I’m not seeking medical advice. Just today I asked my PCP about them and she essentially said maybe they work, maybe not, and she had no objection to me trying some. Of course, the ads on TV make them seem like miracle drugs, tho I never got the connection between jellyfish and memory.
So I ask here - have any of you used any of the various products that are supposed to improve memory/concentration/whatever? Were they effective or just snake oil?
I could make a joke here about wanting to ask something else but forgetting what it was, but I won’t do that. It’s too easy…
Quick way to find out? Ask doctors if they are taking them. Your doctors, not the doctors selling them, I mean.
They can hurt if they are in untested dosages, or are untested pharmaceutically active chemicals or they lead to you not taking in a food or drug that is beneficial or not following good, preventative habits. Shoot, they can hurt just your pocketbook, taking money that could be used for nutritious food or tai chi lessons.
I know the neurology trained one in my family isn’t and they haven’t suggested that I take them, beyond a run-of-the-mill multivitamin for seniors.
I have not tried them. I’m not sure I would be able to tell if they were effective or not. Would I have fewer “why did I come into this room?” moments? How would I quantify that? I notice the times I can’t think of a certain word when I want to use it; I don’t notice all the times I do think of the word I want without any trouble.
To me if a doctor says they have no objection to me taking some new supplement, it is code for “it won’t hurt you, probably because it doesn’t do anything at all except reduce the size of your bank account.”
That’s kinda the feeling I have - as if she didn’t want to laugh in my face for suggesting it, just in case I was really serious. I just seriously wonder if any of them do anything of value. I don’t personally know anyone who uses any of them, which is why I asked here.
She did mention Vitamin B in passing, but not like a recommendation.
I’m definitely not champing at the bit to pop more pills…
They both do something that various suppliments and snake oils falsely promised for centuries. If Prevage or any of the others actually worked, you’d know all about it.
My father was on a trial for a memory drug for his dementia (Alzheimer’s). The trial was stopped because they weren’t seeing hoped-for measurable results with any of the patients. This was about 14 years ago.
I tried ginkgo biloba a few years ago when I was acting in a Shakespeare play and had a lot of lines to memorize.
I don’t think it helped. It did not make the memorization process any quicker or easier. I remembered all my lines on stage, but it’s extremely rare for me to drop a line anyway.
I’ve taken several different nootropics, some for a couple of months at a time. Some had small transient effects, some had no effect, some had unwanted side effects.
I wouldn’t recommend any of them to anyone.
What’s unexpectedly made a big difference to my short-term memory is a low FODMAP diet.
This is a medically recommended diet for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but it may not make a difference to people without IBS. On the other hand you may not know you have IBS.
It’s made a real difference to both my energy levels and my memory.
You can find people on the Dope (or anywhere) who will give positive testimonials for just about anything. Anecdotes such as these are basically worthless, but there’s a human compulsion to seek them out (I’d point to past threads along similar lines but I can’t remember what they were about).
Best to rely on good, reproducible science, and not a crummy observational study that appeared in a predatory open-access journal and is endlessly hyped by the company marketing the alleged memory aid.
Bottom line is that memory supplements don’t have proven value.
Oh, and the fact that docs are taking a supplement doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t fooling themselves.
I just read an abstract of a paper (low-quality evidence) suggesting that blueberry supplementation may help memory in older adults. Oddly enough, I was eating blueberries at the time. Better for you than pills anyway.
If you’re deficient in some mineral or vitamin and you take it, it will improve you. If you’re not deficient, it won’t. It’s hard to know whether you’re deficient, which makes this so difficult. For example, Vitamin B12 can improve your memory but only if you’re deficient in it.
There is no, or even negative correlation, between price and effect. Blueberries, other healthy foods, and gingko biloba are cheap and probably do just as much as the proprietary phosphatidylserine blend that costs $60/bottle; for advertised products the only active ingredient is advertising. ALL advertised products, without exception. (See Principle #1 - they may show positive studies but probably only the people who were deficient in whatever chemical being tested had positive results, and that may or may not be you. Probably not.)
Only you can test a product rigorously; to prove it’s effective you need to write a diary every day, noting things you remember and forget; and you must take the product for a while and take notes, then stop taking it and take notes, then take it again for a while and take notes, then stop taking it and take notes. You need to do this over weeks and months until taking notes is a boring, repetitive routine; only this way can you avoid a fictitious positive result from subconsiously trying harder to remember things while you’re taking the medicine. It’s a lot of work. You must also not use any standardized or repeatable memory test because you’ll get better at the technique of taking the test, and not really be improving your memory per se. After months you must look back at your journals during the “on” and “off” periods and see if you notice a correlation.
[insert joke about forgetting item #4- everyone else in this thread is doing it!]
How are you supposed to note something you forgot?
[/quote]
Right… Luckily most forgetting is noticed when something bad happens later as a result, e.g. you find the living room lights on in the morning; you find a rotten apple on the table that you forgot to throw out; your hair’s in your face because you forgot to get a haircut again. Can’t find your car because you thought you knew where you parked but I guess you forgot…
I’ve been taking Ginkgo Biloba for years since both my mother and maternal grandfather died from AD and my memory was getting worse over time. My doctor said they wouldn’t hurt, so I tried them. Did they improve my memory? Hard to say since I don’t have a second me who didn’t take them to ask. There is no scientific evidence that is does anything, but if I think it improves my memory that’s all that matters.
“Maybe they work, maybe not” basically means “they don’t work.” If you’re going to take random shit in the hopes it “maybe” will improve your memory, try beef jerky or M&Ms. At least they taste good.
Even this would never be reliable. You will never get bias out of the process, nor will you be controlling for other factors than could affect one’s memory.
