any kind of fat or fat containing meal helps it enter the system. I do 1500 milligrams in the morning, and then my morning is awesome. And if I was going to do something really cognitively intensive, I would do it again at lunch. People on Reddit and similar people in the community will tell you creativity, social ease, reduced anxiety, big picture thinking. You guys kind of noticed any of those things in me. 25 years of aniracetam does things now, the things about mood and anxiety. It's mostly studies on animals, but the human data says it's about helping cognitive impairment. The next racetam you may hear about is called oxaracetam. Think of it as the analytical racetam. It's related to piracetam, but people will say it's more activating. And people take about 800 milligrams once or twice a day. And it has a reputation in the nootropic community for logical or structured work, like writing code for concentration, for mental stamina. And there are a few human trials in cognitive impairment and less research on it in general. And it seems to help animals with mood and anxiety. I've used oxiracetam a few times, and I just don't like it as much as I like aniracetam or pramaracetam. Or my favorite for energy, which would be phenylpiracetam. Speaking of pramaracetam, this is something you could call the memory specialist because it's much more potent by weight than piracetam and it has a really strong affinity for choline uptake. So if you want to get choline into your cells, which you do, then you should be using this. And they studied it in people with memory issues after a brain injury. I've had two substantial TBIs, and I think it helped me. Or after oxygen deprivation, which a lot of us have, if we fly anyway. And the dosing there is about 400 to 1,200 milligrams a day. And I'm actually ser about that. If you fly, you probably should be oniracetam. I always take one of them, usually aniracetam, because if I'm going to be in the air with a little bit of hypoxia, I think my brain would benefit from having protection from that. Then we have phenylpiracetam. This is kind of the big gun, the outlier. It's the only one with a phenyl group and is very activating alertness, motivated focus, tolerance of cold endurance. This is one where very few people feel nothing. You only take 100 to 200 milligrams once or twice a day. You can build tolerance quickly. So going on and off of it matters. It's not a daily driver. And in the world of nootropics, people say, amazing focus. You can tolerate harsh conditions. You've got endurance. And the World Anti Doping Authority definitely says this one works because it's on their list as performance enhancing. And again, WADA is the guide to what works and what doesn't work. The fact they don't want you to use it is just because they hate you. Now, am I on phenopalostatom right now? I'm actually not. I might use it once or twice a week. It's pretty ampy. And a word of warning, if you have ever watched any of my psychedelic videos, you know that the Beyond Conference just purchased Wonderland, which is the second largest psychedelic conference in the US and this year we have Rick Doblin and Paul Stamets and Dave Rabin as speakers. So I'm a fan of psychedelics for cognitive enhancement and spiritual growth and trauma resolution and things like that. Do not mix phenylpiracetam with LSD or mushrooms, because you're probably not gonna have a good trip. Phenopiracetam is just too focusing in order to allow you to go into the space you need to go into. You will have a hard time surrendering into the psychedelic if you're on simultaneously a drug that makes you alert with motivated focus. They're opposite state, opposite states. So don't make that mistake. Take it from someone who has now who's actually using racetams and why. And Piracetam, because it's the most studied, is the safest. People who've had stroke or dementia, neurologists are using it, rehab physicians, air traffic controllers, and anyone who's got an aging brain and wants it to keep working. And a note on physicians using it. If your physician knows about Piracetam, you should shake their hand and say, thank you, doctor. That's because none of the main US prescribing lists even recognize that the Racetam family exists. So it's not on DailyMeds approved drug labels. It's not the orange book, the purple book, the standard PDR listings, none of it. So if your doctor knows your doctor cares enough to go outside the big pharmacy fishbowl that they were educated in, because these drugs are made by big pharmaceutical manufacturers like Sandoz, and they've been around for 60 years, and there's no excuse for them not being part of standard available tools in the U.S. actually, there is an excuse. It's called corruption and fraud. But that's a different video. Now, let's talk about phenylpiracetam. This is the stimulating one. And I have advised more than one winner of the World Series of Poker. And in fact, I've even trained the brain of one of them at 40 years of Zen. And you need stimulation for that. So phenylpiracetam is perfect for counting cards or for playing poker. If you're a Silicon Valley founder and you've been following me for years, you may already be on phenylpiracetam. For students, it's great, but not every day. If you're a day trader, same thing. Surgeons, anesthesiologists. If you're an endurance athlete or you're going to go do some extra cold therapy, or if you are going to go into a hostile environment with a lot of weapons because you're in the Special Forces, you might want to be on phenylpiracetam also, because you could hit your head or face a lack of oxygen, and this is just going to keep you from getting the same brain injury. And of course, any biohacker, this is on your list. When it comes to oxiracetam, you could try it versus the others. And you may find if you're a software developer or you're playing chess or something, that it helps you on the analytical front. But it's nuanced. And I found that between pramaracetam and phenylpiracetam and aniracetam, I just didn't need oxiracetam. Aniracetam is calming and it's really good for memory IO So if you want to be creative and just remember things better, if you're trying to study, to get new stuff in, or just to be able to recall and plumb the depths, what do you think I can do? Some of what I can do? Well, it's a combination of brain training, hardware upgrades and nootropics. So writers, journalists, public speakers and professionals. That's a lot of my life. And Pramoracetam, if you hit your head or had a stroke, look at that one. So will these actually work for you? Who benefits from the Racetam family? And you can't just say, does this improve cognition or cognitive function? So you gotta break it down into what does it actually do? Because maybe that's what you need. Maybe you don't. There's really good data around dementia, vascular improvement and brain injuries or hypoxia or stroke or aphasia, vertigo, or sometimes anything where there's a deficit in cognitive function. So piracetam and dementia has a mixed picture. And in 2002 there was a meta analysis and the aphasia review, and what I would say then is give it a try. It's unlikely to cause harm. And the only notable side effect, other than depleting your acetylcholine stores possibly, is that piracetam can amplify the effects of caffeine. So if you like caffeine. That's tattooed on my arm here. Well, you might like piracetam as well. I do notice an improvement on long research and writing days. It does improve word recall, but not as dramatically as, say, aniracetam would. And phenylperacetam, you feel it within an hour, take it for jet lag. And if you stack it with modafinil and some danger coffee and maybe a milligram of nicotine, you are a great golden in God for a while and you can get it done, and you get it done with precision and excellence and not suffer it while you're doing it. That said, you're still the same person. It's not psychedelic or anything like that. And how are you going to know if it's really working for you? Well, if it's female prastam, you'll know because most people feel that one. So what you could do is you could look at how easy was it to recall words when your brain is working right, you should never grasp for a word ever. Now that's a high bar. And I went from 20 or 30 times a day losing my train of thought, grasping for words, not being able to remember things to, yes, this took a lot of work. But if I even forget a word, it doesn't just effortlessly pop in even once a day like, what is going on? And it's usually, I can tell you, oh, that's an effect of something that I ate that created lipopolysaccharides or it's bad sleep, but there's always a reason. So that said, notice what words are easy to come up with, and that's probably going to be your biggest thing. You could also play any kind of video game that you play reliably on your phone. It could be a memory game like Freecell or it doesn't really matter anything that you play regularly and notice shifts in how you function there. And cognition isn't just one thing. You got memory, attention, processing speed, fluency, mood, motivation, and they all kind of interact with each other. So it's messy in there. So if you do something like Freecell that helps with working memory or a game that actually could be cognitive training, you might find something different than a reaction time game. Your hair starts thinning years before you notice it. Biotin, gummies, DHT blockers, scalp massagers, most of them don't actually get to the root cause. It's because age related hair thinning starts with senescent cells, cells, you might know them as zombie cells. And they build up inside your hair follicles. They accumulate, then they send out inflammatory signals and they disrupt your natural hair growth cycle. And then summer makes it worse. UV exposure, heat, sweat, all of it adds stress to your scalp on top of what's already happening underneath. Once again, built something that addresses age related thinning at the source. And it's something that I use and I see a difference from their OS1 peptide, the same that's in their skin. And so sun care products is the first ingredient scientists have proven reduces the biological age of skin, including your scalp. And it does this by targeting the buildup of zombie cells. And of course, it's in their OS1 hair scalp serum. And get this, their studies show 40% more hair density and 43% thicker strands at six months of regular use. And 75% of people notice new hair in about three months. I like using it because, well, it works, but it also goes on like water. It's not sticky, there's no residue. You just put it in after a shower before you dry your hair and it works. It stacks cleanly with anything else you're already doing. It works well for men and women because it's not dealing with dht. And for a limited time you can get OneSkin with 15% off at OneSkin Dot co Dave and after you purchase, tell them the human upgrade sent you. That's 15% off at OneSkin Co Dave. There's a lot of noise in the longevity industry right now and Oneskin is one of the brands that's doing really solid longevity work with clinically proven results. Let's talk about how to stack piracetams. If you're taking a racetam, any of them, you might want to pair it with choline. I didn't need to do this when I was young, but I do it now because, well, I'm still young, but not as young as I was, in case you're wondering. I'm 28% old and I'm going to live to at least 180. You can do the math. At least you can if you're on some kind of racetam family. With choline, you have roughly a 6 to 1 racetam to choln. So that's 300 to 600 milligrams of alpha GPC or 250 to 500 milligrams of citicoline, also known as CDP choline. And just a note, CDP choline is safer, better studied and my go to and alpha GPC is an occasional add on and that's because you can do both. But if you're doing alpha GPC every single day, it can build up in cell membranes. I think they're both good. I just always lean towards citicoline first, but I don't avoid alpha gpc. Now, can you stack racetams, other racetams? Yes, you can. If you were to do that, you would take maybe piracetam as a base and add either aniracetam or oxaracetam. And there are no trials of the combination. I have done it multiple times and it's probably not worth it. Except if you take piracetam or aniracetam and you're tapped out. Maybe you flew around the world and you need to get on stage and it's just not working. Then layer in phenylpiracetam because it's more ampi. Does it make sense to stack rastan with caffeine? Absolutely. It works great. And if you take say more coffee danger coffee than you're used to and you take a higher dose of phenylpiracetam, you may be a little overstimulated. So that's the one where just treat phenylpiracetam a little bit like a stimulant, even though it's not. And should you take Omega 3s with racetams? Meh, Omega 3s. Well, that doesn't really mean anything because there's plant based omega 3s. You take those, they convert at a ratio of 45 to 1 into the good stuff. So should you take racetam with EPA and dha? Well, you should take EPA and DHA without racetam. So of course you should stack them. But I'm not sure it's gonna do much. It might theoretically improve membrane fluidity, but they're a good practice independently. And the deeper into stacking you go, the more variables you have. I take 150 cell bones a day. They're carefully stacked and layered mechanisms based on my genetics based on all the stuff we do with unlimited life, which is a concierge longevity and life extension medical practice that I'm a founder of. So I would just say you probably don't need to stack your racetams. You're better off to look at stacking other nootropics like some of the herbals with your racetams and stacking GPC or CDP choline. I'm not a huge fan of stacking racetams on Racetams. And yes, they do stack well with Modafinil, which I've done other videos on, which is one of my favorite nootropics. Now, a video like this isn't complete without talking about safety of racetams. And Piracetam has decades of clinical use. It's well tolerated by most people. What are the things that people report about Piracetam that aren't good? Headaches, not being able to sleep, agitation, irritability, anxiety, GI symptoms. And a few people get brain fog from Piracetam, which sounds crazy, but it does happen. I think those people actually have underlying brain issues that they need to resolve because it shouldn't do that unless it's unlocking something that let you sense something that you weren't sensing before. You might want to take some extra caution. I don't know if that really means. But hey, that's what all the research shows around kidney dysfunction. There is no load on the kidneys that I've been able to find. But anything that you're taking could have a problem if you have kidney dysfunction. But if you have kidney dysfunction, you probably want your brain to be more protected. So talk to your doctor and if you have something like a seizure disorder, you're on psychiatric medication or any kind of large pharmaceutical stack, pregnancy and breastfeeding or if you're a competitive athlete, you should be on it if you're a competitive athlete. Unless the World Anti Doping Authority has their evil grip on your throat, in which case join the Enhanced Games, of which I'm an advisor, and then you're good to go. And just a quick note about safety in general. The fact that there isn't any good safety data on something doesn't mean it's dangerous, but it doesn't mean it's safe either. And there's a reason it's called Danger Coffee, because who knows what you might do. There's no double blind clinical trial showing that jumping out of a airplane without a parachute is dangerous, but we know it is. So I'm just going to say if there's no mechanistic cause and there's no reports of something that's been around for 60 years. It's probably not that dangerous, but there might be something in there. You decide if all the benefits we just talked about are worth whatever theoretical risk. Risk. I think it is. And I think it's only up to you to choose how much risk you're willing to take for what benefits. It's not your insurance company, it's not your government, it's not your doctor, it's not your mommy, it's not your daddy. It's just you be your own health daddy, especially when it comes to your brain. Now let's talk about the US Regulatory as best as we can tell right now in the US Piracetam is not a scheduled drug. Possession is not criminal, but it's not a priority approved as a dietary supplement or a pharmaceutical. And the FDA has definitely acted against companies that market them that way for quite a while. You could buy them on Amazon and all of a sudden Amazon one day just stopped allowing you to buy them even though possession is not criminal. And you can buy them legally as long as they don't tell you they're going to act as smart drugs or have a medical effect. Now why does this matter? Because it'd be nice if, if you knew that you were getting pharmaceutical grade instead of having to buy them on the gray market. I'm sure there are companies out there selling caffeine pills as Piracetam because, well, there's unethical people out there, although I've never received anything like that. And well, it'd be nice if the jackboot of regulation from the pharmaceutical industry was lifted from the nootropic industry. It's dumb. And some product testing evidence out there which may be real or it could be by people with an agenda who lie because they're rife in the drug industry. They find unapproved drugs or inaccurate quantities or an absence of piracetam, so your mileage may vary. Talk to people in the community. I am not going to tell you where I buy my things because they would get shut down. So sorry guys, and thank you for the companies making good stuff out there. As an example, my friends at Nootropics Depot, well, they were selling these things and they were lab tested. They published the results. So this is a reliable, safe way to buy them. They became the poster child for enforcement under the Biden era FDA administration. And that was a sad day. And they had to pay a very large fine. They almost put them out of business. It's dumb. Like, this is not okay. This isn't how the world works. And in most of the world, this doesn't happen. It's just in the US you can go overseas, go to Mexico, you can buy almost anything you want. It's like they have this weird thing called freedom and they don't even have stars and stripes on their flag. So we gotta fix this problem, guys. And in order to fix it, you might need a working brain, which is why maybe they don't want you to have a working brain. At least you could assume that based on this kind of behavior. So what's a Piracetam or a racetam starter protocol look like? If you just want to be conservative, you just want to get your feet wet. And if you're over 50, seriously, if you're worried that you put your car keys in the fridge for the first time, that's not healthy, it's not normal, and you can do something about it. And the good news is when your brain works better, you actually have less emotional dysregulation too. You just feel like you're more in charge of yourself to be in the driver's seat. So you'd start with Piracetam alone. Don't take a bunch of racetams at the same time. And that's because it's the most conservative with the most safety data, and especially over. I'll call it about 40. Take choline with it. Either have three or four eggs including the yolks, or take CDP, choline or acetylcholine and possibly alpha GPC. Try it for about three weeks. Expect it to be a gradual effect. It's not like having a shot of caffeine. But some people do notice. Oh my God, it was so clear today. If that's you, that's great. And then just track a concrete metric. The easiest thing is, you know, do I forget words? Just take a little note in the back of your mind or even on your phone. I forgot one, I forgot one, I forgot one. And if it happens, it is a symptom. It's almost like limping. It's just limping with your mind. And if after three weeks you feel no change in anything, that means maybe your brain is doing really, really well or you have very little self awareness. But you might not want to put your money behind Piracetam because there's other things you you could do. And once you know what it feels like on Piracetam, try some aniracetam. I find that memory recall is so much better on that stuff. And it's less stressing than even piracetam because it's anti stress. And get yourself a bottle of phenylpiracetam for when you just feel like crap and you're traveling or you just really need to put your brain in go mode. It's good to go. Here's what I really want you to know in this video. Racetams deserve real credit. Invented in the 60s, 60 years of clinical use, millions and millions of people using them. And Piracetam kicked off this idea that cognitive function is something you can change without a stimulant or a sedative. And it built an entire industry. And the descendants of Piracetam opened up things like memory, attention, plasticity, cellular energy, all the different layers that you can pull when you're a biohacker. And maybe the most exciting use case is restoring function when your brain isn't working right, which happened to me very dramatically in my 20s. So start with your fundamentals. Avoid toxins, fix your gut, eat the right foods, and then look at taking some piracetam or something similar. But I do want to share this with you. The biohacking industry is forecast by analysts to be about $200 billion by 2030. Now, it's crazy that this industry started at now it's called the Beyond Conference in San Francisco with 100 people at a conference I started and some posts on my blog and on Twitter back then, $200 billion. But the global nootropic market, which is part of the biohacking market, is somewhere around 5 to 6 billion this year. I think it's a little bit conservative. And if you look at cognitive enhancement, which is more than just nootropics, it's probably 10 to $15 billion, and it's growing between 10 and 17% a year across basically every industry analyst I could find. So one unusual Belgian lab in 1964 made that much change in the world. And if you use nootropics, you are positioning yourself to be the kind of person who has the capability to make that kind of change in the world if you apply yourself consistently over time. And it is easier to apply yourself consistently over time when you're on nootropics and you take care of your biology. And as an example, at 40 years of Zen, I just did the most annoying test ever. It's 14 minutes of staring at a screen and every one second the word no or the word go pops up and you have to click the word go as fast as you can without losing track. And I had a 50% higher reaction time than anyone else my age and I had no decline at all in my reaction time over 14 minutes, which is a sign of cognitive resilience that even a 20 year old doesn't have. And that wasn't natural. That was built by biohacking. And the reason I do these videos for you is because I want you to have a brain that doesn't get tired, that doesn't wear down and lets you pay attention to what you want and makes you very, very difficult to program by bad people who are trying to program all of us. Now I know you learned something about prasadum here. What other nootropic would you like to learn about next? Let me know below. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
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The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and caution that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.