We rely on coffee to start our day, and to function with a decent productivity. Take away the coffee and the world will collapse. Let’s face it, it’s almost impossible to focus throughout the day without our daily dose of caffeine.
Almost two thirds of the Americans drink at least one cup of coffee each day – according to a survey commissioned by the National Coffee Association. This is why coffee is a $36 billion industry.
But coffee has its own shortcomings, and on its own coffee might not be able to give you the boost you need. This is why people have tried various ways to make coffee more efficient and reduce its side effects. The best way to achieve that is to combine coffee with nootropics.
Nootropics can reduce or eliminate some of the side effects of caffeine, the active compound in your cup of joe. But equally important, it can also enhance some of the caffeine’s benefits, as well as provide their own added benefits. When combined, coffee and nootropics can create a synergy that will enhance the benefits of consuming coffee.
In this article we will explain what are nootropics, and why you should add them to your daily cup of joe. We will also show you the most popular and effective coffee and nootropic stacks.
Nootropics: What Are They?
Nootropics range from supplements to drugs that improve cognition. Commonly referred to as “smart drugs,” nootropics are designed to enhance executive functions like memory, motivation, and creativity in healthy people.
The word nootropic was borrowed from the Ancient Greek: nóos meaning “mind” and trop* meaning “turning”. The term was coined in 1972 by Corneliu Giurgea, a Romanian psychologist and chemist.
A nootropic is a substance that supports and improves cognitive performance safely, without major side effects.
Smart drugs, also called nootropics, have been around for thousands of years even if you haven’t heard of them before. Nootropics are safe to consume, they have no side effects, and they are not addictive. Quite the contrary, they protect your brain.
You can enhance your coffee with nootropics, creating a synergistic combination that gives you an even bigger cognitive boost.
Synthetic vs Natural Nootropics
Nootropics can be natural or synthetic. Ritalin and Adderall are synthetic compounds, and they are considered nootropics by some. However, these are prescription drugs, they are highly addictive, and they can cause serious problems if abused. However, there are safer synthetic nootropics.
Synthetic Nootropics
The FDA considers all racetams as unapproved new drugs, including aniracetam, piracetam, oxiracetam, pramiracetam, and phenylpiracetam. Although they are not illegal, they cannot be sold as dietary supplements.
The term nootropic was coined after piracetam was discovered to exhibit cognitive enhancement properties in the 1970s.
It is possible to buy synthetic piracetams online, but they can have a lot of side effects, and if you absolutely must try them, you should do thorough research. Results vary, and the side effects can be severe for some users. For both enhancing benefits and reducing side effects, racetams are often combined with other nootropics, such as choline.
Natural Nootropics
Natural nootropics can be teas, herbal supplements, or extracts. Some of the natural nootropics include L-Theanine, Ginseng, Rhodiola Rosea, Maca, Bacopa Monieri, Gingko Biloba, taurine, and mushroom extracts.
Many of these natural nootropics are potent, and extremely safe, though some of them can get pretty expensive.
What Is a Nootropic Stack?
Nootropic manufacturers combine various nootropics in a stack and sell them as supplements. Nootropic supplements are more powerful and and have more benefits than individual nootropics.
Nootropics are legal. Since they are meant to be safe and non-addictive, they can be bought over the counter. So if a substance is not sold over the counter, it doesn’t qualify as a nootropic.
Now that we knw what nootropics are, let’s see now how nootropics and coffee can improve your mood and productivity.
Is Coffee a Nootropic?
We all look at coffee as a nootropic, and let’s be honest, it really is awesome. Loaded with antioxidants and giving us a boost from caffeine, it sounds like a no brainer. But let’s dig a little deeper and see if our intuition is accurate.
Is Coffee a Nootropic?
We all look at coffee as a nootropic, and let’s be honest, it really is awesome. Loaded with antioxidants and giving us a boost from caffeine, it sounds like a no brainer. But let’s dig a little deeper and see if our intuition is accurate.
Corneliu E. Giurgea, outlined these requirements for a substance to be considered nootropic:
- Enhance the memory and learning process
- Enhance resistance of learned behaviors to conditions that disrupt them
- Protect the brain from physical and chemical damage
- Enhance the effectiveness of the tonic cortical and subcortical control mechanisms
- Have minimal side effects, or none at all, and to be non-sedative
Conclusion: caffeine and coffee by extension are not nootropics.
Caffeine does not improve memory or learning consistently. It does not protect the brain from injury. It is also toxic at high doses, and can result in acute toxicity and even death if misused.
Some might argue that it’s the dose that makes the poison. That is partly true. However, good nootropics are more effective than caffeine. They are more effective without any of the side effects of caffeine:
Then, should we stop drinking coffee then? Of course not. Yes, coffee can help with deadlines, but it does so by putting a lot of stress on our minds and bodies. A caffeine break from time to time is fantastic, because it allows you to rest, and break the stress cycle. But what if we could eliminate this need to reboot with a coffee break?
Enter NOOTROPICS. When we combine coffee and a nootropic, we use our rest time more efficiently, and we also mitigate some of the caffeine side effects. A great example of this synergistic action between coffee and a nootropic is the coffee – L-Theanine stack.
Nootropics Benefits
Here is a list of nootropics benefits. A particular nootropic will only have some of the listed benefits. So when you combine it with other nootropics, you gain most benefits.
- Adaptogenic
- Enhance brain performance
- Boost energy levels
- Improve your memory
- Increase your concentration and attention
- Increase your productivity
- Motivate and focus during physical exercise
- Reduce the effects of physical and mental stress
- Boost the learning process
- Improve mood
- Boost your creativity
- Brain chemicals are regulated
- Focused relaxation
- Increasing cerebral blood flow
- Boost the regeneration of brain cells
Short-term benefits of Nootropics:
You can benefit immediately from nootropics just as you can from coffee. This is encouraging and rewarding for people who are looking for fast results.
For students that need to improve exam studying, or for employees that are crunching deadlines, here are some of the cognitive benefits of nootropics:
Short-term memory, focus, improves stress resistance improvement, and improvement of other factors that help with productivity, competition, deadlines, and exams.
Nootropics Long-term benefits:
Remember: crunching deadlines and heavy partying don’t last forever. However, for those who look for long term benefits, nootropics help your brain stay young longer, and here is how it does so.
Supports brain health and functioning throughout life, including memory, age-related cognitive decline, depression, and mental clarity.
Coffee Benefits
Coffee and Nootropics both boosts productivity and enhance mood, but they differ in their effects as well as how they affect our cognitive abilities.
But lets take a look at coffee as a nootropic, and I’ll show you that coffee is so much more than caffeine.
Caffeine versus Coffee
We mention “caffeine” throughout the article as caffeine is the active compound in coffee. But I strongly recommend against caffeine tablets or caffeine powder. Coffee is a mix of antioxidants and polyphenols that act synergistically together with caffeine. So reducing coffee to a single compound is just simplistic and wrong. Coffee is the main source of antioxidants in many people’s diets.
Caffeine, on the other hand, is just a stimulant. As a stimulant, caffeine is extracted from coffee and added to energy drinks and sodas for an extra kick. However, the rest of the compounds are not available when you isolate caffeine alone. If you don’t have underlying health problems, even the terpenes kahweol and cafestol are beneficial for you.
Coffee Benefits
To get back on topic, here are some coffee benefits.
- Increase your brain’s energy
- Enhance cognitive function,
- Analgesic properties
- Mood and memory are improved
- Boost antioxidant activity
- Neurotransmitter modulation
- Manage cerebral blood flow
- Enhance your physical performance
- Reduce mental fatigue
Coffee is not a nootropic, so it has some downsides. Here are some of them:
Coffee Side Effects
- Crash potential
- Caffeine addiction or dependence
- Indirect influences influence cognition
- Increased risk of acute coronary events
- Too much coffee may cause tachycardia, palpitations, and elevated blood pressure
- Withdrawal symptoms (tiredness, apathy, weakness, drowsiness, headaches, anxiety, decreased motor behavior, increased heart rate, increased muscle tension, and occasionally tremor, nausea, and vomiting)
- Sleep may be affected by coffee consumption
Nootropic Coffee Stacks
We looked at how nootropics and coffee are beneficial on their own. Let’s see now how they can interact and produce the synergistic effect that we discussed at the beginning of the article.
As with any stimulant, there is a fine line between consumption and abuse. That last cup of the day seems to be almost always a bit too much. Caffeine tolerance is not the same for everyone, and it depends on: genetics, diet, how much sleep you had the night before, etc.
As a stimulant, coffee will affect your sleep pattern. You can’t override a sleepless night by drinking more coffee. As you start to drink more coffee, you build a tolerance to it. The more coffee you drink, the less effective will be. Then you’ll have to increase the dose, which in turn will disturb your sleep pattern even more. Your body will not cover optimally and the regimen will not be sustainable.
By combining coffee and nootropics, we enhance the effects of coffee, boost mental processing, and mitigate most of the side effect of caffeine. Imagine be able to drink the same amount of coffee and sleep and rest 2 times better.
Coffee and L-Theanine
A simple coffee stack is caffeine and as L-theanine, to mitigate sleep disruption issues. The combination of caffeine and L-theanine is probably the most popular nootropic combination.
Offers the benefits of caffeine and it mitigates sleep loss. It also eliminates the jitteriness that caffeine causes. L-Theanine is an amino acid extracted from tea. L-theanine is the reason black tea doesn’t make you jittery or disrupt your sleep. L-Theanine causes dizziness for a small number of people.
Bulletproof Coffee
A very popular caffeine stack is MCT oil and coffee. This combo was popularized by Dave Asprey as the Bulletproof coffee. Bulletproof coffee is not strictly a nootropic stack, but it does provide mental clarity and energy. MCT oil, is a fatty acid extracted from coconut oil.
Bulletproof coffee has been reported to have helped a lot of people with brain fog. This is probably because low calorie coffee and high fat MCT oil keep your body in ketosis. The bulletproof method requires you to only have coffee and MCT oil for the whole morning. MCT oil is a fat and taken with coffee will slow down the absorption of caffeine. The slower absorption will reduce the jitters and the afternoon crash.
The 5 Hour Energy Formula
The 5 Hour Energy formula, a popular energy drink, contains caffeine, L-tyrosine, and B vitamins (B12 and B6). I hate most energy drinks, some of them are pure evil. However, 5 Hour Energy contains nootropics not caffeine and sugar.
CILTEP
CILTEP is a popular stack created by the biohacking community and popularized by Abelard Lindsay. It contains forskolin, acetyl-l-carnitine, l-phenylalanine, and vitamin B6.
The CILTEP formula is designed to improve mental performance, by inducing Long-Term Potentiation, which is a long-lasting strengthening of synapses that is based on recent patterns of activity. Basically, it helps us learn better.
Because CILTEP improves signaling between brain cells, the benefits are beyond memory only, with effects on deep concentration and focus. CILTEP works great with coffee. Natural Stacks have their Neurofuel supplement which is based on CILTEP. Use this coupon code to receive a surprise discount on Neurofuel or any of their other stacks: COFFEE-BREWING-METHODS
Mushroom Coffee
Mushroom coffee is probably one of the most aggressively marketed smart coffees. Despite that, the mushroom coffee works! Not only they mitigate caffeine negative side effects , but mushroom extracts have cognitive-enhancing properties, so they complement caffeine. The result is heightened focus, improved memory, and increased energy. All of these with a grounded attitude and no sleeping problems. Some of the best mushroom extracts are: Lions Mane (Hericeum erinaceus), Chaga (Inotus obliquus), Cordyceps (Cordyceps sinensis), Turkey tail.
Video 5 Nootropics You can Buy at Your Pharmacy Today
Is a Coffee Stack the NZT Version from Limitless?
I don’t think you should be using nootropics on a regular basis. Our bodies need a break. We are not built to sustain the fast pace we of the modern life long term.
Nootropics are legal, but that doesn’t mean they are 100% safe. Ask medical advice as you would for any new substances.
Taking a break from coffee once a year, will help you more in the long run.