From Wikipedia: “Piracetam (brand name: Nootropil, Qropi, Myocalm, Dinagen, Synaptine) is a nootropic. It is a drug which is claimed to enhance cognition and memory, slow down brain aging, increase blood flow and oxygen to the brain, aid stroke recovery, and improve Alzheimer’s, Down syndrome, dementia, and dyslexia…”
I’ve heard about it, and I can easily find it (it’s NOT a controlled substance; several places that sell vitamins and suplements carry it). I’m curious, but I’d like to hear from anyone who’s actually tried it before I make a purchase.
Did Piracetam usage actually make you feel smarter? Cause a noticable increase in memory? More aware? More creative? Any side effects?
It definitely helps me multitask better. I think it’s the only nootropic that actually works, and I’ve tried 'em all. If you like it, you can buy in bulk from Bulk Nutrition for about $33.00/kilogram.
Nootropics like Piracetam have been shown to be effective in certain cognitive disorders along with a few other specific diseases, but well-designed studies showing effectiveness in ‘cognitive enhancement’ seem to be lacking still.
Well, it’s notoriously hard to even define intelligence, let along measure it on some kind of quantifiable scale.
I’ve been taking it for a while and subjectively, there’s a definite, noticeable difference when on piracetam than when not. It also makes me much more sensitive to caffeine - anecdotal, but there you have it.
I tried it for a few months several years ago (maybe even prompted by this thread). Didn’t seem to do a thing. Caffeine is infinitely more effective as a cognitive enhancer as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I’ll try it again since I have the better part of a kilogram still left.
Piracetam has a history of being used to treat cognitive impairment. According to a meta-analysis on human studies, piracetam improves general cognition when supplemented by people in a state of cognitive decline, such as the kind that comes with aging. Though piracetam may be a useful supplement for improving longevity, it offers limited benefits for healthy people.
Healthy people supplementing piracetam do experience little to no cognitive benefit. Though piracetam supplementation in healthy people is understudied, preliminary evidence suggests that piracetam is most effective for older people.
IIRC, that’s pretty much where the science was at when I last tried it. But it appears to be an extremely safe supplement and so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. No, I’m not going to speedball it with ketamine.
I do think my memory has degraded ever so slightly in the past year. Most likely, this is due to working from home, the attendant lack of conversation, and therefore a reduction in memory reinforcement. Hard to say. Might worth trying again, just to see.
As is generally the case with supplements touted to have health benefits (in comparison to drugs), there are problems with lack of solid clinical trial evidence and the potential for poor correlation between what the label says and what’s actually in there.
A neurologist notes:
“The primary plausibility problem with the PIED category of drugs is that they are further extrapolating from data in disease states to the enhancement of otherwise healthy function. Just because a drug may enhance memory function in someone with Alzheimer’s disease, that does not mean it will enhance memory function to supernormal in a healthy individual.”